I’m a journalist, broadcaster and author. I report on social media, extremism, disinformation, online life and culture and more – in text, audio and video.
I focus on stories that people will be talking about – before they’re actually talking about them.
I write a Substack - read and subscribe here
I produced a series on the secret history of social media way back in 2011. While working for BBC Trending, I explored fringe political movements – the worlds of incels, 4chan, fake victims, extreme trolls and so much more. Later I wrote a book that became the first in-depth examination of the alt-right, just after I produced the first radio documentary series about the Black Lives Matter movement. That same year - 2016 - I struck up a conversation with the Russian hacker(s?) who broke into the Democratic National Committee’s computers, an event that lead to the thing we call Pizzagate, which I reported on shortly before a man armed with a gun tried to get to the bottom of it.
I wrote about the history of fake news and found evidence that Russian trolls drove the number one Twitter hashtag at the very moment Donald Trump was elected president. I visited the first US factory that sent its jobs overseas (it’s still empty).
In Berkeley I covered fractious protests and counter-protests in the early years of Trump’s first term, and embedded with antifa and Proud Boys and brought them together in a cannabis café for an encounter that was, perhaps surprisingly, completely peaceful.
Pizzagate set the table for QAnon so I was on that beat for a while too, up to and beyond the events of January 6, 2021.
I did the first interview with the QAnon Shaman after he emerged from prison, reported on the sorry-not-sorry Jan 6 rioters, and found out how election deniers were getting into government around the country, like in small towns in Iowa.
I challenged the anti-semitic anti-vaxxer who wants to be the next Alex Jones and broke the story of how Jones himself manages to spend vast amounts of conspiracy theory money despite bankruptcy.
I reported on threats against election workers and as a result I am officially qualified to supervise a polling place in the state of Wisconsin (because I sat through the whole training course, not because of what I wrote!). I wrote a profile of our extremely online vice president and was the first reporter to make it to the childhood church of Robert Prevost after he became Pope Leo XIV.
Many of these stories and many others are in my latest book DAY OF RECKONING: How the Far Right Declared War on Democracy.
Oh, again: I write a Substack - read and subscribe here
