They are the horror stories of our time: governments poison us, climate change is a lie, the earth is a disc…Conspiracy theories, as crazy as they sound, all have one thing in common: they explain our complex world in the simplest way possible and give it a supposed meaning. Our own world of imagination and conspiracy theory merge into a kind of alternative reality. In times of fake news and health demos, this poses a threat to democracy. What happens when fictional descriptions of the world suddenly take on equal status with scientific facts? Harald Lesch and Dirk Steffens go on a journey to sound out this danger and find out what can be done about it.

WRITER: Tamar Baumgarten     DIRECTOR: Stefan Schneider     CAMERA: Martin Christ     EDITOR: Fabian Reisch     MUSIC: Ritchie Staringer     NARRATOR: Hildegard Meier     COMMISSIONING EDITOR: Iris Zink, Tobias Schultes         EDITORIAL MANAGEMENT: Christiane Götz-Sobel (ZDF)