Podcast Corner: Jon Ronson returns to dig into culture wars and conspiracy theories
Jon Ronson presents season two of Things Fell Apart on BBC Sounds. (Photo by Jason Kempin/Getty Images for Netflix)
Two years after the first season debuted, Jon Ronson is delving back into the culture wars as Things Fell Apart, from BBC Sounds but widely available, returns for season two. By culture wars, Ronson says he means basically anything that people yell at each other about on social media — and it’s mostly America-focused.
While the first eight episodes traced a path from the 1970s through to the covid times, examining how conspiracy theories, the abortion ‘debate’, and QAnon grew wings, season two focuses on a six-week period around March 2020 when yes, the pandemic led to the world locking down — indeed, episode seven is about this ‘great reset’.
He explains at the outset of season two: “That bizarre experience of lockdown changed people psychologically, they grew ever more suspicious of our neighbours and of our institutions — people fell apart.”
Ronson, as is his wont, plays things right down the centre, perhaps exposing the listener’s own prejudices — he does not pick a side as things fall apart, rather letting each side explain their point of view. It’s almost quaint. All the while, the eight 30-minute-plus episodes are compelling, exploring how stories can spiral, such as one mother’s concern over a school’s handling of her daughter’s gender identity leading to Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ law.
The first episode begins with the mysterious deaths of 32 black sex workers in Miami in the 1980s, continuing with the since debunked mental health diagnosis of “excited delirium”, Tasers, and finally, the murder of George Floyd.
Episode four, ‘Spicy Brando’, is perhaps the standout of season two, exploring claims of ‘white supremacy’ and a group of men accused of plotting to kill a state governor for implementing lockdown rules. It’s the story of Brandon Caserta, who found Jordan Peterson while feeling disenfranchised in 2018. Cut to lockdown and Caserta explains: “I felt suspicious from the beginning.”
Thus he begins training with a militia, and Ronson touches on the ‘Boogaloo’ uprising conspiracy, an FBI sting, and a conversation, from prison, with a black man called Dédé who defends Caserta’s bona fides. Ronson posits that this is two culture wars colliding with each other: The state can’t tell us what to do vs ‘there’s a white power civil war brewing and we need to stop it’.
Ronson’s sign-off at the end of the season seems pointed. He says of one of the stories discussed that the media shouldn’t forego evidence for ideology and of another, that, tempting as it is, “documentarians should not try to see the world in terms of heroes and dragons”.
Ronson has proven himself over the years as one of the best podcast documentarians and that continues with season two of Things Fell Apart.
