How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - Jon Ronson on truth-telling and the culture wars

Episode Date: March 13, 2024

Jon Ronson is a journalistic hero of mine, as he is to many. He was one of the first people to write about the culture wars, well before the phrase became commonplace in our news cycles. His two audio series exploring real-life origin stories from these everyday battles ‘Things Fell Apart' (BBC Sounds) have been a huge commercial and critical success. Ronson has written a handful of fascinating works of non-fiction including ‘Them: Adventures with Extremists’; ‘The Psychopath Test’ and ‘So You’Ve Been Publicly Shamed’ and his book ‘The Men Who Stare at Goats’ was made into a feature film starring George Clooney, Ewan McGregor and Jeff Bridges. We explore Jon’s love of storytelling, what being bullied at school taught him, why truth-telling is vital and whether he will ever regret his solitary nature. Plus: why (according to him) he sucks at screenwriting despite having been portrayed by two Star Wars actors. Oh, and his deadly professional rivalry with Louis Theroux… Season 2 of Things Fell Apart is available now on BBC Sounds And as always, I’d LOVE to hear about your failures. Every week, my guest and I choose a selection to read out and answer on our special subscription offering, Failing with Friends. We’ll endeavour to give you advice, wisdom, some laughs and much, much more. Have something to share of your own? I'd love to hear from you! Click here to get in touch: howtofailpod.com Production & Post Production Manager: Lily Hambly Studio Engineer: Gulli Lawrence-Tickle Mix Engineer: Josh Gibbs Senior Producer: Selina Ream Executive Producer: Carly Maile Head of Marketing: Kieran Lancini How to Fail is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment Production. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by car and other conditions apply. Hello and welcome to How to Fail with me, Elizabeth Day. In my podcast, we look at and celebrate our unique individual failures, because ultimately, they're the stepping stones to success. Every week, I invite a guest to look at their failures and what has come afterwards that might have helped them grow and succeed. Just before we get to my chat with Jon Ronson, please do join me after this episode

on Failing With Friends, my subscriber series where I continue my conversation with him. Every week, I'll be looking at your failures or questions with my fabulous guest. And this week, Jon and I go through failures from getting published to failing at failure. I'm not sure that's possible, but tune in to find out. And I can't wait for you to join us. I would love to hear from you. If you'd like to get in touch, follow the link in the podcast notes. Get Failing with Friends episodes every week and all episodes of How to Fail ad-free. Just visit the How to Fail show page on Apple Podcasts and click start free at the top of the page to begin your free trial. First, a disclaimer. John Ronson is a journalistic hero of mine.

Way back when I was a reporter for a Sunday newspaper, desperate to write features as well as he did, I remember poring over his articles to see just how he constructed them. Alas, I never quite learned the secret, but I've followed his career with admiration ever since. From being a columnist at The Guardian, Ronson has gone on to write internationally best-selling non-fiction books, including Them, Adventures with Extremists, The Psychopath Test and So You've Been Publicly Shamed. His hit podcasts include The Butterfly Effect and Things Fall Apart, the latest series of which examines the culture wars through eight stories which all happen

within a few weeks of each other in May and June 2020. Ronson takes us through tales of anti-vax conspiracists, the murder of George Floyd, and controversies around self-identification in schools with his uniquely typical blend of curiosity, candor, and humour. His investigative technique has been described variously as faux-naïf, gonzo, and a bit like Louis Theroux. But two of them are friends. For Ronson, the truth is a lot more straightforward. I think probably a better word is curious. If you fill your head with judgment, there's no room for curiosity. John Ronson, journalistic hero. Welcome to How to Fail. Well, Elizabeth, thank you. Thank you for that lovely introduction. And yeah, I think all three

of those, like, I don't think I'm faux naive. I think I'm genuinely naive and people just don't believe that. And I am a bit like Louis Theroux. Me and Louis have had this long sort of funny, sometimes serious, sometimes funny rivalry. Yeah. Nemeses pushing each other forward. And Gonzo I don't agree with because to me Gonzo is all about taking a whole load of LSD and then causing mayhem at a police convention. And while I sometimes do get into dangerous adventurous situations, I don't do that. I don't make everything more crazy by my presence, which is what I associate with Gonzo. It's crazy enough already so much of the time, the stuff that you cover. And actually,

you talked about how you see yourself more aligned with Tom Wolfe's new journalism school. Yeah. Nonfiction books have such lower creative ambitions. If you picked up a novel, and at the beginning of the novel, the author says, in this novel, I'm going to tell you this, this, this and this, you'd be outraged. Why can't nonfiction books have all the page turnery, creative ambitions of a novel? Tom Wolfe and Joan Didion and Jo Esther House and all of these, George Plimpton, all of these great experimental non-fiction writers who were taking ideas from novels to make their novels page turners for the unreliable narrators, like all the things that are really fun in a novel, cliffhangers. I try and bring those things to non-fiction. Tom Wolfe is also someone that I turned to in those days as a Sunday newspaper reporter when I was desperately trying to work out how to write better. And he really

taught me that you can have this kinetic reported prose and put that into fiction. But the other thing that he says is that being a journalist already changes the atmosphere in the room. And you have to acknowledge that. And I think you do that very well. Yeah, I'm a very big believer in that uh I noticed it first actually uh did you ever watch any of those old D.A. Pennebaker documentaries no okay like one his most famous one was uh the Bob Dylan one Don't Look Back where he's with Bob Dylan on on his first big acoustic tour of Great Britain and you just see Pennebaker, he's in a dressing room, and you catch a glimpse of him in the mirror. And that's kind of how it began. And then

people, you know, we realise more and more that we change everything when we're in a room, and we have to acknowledge that. Plus, for storytelling reasons, I like, it's just, it's easy for me to make myself a protagonist in the story. I'm catching a plane and I'm getting off the plane and I'm renting a car and I'm driving to my destination. That's a good, solid way of telling stories. Let's get back to that idea of curiosity. I'm very interested in how curiosity starts, what makes you a curious person. Can you remember the first thing you were curious about as a child? My parents would tell a story and then the story would end.

And I would always say, and what happened after that? And they'd get annoyed with me and say, no, that's the end of the story. Like, oh yeah, but something must have happened after that. What happened then? So yeah, that kind of bugged them and then I didn't have a good time at Cardiff High School and I was definitely you know sort of pushed to the uh edges of the playground so I'd be standing there on the edge of the playground looking in and I think that's good training for a journal for a journalist that journalist, that you want to be unpopular. You kind of want the elites to hate you, because if you're too aligned as a journalist,

then you're not telling good stories. You're not telling nuanced, unaligned, independent, curious stories if you're part of the gang. I could not agree more. And I had that salutary experience when I went to my first secondary school in Belfast, where obviously I spoke like an outsider as well. So as well as being on the edges of the playground, I spoke less and listened more and it made me into an observer of the things that were not being said

as well as the things that were. But I didn't enjoy it at the time. No. How did you survive it? What coping mechanisms? I kind of put an invisible suit of armour around me, like no one can get me now. So that was a psychological way of surviving it.

And also just knowing it would be over. I'm going to go to London. So this is temporary. I always knew that. Also, in Cardiff, there was an art centre, it's still there, called Chapter Art Centre. And I'd go there and I'd see Martin Scorsese films, Woody Allen films.

I remember seeing a double bill of Zellig and the King of Comedy when I must have been about 12 or 13. And that was like, oh my God, you know, there's life. There's life outside this life. I remember when I was 10, I went to Marlborough College summer school and the holiday program, the BBC holiday program was filming and my mother got friendly with the sound man and he invited us to the BBC, to TV Centre, and they were filming Fawlty Towers and I got to walk around Fawlty Towers. Wow. Yes and John Cleese was in the canteen

and I was like whoa this is mecca. So all of these little indications that there was a world for me. And there was a world of stories that you wanted to see how they ended. Yeah and it was rough I mean you know it's really rough to have and it stays with you. It's funny I was interviewing the governor of New Jersey for my book. Casual. For my book, so you've been publicly shamed. He's a disgraced governor. And we were sitting in a cafe.

And, you know, we've both had kind of amazing lives. But we both were fixating on, like, the two years between the age of 14 and 16 when we were being bullied and it just made me realize that that follows you around it follows you into rooms well you said this thing actually that I read whilst researching this that being bullied either makes you into a bully yourself or it does make you more empathetic because you don't want to tear another person down yeah yeah absolutely I don't quite understand why it can turn you into a bully when you know how awful it is. But yes, I've got friends or former friends who were bullied badly at school and just have become the most terrible online bullies, which is just mystifying to me. Is Louis III one of them? I'm not going to name him less than Beetlejuice, he manifests. I do think a lot of the leaders of the culture wars have narcissistic traits because if you're wounded, social media is a place where people wound each other,

especially Twitter, and if you've got a certain narcissistic temperament, if you're wounded, it won't heal. I'm on blood thinners at the moment because i just had a pulmonary embolism so i guess yeah blood clot in my lung oh my goodness yeah and i think maybe narcissism is like uh it's like a psychological blood thinner like the wound won't heal if you start to bleed the bleeding won't stop and uh so i've had friends who've felt wounded on social media and are now spending their lives just lashing out and seeking revenge and getting revenge.

Let's talk about the culture wars. I loved Things Fell Apart, I mean, both seasons, but the second season, particularly the episode you did on self-identification in schools and the litter tray. Right. It was an extraordinary story, which we'll come back to. But for you, what are the culture wars? How have you learned to define them when asked this question by people like me? Right. Well, my first definition was actually a little bit of a glib one. I said it

was just everything that people yell at each other about on social media. It's the battle of dominance between conflicting values, I think. And quite often, not always, but most of the time, it's wars that don't involve economics. So it's wars over cultural values. And quite often, these culture wars then become actual wars. Why do you think that we are living through an age where culture wars exist? I did an event the other night with Chris Anderson, the head of TED, and he said that the internet prods at our lizard brains, our instinctive, lashy-outy brains. That's what's rewarded.

That's what the tech utopians want to prod at because they know they make more money that way. And so our reflective brains, our nuanced, thoughtful, patient brains aren't getting used enough. So, as you said in the introduction, I think that curiosity is a much better mindset than judgment. If you fill your head with judgment, there's no room for anything else. mindset than judgment. If you fill your head with judgment, there's no room for anything else. But we are creating a world where judgment is just instant cold judgment. It's just rewarded more

than curiosity. I was talking to a guy the other day, a YouTube guy. He said when he has someone nuanced on, he gets 12,000 views. When he has someone on and he can put the headline, woke people are the death cult he gets half a million views that's going to be the subject heading for this podcast episode let's put it to the test so do you limit your own internet use no well i don't tweet anymore other than either promoting my work or promoting work of other people that I like. No more opinions. My God, no more opinions.

I'm like, after bringing out, so you've been publicly shamed. I was like, Eve in the Garden of Eden after eating the apple. Like, cover me, you boughs. Will you tell us in brief that story that I mentioned about what was used by certain Republican politicians in the States as an example of a litter tray in a school classroom? huge followings, this myth that children are identifying as furries. But the rumour being spread all around America and Britain is that schools are so terrified of controversy that they will give these children that identify as cats litter trays to use as toilets. And people were standing up at school board meetings crying saying just you know is this the world we want where our children are using litter trays and

then congressmen and senators and joe rogan and piers morgan and you know that kind of rumble crowd yes nobody thought it through like are you telling me that an incredibly awkward 13-year-old kid, like all kids are, are going to go to the toilet in a litter tray in school? And if that's the case, where are the photographs? Where's the example? And the reason why there weren't any, because it didn't exist. For all of our wisdom, we still fall for these urban myths. And they did find some litter trays in schools, but it wasn't for children identifying as furries. It was in case there was a school shooting and children had to

be locked down in their classrooms for a long period and they needed to use the toilet. So that's maybe what we should be more worried about. Exactly. It was such a perfect microcosm of something that you think or you might have heard turning out to represent the exact opposite. Yeah. And it was so beautifully told. Thank you. Yeah, we're always, we worry about the wrong things. And my conspiracy theory is that, I don't know if tech utopians are manipulating the world to make this happen, but they certainly love it. They're benefiting from it. We're down here screaming at each other to the extent that we're getting so obsessed. We're losing our families and our livelihoods.

And they're up there becoming trillionaires. You started out in journalism before the internet was really a thing. So do you feel, having done the work that you have done over the past decade and a bit, do you feel more optimistic or more pessimistic about the future of humanity? Ah. In three words or less.

A little more pessimistic. Writing So You've Been Publicly Shamed was a pretty salutary thing for me. Just seeing the casual cruelty that that's being perpetrated not by big pharma that i wrote about in the psychopath test or you know these powerful secretive elites that i wrote about in them no the people are being cruel and abusing their power and so you've been publicly shamed was us just regular people going on twitter tearing somebody apart having a little chuckle about it not thinking for a second whether that person was okay or in ruins and then if confronted about it we just say oh i'm sure

they're fine now we were the cruel power abusers and then then when the book came out, I mean, most people really liked it, but there was a backlash from people who just didn't want to be confronted with that reality. The sort of punitive punishments for tiny transgressions wasn't a sustainable way to live our lives. You had a generation of kids coming up who were creating a set of rules for themselves that were just impossible to live by. You know, retrospective punishments for, you know, I wrote something in 1998 that was fine then and isn't fine now. And if somebody finds it, not me, by the way, nobody needs to look at what I wrote in 1998.

me by the way yes nobody needs to look at what i wrote in 1998 um um then you're done you're got and um and it can affect you for the best of your life so that you know i just found that just horrifying you know when we watch to kill a mockingbird or whatever you know we we identify with the kind-hearted defense attorney, but give us the power of justice, we become, you know, the hanging judge or the people in the lithographs, you know, enjoying whippings. But we still think we're Atticus Finch. That's the mad thing about it. Yeah, because we think we're being empathetic,

but what we actually are is displaying highly selective empathy. It's empathy for our own group, but a total lack of empathy for anybody outside of the group. Which isn't really empathy. No, it's almost, it's performative empathy. It's empathy for our own group, but a total lack of empathy for anybody outside of the group. Which isn't really empathy. No, it's almost, it's performative empathy. I would say though, I think a lot of that very recently has changed. I think Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter has been by and large terrible. But one arguably positive thing that's come from it is that the, that kind of punitive bullying aspect of the progressive left have kind of left Twitter. So that's not going to happen on Twitter anymore.

They've gone to blue sky, but blue sky doesn't have the power to ruin somebody's life. So that type of bullying seems to have sort of diminished recently. But what's taken its place, I think, is much more right-wing bullying. You know, these sort of trolls becoming more and more extreme versions of themselves. You've said that you're cursed with being able to see all sides of every argument.

And I wondered how that duality plays out in your own identity, because you're lots of different things you're Welsh you're Jewish you have American citizenship you live there now how much time if any do you spend thinking about your own identity and how you label yourself? I mean I spend almost all of my time alone constructing stories. For some reason, I sort of harness the horrors of the world by being back at home on my own, turning them into stories. And that gives me like total happiness, making a story work. You know, I was in hospital

two weeks ago with this blood clot. And when I got back, and luckily I'm working on a new book and I had a chapter to write, and I was sitting there recovering, writing this chapter and chuckling away and realizing that it was making me feel better. Like this was better than any medicine. Writing good sentences was better than any medicine. Now, why is that? Why is it that I can't bear all the noise and clamour of the outside world? I hate going to parties. I hate going to dinner parties. But what I love is being back at

home, controlling my own little room by telling these stories. I mean, that's definitely a I mean, that's definitely a neurodiverse response to the world. So is your identity writer, storyteller? I guess, yeah. I mean, I work every day, seven days a week, and have done for decades. It's funny, like in the old days, storyteller implied, I don't know, somebody in Norfolk drinking liquid opium and playing a drum is that not you is that what you were saying don't shatter my dreams and wearing two big linen trousers yes um so I'm not that but I think storyteller's luckily been slightly redefined as

something something less uncool so yeah I think I guess I'm a storyteller and that's kind of all I do. I do that. I work almost all day. I'll go for a big hike or a run and then we'll watch TV. Hi, I'm Matt Lewis, historian and host of a new chapter of Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit. Join me and world leading experts every week as we explore the incredible real life history that inspires the locations, the characters and the storylines of Assassin's Creed. Listen and follow Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. Peyton, it's happening.

We're finally being recognized for being very online. It's about damn time. I mean, it's hard work being this opinionated. And correct. You're such a Leo. All the time. So if you're looking for a home for your worst opinions,

if you're a hater first and a lover of pop culture second, then join me, Hunter Harris, and me, Peyton Dix, the host of Wondery's newest podcast, Let Me Say This. As beacons of truth and connoisseurs of mass,

we are scouring the depths of the internet so you don't have to. We're obviously talking about the biggest gossip and celebrity news. Like, it's not a question of if Drake got his body done, but when. You are so messy for that, but we will be giving you the B-sides. Don't you worry. The deep cuts, the niche, the obscure.

Like that one photo of Nicole Kidman after she finalized her divorce from Tom Cruise. Mother. A mother to many. Follow Let Me Say This on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Watch new episodes on YouTube or listen to Let Me Say This on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Watch new episodes on YouTube or listen to Let Me Say This ad-free by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Let's start actually with your final failure because it follows on from what we've just been discussing which is the isolation that comes from being a writer so although it's your happy place I can completely relate to that because I'm a fellow introvert and I know that sounds ridiculous talking to you

in a microphone on my own podcast well yeah because this is easy like yes it's just a chat yeah it's a chat yeah it's who most of my socializing is with people I've never met before we can cope with that because it's just a one-on-one deep connection and then you can go home and shut the door and funnily enough being on stage is the same thing I totally agree yeah and it's something that I find it so hard to explain. Yes. Why? Is it because, you know, we're pretty much alone on a stage. Maybe there's one other person that you're talking to and you can't see the audience, the lights are in your eyes and you can't see them. So maybe it's just that you're not getting the sensory overload of being around people. So for instance, if I'm, you know, having my mic put on me and people are like prodding you

and putting things down the back of your neck, hate that. Being on stage, love it. And then the book signing afterwards, I really like meeting people and I'm very grateful for people wanting to come. But it's more difficult than being on stage. Totally relate.

Yeah. Are you neurodiverse? Probably, yeah. Your failure is succumbing to the isolation that comes with being a writer. What's your fear around it? You forget how to socialise with people. So going to parties that's already hard gets even harder. It can probably become dysfunctional. And when I come back to Britain, which is often, you know, four or five times a year, and people want me to do things,

and I do things like this more often, and you realise, oh, this is actually kind of fun. You know, I'm having, you know, it's a bit overwhelming, and I couldn't do it for more than a week, say. And then you go back to America, and you're upstate in the countryside, and I've got a few friends up there but you know 90% of my time I'm alone and and you know you do start to think you

know am I am I giving up things for this but do you feel lonely I don't feel lonely and I'm married and my wife's always around and my son you know visits us a lot so it's not like I'm completely alone. But I suppose I sometimes feel a bit kind of, have I veered off a track that would make me happier, I suppose. I completely understand what you're saying. I don't think you have, if that's any help. Right. Well, yeah, because maybe I've created this life for myself because this is the right life for me I also think that we live in a world that fetishizes the notion

of socializing and many and varied friendships and extroversion and noise and parties and that can be what makes someone happy but it doesn't always it's just that there's less space for us culturally to have our experience of what happiness is reflected and so therefore we do feel like maybe we're making the wrong choice my fear is ending up all alone at the end of my life because i do have this compulsion to have my own space and to be locked away writing a book, but stroking a cat. And friendships are very important to me, but I don't have children,

and so I'm worried that everyone will die and I'll just be on my own, and then I'll think, oh, I wish I'd made more friends and gone to more parties. Yeah, I agree with that. If I didn't really want this life I wouldn't have created it like if I was an extrovert I would live a more extroverted life so I think I'm probably complaining about nothing here and is your wife an extrovert or an introvert or a mixture of both she's probably probably more of a mixture yes I mean when she was, she was much more extroverted.

But like all of us, you know, when you get older, you just want to watch TV more. And where are you with friendships? Because this is another fascination of mine, friendships and how they change as we get older, but also how they fluctuate for different gender identities. And historically speaking, just to generalize hugely a straight white man seems to struggle with friendship especially if they have a long-term romantic relationship and have children yeah i'd say that's true i'd say most the vast majority of

my friends are women for some reason i just i was talking to adam curtis about this the other day i had a drink with him and he said the same thing that we just kind of prefer women to men but i i probably do struggle a bit i i think this is the legacy this is the remaining shadow of having a bad time at cardiff high school it it still manifests in a in a lack of confidence about friendships, I'd say. And so I'm a little less just diving into a friendship in the way that maybe other people do. I'm more wary and worried about saying the wrong thing and making a mistake. So I'd say that's a negative legacy.

I'll be your friend and we never need to do anything or pursue any act of friendship. We never need to text, we never need to see each other, but you can just know in your back pocket that I'm here being your friend. Well, that's very nice. And look, these are small gripes. What I'm saying is the truth,

but I don't think any of these are particularly bad things. I'm basically very happy. I love my work. I love telling stories. I'm very grateful that I can earn a living out of it and people like it. I've got a very happy marriage. The friends that I do have are very good friendships.

So really, I'm reaching for small issues here. I do want to make that clear. This sounds worse than it is. Your second failure, as you put it, is the perils of writing about your domestic life. Yes. Why did you choose this one? life yes why did you choose this one let's go back to 2003 I'm writing uh the men who stare at goats and I'm constantly in America because it's not working it's it's my previous book them every time we flew to America it was just golden like every time I got off the plane something amazing happened and then channel four said to me do more this was great because I wrote it was my book then but I also made a documentary series I loved them thank you so much and when I watched Succession it really reminded me of them and the

scenes with the Bilderberg group right well I wouldn't be surprised like I can't speak for Jesse well I was told one time that they had a couple of my books in the writers room I bet yeah anyway sorry I interrupted. Okay. But yeah, the opposite happened with the ministerial goats. Like every time we got off a plane, we got nothing. It was awful. I was wasting all of Channel 4's money. We were just flailing around in the dark. Anyway, I was on the plane from Los Angeles to Hawaii. And just before I got on the plane, I phoned my wife. My son at the time was probably about five.

And she said that they just came out of the vets. And my son fell over and got glass embedded in his hand. And he was going to have to have an emergency operation while I was on the plane from LA to Hawaii. And I just, I was on this plane and everybody else, it was like a party plane. Everyone had like garlands and, you know, doing Hawaiian things, I guess, eating pineapple. And I was just, I was so miserable. I'd never felt so far away from home. And the travel was always my least favorite part of the thing anyway. For me, the travel and the dangerous situations that I put myself in are just so I'd have something to write about when I get back home. And as it happens, that trip to Hawaii was amazing.

It was when I discovered the whole story that became The Men Who Stare at Goats. So the happy ending is that I got to Hawaii and finally the story unlocked and I met this soldier who was learning how to walk through walls and become invisible. And so I'd kill goats just by staring at them. And it was a great trip. But I thought, I can't do this. And I thought, my son's young enough still that I can make a change. So I gave up traveling. But then it was like, I've got to do something. I'm going to write about my domestic life. And I was really inspired by Nick Hornby and the way that he would make tiny human things

so big and powerful. And I thought, well, I'll try and do that with nonfiction. I write about craziness and human absurdities. I'll just do that about my domestic life, neighbours, family, friends. And I thought this could be really interesting because most people are wrapped up in a bubble of human absurdity, not about killing goats just by staring at them, but by some stupid fight they have with their next door neighbour. So I write about that. And it started off fine, but the tyranny of the deadline, this was a weekly column for The Guardian, and it became so dysfunctional, I can't tell you.

You got to the stage where you were desperate for something terrible to happen in your own family. So you'd have something to write about and it was awful and my son was getting more and more annoyed by then he was like eight and he just didn't want to be in my columns and you know my god you know rightly so and my neighbors were getting annoyed some guy came up to me a neighbor and said um that column you wrote because sometimes i'd like disguise identities uh he said that column you wrote last week was that about me and I'd go you know yes but I'm the idiot in the story I'm the idiot not you and also to make things worse the Guardian loved the column but the letters page each week was filled with people who like hated the column and but then I'd do talks and

when I was doing talks for them or the men of steric goats my audience were by and large nervous looking men but when I started writing about my personal life my audience was suddenly open smiling women so people I knew people like the column but the letters page like okay abuse me you know I'd write the column and then in the letters page and I felt like you know I was turning into like a caricature or a joke so I quit and eventually and I've never written about my personal life again although actually in the book I'm starting to write now there's an element of personal life but yeah but everyone's much older now and it's all fine. How do you feel about criticism? If it's factually accurate, I'm all for it and I have no problem with it at all.

And in fact, I think people should take criticism better. And I think a bit of humility is a good thing, right? But when you say factually accurate, what if it's just, I don't like you? That might be factually accurate for the person saying it. Yeah, I don't really mind that. Don't you? That's's amazing because as someone who survived being bullied I would have thought that you would mind that still no I really don't I really just

become inured to it I don't know I'm just a little bit more rational about things season two of things fell apart has had you know millions of listens and some of those people just statistically aren't going to like me so I just said okay well fine I'll just do this for the people who do. And do you choose not to seek it out do you choose to insulate yourself from the response to your work? It's not a big issue like if I read a really positive review It's not a big issue. If I read a really positive review, I'm happy for probably five seconds and then I completely forget about it and never think about it again. So, you know, some years ago I thought, well, if that's my response to very positive reviews, I should have the same response to negative reviews. I should be unhappy for five seconds and never think about it again,

because otherwise it's dysfunctional. Connected question then how do you feel about success so you mentioned there that things fall apart the second season has had millions of downloads it was at the top of the chart above your mate slash rival Louis Theroux. Well actually then he went from 191 to number one I was in hospital with my blood clot and I looked on charitable to see how how I was doing and I noticed I was number two I'd gone from number one to number two and Louis had gone from 191 to number one irritating yeah I know to you that I know we're joking about it but do you care because I am very competitive I wish I wasn't but I am and so I do check things

like that and it does seem to matter to me and my psyche I strive to be enlightened and not let it matter but how do you feel about it I'm glad to say I don't feel that way for me it's all about the story and making the story as as good as possible and caring hugely I I go over my sentences, you know, a hundred times, 200 times. The Things Fell Apart episodes, you know, we edit over and over and over again. We're like dollhouse makers, you know, the tiny minutiae. And when it's done, I think it's kind of done. If something that I think should be a success is less successful than I would have hoped, Something that I think should be a success is less successful than I would have hoped.

I'm a little saddened, but that's all. My job is to tell the story as well as possible. And anything that happens afterwards is just, you know, for the fates. That's so wise. Well, I really do believe it. And also, you just, you can never anticipate. And often it's very, it just seems very scattershot, something that I don't think is that great that I've done. I mean, I think everything that I do by the time I bring it out is good,

but something I think is a little less good than something else sometimes does a lot better. Some things I think are like, this is the most amazing thing, doesn't do that well. And I've given up kind of caring or anticipating I'm only interested in making the story as good as possible how important is truth to you oh hugely and in fact when you said does criticism upset you the only time I ever feel upset is if it's if it's untrue and then I get really upset for some reason I don't know why truth matters to me that much, but it really does.

And when you get upset, what happens? I mean, nothing. Nothing. Nothing on the outside. I don't have a meltdown or anything. Well, maybe a little. Maybe I'll angrily say to my wife, would you believe this? Yeah.

And she will try and change the subject as quickly as possible um but truth telling is very important to me as well have you always been like that yeah i'd say so but definitely more now and you feel a bit like king canote these days because a disinterest in truth seems to be pervading the media in so many ways in fact season two of things fell apart is very much about that it's about the different ways that people lie so the right lie in these big baroque sort of balls out ways these big mythological lies about you know pizzagate or whatever and then the left you know act it, journalist activists on the left, I think, lie in slightly more subtle different ways. But it's all a kind of form of lying.

And by that, I mean, I suppose, I've seen this happen. This isn't just me imagining it, that if you're an activist left-wing journalist and you're telling a story about a heroic woman, for instance, and then you see that there's aspects a heroic woman for instance and then you see that there's aspects about this woman that isn't quite so heroic I've noticed them filtering that stuff out you know flattening the moral complexity because they want to have a more simplistic ideological story which is a different kind of lying but it's still a kind of lying. And how do you find your stories? Are you a sort of 3am YouTube rabbit holer? Not 3am.

I always start work around 6am, but I always finish around 3pm and then I won't do any more work. But yeah, I go down a lot of rabbit holes. I listen to a lot of academic books and boring audio books and read a lot of academic papers and I'm just sort of looking for the little gleam of a jewel in the mud, just something where you just think, ha, I didn't expect that. Or I don't know what that means, those words. Episode one of season two of Things Fell Apart is about this.

Will I very quickly recount it? do yes okay so miami in the 1980s 32 women are found dead in mysterious circumstances they're all black sex workers they've all got low levels of cocaine in their system and their and their bodies are all in very similar positions and they're all naked from the waist down but there was no obvious cause of death so the deputy chief medical examiner announced that he'd solved the mystery and these women had all spontaneously dropped dead as a result of a combination of cocaine and sex and he gave gave it a name, excited delirium. And he said, this is how women die. And men just go berserk. They rip off their clothes. If they take too much cocaine, go running through traffic, and then they spontaneously drop dead. Anyway, it turned out that it was a serial killer. Like, of course it was. But that didn't daunt him. He

went around continuing to postulate his theory of excited delirium. It gets taught in police training schools. The man who put his knee on George Floyd's neck learned all about excited delirium and that you had to restrain them or else they're going to be a danger to themselves and a danger to other people as they were standing around george floyd's body they talked about excited delirium this entirely fictitious made-up diagnosis that proliferated in really powerful important places courtrooms police training and so on anyway i discovered that because i was listening to a very good audio book called his name is george Floyd. And there was just a very brief mention of excited delirium. And I was hiking upstate. And I just thought, huh. And it didn't really explain what it was in the book. But I went down a rabbit hole. And that's how I found that story that I just told you. Fascinating and terrifying in equal measure. Do you ever worry that you're becoming close to believing in a conspiracy in the way that you report conspiracy theories? Because sometimes it

can feel like that when you're disappearing down a rabbit hole, that you want to see this thing. Yes, but I don't see it as a bad thing. I think, going back to what I said before about how non-fiction writers should have all the ambition of novelists, I think, you back to what I said before about how nonfiction writers should have all the ambition of novelists, I think, you know, if you're reading a novel, you kind of want the protagonist to go through a big life change. And so if I'm investigating something, in my book Them, I was trying to sneak into this powerful club called the Bilderberg Group, and I got chased away by men in dark glasses, and a car chase ensued, and I got chased away by men in dark glasses and a car chase ensued and I got really paranoid that the Bilderberg Group were following me everywhere and eventually

I realised that this paranoia was a gift because what great writing this this would make so as long so I think if you can really succumb to a conspiracy theory, fall down the rabbit hole, change, see the world in a completely new way, but also have the ability to come back out of it with your rationality back, then that's a gift for this kind of writing. That's an amazing way of expressing it. Thank you. What does Elaine, your wife, make of it all? We don't really talk much about my stories or anything like that i remember when i was being chased by the bilderberg group that time it's a bit like john or what have you done now go back to writing about our domestic life the opposite she uh i phoned her up very upset i said i'm in Portugal. I'm being chased by these shadowy henchmen of the Bilderberg group.

I'm really out of my depth. Things have gotten too far now. I'm scared. And Elaine went, oh, you're loving it. That's what you need. I know, I know. Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest? This is a time of great foreboding.

These words supposedly uttered by a king over 800 years ago, these words supposedly uttered by a king over 800 years ago, set in motion a chain of gruesome events and sparked cult-like devotion across the world. I'm Matt Lewis. Join us as we unwrap the enigma and get to the heart of what really happened to Thomas Beckett by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit. And I'm Lee Alec Murray. And I'm Leah President. Every week, you can listen in while we break down the latest pop culture news and dish on what new releases we can't get enough of. We're covering the latest in film, video games, music, manga, and obviously, anime. Get the latest on The Anime Effect. So join us every Friday wherever you get your podcasts.

And watch full video episodes on Crunchroll or the crunchyroll youtube channel i gobbled up your psychopath book and um i was fascinated that psychopath and sociopath are basically the same thing yes i never knew that yeah that. Yeah, I didn't either. Until I read your book. But you're taking it on tour, aren't you? Yes, October, November, I'm doing a big psychopath night. 27 shows in places, including places I've never spoken before, in like Southend and Ipswich and Tunbridge Wells, and lots of places where I have spoken in before, like London and Glasgow and Edinburgh.

So yeah, it's like bringing the psychopath test to life. Can you tell us anything about the content? I have mystery guests with incredible stories to tell and film clips that have never been seen before and funny stories and like a kind of 3D version of the book. And people should feel very welcome to come. We'll put a link in the show notes. Okay.

Your final failure is screenwriting and Hollywood in general, as you put it. Talking of what you like to write, but this deals more with what other people have drawn you into writing. So tell us why you consider this a failure. Well, I was listening to your fantastic interview with the very great Kazuyo ishiguro and who i adore and i thought you did a brilliant job with him and i think he's just one of our greatest people he's an incredible person and he has that um the intelligent person's gift of not making you feel stupid like he's so he's so clever and makes all of his brilliant ideas accessible so it was a privileged interview him so good i mean wow i mean two or three of his books you would never let me go the remains of the

day i mean these are the great some of the greatest books of our lifetime totes and clara and the sun have you loved that yeah yeah um the the the heroine of clara and the sun is is a woman called josie and And my dog is called Josie. So it was slightly odd to be listening to the audiobook of Clare and the Sun while giving Josie walks. Because it's like, you know, Josie, Josie, stop sniffing that. And then in my ears it's like, you know, Josie, no. Yeah.

But he said something similar about screenwriting. He has problems with screenwriting too. And I wish I understood it, and I don't really, that if you're adept at non-fiction narrative storytelling, you'd think you'd be adept at screenwriting. But I found it very hard to transfer the skill from one to the other if I'm being completely honest and it made me realize that we should stick you know I'm at a time in my life now where I could actually get commissioned to write more screenplays if I wanted to and it means I'd

like get the writers guild health fund like lots of good things would come from it but I just came to realize that I want to spend my remaining years doing what I really know how to do and know how to do well if I'm on a zoom and it's about one of my books or podcasts I have super confidence I'm like the king of the zoom if I'm on a Hollywood zoom um about screenwriting if it's about one of my things that are being adapted, then I think I can still contribute. But if it's screenwriting, I just realise I'm a novice. And for me, it's as alien a skill as landscape gardening. So I think kind of a good realisation from all of this

is stick to what you do well. Why not? How old are you now 56 i do think there comes a stage where we want to lean into as you say what we're expert in what we've built up the 10 000 hours doing rather than having to learn a whole new skill and i've recently written my first and I've recently written my first script which I heard you say that actually in one of the interviews and yeah oh my goodness I mean worked with lovely people but it's such a long process and I felt like such a dunce where I was constantly having these notes and having this feedback which was all really good. But it puts you in that position again of feeling like,

oh, I've got to learn this whole new skill and I've got to learn how to belong again almost. Yeah. And I was like, I'm too old for this. Well, I think it's okay to sort of realise that. For me, I think it's fiction. It's the fact that it's fiction. You know, if I go into a room as a piece of journalism, I feel confident enough to know that i could tell the story of what's happening in this room

in the best way that it could be told but if i go into a room in fiction there's no room like i don't know what color the walls are i don't know who's in the room. I don't know anything. So that fundamental source material thing, I just don't think my brain works with fiction. And I think it works really well with nonfiction. And I don't know why. It should be similar, but it just isn't. And you say Hollywood in general. Was there something about Hollywood itself that felt rather alien to you? Well, I love LA. So do I. Hardly anyone loves LA.

What do you like about it? I love that it feels as though things are possible. I love the low, flat horizon, the endless sky, the fact that you can hike. People don't know that the mountains are right there. You hike in the city, yeah. Yes, it's incredible. I like the fact that there are different parts of LA, so it's sort of lots of villages in one sprawling city.

And as long as you find out which village you like, you can have the most wonderful time there. And you can write outdoors whilst getting a tan. And you haven't mentioned a couple of other things that I really love, the colours. You have these pale colours that you don't get in Britain. When a Brit goes to New York, it's amazing, but you kind of understand. But when a Brit goes to LA, it's like going to Mars.

You know, different colours, different plants. And yeah, the hiking. I mean, Runyon Canyon, Griffith Park. Griffith Park. Yeah, those are my favourite places on earth. But when you look closely in Griffith Park, a lot of your fellow hikers are these spectral figures who came to LA in their 20s and have probably made a living writing screenplays

that never got made. And they'll have meetings where people will tell them, you know, keep at it. You're the greatest voice of your generation. And then nothing ever happens. And 30 years go by and you've written and written and written and nobody's ever read or watched any of your stuff. And there's something so bleak and depressing about that.

And the other thing is, I think it's a very weirdly, it's a very, I mean, I guess because such big amounts of money are involved, it's a very alpha male industry when you're actually making films to get by you have to be pretty aggressive and and i'm i'm just not i'm just not that way having said all of that you have had two things made three three well wait tell me what they are well the men who stay at go yes which i didn't write but that's the thing. Sorry, that's why. It wasn't me being incorrect. But you are played by Ewan McGregor in that.

I am. And then in Frank, which I co-wrote with the brilliant Peter Straughan, Donald Gleeson plays me, another Star Wars person. I just want to point out that the two times I've been played by actors, it's both like Jedis. Because you were in Frank Sybottom's band yes I was his keyboard player and then Oak Joe which I co-wrote with Bong Joon-ho who then wrote and directed Parasite so that sounds quite successful for someone who it does

it really does and each time is a miracle I mean my you have to, once you're on the inside of it, you realise why almost no films ever get made. I remember I made this documentary called Stanley Kubrick's Boxes and I interviewed, I was the first person to look through Stanley Kubrick's Boxes. And I interviewed his lawyer, Rick Sennett.

And afterwards, when the interview was over, he told a really funny story about a beach holiday. It's on Vimeo if people want to watch it. But afterwards, I said to him, oh, yeah, I've got this book, The Many Stoic Goats, that they're trying to turn into a movie. And Rick said to me, this is what you have to know about movies.

No film ever gets made. And I see what he means now. The three occasions when something I've done has got made, it's just felt like an unbelievable miracle. Like you're a juggler juggling 30 things and not dropping it. It's the number of things that have to fall into place. I just can't believe that anything ever gets made. And do you think that's partly why it doesn't feel right for you? Because there's so many other people involved. It's sort of an extroverted take on an introverted profession.

I think you have to be egoless. I won't say who it is, but a friend of mine who's a very successful novelist wrote a screenplay. And he told me that he was at Sundance when the screenplay was being made, and they were backstage and ready to go out for the audience, for the big premiere. And the director goes out, and then the actors go out, and then he was about to go out, and the PR person put her arm in front of him and said,

talent only. That is savage. I know. You have to. the one thing i can tell you that anybody listening to this who wants to be involved as a writer in hollywood leave your ego at the door like don't don't bring any ego or any expectation either so if something happens if something gets made it's a wonderful miracle but don't put any stock in it don't hold and and keep your ego out of it because even if um your thing gets made you're still the person in the wings saying sorry you know being told sorry talent only what's it like seeing yourself portrayed on screen

i wish i could i wish i could say oh it was amazing but to be honest it's so part of a I wish I could say, oh, it was amazing. But to be honest, it's so part of a construction that you're on set. You know, I visited the set, so I see a couple of scenes getting filmed. And then with Frank, the director was nice enough to send rough cuts all the time to me and to Peter and ask for notes. So it feels like it's a machine. You know what? I remember saying to somebody somebody i can't remember which film it was but i said to somebody so you know what's what's the moment you know when this is

all that magical it's it's not the premiere because at the premiere you're just nervous as hell about whether people are going to like it or not it's not when you see the film because you've seen the film in different iterations, like over and over again. It's definitely not like the interviews. The magical moment, you suddenly realise, oh my God, the magical moment was actually the writing of the screenplay, like when it was working. Wow. So the thing that you're thinking, OK, I'm going to do this because then everything's going to be so glamorous. Actually, the thing that you're doing is the best part.

That is such a metaphor for life and such a brilliant note to end on because it goes back to that idea of the joy and the purpose being in the telling of the story. And that is separate from how it's received. Yes, absolutely. There was a moment when I was writing Frank where I got confident enough that I would open up my laptop

and it would feel like the characters, Maggie Gyllenhaal's character, Clara, were like there, it's like holograms on my keyboard waiting to be told what to do. And that's the moment. That's the moment that it's all for. Take joy in the doing.

And thank you so much, John Ronson, for being an un-Norfolk-based, un-baggy-trouser-wearing storyteller. We are so lucky to have you. And thank you for coming on How to Fail. Elizabeth, it was an absolute joy. Thank you. I hope I didn't overshare. There's no such thing in my book.

If anything, you undershared. There's another failure. No, I'm kidding. You were perfect. Thank you. I just want to remind you that we continue our conversation with the wonderful John Ronson over at Failing With Friends. It's an amazing community of subscribers where we chat through your failures and questions. So for fun, I only ever listen to celebrity memoirs. I love celebrity memoirs on audiobook. Right.

Have you listened to Britney's? Oh, yeah. Oh, so good. If you're not yet a subscriber, I'd love for you to join us. Just visit the How to Fail show page on Apple Podcasts and click start free at the top of the page to begin your free trial and start listening today. And remember to follow us. Press the plus button on the top right to get new episodes of How To Fail as soon as they drop on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music,

or wherever you get your podcasts. And please tell all your friends. This is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment original podcast. Thank you so much for listening. and potatoes or small hot coffee. Choose two for $4 at Wendy's. Available for a limited time at participating Wendy's in Canada. Taxes extra.