How did the culture wars take over? Ft Jon Ronson
Radical with Amol Rajan
BBC
4.5 • 919 Ratings
🗓️ 15 February 2024
⏱️ 45 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Rarely a week goes by without a fresh skirmish in the culture wars between the right and the left. Whether it’s cancel culture, wokeism, defining a woman or marking colonial history, battles between the warring tribes are increasingly having an impact on our lives.
With the row over Rishi Sunak’s joke at Prime Minister’s Questions over defining a woman still reverberating around Westminster, this week Amol and Nick look at the roots of culture wars, why they matter and where they’re going.
They’re joined by Jon Ronson, the journalist, documentary-maker and podcaster whose series ‘Things Fall Apart’ has catalogued and defined culture wars on both sides of the Atlantic.
Episodes of The Today Podcast land every Thursday and watch out for bonus episodes. Subscribe on BBC Sounds to get Amol and Nick's take on the biggest stories of the week, with insights from behind the scenes at the UK's most influential radio news programme.
If you would like a question answering, get in touch by sending us a message or voice note via WhatsApp to +44 330 123 4346 or email us Today@bbc.co.uk
The Today Podcast is hosted by Amol Rajan and Nick Robinson, both presenters of BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, the UK’s most influential radio news programme. Amol was the BBC’s media editor for six years and is the former editor of the Independent, he’s also the current presenter of University Challenge. Nick has presented the Today programme since 2015, he was the BBC’s political editor for ten years before that and also previously worked as ITV’s political editor.
The senior producer is Tom Smithard, the producers are Hazel Morgan and Joe Wilkinson. The editors are Jonathan Aspinwall and Louisa Lewis. The executive producer is Owenna Griffiths. Technical production from Jack Graysmark and digital production from Elliot Ryder.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:05.0 | Cancel culture. |
| 0:06.6 | Wokeism. |
| 0:07.6 | What is a woman? |
| 0:09.1 | Apologise for the past. |
| 0:10.5 | Toxic masculinity. |
| 0:12.1 | This is the language of the culture wars. |
| 0:14.8 | And we are going to discuss today what the roots of the culture wars are, why they matter and where they're going. |
| 0:21.0 | And we've got the ideal guest for that, John Ronson, the man who has actually helped us understand |
| 0:27.5 | where those culture wars come from and why they matter. So we're going to ask, |
| 0:32.5 | how did the culture wars take over. Let's do it. |
| 0:51.1 | It is Amol in the Today Podcast studio. |
| 0:52.4 | And Nick here too. |
| 0:57.6 | Welcome back to our lovely little domain where I can tell you that as we discussed the culture wars a few years ago, it felt to mean it as if I was the BBC's Culture Wars |
| 1:01.7 | correspondent. |
| 1:02.9 | I would go on the 10 o'clock news and the Today program and I'd be talking about whether |
| 1:06.6 | or not they could sing rural Britannia or land of hope and glory at the proms or whether or not |
| 1:11.3 | Little Britain that comedy with David Williams and Matt Lucas from the turn of the century was |
| 1:15.6 | going to have to be rewritten. There was a time when it felt like it was my entire life and I suspect |
| 1:20.1 | to some of our listeners it does feel like the culture wars and the noise they create defines |
| 1:25.3 | the era in which we live. Defines because it drives clicks in large part in an age of noisy debate on so-called news channels. |
| 1:34.5 | Rowing about, not about facts, but about values. |
... |
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