The Coming Storm

BBC Radio 4

31 episodes listed below

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Conspiracy culture, traced back to power.

The gist

The Coming Storm follows Gabriel Gatehouse through conspiracy culture, election panic, and the people who turn suspicion into power. It is measured but uneasy, treating bizarre claims as clues to real political fractures rather than as spectacle.

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About The Coming Storm

The Coming Storm is political reporting about the stories people use when ordinary trust has collapsed. It begins with conspiracy culture, but it rarely stays there for long. Gabriel Gatehouse follows the trail from QAnon and Pizzagate into party machinery, media distrust, ideology, and the anxious folklore around stolen elections. The show has a habit of pausing at the odd detail. A man in horns and furs becomes more than a spectacle. A local Idaho convention becomes a window into the fight over what politics is supposed to mean. A think tank's scorecard becomes a way to ask how influence works when democracy is dismissed as theater. The tone is serious, but not airless. Dry humor appears when the material becomes almost too strange to absorb, then the reporting returns to the harder question: what is the strange thing doing in the world? The series is especially sharp on the difference between belief and strategy. Some figures may genuinely believe what they say. Others may find that conspiracy language is politically useful even when they do not fully buy it. That ambiguity gives the show its tension. It does not treat every connection as evidence, and it does not pretend that every connection is meaningless. Episodes move between authored narration, interview exchange, live audience questions, and clips from public media. The result feels like an investigation that keeps checking its own map. Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Bobby Kennedy Jr., Peter Thiel, and Jacob Rees-Mogg appear as figures inside larger arguments about power, anti-state politics, and the appeal of a single explanatory story. The show is also alert to journalistic failure. It asks what happens when establishment media ignore alternative narratives because they arrive dressed in absurdity. That does not mean endorsing the narratives. It means asking why they found an audience. The Coming Storm is best for listeners who want political analysis with history, texture, and unease. It is not comfort listening. It is a careful walk through the place where paranoia, grievance, ambition, and real institutional distrust begin to sound like one storm.

Made for: For listeners who want serious political reporting on conspiracy culture, populist movements, and the stories that make institutional distrust feel coherent. It suits people comfortable with ambiguity, historical lineage, and interviews that test claims without flattening them.

What sets it apart: The show treats conspiracy culture as both absurd and consequential, moving from local scenes to wider consequences without adopting the logic it studies. Its self-questioning style makes the investigation feel alert to its own risk of over-connecting the dots.

In their own words

America through the looking glass - enter a world where nothing is as it seems.As America heads into a presidential election, Gabriel Gatehouse dives back into the labyrinthine rabbit warren of American conspiracy culture. Whilst liberals across the world worry about a possible return of Donald Trump, millions of Americans are convinced that their democracy has already been highjacked - by a sinister Deep State cabal. How did this happen? And who is behind it? That's the story that Gabriel Gatehouse is investigating in this series of The Coming Storm.The search for the origins of this story takes...

As heard by us

Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026

It traces how conspiracy narratives move from online belief into party politics, institutional pressure and elite power.

The Coming Storm follows conspiracy narratives into the political institutions, money networks and media systems that give them force. Gabriel Gatehouse combines reported scenes with interviews and live conversations, moving from a Republican Party struggle in Idaho to questions…

Read our full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

Gabriel Gatehouse follows the rabbit hole until conspiracy meets campaign machinery and your certainty starts sweating.

Press play if you want

  • a guide to how QAnon, political ambition, and institutional distrust feed one another
  • reporting that asks who genuinely believes the story and who finds it politically useful
Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →
QAnon and Pizzagate mythologyelection distrustIdaho Republican politicsanti-democratic rhetoricsovereign individual ideologytrue believers versus opportunistsjournalistic blind spots

Talks about

Best episodes of The Coming Storm

Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.

Live at Hay FestivalJul 2, 2025

A careful look at conspiracy thinking, journalistic failure, and why strange clues can still matter.

This BBC Radio 4 conversation around The Coming Storm treats conspiracy thinking as something worth hearing, even when the facts do not hold up.

Inauguration: Live Q&AJan 20, 2025

A live, uneasy look at conspiracy theories edging closer to power.

The episode treats Trump taking the oath of office tomorrow as a live wire under the conversation, using it to ask what changes when conspiracy thinkers move nearer to power.

3. The Enemy WithinSep 25, 2024

A prank flyer opens onto Idaho's larger fight over conservatism and power.

Gabriel Gatehouse starts with a prank at Idaho's 2022 GOP convention, then uses it to open up a bigger fight inside Idaho Republican politics.

The Louis Theroux InterviewNov 17, 2022

A careful, unnerving conversation about conspiracy culture, power, and the stories that take root around both.

The Coming Storm gives Louis Theroux room to do what he does best: stay curious without pretending the answers are simple. It starts with Jacob Chansley, aka QShaman, then moves through Peter Thiel, The Sovereign Individual, Bitcoin, and the argument that the internet's…

8. EpilogueFeb 22, 2022

A slow, unnerving look at how stories turn into systems.

The episode moves from a question about Trump and Russia into the blur where political stories, finance, and the pull of a single explanation start to merge.

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Episodes

  1. 1

    Live at Hay Festival

    BBC journalist Gabriel Gatehouse and producer Lucy Proctor speak with writer Horatio Clare at the Hay Festival in 2025 about the two series of The Coming Storm, covering QAnon's origins, the 2024 US election, and the shift from fringe conspiracy theories to mainstream political power.

    Jul 2, 2025·1h 3m·4 clips
  2. 2

    Inauguration: Live Q&A

    The episode opens on the eve of Donald Trump’s inauguration.

    Jan 20, 2025·39m·3 clips
  3. 3

    Inauguration Bonus

    Jan 19, 2025·40m
  4. 4

    Send us your questions! Live Q&A

    Jan 16, 2025·1m
  5. 5

    Americast: Why Trump Won (and Why Harris Lost)

    Nov 8, 2024·29m
  6. 6

    8. The Last Election…?

    Oct 30, 2024·54m
  7. 7

    7. Wonderland

    Oct 23, 2024·40m
  8. 8

    6. Kompromat

    Oct 16, 2024·34m
  9. 9

    5. The Photocopier

    Oct 9, 2024·37m
  10. 10

    4. The Jump

    Oct 2, 2024·35m
  11. 11

    3. The Enemy Within

    Once upon a time in Idaho, politics got weird.

    Sep 25, 2024·38m·3 clips
  12. 12

    2. Flight 007

    Sep 18, 2024·37m
  13. 13

    1. The Yogi

    Sep 18, 2024·40m
  14. 14

    Welcome Back

    Sep 4, 2024·3m
  15. 15

    Introducing The Gatekeepers

    Feb 7, 2024·3m
  16. 16

    Introducing The Cows Are Mad

    Oct 18, 2023·3m
  17. 17

    Americast – Conspiracies: Inside the Rabbit Hole

    Jun 2, 2023·36m
  18. 18

    Introducing... A Very British Cult

    Apr 5, 2023·2m
  19. 19

    Bad People present True Crime Crackers 2022 ft. The Coming Storm

    Dec 21, 2022·41m
  20. 20

    The Louis Theroux Interview

    Never ignore the weird stuff.

    Nov 17, 2022·55m·4 clips
  21. 21

    The Mid-Terms: 2. The Regime

    Nov 13, 2022·55m
  22. 22

    The Mid-Terms: 1. Groomers

    Nov 6, 2022·42m
  23. 23

    8. Epilogue

    No one gets a safe seat.

    Feb 22, 2022·38m·2 clips
  24. 24

    4. Q Drops

    Jan 4, 2022·36m
  25. 25

    5. Blowback

    Jan 4, 2022·34m
  26. 26

    7. Welcome to the Future

    Jan 4, 2022·37m
  27. 27

    6. The Usual Suspects

    Jan 4, 2022·42m
  28. 28

    3. The Basement

    Jan 4, 2022·32m
  29. 29

    1. The Dead Body

    Jan 4, 2022·34m
  30. 30

    2. Sex, Lies, and… a Videotape

    Jan 4, 2022·35m
  31. 31

    Trailer

    Dec 20, 2021·3m