Things Fell Apart

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Things Fell Apart: S1. Ep 5: A Scottish Jewish joke

ThingsFellApart Season One

S1. Ep 5: A Scottish Jewish joke

BBC Radio 4 - Things Fell Apart, S1. Ep 5: A Scottish Jewish joke

Strange tales from the culture wars by Jon Ronson.

A series of strange, unexpected, human stories from the history of the culture wars.

This is the story of the very first person to be publicly shamed because of something they did online. It’s 1988, the internet exists only in its most nascent form, and a software designer, Brad Templeton, uploads onto a message board a joke in poor taste. How the architects of the emerging internet respond to the joke will create a set of rules that the rest of us have lived under ever since…

Written and presented by Jon Ronson
Produced by Sarah Shebbeare
Assistant Producer Sam Peach
Original music by Phil Channell

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Strange tales from the culture wars with Jon Ronson.

Jon Ronson is back with a new season of jaw dropping, unexpected human stories from the history of the culture wars. This time - those that engulfed us during lockdown.

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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Things Fell Apart

S1. Ep 5: A Scottish Jewish joke

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