S2. Things Fell Apart is back

Things Fell Apart

BBC

Society & Culture, Personal Journals

4.6 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 2 January 2024

⏱️ 4 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're about to listen to a BBC podcast and maybe it's when I had a hand in.
0:04.0	I'm Tammy Walker and I produce podcasts for the BBC.
0:08.0	My role is to give new and diverse creators a voice with the opportunity to build a career.
0:12.0	That's the thing I love about podcasts.
0:14.4	You start with just a good idea, but then you have the space to see where it goes.
0:18.4	And doing that at the BBC means we can really run with the best stories
0:21.9	while developing the most unique audio talent.
0:24.8	So if you like what you hear, why not check out the huge range of podcast we've got on BBC Sounds.
0:31.6	BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts. I'm John Ronson and I'm back with season two of Things Fell Apart.
0:46.0	My show for BBC Radio 4 that unearth the origin stories of the Culture Wars that divide us so toxically.
0:54.0	Just like in season one, these eight new stories start in the most unexpected places.
1:02.0	My David's like, no, I don't want anything to do with a yacht club and I'm like,
1:06.5	no, honey, it's not like that. They don't wear ties. They're not stuffy. They're like us.
1:11.2	And something happened one day at the yacht club?
1:15.0	Ah yes. The stories twist and turn until each one ends with the explosion of a new
1:21.8	far-reaching cultural.
1:25.0	It was from the black women having sex with the male of the species.
1:32.1	He was quoted saying this.
1:35.0	If you tell me that my nephew had superhuman strength, if you tell me that he didn't feel any pain, well he's dead now. This time around the stories are all about the
1:45.9	battlefront that engulfed us during lockdown. That bizarre experience changed people psychologically.
1:54.3	We grew ever more suspicious of our neighbors and our institutions.
1:58.9	They murdered him and called it COVID.
	...

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