Episode description

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