IN HIS introduction to the new season of The Coming Storm (Radio 4, Wednesdays, first episode 11 September), Gabriel Gatehouse channels the histrionics of a showman enticing us into the museum of curiosities. His exhibits are those weird and wonderful Americans who believe in QAnon, in the Deep State, and in reptilian tyrants. That a second series is needed suggests that the predicted storm has not, in fact, come; but the cumulonimbi are plain to see, in such characters as Alan Hostetter, the California yoga instructor who was imprisoned after the 6 January 2021 Capitol protests.

Hostetter’s is an intriguing story; and Gatehouse is best when he drops the fairground act and tells it straight. Awakened to state overreach by lockdown sanctions, Hostetter developed a world-view according to which his entire career has been shaped by a conspiracy directed at himself. Even those who joined him at the Capitol he now regards as agents provocateurs. As Gatehouse astutely comments, by giving him a prison sentence of 11 years, the judge implicitly bolstered the mythology of an epic struggle for truth in American politics. He might, instead, have treated him like the deluded narcissist that he is.

For those who haven’t seen it before, Gatehouse puts on a good show. But conspiracy reporters, like conspiracy theorists, have a tendency to lay it on thick. The cult movie The Matrix is invoked: are we brave enough to take the red pill that enables us to see through the reality constructed for us to the horrific truth? We are invited through the looking glass and down rabbit holes, where we might presumably drop in for a mad tea party with another BBC disinformation expert, Marianna Spring. If you want a break from the True Crime genre, then True Conspiracy offers an entertaining alternative, so long as you don’t mind the odd mixed metaverse.

Someone who rarely shied away from histrionics was Salvador Dalí. From surrealist masterpieces to adverts for stomach-pain solutions, Dalí turned his hand to anything that would keep the money rolling in. The story recounted in Scamtown (Apple Original Podcasts, released Monday) seems entirely in keeping with this peculiar world in which cultural registers are liberally combined. It tells of a sketch dashed off by Dalí of the crucifixion, which was given to the inmates of the Rikers Island prison, in New York. Having been hung for several years in the canteen, gradually acquiring coffee and ketchup stains, it was stolen and replaced by a comically poor imitation.

The Thomas Crown Affair this ain’t. The thieves were hopelessly inept and evidently had no idea what to do with the picture once they had it. But then there comes the second part of the story, as glorious as the first. It tells of the legal defence put up on behalf of the supposed leader of the heist. I won’t spoil it. Suffice to say, it is surely one of the finest examples of brazen legalistic chutzpah that you will encounter.