Jon Ronson investigates the men looking for purpose in strange, dark places

When journalist Jon Ronson visited castle owned by a digital tycoon, it became a portal into a world of disaffected men, grasping for purpose online in a world where traditional institutions are collapsing.

He had received a series of texts from his son Joel, after he was lured to a mysterious castle in the forests of New England late one night, and those texts set him off into an investigation of the modern manosphere.

Jon began to investigate the wider ‘man crisis’ – where some are feeling tossed around in a sea of conflicting ideologies of what it means to be a man today.

From the death of utopian factory towns to the false promise of YouTube influencer culture, Jon shows us our rapidly changing world like never before, and the men caught in the middle.

He found a world drained of purpose, of collapsing institutions, in which a new era of disinhibited behaviour has taken hold of our online and real-world selves.

The Castle is published by Penguin.

Jon is currently on tour in Australia. He is speaking at The Melbourne Town Hall this weekend.

This episode of Conversations was produced by Meggie Morris. Executive Producer is Nicola Harrison.

It explores masculinity, culture wars, gender wars, Musk, Trump, tech billionaires, Marc Fennell, manosphere, Louis Theroux, Peter Thiel, Hugh Hefner, Dan Bilzerian, Andrew Tate, Chris Mark, the castle, sons, fathers, fatherhood, death threats, murderers, ChaptGPT, AI, Google Gemini, Artificial intelligence, psychopaths, Zuckerberg, Argentina, anger, disenfranchised men, angry men, ICE, United States, Donald Trump, Nerd Reich, politics, silicon valley, gender wars, class war, race war, Louise Theroux, investigative journalism.

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