Black Pill
How I Witnessed the Darkest Corners of the Internet Come to Life, Poison Society, and Capture American Politics
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wish list failed.
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy Now for $24.27
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Elle Reeve
-
Written by:
-
Elle Reeve
About this listen
This tour de force of investigative journalism—in the vein of The Next Civil War and Why We’re Polarized—reveals how the battle between the right and left is spilling out from the darkest corners of the internet into the real world with often tragic consequences.
Award-winning journalist and CNN correspondent Elle Reeve was not surprised by the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. With years of in-depth research and on-the-ground investigative reporting under her belt, Reeve was aware of the preoccupations of the online far right and their journey from the computer to QAnon, militias, and racist groups.
At the same time, Reeve saw a parallel growth of counterforces, with citizen vigilantes using new tools and tactics to take down the far right. This ongoing battle, long fought mainly on the internet, had arrived in the real world with greater and greater frequency.
With a sharp eye for detail and a dash of dark humor, Reeve explains the origins of this shocking sweep of political violence. Drawing on countless interviews with sources in the white nationalist movement as well as hundreds of as-yet-unseen documents, she takes us on a surreal journey from the darkest corners of the internet to the most significant and chilling scenes of real-world political violence in generations. A stranger-than-fiction odyssey into the dark heart of what American politics has become, Black Pill is necessary listening for any supporter of democracy.
You may also enjoy...
-
Wild Faith
- How the Christian Right Is Taking Over America
- Written by: Talia Lavin
- Narrated by: Talia Lavin
- Length: 9 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From school boards to the Supreme Court, Christian theocracy is ascendant in America—and only through exploring its motivations and impacts can we understand the crisis we face. In Wild Faith, Lavin fearlessly confronts whether our democracy can survive an organized, fervent theocratic movement, one that seeks to impose its religious beliefs on American citizens.
-
-
will listen again when I need reminding
- By Alicia Hauff on 2024-11-28
Written by: Talia Lavin
-
The Quiet Damage
- QAnon and the Destruction of the American Family
- Written by: Jesselyn Cook
- Narrated by: Jesselyn Cook
- Length: 9 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Quiet Damage, celebrated reporter Jesselyn Cook unfolds the heartbreaking stories of five representative families from couples young and old to rural white parents to urban Black siblings, to show how QAnon shattered bonds once believed unbreakable. Cook paints a portrait of American suffering, of the vulnerabilities that have left people susceptible to outrageous theories promising order and control in a world where both are increasingly in short supply.
-
-
Very insightful
- By Ryan Collins on 2024-12-05
Written by: Jesselyn Cook
-
Autocracy, Inc.
- The Dictators Who Want to Run the World
- Written by: Anne Applebaum
- Narrated by: Anne Applebaum
- Length: 4 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the Pulitzer-prize winning author, an alarming account of how autocracies work together to undermine the democratic world, and how we should organize to defeat them.
-
-
A good summary, but with one obvious blindspot
- By Andrew Dunn on 2024-08-09
Written by: Anne Applebaum
-
Ministry of Truth
- Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past
- Written by: Steve Benen
- Narrated by: Rachel Maddow
- Length: 5 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For as long as historical records have existed, authoritarian regimes have tried to rewrite history to suit their purposes, using their dictatorial powers to create myths, spread propaganda, justify decisions, erase opponents, and even dispose of crimes. Today, as America’s Republican Party becomes increasingly radicalized, it’s not surprising to see the GOP read from a similarly despotic script. Indeed, the party is taking dangerous, aggressive steps to rewrite history—and not just from generations past.
Written by: Steve Benen
-
On Tyranny
- Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
- Written by: Timothy Snyder
- Narrated by: Timothy Snyder
- Length: 1 hr and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Founding Fathers tried to protect us from the threat they knew, the tyranny that overcame ancient democracy. Today, our political order faces new threats, not unlike the totalitarianism of the twentieth century. We are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience.
-
-
The times they are a changing!! But which way?
- By MW "Photodude." on 2019-05-06
Written by: Timothy Snyder
-
War
- Written by: Bob Woodward
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 12 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Bob Woodward tells the revelatory, behind-the-scenes story of three wars—Ukraine, the Middle East and the struggle for the American Presidency. War provides an unvarnished examination of the vice president as she tries to embrace the Biden legacy and policies while beginning to chart a path of her own as a presidential candidate.
-
-
All over the place
- By Void on 2024-11-20
Written by: Bob Woodward
-
Wild Faith
- How the Christian Right Is Taking Over America
- Written by: Talia Lavin
- Narrated by: Talia Lavin
- Length: 9 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From school boards to the Supreme Court, Christian theocracy is ascendant in America—and only through exploring its motivations and impacts can we understand the crisis we face. In Wild Faith, Lavin fearlessly confronts whether our democracy can survive an organized, fervent theocratic movement, one that seeks to impose its religious beliefs on American citizens.
-
-
will listen again when I need reminding
- By Alicia Hauff on 2024-11-28
Written by: Talia Lavin
-
The Quiet Damage
- QAnon and the Destruction of the American Family
- Written by: Jesselyn Cook
- Narrated by: Jesselyn Cook
- Length: 9 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Quiet Damage, celebrated reporter Jesselyn Cook unfolds the heartbreaking stories of five representative families from couples young and old to rural white parents to urban Black siblings, to show how QAnon shattered bonds once believed unbreakable. Cook paints a portrait of American suffering, of the vulnerabilities that have left people susceptible to outrageous theories promising order and control in a world where both are increasingly in short supply.
-
-
Very insightful
- By Ryan Collins on 2024-12-05
Written by: Jesselyn Cook
-
Autocracy, Inc.
- The Dictators Who Want to Run the World
- Written by: Anne Applebaum
- Narrated by: Anne Applebaum
- Length: 4 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the Pulitzer-prize winning author, an alarming account of how autocracies work together to undermine the democratic world, and how we should organize to defeat them.
-
-
A good summary, but with one obvious blindspot
- By Andrew Dunn on 2024-08-09
Written by: Anne Applebaum
-
Ministry of Truth
- Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past
- Written by: Steve Benen
- Narrated by: Rachel Maddow
- Length: 5 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For as long as historical records have existed, authoritarian regimes have tried to rewrite history to suit their purposes, using their dictatorial powers to create myths, spread propaganda, justify decisions, erase opponents, and even dispose of crimes. Today, as America’s Republican Party becomes increasingly radicalized, it’s not surprising to see the GOP read from a similarly despotic script. Indeed, the party is taking dangerous, aggressive steps to rewrite history—and not just from generations past.
Written by: Steve Benen
-
On Tyranny
- Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
- Written by: Timothy Snyder
- Narrated by: Timothy Snyder
- Length: 1 hr and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Founding Fathers tried to protect us from the threat they knew, the tyranny that overcame ancient democracy. Today, our political order faces new threats, not unlike the totalitarianism of the twentieth century. We are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience.
-
-
The times they are a changing!! But which way?
- By MW "Photodude." on 2019-05-06
Written by: Timothy Snyder
-
War
- Written by: Bob Woodward
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 12 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Bob Woodward tells the revelatory, behind-the-scenes story of three wars—Ukraine, the Middle East and the struggle for the American Presidency. War provides an unvarnished examination of the vice president as she tries to embrace the Biden legacy and policies while beginning to chart a path of her own as a presidential candidate.
-
-
All over the place
- By Void on 2024-11-20
Written by: Bob Woodward
-
Selling the Dream
- The Billion-Dollar Industry Bankrupting Americans
- Written by: Jane Marie
- Narrated by: Jane Marie
- Length: 6 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Peabody and Emmy Award–winning journalist Jane Marie expands on her popular podcast The Dream to expose the scourge of multilevel marketing schemes and how they have profited off the evisceration of the American working class.
-
-
must listen
- By Raccoon on 2024-07-02
Written by: Jane Marie
-
American Psychosis
- A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy
- Written by: David Corn
- Narrated by: Steven Jay Cohen
- Length: 17 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A fast-paced, rollicking, behind-the-scenes account of how the GOP since the 1950s has encouraged and exploited extremism, bigotry, and paranoia to gain power, American Psychosis offers listeners a brisk, can-you-believe-it journey through the netherworld of far-right irrationality and the Republican Party’s interactions with the darkest forces in America.
-
-
Excellent, essential.
- By Anonymous User on 2023-06-06
Written by: David Corn
-
The Zombie Survival Guide
- Complete Protection from the Living Dead
- Written by: Max Brooks
- Narrated by: Marc Cashman
- Length: 8 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Zombie Survival Guide is your key to survival against the hordes of undead who may be stalking you right now. Exhaustively comprehensive, this book covers everything you need to know, including how to understand zombie physiology and behavior, the most effective defense tactics and weaponry, ways to outfit your home for a long siege, and how to survive and adapt in any territory or terrain.
-
-
How certain chapters can be applied to real life situations and disasters and make you think.
- By Timothy Johal on 2024-02-08
Written by: Max Brooks
-
The Bishop and the Butterfly
- Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
- Written by: Michael Wolraich
- Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
- Length: 11 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Vivian Gordon went out before midnight in a velvet dress and mink coat. Her body turned up the next morning in a desolate Bronx park, a dirty clothesline wrapped around her neck. At her stylish Manhattan apartment, detectives discovered notebooks full of names—businessmen, socialites, gangsters. And something else—a letter from an anti-corruption commission established by Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Written by: Michael Wolraich
-
Culture Warlords
- My Journey into the Dark Web of White Supremacy
- Written by: Talia Lavin
- Narrated by: Talia Lavin
- Length: 8 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One reporter takes an immersive dive into white supremacy's explosive online presence, exploring the undercurrents of propaganda, racism, misogyny, and history that led us to where we are now. Shocking, humorous, and merciless in equal measure, Culture Warlords explores some of the vilest subcultures on the web - and shows us how we can fight back.
-
-
Fantastically relevant and thoroughly researched
- By Mountain mama on 2021-01-23
Written by: Talia Lavin
-
Bloodlands
- Europe Between Hitler and Stalin
- Written by: Timothy Snyder
- Narrated by: Ralph Cosham
- Length: 19 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Bloodlands is a new kind of European history, presenting the mass murders committed by the Nazi and Stalinist regimes as two aspects of a single history, in the time and place where they occurred: between Germany and Russia, when Hitler and Stalin both held power. Assiduously researched, deeply humane, and utterly definitive, Bloodlands will be required listening for anyone seeking to understand the central tragedy of modern history.
Written by: Timothy Snyder
-
A Well-Trained Wife
- My Escape from Christian Patriarchy
- Written by: Tia Levings
- Narrated by: Tia Levings
- Length: 10 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Recruited into the fundamentalist Quiverfull movement as a young wife, Tia Levings learned that being a good Christian meant following a list of additional life principles—a series of secret, special rules to obey. Being a godly and submissive wife in Christian Patriarchy included strict discipline, isolation, and an alternative lifestyle that appeared wholesome to outsiders. Women were to be silent, “keepers of the home.” A Well-Trained Wife is an unforgettable memoir about a woman's race to save herself and her family and details the ways that extreme views can manifest in a marriage.
-
-
Vulnerable and honest
- By Brooke on 2024-12-18
Written by: Tia Levings
-
Anansi's Gold
- The Man Who Looted the West, Outfoxed Washington, and Swindled the World
- Written by: Yepoka Yeebo
- Narrated by: Jude Owusu
- Length: 12 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Ghana achieved independence from Britain in 1957, it instantly became a target for home-grown opportunists and rapacious Western interests determined to claim whatever assets colonialism hadn’t already stripped. A CIA-funded military junta ousted the new nation’s inspiring president, Kwame Nkrumah, then falsely accused him of hiding the country’s gold overseas. Into this big lie stepped one of history’s most charismatic scammers, a con man to rival the trickster god Anansi.
Written by: Yepoka Yeebo
-
Lucky Loser
- How Donald Trump Squandered His Father's Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success
- Written by: Russ Buettner, Susanne Craig
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 17 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters behind the 2018 bombshell New York Times exposé of then-President Trump’s finances, an explosive investigation into the history of Donald Trump’s wealth, revealing how exactly one of the country’s biggest business failures lied his way into the White House.
-
-
Revealing
- By Brandy A on 2024-11-18
Written by: Russ Buettner, and others
-
The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory
- American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism
- Written by: Tim Alberta
- Narrated by: Tim Alberta
- Length: 18 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Evangelical Christians are perhaps the most polarizing—and least understood—people living in America today. In his seminal new book, The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory, journalist Tim Alberta, himself a practicing Christian and the son of an evangelical pastor, paints an expansive and profoundly troubling portrait of the American evangelical movement.
-
-
Required Reading
- By Isabel McKinlay on 2023-12-23
Written by: Tim Alberta
-
Quackery
- A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything
- Written by: Lydia Kang, Nate Pedersen
- Narrated by: Hillary Huber
- Length: 10 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What won't we try in our quest for perfect health, beauty, and the fountain of youth? Well, just imagine a time when doctors prescribed morphine for crying infants. When liquefied gold was touted as immortality in a glass. And when strychnine - yes, that strychnine, the one used in rat poison - was dosed like Viagra. Looking back with fascination, horror, and not a little dash of dark, knowing humor, Quackery recounts the lively, at times unbelievable, history of medical misfires and malpractices.
-
-
how bad the narration was
- By adam martin on 2024-11-03
Written by: Lydia Kang, and others
-
How Fascism Works
- The Politics of Us and Them
- Written by: Jason Stanley
- Narrated by: MacLeod Andrews
- Length: 5 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As the child of refugees of World War II Europe and a renowned philosopher and scholar of propaganda, Jason Stanley has a deep understanding of how democratic societies can be vulnerable to fascism: Nations don’t have to be fascist to suffer from fascist politics. In fact, fascism’s roots have been present in the United States for more than a century.
-
-
Absolutely Terrible
- By Ronan Lynch on 2022-07-10
Written by: Jason Stanley
What listeners say about Black Pill
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Ryan Collins
- 2024-08-06
Required listening/reading for anybody interested in the intersection between politics and the internet
An insightful and often exhilarating exploration of the last 10 years of politics through the lens of those incorrigible little scamps hanging out on the dumbest websites on the internet. Elle Reeve recounts a decade of interviews and research on right wing online (and offline) spaces, introducing and deconstructing an extremely compelling cast of characters. Black Pill is great summary for those already familiar with the subject matter, and serves as a Rosetta Stone for anyone who isn’t embarrassed by the amount of right-wing internet slang they understand. Brilliantly narrated by the author.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Justin Stewart
- 2024-11-25
Not worth it
Tidbits of interesting information, nothing ground breaking and plagued with overly detailed storytelling. Too much fluff
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Tristan Hanscomb
- 2024-07-10
Amazing!! Incredible work!
Found out about this book through your recent appearance on the QAA podcast. This is the book I’ve been needing! I’ve been following the rise of the far-right since the emergence of edgy jokes about Nazis online as a young g teenager, and watched the events of the last decade cascade one into another. I seen the connection between these events, and was the only one telling my family and friends that Qanon was dangerous and will lead to something bad, but I could not articulate the timeline well enough. This, this is the holy grail of the history of online trolls to Jan 6. Thank you Elle, thank you for putting yourself out there to get us the first hand account of facing down the far right that we all need to hear. Amazing work.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Anonymous User
- 2024-08-30
Harrowing, brutally honest, a raw look at the online right wing that shocked me to my core
I fear for the future of America. People like this got a man into the White House and nearly usurped the conservative movement. The story is disturbing and a cautionary tale of what happens when you embrace ironic bigotry until it slowly consumes you.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!