Are conspiracy theories America’s biggest export?

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.

0:30No bouncing between tabs. And best of all, no spreadsheets. Stop managing software and start managing your business with one unified system. Try for free today at odoo.com. That's O-D-O-O dot com. With the new Schwab Teen Investor Account, teens can gain hands-on investing experience and build positive money habits. It's an account co-owned by you and your teen, so you can monitor and engage with the account while your teen learns how to invest and manage money. Learn more at schwab.com. Hey there, it's Asma and Tristan here. Hey guys, as we reach the end of 2025, we wanted to bring you a few of our favourite episodes of the podcast since we relaunched in September.

1:11That's right, and we will be back in the new year with brand new episodes bringing you stories about where the world and America meet. And we love to hear from you about what you thought about the episodes or the other topics we've been looking at. So please message us. Our email address is theglobalstory at bbc.com. Now, Tristan, one of the episodes I was really into is the story of a young British woman who was so influenced by her mother's health conspiracy theories that she died. It is a fascinating story that gives us a glimpse into how conspiracy theories that really originated and had some roots here in the United States traveled halfway across the world, across the Atlantic Ocean, and have found a home in the UK.

2:00Incredibly tragic story, but it's really brought to life by Mariana because she's such a wonderful storyteller. I really enjoy this episode too. These days, it seems like mistrust in science has never been higher. Fewer people are getting vaccines. Vaccination rates for kindergartners continued on a downward trend across the country last year. A known vaccine skeptic is now leading the most powerful health agency in America. I want to thank President Trump for entrusting me to deliver on his promise to make America healthy again. And this year, for the first time in almost a decade, people in the U.S.

2:39died from measles. This is completely preventable. This doesn't have to happen if we can get vaccination rates back to high levels again. The attacks on public health are escalating. In August, a gunman opened fire on the headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control, firing over 500 rounds and killing a police officer. White's deadly attack on the CDC was fueled by his deeply held beliefs in misinformation. They say that he... Increasingly, this misinformation is being exported around the world. And an ocean away, one family is reeling from its real-world impacts. My sister has passed away as a direct consequence of my mom's actions and beliefs.

3:22From the BBC, I'm Asma Khalid. And today on The Global Story, Mariana Spring, on how suspicion of science in America helped radicalize a British mom with devastating consequences. Mariana, hi. It's nice to meet you. Lovely to meet you. You have become the disinformation expert at the BBC. How did you first hear about this particular story about Kate Shemarani?

3:51Marianna Spring:Kate Shemarani was someone who came onto my radar very early on in me doing this job. So I started investigating all things, social media, disinformation, around the time that the lockdowns were first imposed during the pandemic here in the UK. And Kate Shemarani was a conspiracy theory influencer who didn't have a huge following at that point. She was posting on social media. She was attending these anti-lockdown rallies. And I remember being at Trafalgar Square in the centre of London and seeing her at one of these protests. And, you know, she was in this quite glamorous dress. She's got long blonde hair.

4:28Marianna Spring:She had a mic. And what was interesting is that she was someone who is, was trained as a nurse. She was there spreading completely untrue claims about the pandemic that went way beyond legitimate questions and concerns people might have about the proportionality of lockdown measures. or vaccines.

4:51Marianna Spring:She builds this platform and she starts to get criticised more and more, particularly when she makes comments suggesting that doctors and nurses involved in administering the vaccination are similar to doctors and nurses in Germany who were hanged for their part in medical experimentation, etc, etc. But perhaps the main way that I came to understand her family was speaking to her children who reached out to me. In the summer of 2020, which was very early on in the pandemic, I heard from her eldest son called Sebastian, who said to me, I'm really worried about the harm that my mum is causing by promoting misinformation about the pandemic, particularly because she's often using her nursing credentials.

5:40And you met her in person during this time period?

5:43Marianna Spring:I did. I met her to speak to her about anti-vaccine videos that she featured in. It was a very intriguing experience. I went round to her house and when I met her, my impression was she really wanted me to like her, which surprised me given that I'd just interviewed her son who was saying, my mum is a danger to society because she's sharing this kind of misinformation.

6:07Marianna Spring:We were at her house, met all her cats and chihuahuas. And there were these photos of the family on the wall. So she has four children. But I knew at that point they weren't in touch with her. So it felt like this veneer of we want to be this happy family and it's all perfect and it's all great. But I knew behind the scenes that at least two of her children had decided they didn't really want to speak to her anymore because she was spreading misinformation. So this is happening 2020, 2021. Yes. As the COVID lockdowns were getting underway. What happens after that time period, after you meet her?

6:47Did you stay in touch over the last few years?

6:49Marianna Spring:Yeah, she stayed in touch over text. She used to text me quite a lot, actually, usually warning me that I was somehow being used or misled by the evil BBC who want me to say and do certain things. Spoiler, that doesn't happen. I'm quite disobedient probably in that regard. But I stayed in touch with her. And I also stayed in touch with Sebastian, her elder son. Okay. Mainly because I was quite interested to see what happened next. Was it possible for their relationship to repair? Would his mum suddenly have this moment where she turned around and said, oh, actually, I don't know why I was posting that stuff and showing that content.

7:26Marianna Spring:I kind of wanted to keep tabs and see what happened. But I don't think I had any idea that it would get as bad as it did, really. Okay, there are a lot of characters in this story. So I want to take a moment and pause just to explain who is who in this family. There's the mom, Kate Shemarani, whom we've already met. She's this well-known British conspiracy theorist. Their eldest son is Sebastian. We met him earlier, too. Then there's a set of twins, Paloma and Gabriel. Paloma is central to this story. She's the daughter who ends up getting sick. Her twin brother is Gabriel. And they all seem to remember a childhood filled with conspiracy theories.

8:15Marianna Spring:It's interesting because when you talk to Sebastian and Gabriel Shemirani about this, they're often filling in the gaps, particularly because a lot of this happened when they were really little. So it was around 2001 when the 9-11 attacks happened in the United States. They say their dad in particular became extra fascinated in conspiracy theories. My dad was radicalised by 2001. He believed and still believes that 9-11 was an inside job. You know, it was staged in some way. It was an inside job. It was a hoax. He would come home from work around maybe 9 or 10pm at night and spend hours until the early hours of the morning watching conspiracy theory documentaries and videos.

9:05So they say that their dad got really into this 9-11 stuff

9:09Marianna Spring:and he was the person that drew their mum into that way of thinking. And she also started to indulge in conspiracy theories. You know, I'd come home from school and she would tell me some new mystical property of a vegetable that she'd found. So there was a lot about lizards. Me and Sebastian believed that the royal family were lizards, shape-shifting lizards that crossed across dimensions. Oh, this I'm not familiar with. This must be like a British conspiracy. Yeah, it kind of is, although actually a lot of US conspiracy theorists share it as well. So there was a lot of talk about lizards, you know, bedtime stories with lizards.

9:47She gave me this book for Christmas by David Icke. It was all about the lizard people that live under the surface of the earth.

9:51Marianna Spring:And then it started to sort of gradually escalate. About how the Rothschilds are plotting to go live on a space station, how there's going to be this mass genocide and stuff like that. It sounds like a bad Hollywood plot. But at the time, you know, I'm 10, 11 years old and I'm bricking it.

10:10Marianna Spring:They would listen to Alex Jones, the US conspiracy theorist, in the car on the way to school. This is when they were... That's Sandy Hook. About Sandy Hook, the shooting that happened in Connecticut in 2012, and all of these false narratives that were being spread at that time, suggesting that it was a hoax or stage that the children had not really died. Really disturbing stuff. It sounds like what you're saying is these kids don't remember a time in their lives when they were not surrounded by conspiracy theories from their parents, that their mom was really predisposed to this. But was there a particular moment in which she becomes sort of deeply, deeply entrenched in these views?

10:52Marianna Spring:so 2012 was this pivotal year where Kate Shemarani was diagnosed with breast cancer and at the time the kids say they were kind of kept in the dark about it they didn't really know what was going on but she had a mastectomy so an operation which appears to be the thing that removed the cancer but she chose not to have subsequent treatment like chemotherapy or radiotherapy, which you can have often to prevent the return of that cancer. And she turned to alternative medicine. What does that even mean, alternative medicines? What would she have done? Alternative medicines can be a whole range of things.

11:30Marianna Spring:So it can include diet, supplements, there's oxygen treatments that you can have. Often they're rooted in lifestyle change. And what's important to say is that some alternative medicine can be and is intended to be complementary. So people might choose to have conventional treatment and then also to basically eat healthily or do things that are good for their well-being but when it comes to Kate Shemarani she credited this alternative medicine on its own as being the cure as being yeah exactly so she usually uses this uses this word cancer-free I'm cancer-free because I pursued this alternative medicine regime I chose to do the Gerson therapy 13 juices a day all organic it was more so around 2015 that she started actually sharing this stuff on social media.

12:15And an organic, fat-free, salt-free, sugar-free, vegan diet. Five coffee enemas a day also.

12:21Marianna Spring:And specifically using her own cancer journey as a key way of connecting with people online. Hi, I'm Kate Shumarone, natural nurse in a toxic world. And building up this brand too. So calling herself the natural nurse because she had those nursing qualifications. Everything I learned in nursing school, I've had to unlearn and re-educate myself in a lot of things. And it's worth saying as well that at this point, the children have absorbed quite a lot of the views that their parents were sharing. I mean, you trust your parents. So, for example, when it came to Paloma, you know, her friends have spoken to me about how she didn't use sun cream because her mum had told her that that could give her cancer.

12:59Marianna Spring:Or she wouldn't use toothpaste that had fluoride in it or she wouldn't eat meat. There were quite a few things that she chose to do taking on her mum's health beliefs. But her process of separating from her mum in particular happens when she's at Cambridge University, where she begins to distance herself from her parents' views. And friends I've spoken to describe how, you know, she starts eating meat. She starts using toothpaste that has fluoride in it. She might take painkillers if she doesn't feel well, which she wouldn't have done. She does continue to try and go back home during the university holidays.

13:30Marianna Spring:But then the kind of unthinkable happens. So Paloma, she's graduated from university. She's living in Kent in a flat share. And then she starts to have some trouble breathing. She's got a pain in her chest. She goes and has a whole range of tests. And then she finds out that December in 2023 that she has non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a blood cancer. The doctors at the time say to her, look, obviously this is scary, but it's a really treatable cancer, especially in younger people like you. They give her around an 80 % chance of the cancer being cured if she has chemotherapy, conventional therapy. And at that time, she seemed to genuinely be considering them.

14:11Marianna Spring:And then her mum turns up out of the hospital.

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15:29I think it's totally understandable. Any mom would want to be there in the hospital with their kid when they're in a moment of crisis, even if they hadn't had the smoothest relationship. But when Kate does show up at the hospital, how does she then insert herself and her views into her daughter's treatment plans?

15:50Marianna Spring:So from the accounts of people who were there, Paloma's former boyfriend, for example, and his mum who'd attended the hospital with Paloma, they say that the atmosphere changed very quickly when Kate Shemarani turned up. How so? So she was asking for blood work, histology. She wanted to know exactly what was going on. And some of these things are normal things. If you're a mum and you turn up, you want to know what's going on. But before Kate Shemarani had turned up, Paloma had expressed concern to medics that she was worried what would happen if her mum did end up coming. and I've seen evidence that the medics at the time were discussing safeguarding concerns.

16:29Marianna Spring:They were saying, hang on a second, what's happening here? And then when... Protect her from her own mother. At the time, I've seen text messages where Kate Shemarani was, you know, texting the former boyfriend, for example, saying, don't let her consent to chemo, don't let her consent to anything. And Paloma's kind of saying, okay, everyone, can we just calm down? All of the people I've spoken to who knew her really well have said to me, she was kind of on the fence. She didn't really know what to do. About doing the chemo. About doing the chemo, about whether she should go back and live with her mum, what she should do.

16:57Marianna Spring:And in the end, she decides, I'm going to go back and live with my mum. She didn't make a definitive decision about the chemo. She said, for now, I don't want to have it. And I want to pursue this other therapy, which is called Gerson therapy. What's that? I'm not familiar with that. So Gerson therapy is a type of alternative medicine. People use it for a whole range of different illnesses. and it involves a very strict diet of fruits and vegetables and juices and also coffee enemas. It can actually be harmful in and of itself. And that was something that really, really worried Gabriel and Sebastian.

17:34And how do they react? How do the brothers react to this?

17:38Marianna Spring:So straight away when Paloma has gone home to her mum, so around Christmas of 2023, Gabriel actually turns up at the house with the boyfriend at the time, Ander, and they try to get Paloma to leave. Paloma's really confused. She found the whole thing quite distressing because you end up with Gabriel and her mum arguing with each other. But there's this desperation and when you talk to Gabriel about it, he says, like, this is my twin sister and I just really needed her to leave. I was so worried that the minute she was back home with mum, that was it, that she was going to go down this alternative medicine route and no matter how poorly she got, she wouldn't seek help.

18:13Marianna Spring:And that was actually the last time that Gabriel ever saw his twin sister. that Christmas.

18:22Increasingly, Paloma is difficult to speak to.

18:26Marianna Spring:The relationship with her boyfriend breaks down over a period of time. And Gabriel then tries one last-ditch attempt to say, please, Paloma, can you have chemotherapy? I'm so worried, I don't want you to die. And he ends up getting blocked.

18:45and during the time period i imagine she's getting sicker because if you don't do anything to truth cancer right in terms of chemo how are you going to get better exactly that and