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. The acclaimed writer and podcaster Jon Ronson has seen friends swallowed up in them to the extent that it's ruined their lives. Jon was curious to learn how things fell apart, and so he went back into the history of the culture wars to find some of the origin stories: the pebbles thrown in the pond, creating the ripples that led us to where we are today. He had no idea what he'd find, but he's uncovered some extraordinary people and the strangest, yet most consequential tales.
Chart trend
Position in the Personal Journals chart (US), last 90 days.
#1#50#99JulAugSep
#3
all-time peak
1
day in the top 3 since Nov 2024
Latest episodes
Showing 20 · updated from the feed
An Audience with Jon Ronson
Jon Ronson’s second season of unexpected human stories from the culture wars focused on the divisions that erupted in the wake of the Covid lockdown. It was a number 1 hi
Jul 17 2024 27 min
How Things Fell Apart with Adam Buxton
In this bonus episode, Jon Ronson's friend and fellow podcaster Adam Buxton chat about the latest season of Things Fell Apart. They discuss their favourite moments from t
Mar 13 2024 36 min
Mikki’s Hero’s Journey
How a former actor and model, burned by Hollywood and devastated by the death of his brother, has become an important culture warrior, fueling the flames of every story w
Jan 9 2024 37 min
You’ll Own Nothing and You’ll Be Happy
How a young man with a novel idea for affordable accommodation, and an Oxford man with a plan for bus lanes, and a Danish woman writing a thought experiment about car ren
Jan 9 2024 33 min
A Hierarchy of Trauma
How a bestselling book about trauma - lockdown’s number one bestseller - helped the culture war over free speech burst out of colleges and into the workplace. A shift som
Jan 9 2024 33 min
Things Weren’t Going Back to Normal
How a schism between a mother and her teenage daughter during lockdown contributed to Governor Ron DeSantis enacting new and far-reaching laws in Florida.
Written and pr
Jan 9 2024 36 min
Spicy Brando
How a disenfranchised young man, maddened by the strict lockdown laws in Michigan, joined a club of like-minded men and suddenly found himself under arrest for the most u
Jan 9 2024 34 min
Tonight’s the Night, Comrades
How an American media polarized over Antifa led to an innocent family on a Twilight-themed lockdown-escaping camping trip getting barricaded in the woods by armed, hostil
Jan 9 2024 31 min
We’re Coming After You, Honey
How a chance encounter in a yacht club in the early 2000s between a bartender and a very wealthy couple with a daughter sick with a mystery disease ended with the creatio
Jan 9 2024 33 min
The Most Mysterious Deaths
How the mysterious deaths of 32 black sex workers in Miami in the 1980s led to a whole new (and spurious) mental health diagnosis, ending with another murder that occurre
Jan 9 2024 34 min
Bonus: Jon Ronson, Live at Hay
In front of a live audience at the Hay Festival 2023 in Wales, Jon Ronson and journalist and author Dolly Alderton discuss Jon’s multifarious adventures in nonfiction, an
Jul 5 2023 45 min
How Things Fell Apart with Louis Theroux
In this bonus episode of Things Fell Apart, Jon Ronson's friend and fellow documentary maker Louis Theroux asks him all about how he made the series. They take a deep div
Mar 30 2022 43 min
A Mock Slave Auction
An incident of racist bullying on Snapchat is currently tearing apart a small town on a lake in Michigan. As the ripples spread, practically every conflict we’ve encounte
Jan 25 2022 36 min
A Secret Room Behind a Fake Wall
It’s 2017. Late one night after a party a Hollywood actor plays a prank on a friend. But the prank backfires terribly and the ripples are seismic - taking us inside Donal
Jan 25 2022 32 min
Many Different Lives
This story is about how the unique experiences of a little girl growing up unconventionally in America in the 1970s seismically changed the face of feminism in the 90s an
Jan 25 2022 35 min
A Scottish Jewish Joke
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
Jan 25 2022 33 min
Believe the Children
In the mid 1980s a new conspiracy theory proliferates across America - that cabals of Satanists are secretly preying on children and polluting the culture. This ‘Satanic
Jan 25 2022 32 min
A Miracle
It’s the early 1980s and a hugely popular television evangelist is having a crisis of conscience. She wants Christian evangelism to be less bigoted. And so, to the horror
Jan 25 2022 33 min
Dirty Books
1974. A church minister's wife in West Virginia learns of a brand new curriculum being introduced into her children's school. So she decides to read all 325 new textbooks
Jan 25 2022 31 min
1000 Dolls
It's the early 1970s. Frank Schaeffer is an American kid living in the Swiss Alps – the son of an influential Christian art historian - who daydreams of one day making Ho
Jan 25 2022 31 min
Chart positions
Where Things Fell Apart ranks today in each Apple Podcasts chart (US, Sep 4, 2026).
A curated, balanced selection of Apple Podcasts reviews.
I was a bit lost and confused after the 2024 election. I couldn’t understand how some of my friends and family saw things so differently than I did. I couldn’t stomach my usual True Crime podcast and came upon this and finished both seasons within a two week span. The perspective this gave me- it calmed me. It allowed me to settle a bit and think through what is happening with a different lens. I sure hope there is another season soon- incredible podcast and work. Will be getting Jon’s book to tide me over!
Kateybadger · Dec 2024
All of Jon Ronson’s work is stellar. But Things Fell Apart is by far the best one. His fact checking is spot on and his manner of storytelling is down right addictive. Thank you for seeing and telling all sides! He’s the first I’ve seen to transcend the culture wars.
lvicki11 · May 2024
Jon Ronson has an extraordinary way of connecting the dots, and his interviews are done with the deft and even hand of a remarkably skilled, curious and intelligent man. I would nominate him as the most important and accessible journalist on the topic of conspiracy theories today.
kskrglmq · Apr 2024
These episodes are amazing: each following out of the one before, as though illustrating season one's central metaphor of the ripples a pebble sends out through water. It's as balanced as it is fair: its merely being there means something. Season one: episode 3 is one of the most moving things I've ever heard.
Ed Van Buren · Mar 2024
I listened on the rec of a different podcaster I like. But despite some really great episodes (1000 Dolls, Miracle, etc), Ronson “disappears” critical but inconvenient facts. Which makes me question whether those great episodes are trustworthy at all!
Like: nowhere in the episode about the Pulse nightclub shooting does he say that it was (a) carried out by a jihadist and (b) was not targeted specifically at the LGBT community (the shooter had no idea it was a gay club; he was trying to kill as many young americans as he could). This undermines the whole rationale for why the advocacy group thought the response should be to partner with schools.
This kind of omission / obfuscation happened so often throughout many episodes that I had to stop listening because I lost trust in Ronson’s ability to tell a complete story. He’s clearly an activist, not a journalist - as long as you’re eyes wide open on that, listen away.
eship4life · Mar 2024
We strive to present a balanced view by showing a diverse range of reviews from Apple Podcasts.
More podcasts like Things Fell Apart
Popular shows in Personal Journals, for your next listen.
Here you find the Apple Podcasts chart positions of Things Fell Apart, its latest episodes to listen to directly, and reviews from listeners. Rankings are updated daily for the United States.
