21 episodes
Things Fell Apart BBC Podcasts
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- Society & Culture
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4.6 • 566 Ratings
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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.
In Jon Ronson’s award winning first series of Things Fell Apart, he explored the origin stories of these culture wars which have divided us so toxically for decades. But now new battle lines have been drawn. Many of them are linked by one extraordinary thing: they all snowballed within days of each other, just weeks into lockdown. And so in Season Two of Things Fell Apart, Jon Ronson uncovers intriguing and wholly unexpected origin stories, but this time of the culture wars that ignited during lockdown, and now dominate society.
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S2. How Things Fell Apart, with Jon Ronson and Adam Buxton
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.
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S2. Ep 8: Mikki’s Hero’s Journey
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 7: You’ll Own Nothing and You’ll Be Happy
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 6: A Hierarchy of Trauma
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 5: Things Weren’t Going Back to Normal
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 4: Spicy Brando
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
Customer Reviews
Fantastic and revealing
Such a brilliant and educational listen. Some of the stories are hard to believe. I have recommended it to several people who believe in some of the conspiracy theories, I await their response
Man gone quiet…
Was my favourite Spice Girl. Disappointed how Jon has been silent/lack of enquiry in one of the most contentious areas…trans and trans kids… Born in the wrong body? Can a man with a penis just say “I’m a woman?” the medical treatment and life changing surgery that kids and young people have gone through? Just silence. Clearly not as brave and fearless as I thought. It’s called cowardice Jon.
An idiot like the rest of us
He knows how to spin up a yarn and tell a story.
Ronson has failed to recognise the medical scandal that is trans ‘healthcare’ and the episode where he dismisses a mother’s safeguarding concerns with ‘you did tell them to affirm’ style victim blaming is awful: he’s clearly done no research (which he admits in a later episode).
The episode with Adam Buxton where they do the self-regarding ‘we’re the rational adults in the room’, misread Yeats, and slag down Graham Linehan is cringeworthy and - unintentionally - laugh out loud comedy gold in turns.
They, with great chummy smugness, seem to believe that they are somehow superior to the YouTubers making their content more attractive by giving it click bait headlines, or the people that they mock for falling for mad ideas: but they have too, and they don’t see that.