Offline with Jon Favreau - What Does It Mean to Be a Good Man? (with Jon Ronson)

Episode Date: October 17, 2026

What would you do if your son texted you in the middle of the night that he'd stumbled upon a bizarre castle lorded over by a creepy man? For Jon Ronson, the journalist and bestselling author of So You've Been Publicly Shamed and The Psychopath Test, the answer is simple: write a book about it. The Castle: Adventures in a World of Unraveling Men is an empathetic, humorous, and startling investigation of men who are struggling to find purpose, connection, and place in a rapidly changing world. Jon and Jon talk about what happened to the institutions that once gave people a sense of belonging, how the internet has offered new—and sometimes dangerous—substitutes, and what all of this means for raising boys.Hate listening to ads? Become a Friends of the Pod subscriber for ad-free episodes of Pod Save America, Pod Save the World, Lovett or Leave It, Runaway Country, Offline with Jon Favreau, and more—plus exclusive content, including bonus episodes of Pod Save America. Subscribe now at crooked.com/friends, on Apple Podcasts, or through the Pod Save America YouTube channel.You can request a transcript by emailing [e-mail]. Include the podcast name, episode title, and air date. Please allow 48 hours for delivery.

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And I thought this guy's trying to be Hugh Hefner during surely the worst period of human history to be Hugh Hefner. Our purposelessness is pushing each of us into hazardous situations. Like it's pushing me into investigating this guy, he's sending me death threats. Right. And it's pushing him into very skeevy things with women in his castle. So with the death of somebody of the old institutions and deindustrialization and the some ways that I think impacting men and women. But among men, I think there is a thing. is probably a sense that what's our place now?

Like, what do we do? There's more than 7 million men in America. They aren't only unemployed. They aren't even looking for work. They've just bowed out. But also the American Psychological Association brought out this paper and it listed harmful male traits, insodony and so on. But others are things that I do all the time,

like adventure, competitiveness. Reading those traits, I'm like, yeah, I'm ambitious and competitive and all that kind of stuff too. And then you're like, well, do I teach my kids? boys that? Do I not? What do you think a positive vision of masculinity looks like? Every time there's another horrifying story about the way men treat women, it leads to another conversation about how to raise boys, a conversation that's usually about the men we don't want them to become. Don't be cruel. Don't be entitled. Don't confuse aggression with strength

or mistake dominance for respect. Don't treat other human beings as objects or ignore boundaries or stay silent when you see someone getting hurt. Basically, don't become the kind of man who thinks the world revolves around him. I think about this all the time. Our boys are six and almost three, and right now they are the sweetest, most sensitive, thoughtful little kids. Emily and I would do anything for them to stay that way. I'm sure most parents would. No one sets out to raise boys who become bad men.

But even when they're young, you quickly realize that you can't predict, much less control, every person, idea, or situation your kids are exposed to. They will inevitably compete with other kids, struggle with friendships, experience rejection, and encounter all kinds of messages about what being a man is supposed to mean. Our job, I think, isn't just to keep our boys away from the worst versions of masculinity. It's to give them a compelling picture of the men they could become, one that offers something more fulfilling than the endless pursuit of success, approval, and self-gratification. It's not like we don't know what makes a meaningful life. All the major religions, the social sciences, even neuroscience, keep pointing us in the same

direction. We need each other. We need to love and be loved. We need connection, true connection, to one another, and to something larger than ourselves. Close relationships, tight-knit communities. We've heard it over and over again. The hard part isn't knowing any of this. It's actually building a life around it, to find work that makes us feel useful and fulfilled, places we feel like we belong, friendships that don't fade as we get older, busier, and more wrapped up in our own lives. The more difficult it's become to find those things, the more tempting it's become to settle for something that feels close enough. Why go out when it's easier to spend the night scrolling? Why risk an uncomfortable conversation or an awkward social interaction that ends in disappointment. Why take those chances

when the thing we're always staring at is forever promising and escape from all that friction? A world where there's always someone who agrees with us, where people admire us, follow us, want us, where there's always something new to watch, something new to laugh at, to make us feel good even for a bit. And now with AI, something that will listen to us for hours, tell us exactly what we want to hear, and never bother us with its own name. needs. When being liked is this easy. Why go through the trouble of being known? And here's the problem with trying to raise boys who won't spend their lives chasing all these things. I still chase plenty of them myself. I know how important it is to spend time with the people I love.

I also know how easy it is to reach for my phone the second I have nothing to do. To spend five, 10, 20 minutes scrolling through shit I barely care about instead of calling a friend or my parents or just being present with Emily and the kids. And if it's not the phone that steals my attention, it's work, thinking about the next episode, the next essay, the next thing I should be doing, the next achievement I can pursue. I feel incredibly lucky that I get to do work that gives me purpose with people I care about.

But I also know how easily that can turn into measuring my own worth by what I accomplish and how fleeting that satisfaction can feel. And what worries me about that isn't just that I may miss out on the very things that make my life meaningful is that my boys are watching. And even though Emily and I tell them it's okay to make mistakes, that they don't have to be the best at everything, that what matters most is how they treat other people, the lessons that stick are the ones they get from watching us. What are they learning when they see how much time I spend working or how distracted I can be when I'm supposed to be spending time with them? Yes, I want

them to work hard, take pride in what they accomplish, and find ways to contribute something meaningful to the world. But I never want them to believe that their accomplishments are what make them valuable. Because people can admire what you accomplish without ever knowing who you really are. An audience can applaud without caring whether you're really happy. A job can make you feel indispensable without giving you the sense that you're loved. Real relationships, close relationships, are different. They involve people who don't always agree with you, flatter you, or tell you what you want to hear. They require patience, compromise, honesty, and occasionally admitting you're wrong. They can be clumsy and frustrating and even break your heart. But it's through those relationships

that we learn to care about other people's needs as much as our own, where we discover the satisfaction of showing up for someone, even when it's inconvenient. And where we learn that love isn't something we have to earn by accomplishing enough. I don't know how to teach my boys all of this. I'm not sure anyone does. So maybe the most important thing I can do is keep trying to learn these lessons myself. When Charlie, our six-year-old,

first started kindergarten this year, you would have thought we were sending him off to war. Drop-offs involved big feelings, a few tears, and several rounds of, wait, one more hug! As I try to walk away, slightly worried, of course, that I'd be late for work. Then slowly the tears stopped. We got down to a very manageable three or four hugs.

And eventually I'd watch my son run happily towards his friends. This week was the first time he ran off without asking for a hug. When I called after him, he still ran back and threw his arms around me. But I walked away a little deflated. For weeks, I'd been trying to get him comfortable enough to say goodbye without the extra hugs. Now that he finally could, I wanted them back. And it suddenly hit me. how quickly these years are going by and how little time we have before our kids start making

more and more decisions on their own. That night, after I got home from work, Charlie was telling us about his day. He was excited that he tied his fastest friend in a race and especially proud that he'd done something in class that earned him a big round of applause. Then, almost as an afterthought, he mentioned that another kid had said something hurtful to one of his friends. So Charlie walked over and asked if she needed a hug. She did. That was, of course, the part of his day that I'll take with me. Not the race or the applause, but the fact that he noticed someone was hurting

and wanted to make her feel better. Moments like that give me hope. Even as I still worry about all the challenges Charlie and Teddy will face and all the ways Emily and I might fall short in helping them, but maybe I should spend a little less time worrying about the men they'll become. and a little more time learning from the boys they already are. My guest today is John Ronson, the journalist and bestselling author of So You've Been Publicly Shamed,

and The Psychopath Test. His fascinating new book, The Castle, Adventures in a World of Unraveling Men, begins with his adult son stumbling into a bizarre situation at a multi-million dollar castle in Connecticut turns into a much larger investigation of men who are struggling to find purpose, connection, and a place in a rapidly changing world. We talk about what happened to the institutions

that once gave people a sense of belonging, how the internet has offered new and sometimes dangerous substitutes, and what all of this means for raising boys. Here's John Ronson. John Ronson, welcome back to the show. John, it's a delight to be here and to see you in human. I know, I know, first time meeting in person.

You were last on in 2024 to talk about your podcast series, Things Fell Part, which was a, a deep dive into the causes of the culture wars and polarization. You've got a new book out, The Castle, which is fantastic. I was just telling you. It's called The Castle Adventures in a World of Unraveling Men. So it's about our crisis of masculinity, people, particularly men who have become unmoored from society, the online rabbit holes they fall down.

It's also for people, it's like sort of an adventure, it's an investigation, it's a mystery. It's a mystery. So it's a wonderful book. And back in 2024, you said people had become coiled springs after six weeks of pandemic lockdown. Is this book in any way a sequel to things fell apart? Yeah, I think so. And in a way, it's a sequel to, so you've been publicly shamed, the book I wrote 10 years ago about the kind of rise of public shabbing on social media. And so you've been publicly shamed.

In fact, I think the last time we talked, I told you about this. Guy Max Mosley, who he was the son of a fascist leader in Britain, and he was caught up in what the news of the world called a sick Nazi orgy. Anyway, he refused to be ashamed by it. And this is like 10, 15 years ago. And he just said, no, I refuse to be ashamed. I'm going to step out of the pact by refusing to be ashamed. And in his case, it was a consensual orgy. So I think it was fine for him to refuse. But what I've noticed, and I'm sure you've noticed, is, not only has unashamedness swept the land, but it's kind of mutated into something worse, which is disinhibition, people just ripping off their faces and allowing their ids to run wild. I think partly as a result of... Yeah, we may have elected a president that... Yeah, I mean, mostly...

For the second time that especially let everyone be disinhibited. Yeah, I mean, he has certainly given people that permission, but also maybe just... just the collapse of the old structures and people not, you know, all the old guardrails used to stop people from going crazy seem to be kind of collapsing. And as a result, I think people are getting more and more and are acting strangely as a result. And then big tech swoops in to encourage people's strange behavior so they can make money out of it. I mean, I think maybe the best place to begin is where the book does, which is with your son, Joel and his friends. friends driving to a castle in Connecticut, expecting a party, and discovering something much weirder.

Yes. And maybe a little more frightening. So what happened? Yeah. So the way I discovered this was I was asleep and I woke up to a series of texts of my son. And the last text said, we left. That was completely fucked. We're okay now.

So he had the other text. And yeah, he and three friends had been invited to a party. held by a stranger that one of them had met earlier that week on Tinder. Okay. So they drive to this man's house. And his house was so strange. Joel did something he's never done before, which was he sent me the coordinates. And it was this giant, ostentatious, newly built Gothic castle.

It's just like right in the middle of Connecticut. Yeah. It's why I've seen pictures of it. And I was like, wow, I don't know Connecticut has a castle like this. Yeah. I think it has like about nine or ten. I think 10 if you include Tommy Hill figures, Greenwich Estate, which has castle elements. Okay, yeah.

One goes down rabbit holes. One one does these stories. Yeah, so this was like if you've got in your mind's eye an ostentatious castle, multiply that by 50. And way too many turrets, far too many spires, and moat and drawbridge. And they entered to discover that there was no party. It was a trick. They had been lured there for some other reason. And the other reason is...

Well, the castle owner comes out and they say, where's the party? This is a guy named Chris Mark. Chris Mark. Man in his early 60s. The great-grandson of a gilded age steel tycoon, hence where he gets his money to build a castle. He said, I've invited you here for another reason. I would like you all to take part in my reality show.

So they said, what's the name of your reality show? He said it's 101 princesses. So they said, what's the core concept? And he said, I'm the king, I'm looking for my queen, I have 101 princesses to choose from. And then he said to the two women in Joel's party, go downstairs to my basement costume room, put on some princess costumes, and then come back upstairs for filming. So they went downstairs, passing all the red flags along the way. Yeah. Dressed up in princess costumes, went back upstairs.

Joel and his male friend dressed in tuxedos and a videographer appears and filming began but they got the sense very quickly that this wasn't a real reality show. It was another trick. There was a further reason why the Castle owner wanted them there, which was, I think he wanted, he was a big Hugh Hefner fan and he wanted his own hair rim. He wanted to lure unsuspecting women to his castle so we could have a

harem. Harem. We say Harim, but I think it's harem. Herom, okay. So I was going, and I thought this guy's trying to be Hugh Hefner during surely the worst period

of human history to be Hugh Hefner. So I thought, I'll write a book, I'll call it the impossibility of keeping a harem in the post-Me-2 age. And it would be all of, and the book wasn't called that in the end, it's called the castle. And I thought, and I'll write a book about

all these other things that men used to be able to do that they can't do anymore. And what is that do? to them? What are these changes in society doing to people's inner lives? That is, I had so many questions like reading about the castle story, which was first of all, like, you meet, how did they connect on Tinder for a party? I don't even, I'm, I'm past Tinder. I never, I never really. Yeah, well, I, I, too, have never been on Tinder, but I saw the text. They, they, they must have exchanged phone numbers because Joel's friend, Nelly got a text that said, you know, party, Saturday night, 18 plus. to attend, 21 plus to drink. So it seemed more like a party than any, than some kind of a match. Yeah, like a date or something.

Yeah, they very much presented it as a party and an above board party where you had to be 21 to drink. So they weren't thinking, okay, it seems, it seems okay. So your son and his friends escape this place? Yeah, they, and then they come to my house to tell me the story. And evidently, it's not a good idea to lure a journalist son to your bizarre castle. I mean, admittedly, you know, to be fragile was a plus one. Still, I decided to go to the castle myself.

And what happened when you got to the castle? Well, he let me in. And you identify as a journalist at this point, right? Told him I was a nonfiction writer, and I'd heard extraordinary things about his castle, and could I come and see it for myself? So he said, yes. I was just out of, what struck me? I was just out of hospital.

I just had surgery, major surgery. And I was feeling like my life sort of slipping away. And I was desperately looking for a story. It's the only time I have well-being in my life is what I have a story to tell. So that's why I went to the castle. But being just out of surgery, as I'm walking down the castle corridors, every time I move in the wrong way, it kind of tears at my scar. And I let out sudden unexpected shrieks.

So I'm walking down this skeevy castle going like, Like some tormented castle visitor from that girl and poe novel. Anyway, the reason I bring that up is because the castle owner, Chris Mark, I think he had a similar absence of purpose in his life at that moment. Just to like a rich air who found himself in a castle. Yeah. And has just gotten weirder and stranger, particularly with women. Yes.

His daughters had grown up and left home. He was rattling around his castle, feeling without purpose. so he decides to lure women to his car, or to take part in this reality show that will never get picked up by Netflix. So you started investigating sort of Chris Mark, who he is, what he's up to, all the sketchy shit he's involved in.

Yeah. When did you realize this wasn't just a bizarre story about one wealthy castle owner, but potentially a window into something much bigger about men? Well, I think two things happened at once. firstly my relationship with the castle owner with Chris got weirder and weirder. He started sending me death threats. Yeah.

He said he had... Because you were asking too many questions. Yes. He tried to get me to sign an NDA. But after he'd already told me loads of intriguing and ominous things, so I was never going to sign an NDA. So then he starts sending me death threats, says he has two murderers on his payroll called Carlos and Brandon.

And if I ever write negatively about the castle, Carlos and Branden would be very angry. and I only just had a prison for murdering someone. So I thought, well, I've got to keep going with this story. Were you, obviously it's a great story. And as a journalist, you wanted to dig in. At any point were you scared, were you like, I should probably bring in the authorities at some point? I mean, like, by the end, I mean, I don't want to give anything away.

But it's clear there are, like, potential sex trafficking going on here. there's potential abuse going on, at least from what you find out, from what you hear, from women who've been at the castle. Like, at what point are you saying, okay, this is a really, this is a story that I have to write and figure out. And at what point are you like, well, maybe I'm in danger, maybe I should be calling someone else. Like, how did that work out?

Yeah. Well, I definitely felt in danger. It was a frightening, you know, when I said, I've never had death death before. I was talking to Patrick Radden-Keefe about this the other day, and he said he's never had a death threat in his life. Wow, Patrick, that's... I know, I thought, God, if he's done a lot of... Yeah, I thought, no, I feel even more worried if Patrick's never had death threats. So, it was frightening.

There's always a bit of you that remembers that the most frightening the thing is in the moment, the funnier it is to write about it, assuming you get through it all. You know, I've had many frightening. I've been outed as a Jew, it's a Jew, had training camp and so on. So I know some experience that the best stories are the ones that are genuinely frightening at the time. I thought about calling in the authorities. I discovered that he had been investigated by the Connecticut State Police.

So I knew that the Connecticut State Police were interested in him. But to give away one spoiler, midway through my investigation, I get a phone call. And it turns out that I'm not the only person investigating him. he's being investigated by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security and so on, so that kind of changes everything. So that's why I decided to continue with his story. Like I couldn't, how could you stop that?

Right. But also, yeah, I think it was that idea of like the two of us feeling, the two of us have this weird, you know, in very different ways, sort of existential enwee. He's rattling around his castle with nothing to do. I'm just out of hospital. we both feel purposeless. Our purposelessness is pushing each of us into hazardous situations.

Like it's pushing me into investigating this guy, sending me death threats. Right. And it's pushing him into, you know, doing very skeevy things with women in his castle. So I thought, that's interesting. And then I thought, well, we're living in a time when there is a kind of crisis of purpose with the death of somebody of the old institutions. and, you know, deindustrialisation and death of office life and just a sort of general sense among men.

I mean, you know, this on ways, I think, impacting men and women, but among men, I think there is probably a sense that, you know, what's our place now? Like, what do we do? Yeah. And so that felt like a theme worth exploring. What happens to people when they're robbed of purpose and structure? What does it do to them?

How does it turn them insane? How do they find structure and purpose? Which I think takes us to the theme of this particular show, because a lot of them find it online. Yeah, you mentioned just now that it hits men particularly different. And I sort of wonder, because so many of the themes, the larger socioeconomic themes and changes, technological changes, economic changes that you talk about in the book, you know, they hit both men and women who are sort of struggling to find purpose and their place in the world.

What makes, like, how do men react to this differently? Why is it different for men than women? Well, I'm glad you bring that because I do think, like, almost all of the themes in this book apply as much to women as they do to me. Yeah, that's sort of what I cut away from it too. I think the difference is,

this is kind of a generalization, and I don't really have an explanation but I think men tend to handle it worse than women. I was talking to Scotchie from Slate not long ago, and she said something interesting. She said, when women meet, they sit across the table and talk to each other. And when men meet, they stand next to each other and face out, looking at something else like a sports game or a high.

Yeah, that is. And men, and I know there's some experience, men are prone to isolating more than women, I think. You know, my wife is forever going out and doing, things. And I, if I allow myself to, we'll isolate. And then I heard the statistic that there's more than 7 million men in America who've just not, they aren't only unemployed, they aren't even looking for work. They've just bowed out. Yeah. So you talk a lot about how the work situation has changed. You write in the book, it struck me that the Mark family's 100-year journey from

steel-related manufacturing to TikTok dances was a uniquely American story. They'd gone from creating and exporting about the most tangible product imaginable steel pipes to about the least a reality show unlikely to get picked up by Netflix. Yes. How has, what did you learn about how the economic evolution of the last several decades in the US and around the world has led so many men to opt out of society, I think, as you put it? Yeah. Well, so it turns out that Chris Mark's great grandfather, the Gilded Age steel tycoon,

he built a utopian worker community for his workers. in East Chicago, Indiana, so I went there. And that's... Yeah, this is sort of when the story starts expanding and taking off. Yeah. Because I thought, you know, this was a place that really thrived for decades on, you know, fairness and structure. People came up through the ranks. They got jobs.

And I don't want to sort of romanticize this too much. It was probably kind of a shit place for a lot of people to live too. Yeah. But there was something to be said for the structure and the fairness and so on that was happening in this town. But then capitalism came along to fuck it all up like it always does. So this utopian worker community, Marktown, I would suggest that people look up an aerial shot of Marktown because it's extraordinary because it becomes completely enclosed by heavy industry. 60 new plants were built completely encircling the town. then the town becomes like rife with pollution

and then the gangs come in and the town just sort of descends into uselessness and the people left behind become hoarders and recluses so that's when I thought okay so this when you take purpose and structure

from people's lives I just did this big tour in Britain and I would ask on stage sometimes how many of you feel the same same way I do, that if you're not working, then you just, you go nuts. You feel completely useless and you go nuts. And everyone puts the hands up. Yeah. People, this is a very, I mean, this is what drives me nuts about the, not to go off on a tangent here, but the whole discussion about AI and job replacement. And, you know, we hear this from the AI overlords themselves,

the executives themselves, that, oh, well, we'll do universal basic income and there'll be so much wealth. And so everyone can just enjoy their leisure time and not have to work. And you're like, you know, societies where people are not working, whether they have enough money or not, are societies where there are problems. Absolutely. Yeah, I heard one AI guru say, it's good that AI can make music because people don't enjoy making music. Right. Yeah. I mean, I'm paraphrasing him, but he basically said that.

They say crazy things. Yeah, increasingly crazy things. Yeah. So I agree. You know, and Sam Altman is trying to encourage us to imagine a world, a post-work world. And yeah, if you take away me, you know, from so many people work. By the way, this is the reason I wanted to write so you've been publicly shamed as well. Because back in like 2015, 2016, when people were getting fired willy-nilly for minor infractions,

I would think to myself, you know, the people who were doing these pile on, quite a lot of them are quite young. And they don't realize how important. Work isn't just about making money to eat. Work is about giving people meaning. And we are punishing people for, you know, in a way. And by the way, when a bunch of people don't have meaning and purpose, it doesn't just affect them, it affects the rest of us.

It affects society. You get crime and their loved ones and their loved ones and families break down and communities break down. Yeah, absolutely. So I really wanted to explore all of that. And what I discovered, and it's kind of, it was right there in front of me, but it took me while to realize it, that there is a new way that people are thriving. There's a brand new way. And that is they're becoming content creators.

39% of Americans, apparently according to a data company called Illuminate now identifies content creators, 39% of Americans. I mean, look, what are we doing? I guess I'm one of them. I guess I have, too. For better or worse. Yeah. So I tell a couple of stories in the castle about terrible things that happen when people try and become content creators. Offline is brought to you by Mint Mobile.

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Just head to 3dayblind.com slash offline. One last time, that's buy one, get one, 50% off when you head to the number three, d-a-y-blinds.com slash offline. Well, I do want to talk before we get to the content creators part. I'll talk about the deaths of despair. So you talk to Richard Reeves, talk to you about the millions of prime age men who are neither working nor looking for work. And they aren't pursuing education.

They aren't helping out with housework. And, you know, even though you sort of write about many of them who are acting out, I would say Chris Mark is one of those people who's acting out. A lot of them are just retreating. Yes. And then the worst cases of that are these deaths of despair, which is 600,000 people who die of overdoses and suicide because researchers have concluded they are no longer being offered a framework within which they can lead these sort of dignified, meaningful lives. How is the breakdown between what is economic, what is cultural, and also how this affects both men and women? Yeah, that's a good question. Well, a lot of those statistics, the deaths of despair.

Well, actually, I said to the two economists Angus Dayton and Case, yeah, that I assume this is men. This I assume that these 600,000 people who should be alive but aren't alive are men. And they said everybody assumes that it's actually pretty evenly split between men and women. And I said, well, I'm surprised because surely automation and so on impacts men more than women. And they said, well, you know, women work in those factories too. And also, you know, women are married to the men who lose their jobs. So the deaths of despair seems to impact men and women, even though everybody thinks this is about men. Yeah.

Yeah, what they discovered was that there were 600,000 Americans who, should be alive but aren't, if progress had continued as expected. And it wasn't poverty. That was the very interesting thing about it. It wasn't poverty because what they concluded was that black people who live in poverty much more than white people do take their lives at a much lower level than white people do. White people are much more prone to suicide than black people. What's the theory then? Black people have better sense of community, better family life. Traditionally through the deck, through that.

Yeah, through, I don't know, community centers or churches or whatever. There's just a better sense of community. Whereas white people, you know, you've got that old bowling alone sort of image from the 90s. And these days, those 7 million men aren't not just not, they're not just bowling alone. They're not even bowling. They're just staying home. Right. So it wasn't poverty.

It was the erosion of a way of life. It was removing meaning from people's lives. Yeah, I find this fascinating because I think at least, I mean, you get this both on the left and the right, but you get a, especially in the left, you get a materialist view of politics and culture and where there is poverty, everything breaks down, where there is wealth. Things are great. Clearly in this book. Yeah. Some of the wealthier, Chris Mark, the castle owner, is extremely screwed up. So the wealth is not making everything great there and doesn't have community and doesn't have these connections.

But then you also see studies where, you know, poor communities that are tight-knit communities, people are like they don't have to be as wealthy to feel content and happy. Yes. And so that's not to say that people have material needs that are not being met that should be met and they have to. But that economics and material conditions alone can't really explain. explain sort of the broader breakdown that we're seeing in society in the isolation and the loneliness. Absolutely. It's much more about, it seems to be, you know, certainly according to the labor economists, it's much more to do with a sort of emptiness. Like, I don't know what to do with my life. My purpose is God. And I certainly feel that. Like, I empathize with that a lot. I say in the book

that, you know, I'll sit on a park bench to try and think up a story idea. And after 10 minutes of fruitlessly sitting on a bench. I'm just overwhelmed by this dreadful thought, which is, I'm just a man sitting on a bench. So I kind of leap up to try and busy myself in some other way. And it's a terrible feeling. I mean, I think I've worsened a lot of people. Like, I can't even take a day off, yeah. So I'm probably, I'm, I, that resonated with me. Right. Well, yeah, exactly, you did, you did Pots Save America, but that wasn't enough. You had to do this show as well. You just, you got to keep working. Right.

to keep working. Yeah. I mean, it's weird that we are so good up in that way. And to the point about yeah, so some of it's individual, people's personalities, but also there's clearly sort of a larger societal structure here that is pushing people one way or the other. You mentioned all the people wanting to become content creators now. Yeah. What did you learn about what that job or profession or calling for people? How, and just sort of the prevalence of, most of our lives being mediated on these platforms sort of does to, or how it amplifies some of these larger challenges in society that you identify. Well, I tell three stories in the castle.

Each one about men thinking, okay, there's a new way to thrive. We can embrace the wide open country of YouTube where a man can thrive through grit and perseverance as an influencer. So build up a following, get a bunch of likes, monetize it. Yeah. Meritocracy, right? It's seen as like, like, anyone can do it. Yeah, yeah.

And it's a hierarchy-free utopia. There's no gatekeepers. I mean, it sounds great, right? Yeah. You know, I grew up, you know, for the first 10 years or more of my career, I had to, I was constantly banging on doors and not being allowed into whatever garden of genius I was desperately trying to enter. So I understand how great a world without gatekeepers.

is. But, well, but on the platforms, these are false promises for a lot of people, obviously. And I tell one story about a man called Greg Chisholm. Wild story. Yeah. This is truly a wild story. He's exactly, as I say in the chapter, this isn't the classiest way to introduce someone, but he's like well within the bracket of people most likely to die a death of despair, grew up in a dying Rust Belt town, couldn't get job in the factory that he should have got a job in, but the factory moved to Mexico. He has a terrible heart condition. At the age of 18, he owes the healthcare companies $200,000

with no prospects. Couldn't be worse. Then he marries somebody. She leaves him, and he's in sole custody of two young daughters. So he's at rock bottom, this guy. Then he happens to see on YouTube one day's mowing lawns. He makes a little bit of money mowing lawns. And he sees this video made by an Australian frutarian cyclist called Durian rider who's like, you know, he's cycling along and he's like, you know, look at me. Look at me. I used to live on the streets. I'm up doing an Australian accent.

I used to be in prison. But look at me now. I'm on YouTube. You can be on YouTube. You've got a story. Watch your story. Tell your story. So this hit Greg.

Like, I have it. What's my story? So he decides to become a lawn care influencer. And he becomes YouTube's. first and greatest lawn care influencer. It's like the lawn care goat who do like these hour long videos where he just

mows up and down like ASMR lawn care. And people have wrapped. They're going like, Greg, don't forget that patch. And he kind of gets to the patch. They're like, oh, cool. And then he does these other videos where he does good Samaritan lawn care work

where he will find a lawn and need and tidied it up and then vanish into the night. like the Zorro of Lord Care Chores and he gets like 100,000 views here, he's doing really well but then something happens he's got this other channel where he just puts his sort of funny

home videos on it because like no subscribers and he's filming his daughters playing in a Barbie cruise ship box and for some bizarre reason it goes viral and gets 20 million views so he's just his daughters

I mean they're very sweet daughter you can sort of see the appeal. They're like wide-eyed, adorable little girls running around the house with a Barbie box on their heads and other kids love it. It gets 20 million views. So he gets a phone call from YouTube saying, would you like to replicate the success? He's like, yes. So he does exactly what YouTube tell him to do. And to cut a long story short, YouTube is saying, you know, you need a WTF moment. He's got to be like surprising and shocking. So he's like following the algorithm following the incentive structure, following the advice that actual humans

inside YouTube are telling him to do. And it culminates in him, I'm leaving a lot of the story out here, culminates in him and his two daughters, dressed as babies, rolling around on the floor with pacifiers in their mouths, spitting food at each other's faces.

And like he's getting billions of views, billions. Of course, people watch weird shit all the time. Right. I mean, he would say that this is like most of the viewers were children who were finding in childhood and their parents. Yeah. But it's a bit like the frog in slowly boiling water. You start at lawn care. Yeah. It all kind of makes sense. Like I sat with Greg as he told me every decision he made. And it makes sense. Like you can disagree with some of his decisions, but it all makes a logical sense. But if you come to a story at the end, like journalists and BuzzFeed and Redditors, they're just seeing a guy in some ral of. Random House in the Midwest, dressed as a baby, and his two daughters are dressed as babies, and they're spitting food in each other's faces, and you immediately think child abuse.

So everybody starts investigating Greg's life, and they start calling the police on him, and they come in like a SWAT team. He's constantly having to take his children to child protects his services. Of course, as soon as the shit hits the fan, YouTube, the hierarchy, free utopia, The hierarchy magically manifests and throws him under the bus for the exact same videos that they were encouraging him to make. And by the time I meet him, he's ruined, he's lost everything. He wakes up, takes his kids to school, shrinks away from the other parents

because they think he's a child abuser, goes home, falls asleep, sleeps all day, wakes up in time to pick, just like there's seven million men. He's shaking, nervous. On the plus side, the New York Times did an extract from the castle, and it was his story. And it did well, like it kind of was the most read article on The Times that weekend. And all his old lawn care fan, he found me up all excited because all of his old lawn care fans were like love bombing him. Like, we love you, Greg. So I think that story turned his life around a little bit.

It is like now having, I have my boys are six and almost three. and being in the YouTube world or like seeing some of the slop that's on there and some of the stuff that gets like millions and millions and for views for kids and you know me being in this business myself you do think that so much of so many of the incentives of these platforms sort of drive people to do things and be things that is just totally different than we've ever seen and in some ways it's an amplification. of what there's always been here, especially here in America, which is like, you can be anything and getting famous is the, is, you know, the highest, uh, achievement, making a lot of money, celebrity. Except now that it is somewhat democratized and also now that it is so crowded that like you have to be and do things that are more extreme. Yes. And in some ways, it's also then, and it's. paradoxical because you're getting like millions of followers and views, but it makes you become lonelier. Yes. And more disconnected, right? More disconnected, not just not known. These new rules

aren't the same as the old rules. Yeah, I think if there's a sort of central thesis to the castle, it's that when the old structures collapse, it does something to us. We unravel. We start to act strangely, and then the internet barons come in and encourage our strange behavior. Right. And, yeah, so in Greg's case, it's dressing himself and his children up as babies. But there's another, but I think you can take that into the anti-woke world. There's a couple of chapters in the book about anti-woke influences. And I think that the echoes are pretty profound.

Greg, everybody's trying to master search engine optimization. So Greg's making these videos called, you know, bad baby, food fight, toy freak daddy. Yeah. And he's got like 600 million views when he puts all the... Because you want the SEO. Yeah, because of the SEO. And in the anti-world world world, they didn't say that. I interviewed this guy who used to make these videos called Amanda Knox's surprising favorite Harry Potter book.

that would get like 69 views. And now he makes videos called Wokeness is the most evil thing you can do. Yeah, he went down that rabbit hole fast in that chapter. Yeah, he realized that this is the way. Like, there's one way to make money on YouTube and that's to do all of the shit. If you have that nuanced people on your show,

nuance doesn't pay the bills. So he has more and more extreme culture warriors on it. show, the most extreme ones out there. He'll tell them that they're brilliant, even though he really he really thinks that they're not, they're more extreme and he found some of their views a little bit frightening, but he won't say that, he tells them they're brilliant. And he calls the videos, these things and, you know, wokeness is the most evil thing in the world. And the images of him, and they're all like, you know, you know, there's sort of the icons. He learned all of this, by the way, by watching this course called How to Master YouTube. Right. Which, yeah.

Yeah, and how to master YouTube? Basically, yeah, the biggest trick in mastering YouTube is to find your enemies. Who are your enemies? Who are your pagans? Your non-believers. Yeah, because you need conflict, too. Yeah, conflict. So they're all chasing conflict and look at the world we're in.

And this guy, the anti-woke influence, I said to me, and the worst thing of all is I don't even mean it. Now, he is, in fairness to him, he's broadly anti-woke. Right. But what he doesn't mean is, here's my brilliant guest. Wokeness is the most evil thing in the world. You know, this kind of extreme end of it. Yeah, he believes a version of it, but not the version that he's performing for everyone.

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It's the best way to support the show. Long play, our docu series exploring the people and forces shaping the South is back. Newsflash, the South is the new political epicenter of the country. Democrats are way on their heels in this region, but Republicans are going through their own reckoning in the South too. We're in the final stretch of the midterms, and the political map has only gotten more competitive with new states and districts emerging as potential flips. So we thought it was time to get back out on the road and take a closer look at what's actually happening on the ground. I'm Aaron Haynes, journalist and expert on all things Southern politics.

And I'm Jennifer Palmary, former White House Communications Director. Tune in on Mondays to Longplay Series on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. So the thing that went through my mind reading the whole book is just, oh, God, I have two sons. Right. And like, how do we raise these boys so that they are good boys? And, you know, you write about this a lot in the book. It's like we give boys. this increasingly long list of things not to be aggressive, entitled, emotionally closed off.

We're also telling them to be strong and ambitious and confident, successful. Which of those messages did the men that you met find most confusing? And what do you think was genuinely missing? Yeah, there was definitely a sense amongst some of the men. Like, I really identified with the whole absence of work thing. But there's this other thing that I think a lot of men, which I don't really identify with, because I don't really identify as particularly masculine. But there are a whole load of men out there who I feel tossed around in a sea of conflicting ideologies about what big man actually means.

You should be more vulnerable. Be more vulnerable. Like you've got all these men's health influences saying, you know, women love it when you're vulnerable. Just allow your mushy heart out when you're on dates. And, you know, clearly that can go very badly wrong. because, you know, there's a kind of strange thing, which is that a lot of women think they want men to be vulnerable, but then when men are vulnerable,

they're like recoil in horror. And even Brunet Brown, like this is... So you were saying that Brunay Brown has said that. Yeah, she said that, and she's like, you know, the sort of doyen vulnerability says that. That time and time again, when a man sort of, you know, expresses their real vulnerabilities,

women look disgusted. And then the men think, oh, shit, well, I won't do that again. So they sort of recoil again. But also the American Psychological Association brought out this paper that said that traditional masculinity was on the whole harmful. And it listed harmful male traits. And some of them are evidently harmful, misogyny and so on. But others are things that I do all the time, like adventure, competitiveness.

I want to be better than every other non-examines. fiction writer. I went to the castle when I'm straight out of hospital. Risk, I think ambition. So that hit me too because I'm like you. I've never considered myself very masculine. I don't think people would describe me like that or who knows me. But reading those traits, I'm like, yeah, I'm ambitious and competitive and all that kind of stuff too. And then you're like, well, do I, like at this point, don't care as much about me, but I'm like, do I teach? my boys that do I not what do I teach like what is a what do you think a positive vision of masculinity looks like at one point I think you cite the study where um they ask men they ask boys

and girls to cite role models and the boys only cite superheroes yeah positive role models but then when you ask them what they want in a role model or what they what they want to look up to another men they say you know people who are good friends and more vulnerable and talk about their feelings. And so talk a little bit about sort of the flip side of this, which is like what a good version of a productive, healthy version of masculinity could be. I suppose I'd go back to the message that's really in all of my books.

It's in the psychopath test. It's in so you've been publicly shamed. It's the most healthy way to think about ourselves and our fellow humans is that we're a mess. Like, you know, good people do stupid things, vice versa. We make mistakes. Zadie Smith said, this always makes me laugh. And I remember this, Sadie Smith said, you know,

every time a homophobic politician is caught having, you know, gay sex in a cubicle, we're surprised. It just happens over and over again. And I think she was kind of making the same point that I'm making, which is that people are a mess. And that's a good, solid, healthy way to think about people. On social media, we create this stage for constant artificial high drama, where everybody's either a magnificent hero or a sickening villain.

And of course, people are constantly being prodded into culture wars. Is it, you know, misogynistic culture wars or whatever it is? the most healthy way to do it is to go out into the world, be with other human beings, stay offline as much as possible, and just see our fellow humans as how we truly are, which is a grey area, as a complicated mess,

and don't succumb to the culture wars. A lot of the men in my book, even the good men, would succumb to sort of blaming women for their problems. And of course, the Elon Musk's love that because the more we're battling around down here, the more money they're making up down.

Plus, we're not even, we're not looking at them as the enemy. We're looking at each other down here as the enemy. You know, Bluess Arsanche. So I think, you know, that's the answer. Like get out, hang out with other people, stay offline, stay the pale off X. And just know it's all bullshit. No, we're being manipulated by the trillionaires.

and just remember that we're victims of their business plans. Yeah. And I also think realizing that so much of the technology we have today and AI is going to make this even worse is it promises sort of frictionless life and satisfaction and relationships. Right. and you can go online and people will like you and follow you and if they don't then you can you know walk away and all that and it sometimes then seems easier to go on to spend time online scrolling than it is to go out and have an uncomfortable conversation or a social interaction that may not be everything you hoped it would be and you come away disappointed or embarrassed

or it's awkward and like that but that friction in relationships is what makes genuine connection possible. Absolutely. In the frictionless world, I think it's the illusion of connection that you get, but it's not real connection with people. Yeah. This actually reminds me a lot of – I made a show in 2017, I think, or 2019, called The Butterfly Effect, which was about the tech takeover of the porn industry.

And a lot of those themes come up. I mean, you know, there was a moment when I was on the set of Amish Girls on Rumspray. a volume two. Because they needed a sequel. Yeah, the director said to me maybe volume one left too many unanswered questions. So they made volume two. And there was a porn star, a male porn star, who couldn't get aroused. And so even though there was an actual naked female porn star sitting right in front of him,

he went on to Porn Hub and started scrolling. So that's, yeah, because, of course, you know, porn is a lot easier to, you know, there's no actual humans involved if you're sitting there watching and all the friction and all the uncomfortableness and the difficulties. But I have a little bit of optimism where I think that I'm spending a lot less time on Instagram I've noticed because of AI. So, you know, my favorite Instagram genre is unlikely friendships between different species of animals.

And now, if you don't even know if the giraffe and the hedgehog are even real for that cuddling, you're not going to bother with it anymore. I've thought that that could help spur the backlash, or at least, you know, fuel it. Because I think when it's all slop and the more slop we're getting on some of these platforms, you're just like, I don't know what's real or fake and it's not very interesting. And why do I don't want that anymore? I agree. I think that's, I think the more slop there is. And also the fact that chat GPT still, you know, we forget even about the obsequiousness and so on. It still is confidently wrong all the time. So it's not fulfilling. It hasn't, you know, grown in intelligence to the way that they always said it would. So if you go on to chat GPT and you know it's given you false information in this confident and obsequious way and people are, you know, wising up now to the, you know, ridiculous obsequiousness is. and Instagram, it's all AI slop and so on,

maybe these bad products that were being, you know, force-fed are going to propel us away from... I hope so. Yeah. And actually, you know, I was at the cage fight at the White House. I was going to ask you about this. I'm glad you brought it up. Yes.

I will just say this briefly, and then I want to hear your story. So I was invited to this. Oh, by who? Well, so WM.E. Ari Emanuel, who ran WME and now he runs the his company he has a company that runs like ultimate fighting right right and uh so i get an email months before that just says like the subject line was like ufc 250 white house and it's from that organization and r cc and it's like i'm like why that would they invite me to this and then i realized they thought i was the other john fabro and so they were

they accidentally they had both of our emails and we're both in L.A. And so they thought they were inviting him because I think he knows Ari and he, I guess, likes UFC. And so I thought, I did a real John Ronson and was like, well, I'm just going to go. And I RSVP'd yes. And I was like, and I'm going to report from there and see what happens. And I kept giving them more information, more details, all my personal info. And they said, yes, great, we'll see you there.

And then like four days before I was supposed to go, I got an email. that said, you know what, we're so sorry. There was a miscommunication. We're oversubscribed and we can't have you here. Oh, my God. I know, I know. But you went. Yeah, I went.

I said, I'm only going to go if I can get access to the South Lord. I don't want to be like the JW Marriott with all the shutouts. So I thought there's no way I'm going to get South Lord access. And lo and behold, I got it. So, you know, I experienced something that you experienced for years, which is like being in the White House. Not that I had all the access that you had, but. I was sequestered in the press briefing room for a while, which is, it's like a slum.

Right. It's like. It's also smaller than it seems, right? Oh, my God. It's one of them said. We're like, we're firefighters on a submarine. One of them said to me. We're in unbelievably cramped conditions where the only thing to do, the only activities are having

your photo taken to the podium and using the vending machine. That's it. Nothing else. So, yeah, it was terrible. But I went there. One positive thing that happened was I... Well, I've got so much I can tell you. It was a crazy week. Like, I loved being there.

It was also a wild event. Yeah, it was. And some of it, you know, the UFC know how to put on a show. They do. At one point at the fan fest the day before, I'm in the crowd, and a bold eagle flies over so low that it's talent. practically touch us. Oh, my God.

And I look up, and my first thought is, I'm in the midst of an actual bold eagle situation here. For then, I realized, no, it's a homing bold eagle. So the bold eagle, and, you know, it's very rare. They're hard to train. They're not pushovers like falcons. Did you see anyone in the administration? Did you talk to anyone in the world?

Well, okay, so I did this with GQ. And GQ had this legendary maverickie photograph. called Bruce Gilden there with me. So we're in the press room. And what we noticed was that, well, I didn't know this, I've never been there before, but usually the luminaries get to go

through a different gate. And Trump was having a pre-fight birthday dinner. And one of the gates was close. So they all had to walk right by the press room, which I'm told is very rare. So as soon as we found this out, we all kind of went outside and started like hanging around outside the press room.

And J.D. Vance walks by and so on. And then I noticed, Bruce. Bruce Gilden is the photographer. It's like a legendary maverick, scrappy street photographer. So I hear a commotion behind me and I look over and he's hugging someone and they're laughing at each other's faces like delightedly laughing and he takes a photo. So I got him and I said, you know, who's that? He said, oh, that's Sean Duffy, the Transportation Secretary. And do you know each other? And he said, no, no, but I know people, see, I know people. So that's your You just get him to hug them?

Yeah, they hugged each other, and it couldn't have gone better. Like, it worked brilliantly. Sean Duffy loved it. He was, like, really cheerful about it all. Got a great photo where Sean Duffy's like going like this. But then Stephen Miller walks towards us. And Bruce Gilden clearly emboldened by how well it had gone. Sean Duffy.

It does the same thing. Grab Stephen Miller, hugs him. Oh, my God. Yeah. Maybe the first hug he's received. I know, right? So Stephen Miller smiles gamely, but his entourage are all like, what the fuck, you know, and that White House staff has gathered and they're like, you know, what's going on?

Who's that guy? Did he come over the wall? Is he supposed to be here? And I heard someone say, I think he's from GQ. So I immediately, like, stomped his far away as I could, thinking I've been here all week and Hunteress Thompson is and fucking it all up for me. Wow. Yeah, so, so.

Yeah. Last question before I let you go. I'm thinking about you. I'm just a man on a bench. Yeah. Has writing this book changed any of your anxieties about your purpose, your need to always be telling a story? And then also, maybe relatedly, like, how do writing this book sort of affect how you see your sons who are older and, like, what you hope for them.

Yeah, well, I just have the one son, Joel. I was very pleased with how he handled the whole thing. For his start, he's being invited to this, well, I mean, he's a plus one, but at this skeevy sex castle. And Joel... Yeah, he did the right thing. Did the right thing, that constant moral probity. Not that he ever would have done any other thing.

So I was kind of very proud of him for being morally upright and also lead. and knowing that he was in danger and getting the hell out and so on. So I think all of this, you know, reflected very well on Joel. It made me even less words. Although I would say when Carlos, when Chris, the carcelona, threatened me with visits from his two murderers, Carlos and Brandon, Joel said, meet them, meet Carlos and Brandon. I did notice that. Yeah, take security.

Joe wanted me to escalate this to gang warfare. So there's still a little bit of recklessness going on. But this experience, I'm actually, I'm very proud of my son. He doesn't succumb to social media bullshit. They spend a lot of time offline in real-world situations, going to concerts, going to movies. I think there's a big, you know, the fact that the Nathan Fielder movies opening this weekend and the cinemas all over the country are going to be packed with people. This is all positive signs that people are getting out of their cocoons, going out into communal situations. So I don't worry at all about my son.

I think he handles all of this stuff very well. Him and his girlfriend are, you know, they're not online obsessives. And I think that's very positive. And the more people like that, the better. Has it impacted my sort of obsession with work and made me more leveled out? No.

I'm just as nuts as I've always been when it comes to needing purpose, so else I'll go crazy. I'm going to try and chill out a bit more, but I don't think it's going to work. I feel the same way. Although I'm, I,

Micahs are young, so, you know, and it's in home and everything. And so I'm, I've tried harder to like, keep work at work. Yeah.

Or at least carve out when I, when I get home to just be with them. Yeah. And not think about work until after they're in bed. And not let it just go through my mind. Because I'm like, these are, you know,

these are the years. Yeah, yeah. Missing. I remember being in with a camera, you know, I made documentaries for, years and there was a real danger that I would just miss my son growing up.

Yeah. And so I deliberately stopped making TV documentaries just so I could spend more time with him. John Ronson, it's great talking to you as always. The book is fantastic. It's the castle, adventures in a world of unraveling men. I loved it. I devoured it in a couple days. So everyone check it out and thanks for stopping by. John, it was a pleasure. Thank you for having me. Offline with John Favro is a Crooked Media production. Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Emma Ilich Frank, and Anisha Banner. Our team includes Dilan Vilewaiva, Mia Kelman, Charlotte Landis, Eric Schute, Rachel Gaieski and Will Jones with support from Adrian Hill and Matt DeGroat. Our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.

Long play, our docu-series exploring the people and forces shaping the South is back. Newsflash, the South is the new political epicenter of the country. Democrats are way on their heels in this region, but Republicans are going through their own reckoning in the South, too. We're in the final stretch of the midterms, and the political map has all. only gotten more competitive with new states and districts emerging as potential flips. So we thought it was time to get back out on the road and take a closer look at what's actually happening on the ground. I'm Aaron Haynes, journalist and expert on all things Southern Politics. And I'm Jennifer Palmary, former White House Communications Director.

Tune in on Mondays to Longplay Series on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.