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Published by BBC Radio 4
If you've ever yelled at someone on social media about, say, cancel culture or mask-wearing, then you are a soldier in the culture wars - those everyday battles for dominance between conflicting values. The acclaimed writer and podcaster Jon Ronson has seen friends swallowed up in them to the extent that it's ruined their lives. Jon was curious to learn how things fell apart, and so he went back into the history of the culture wars to find some of the origin stories: the pebbles thrown in the pond, creating the ripples that led us to where we are today. He had no idea what he'd find, but he's uncovered some extraordinary people and the strangest, yet most consequential tales.
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Jon Ronson’s second season of unexpected human stories from the culture wars focused on the divisions that erupted in the wake of the Covid lockdown. It was a number 1 hit podcast and received five star reviews. In a fun, free-flowing live discussion from the Hay Festival in Wales, Jon turns the tables on himself and asks his audience to ask him anything they like. Series Producer: Sarah Shebbeare
In this bonus episode, Jon Ronson's friend and fellow podcaster Adam Buxton chat about the latest season of Things Fell Apart. They discuss their favourite moments from the show and how to best navigate the culture wars, all while also chatting about lockdown, fatherhood, social anxiety and how a rough time at Cardiff High School made Jon Ronson a better journalist.
How a former actor and model, burned by Hollywood and devastated by the death of his brother, has become an important culture warrior, fueling the flames of every story we tell this season. Written and presented by Jon Ronson Produced by Sarah Shebbeare Original music by Phil Channell
How a young man with a novel idea for affordable accommodation, and an Oxford man with a plan for bus lanes, and a Danish woman writing a thought experiment about car rentals, unwittingly became hate figures for conspiracy theorists. Written and presented by Jon Ronson Produced by Sarah Shebbeare Original music by Phil Channell
How a bestselling book about trauma - lockdown’s number one bestseller - helped the culture war over free speech burst out of colleges and into the workplace. A shift some people pejoratively call the Great Awokening. Written and presented by Jon Ronson Produced by Sarah Shebbeare Original music by Phil Channell
How a schism between a mother and her teenage daughter during lockdown contributed to Governor Ron DeSantis enacting new and far-reaching laws in Florida. Written and presented by Jon Ronson Produced by Sarah Shebbeare Original music by Phil Channell
How a disenfranchised young man, maddened by the strict lockdown laws in Michigan, joined a club of like-minded men and suddenly found himself under arrest for the most unlikely and horrific crime. Written and presented by Jon Ronson Produced by Sarah Shebbeare Original music by Phil Channell
How an American media polarized over Antifa led to an innocent family on a Twilight-themed lockdown-escaping camping trip getting barricaded in the woods by armed, hostile townspeople. Written and presented by Jon Ronson Produced by Sarah Shebbeare Original music by Phil Channell
How a chance encounter in a yacht club in the early 2000s between a bartender and a very wealthy couple with a daughter sick with a mystery disease ended with the creation of the first great covid conspiracy theory. Written and presented by Jon Ronson Produced by Sarah Shebbeare Original music by Phil Channell
How the mysterious deaths of 32 black sex workers in Miami in the 1980s led to a whole new (and spurious) mental health diagnosis, ending with another murder that occurred during the height of lockdown. Written and presented by Jon Ronson Produced by Sarah Shebbeare Original music by Phil Channell Archive credits: NBC News June 1984; Fox Television’s A Current Affair 1989.
Since Jon Ronson’s first series, new battle lines in the culture wars have been drawn. And many of them are linked by one extraordinary thing: they all snowballed within days of each other, in May 2020, six weeks into lockdown. Millions of us spent our days locked at home with only the internet for company. People lost their jobs. Politicians told us what to do. We lived in fear of an invisible enemy nobody understood. This bizarre experience changed people psychologically. People and institutions fell apart. The pandemic – and lockdown – were to become dangerously fertile ground for conspiratorial thinking, and for new frontlines in the culture wars. And so in Season Two of Things Fell Apart, Jon Ronson again uncovers intriguing and wholly unexpected origin stories, but this time of the culture wars that ignited during lockdown, and now dominate society. Written and presented by Jon Ronson Produced by Sarah Shebbeare Original music by Phil Channell
In front of a live audience at the Hay Festival 2023 in Wales, Jon Ronson and journalist and author Dolly Alderton discuss Jon’s multifarious adventures in nonfiction, and all things Culture Wars, including an appearance from a mystery guest from series one of Things Fell Apart. Producer: Sarah Shebbeare
In this bonus episode of Things Fell Apart, Jon Ronson's friend and fellow documentary maker Louis Theroux asks him all about how he made the series. They take a deep dive into Culture Wars battles and explore Jon's storytelling methods, all while chatting about Jon's broken arm, putting old rivalries to bed, and how they deal with difficult interviewees when they both hate conflict. Produced by Sarah Shebbeare
An incident of racist bullying on Snapchat is currently tearing apart a small town on a lake in Michigan. As the ripples spread, practically every conflict we’ve encountered throughout our series rears its head. Presented by Jon Ronson Produced by Sarah Shebbeare Assistant Producer Sam Peach Music composed by Phil Channell
It’s 2017. Late one night after a party a Hollywood actor plays a prank on a friend. But the prank backfires terribly and the ripples are seismic - taking us inside Donald Trump’s White House and the Capitol insurrection of January 2021. Written and presented by Jon Ronson Produced by Sam Peach Original music by Phil Channell Archive with credit to: Videos discussing Isaac Kappy: Lisa Crapella.– Youtube , The Truth Blog Part 2 – Youtube , Miss M – Youtube , Truth Crossing - Youtube Clip from the movie THOR (2011) – Produced by Marvel Studios, distributed by Paramount Pictures and Directed by Kenneth Branagh Coverage of 2016 Democratic National Convention from ABC News Coverage of Pizzagate and Isaac Kappy interview from Infowars Coverage of Edgar Welch's arrest from ANV News Coverage of Nicholas Sandmann incident from MSNBC, CNN and Fox News Interview with Lin Wood from Fox News Clip of Lin Wood’s speech from Ronnie N – Youtube Coverage of 2021 US Capitol Attack from CNN
This story is about how the unique experiences of a little girl growing up unconventionally in America in the 1970s seismically changed the face of feminism in the 90s and beyond. It's a story too about the invention of a word - one that's contributed to a ferocious schism in the British culture wars. Written and presented by Jon Ronson Produced by Sarah Shebbeare Original music by Phil Channell
This is the story of the very first person to be publicly shamed because of something they did online. It’s 1988, the internet exists only in its most nascent form, and a software designer, Brad Templeton, uploads onto a message board a joke in poor taste. How the architects of the emerging internet respond to the joke will create a set of rules that the rest of us have lived under ever since… Written and presented by Jon Ronson Produced by Sarah Shebbeare Assistant Producer Sam Peach Original music by Phil Channell
In the mid 1980s a new conspiracy theory proliferates across America - that cabals of Satanists are secretly preying on children and polluting the culture. This ‘Satanic panic’ is a madness with bizarre and dreadful consequences – as an unsuspecting young woman in New Jersey is about to discover… Written and presented by Jon Ronson Produced by Sarah Shebbeare Original music by Phil Channell
It’s the early 1980s and a hugely popular television evangelist is having a crisis of conscience. She wants Christian evangelism to be less bigoted. And so, to the horror of her peers, she invites a very unexpected guest onto her TV show… Written and presented by Jon Ronson Produced by Sarah Shebbeare Original music by Phil Channell Archive from the PTL network's 'Tammy's House Party' and the 'PTL Club'.
1974. A church minister's wife in West Virginia learns of a brand new curriculum being introduced into her children's school. So she decides to read all 325 new textbooks herself. What she discovers horrifies her so much she instigates a State-wide insurrection. But were some of her concerns based on a misunderstanding? Written and presented by Jon Ronson Produced by Sarah Shebbeare Assistant Producer Sam Peach Original music by Phil Channell With thanks to Trey Kay for helping us tell this story.
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Observed September 20, 2026.
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