YouSaid · the spoken record

Jon Ronson

lines on the record

53

first

2022-03-11

most recent

2022-03-11

sittings or episodes

1

sources

podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

1. “Things are going to slide in all directions. There will be nothing you can measure anymore. It felt like it was hard. I thought I knew these people, these friends of mine, and yet they were behaving in a way that I could never have imagined. And it was happening for a reason. Something was happening. And that was the question. I always want to start with a question, a mystery that I don't know the answer to. And so that was the question. And then I thought, well, the last thing in the world I want to do is make a show about the culture wars that then becomes the part of the culture wars.”

   2022-03-11 · Intelligence Squared · Jon Ronson and David Baddiel on Conspiracies, Culture Wars and How Things Fell Apart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

2. “No, no, no. I was watching friends get more and more engrossed in their particular culture war. And I could tell that it was taking over their brains in a way that was unhealthy. They were thinking about this particular culture war all the time and were getting obsessed. And as a consequence, people were losing their families. People were losing their work, their reputations, people having to move out of home. I mean, this was how serious getting obsessed with the culture war was around 2017-2018. I was watching all of this happening and sort of wondering what's going on. I mean, we're changing. I remember at one point Elaine, my wife said to me, it's like all these people that we knew we thought we knew. It's like we don't know them anymore. It reminded me of the Yates poem Things Fall Apart, the Center Cannot Hold. It reminded me of that Leonard Cohen song The Future.”

   2022-03-11 · Intelligence Squared · Jon Ronson and David Baddiel on Conspiracies, Culture Wars and How Things Fell Apart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

3. “Well, actually, you know, it's kind of more serious than the podcast because we were restricted by the fact that it was going out on radio four and what we were going to do was just keep it all to time. So it's a challenge that you don't really have very often anymore because now you can make things whatever length you like. But I really embrace that. I thought, okay, we've got to make this 27 minutes and 15 seconds or whatever. So this is an opportunity to make these stories like little dollhouses, just polish and polish and polish and make it perfect. So I thought the restricted time was an advantage. It meant that we had to really become kind of minimalistic in the storytelling.”

   2022-03-11 · Intelligence Squared · Jon Ronson and David Baddiel on Conspiracies, Culture Wars and How Things Fell Apart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT