REPUBLIC OF LIES

When Donald Trump entered the White House in January 2017, America's sprawling subculture of conspiracy theorists suddenly gained access to the most powerful man in the world. Over the years, Trump had schmoozed with everyone from climate change deniers to rabid white nationalists to anti-Obama `birthers': suddenly, to understand the news, you needed to understand conspiracies. In False Times, Anna Merlan goes deep inside this secretive world and unearths its most bizarre, enthralling and terrifying stories. She mingles with the outlandish sect which claims that death is just a lifestyle choice - even though their founder died in 2014. She jumps aboard the `Conspira Sea', where the most extreme fringes of the conspiracy world get together for a cruise holiday. She speaks with the `alt-right' leaders who caused global outrage when they organised a white supremacist march in Virginia. And she interviews the ranting YouTuber and media impresario Alex Jones, who believes the American military is using chemical warfare to turn the population gay - and who happens to be on first-name terms with the President of the United States. These stories, Merlan shows, raise timely and troubling questions for us all. What happens when conspiracy theories go mainstream - and what impact does it have on the news that is actually true? What happens when our leaders are closely tied to peddlers of half-truths and outright lies, and what can we do about it? And can the rise of the conspiracy theory shed a light on the political earthquakes of recent years? After all, in an age of fake news, everyone lives in false times . . .