In his new podcast, Jon Ronson, the Welsh journalist and broadcaster, searches for the origins of battles that are now at the center of America’s “culture wars”—abortion rights, gay rights, Q-Anon. The first of eight episodes looks at the Schaeffers, a father-son duo who helped make opposition to abortion a crusade among evangelicals. In the early 1970s, Frank Schaeffer, son of the evangelical scholar Francis Schaeffer, wanted to break into Hollywood. He needed a show-reel for his resume, so he made an anti-abortion film. At first, prominent evangelicals wouldn’t touch the subject with a 10-foot pole. That reticence didn’t last long. Ronson talks to Schaeffer, and to people directly affected by his attempt to hit it big in Hollywood. —J.D.
