A man with a fairytale castle in upstate New York who keeps trying to make a self-produced reality show about "princesses" happen — and become a modern-day Hugh Hefner. A man who got famous on YouTube for lawn care who ends up filming himself as a baby — and has a SWAT team called to his house. These stories form the backbone of Jon Ronson's journey into the world of "unraveling men." Those two men's stories are exceptional, but they're also an entry point into a subject area I like to think of as "WTF is going on with dudes right now."

Join Jon and me as we avoid the usual discussion about "toxic masculinity" and go deeper into friend-less-ness, algorithms, purposelessness, Sad Dads, and male buffoonery. It's a wild ride that felt like the beginning of a much longer conversation (that I hope we can keep having in the comments)!

 

Thanks to the sponsors of today's episode:

Show Notes:

  • Buy The Castle here!
  • You can read an excerpt of The Castle — specifically about the guy who started out as a lawn care influencer and then became The Third Baby — in the New York Times Magazine 
  • Jon mentions his piece for GQ about the White House cage fight
  • Learn more about Jon Ronson's work (there's so much of it!) here
  • We mention So You've Been Publicly Shamed, Jon's previous book
  • I wrote a piece back in 2023 addressing some of Richard Reeves' findings re: men & ambition
  • I reference an episode of The Ezra Klein Show where he references his arguments being reproduced/distorted for engagement — it's the most recent Mailbag ep, which you can find here

We're currently looking for your questions on the following topics:

  • WHAT'S GOING ON INFLUENCER CULTURE? with Katie Sturino — what's going on with privacy, spon, monetization, politics, algorithm fatigue — anything you want to ask someone who's watched the influencing world transform from inside
  • THE LATEST IN BOOK TRENDS with Alyssa Morris (from our very popular BookTok episode!). Ask Alyssa about whatever you're seeing in the book world: covers, genres, how it's handling fan-fic, BookTok trends.....
  • JOURNO-INFLUENCERS with s.e. smith — yep, another episode on influencers, this time on how they're changing the norms of journalism. What journo-influencers do you follow and what makes them compelling? What's the future of journalism when it's wed to this style of promotion? Is it actually anything new? Ask away!
  • Join the ranks of paid subscribers and get bonus content, access to the discussion threads, ad-free episodes, and the knowledge that you're supporting an indie pod trying to make its way in the world.
  • Got a question to submit, a prompt for Ask Anne Anything, or an idea for a future episode? Tell us here.
  • Catch up on everything else happening in the Culture Study universe here.
  • Transcripts will be available here within 24 hours of publishing.


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