The Prism Metanews Guide to January 6th - Part 1 Prism Audio

This segment is the first of four parts that comprise this voice essay. You can find this episode on Apple Podcasts here.
Chapter 0 - Prologue
The confusion that has taken hold around January 6th hit Caroline Edwards on a personal level. She had been on the receiving end of insults from people who supported the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol. In her words: “I was called Nancy Pelosi's dog, called incompetent, called a hero and a villain. I was called a traitor to my country, my oath, and my constitution.”
Ms. Edwards, actually Officer Edwards of the Capitol Police, received all this abuse during and since the attack for the sin of simply doing her job and defending the Capitol from a mob intent on breaking through barriers and windows to get to people inside the building.
Edwards was knocked unconscious in the early part of the attack. But on it went, for hours, and she got up and fought again, injured.
Officer Edwards, testifying in front of Congress about the experience, later said she has asked herselves many, many times how we had gotten to the point where Americans were attacking other Americans on the steps of one our most American institutions. Maybe you have asked this as well. A lot of Americans have. A large part of the reason—and to why we are still asking the question 18 months later—is, my friends, that misinformation about January 6th is rampant and effective.
As Caroline Edwards was recovering from her wounds late that evening, the Congress eventually assembled to finish formalizing the election of Joe Biden as the 46th President of the United States. They were supposed to have done it much earlier in the day. They had in fact convened for that purpose, but the mob disrupted those Constitutionally prescribed proceedings. Never before, until this time, had the United States seen a less-than-peaceful transition of power from one President to the next. Never before, until this time, had the United States seen a defeated President refuse to concede. Or call supporters together to “fight” for him. Our country had never seen anything like it before.
As dramatic as these events were, and for all that we know about them, why do Americans find themselves arguing with one another over the basics about January 6th? We watched our TVs in shock as it unfolded. Almost no one had a clue in the days following, which you might expect in the near aftermath. But you could spend all your time reading and come away confused, still, 18 months later, about what went down. So… why is this episode so hard for us, individually and collectively, to make sense of?
Welcome to our guide to January 6th, in which I will attempt to answer this important question.
I’m Kevin, the editor of Prism Metanews. 
But that probably doesn’t mean anything to you! And you’d be right to question whether it makes sense to listen to me on this or any other topic. As an advocate for critical thinking about sources of information and media literacy habits generally… I ENDORSE.
So here’s me in a nutshell: once upon a time and for a long time, I was in public service. I’m an economist who turned into a linguist who turned again into an intelligence analyst. The U.S. Government trained me to synthesize wide-ranging pieces of information into actionable analysis to help safeguard our national security. For many years, I specialized in understanding foreign media environments and analyzing propaganda.
I have been doing Prism Metanews, and precursor projects related to misinformation, for over a year and a half, all on the side of a full-time job and on the margins of the responsibilities that come from being a father of four. It’s not a paying gig, and there’s no glory in it; I do it because I believe we all need to do something about misinformation culture. This is my something.
It is essential that we as a nation deal with the big questions surrounding the bloody, nihilistic Capitol attack. This was the most significant aggress