Summary
QAnon and the plot to break reality.
A year on from the Capitol Insurrection in Washington DC on 6 January 2021, Gabriel Gatehouse journeys into the dark undergrowth of modern America. He's looking for the origins of the story that drove the crowds to storm the heart of US democracy. From conspiracy-soaked barrooms in 1990s Arkansas, via spies in hotel rooms in the shadow of the Kremlin, to anarchic chatrooms on the early internet, this is a search for the answer to one big question: did this just happen, or is somebody trying to break reality?
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Gabriel Gatehouse, and I've got a story to tell you. It's called The |
| 0:07.0 | Coming Stool, a new podcast series from BBC Radio 4 and World Service. |
| 0:13.6 | On January the 6th, 2021, a mob stormed the capital in Washington, D.C. |
| 0:21.1 | Among the crowds many believes a cabal of satanic pedophile had stolen the election |
| 0:26.7 | it's only a matter of time justice is coming and that a coming storm would free the |
| 0:31.1 | Republic from their grip. A strange fantasy had infected the bloodstream |
| 0:37.2 | of America. Millions believe this narrative. How did that happen? That what I set out to discover. |
| 0:47.0 | It's been a wild ride from the conspiracy soap bar rooms of Arkansas in the 1990s, |
| 0:55.0 | It was a place where anything could be said to have happened. |
| 0:59.0 | To the Byzantine chat rooms of the early internet. |
| 1:02.0 | There was this entire dimension out there. |
| 1:04.0 | And dark websites where kids in basements |
| 1:08.0 | sat around cooking up a powerful and toxic meme brew |
| 1:12.0 | out of the detritus of American culture. |
| 1:15.0 | If I had never been in the picture, I don't know that everything that would have happened afterwards |
| 1:19.0 | would have happened. |
| 1:21.0 | I started by trying to understand this vast and sprawling conspiracy theory known as |
| 1:26.3 | Kianar. |
| 1:27.3 | It was a puzzle. |
| 1:28.3 | It was a series of questions and if you were able to find the answer to them it kind of |
| 1:32.3 | compiled a story. |
| 1:34.0 | But my quest turned into something else. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.