Is this how democracy dies?

Gabriel Gatehouse’s The Coming Storm was the biggest podcast on BBC Sounds: an essential guide to the conspiracy theories tearing America apart. Now he joins us live and via livestream ahead of the most important presidential election of our time with some dark truths about our present and ominous insights into the future.

Gabriel will take us down a rabbit hole – one that both the US as a nation and he as a journalist fell through – to unpack an epochal shift in political culture that starts in the earliest years of the Clinton administration and reached a crescendo on 6 January 2021 with the storming of the US Capitol. But that event wasn’t the wild finale of a chaotic Trump presidency many hoped for – it was only the beginning.

Drawing on a compelling mix of research and reportage, Gabriel will get under the skin of these conspiracy theories to show us a radical new kind of politics emerging, a movement that has coalesced around a loose alliance of tech bros, internet trolls and white supremacists.

Don’t miss this chance to get the inside scoop on a profoundly serious threat to democracy from one of the leading broadcasters of our time – and find out what we can do about it.

Speakers:

Gabriel Gatehouse is a journalist and broadcaster. The former International Editor of Newsnight and co-host of Ukrainecast on BBC Sounds, he has reported from almost every recent conflict around the world, from Ukraine to Syria, Libya to Iraq. He has won numerous awards for his journalism, most recently the 2023 Broadcasting Press Guild (for The Coming Storm podcast) and the 2020 Foreign Press Association award for his coverage of the Hong Kong protests. He has reported extensively from the United States on the rise and fall of Donald Trump. His podcast, The Coming Storm, which launched in January 2022 to critical acclaim, was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Journalism.

Hannah MacInnes is a broadcaster and journalist. Alongside hosting How To Academy’s live programmes and podcast, she presents a cultural show on Times Radio and interviews on-stage at a number of other major literary events. She is the host of The Klosters Forum Podcast series and has written for the Radio Times, the Evening Standard and TLS. Before going freelance she worked for 8 years at BBC Newsnight, as Planning Editor and as a Producer / Filmmaker.

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