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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.

Things Fell Apart

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

S2. Bonus episode: An Audience with Jon Ronson

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.

S2. How Things Fell Apart, with Jon Ronson and Adam Buxton

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

S2. Ep 8: Mikki’s Hero’s Journey

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

S2. Ep 7: You’ll Own Nothing and You’ll Be Happy

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

S2. Ep 6: A Hierarchy of Trauma

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

S2. Ep 5: Things Weren’t Going Back to Normal

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

S2. Ep 4: Spicy Brando

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

S2. Ep 3: Tonight’s the Night, Comrades

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

S2. Ep 2: We’re Coming After You, Honey

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.

S2. Ep 1: The Most Mysterious Deaths

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.

S1. Ep 2: Dirty Books

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