Things Fell Apart

S2. Ep 1: 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 occurred during the height of lockdown.Written and presented by Jon Ronson
Produced by Sarah Shebbeare
Original music by Phil ChannellArchive credits: NBC News June 1984; Fox Television’s A Current Affair 1989.

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.