Walking The Dog with Emily Dean - Jon Ronson (Part Two)

Episode Date: May 30, 2024

Join Emily and Raymond for the second part of our chat with Jon Ronson, who joins us from Greenwich Village in New York, with his dog Josie. Jon tells us the story of bringing his dogs to America on the Queen Mary 2, why he enjoys being alone, and the philosophy behind his no expert policy in his documentaries. You can hear the first part of this conversation here!Jon Ronson’s Psychopath Night is on tour in Autumn 2024. Visit https://www.fane.co.uk/jon-ronson for dates and ticketsThings Fell Apart Season 2 is available now on BBC Sounds and all podcast platforms Read more about Jon’s work at http://www.jonronson.com/ Follow Jon on X and Instagram @jonronsonFollow Emily: Instagram - @emilyrebeccadeanX - @divine_miss_emWalking The Dog is produced by Faye LawrenceMusic: Rich Jarman Artwork: Alice LudlamPhotography: Karla Gowlett  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to part two of my chat with the wonderful John Ronson and his Spaniel Poodlecross, Josie. And if you haven't listened to Part 1 yet, I really recommend you do because this man is hilarious and fascinating. Also, if you want to see John in person, you're in luck because he's touring the UK this autumn in John Ronson's Psychopath Nights, a show inspired by his bestselling book, The Psychopath Test. So do go get your tickets at Fane.co.uk. And while you're at it, I'd love it if you subscribe to it. walking the dog. Oh, shut up now so you can listen to the brilliant man himself. Here's John and Josie and Ray Ray. Your parents must have been so proud, John, when you got your stuff published.

What did they say? Well, it took a while for them to be proud, I would say. I always remember my mother. I had a short story in a book and my mother said, I read your story. The one after it was so good, she said. It's like I was watching with Steve Martin. documentary the other day and he showed his father the jerk and his father said, well, you know Charlie Chaplin. And actually I got a little bit of that off of my parents. Your memoir should be called the one after. Yeah. So it took a while, I'd say, for them to be proud. I don't know when, I don't know what it was when it hit, like when they thought, oh, you have done really well. I do remember at one point they said to me, you became really successful without any help from us whatsoever.

So at one point they realized that, you know, it was an accomplishment. And does your brother, are we allowed to know what he does? Does he work in a similar, in this similar industry or is he do something very different? Very different. He's, you know, he ran the hotel for a long time. And since then, he's, I don't know, he's probably quite private, so I probably shouldn't say. But, you know, businessy type. self-employed business. He's a magistrate as well.

I always think it's interesting when people are sort of, you know, outlies in their family in some way that, again, this outsider thing is coming up. I suppose is there a loner aspect to you, John? Oh, yeah. I'm on my own almost all the time. But I'm actually doing, I'm actually making more of an effort to, you know, tonight I'm going off to a comedy club in Brooklyn to see my friend Fern Brady do a show. She's over in New York. Do you know, I love her? She was on this podcast, and I really connected with her. She is brilliant.

Her book, Strong Female Character is one of the best books I've read in the last few years. She's very funny and talented. So, yeah, so I'm going to see her tonight, and so I'm doing more stuff. Which of your books would you say really? I suppose you felt, oh, okay. Not that I've made it, but people are coming to me as an authority, and I know this book's doing well. And I feel with the psychopath test, things really sort of took off with that, didn't they?

Yeah. But I never wanted to be an authority. I never wanted to be seen that way or like as an expert or anything like that. But when I was writing the psychopath test, I got into a mode of writing that I thought, this is great. You know, as a kid, I loved Kurt Vonnegut. And I loved that weird, absurd, you know, clasp. that he has between, like, comedy and horror, this idea that, you know, a sort of slapstick journey in a serious, horrific world was something I so admired from Kurt Vonnegut from reading

things that's Lauderhouse Five. And I felt that the psychopath test had had a style to it that, that felt really special. So writing the psychopath test, I felt that. But I never wanted to be an authority. You know, if I, if anybody ever saw me as a psychopath expert, for instance, I would always, hopefully I would not accept that. I'd say, no, no, I'm really not an expert. I'm like an outsider looking in. But the comic absurdity of writing that book I really loved. Similarly, with my book Them, actually, which was a few years earlier, you know, getting chased by the Bilderberg group and sneaking into Bohemian Grove with Alex Jones. Again, it had a sort of slapstick adventurousness to it, which I really, which I really liked. I was glad I chanced upon that as a standard.

of writing. You've said, which I thought was really interesting, talking about the psychopath test, and you've also did a brilliant sort of TED talk on it where you were just talking about how there's a tendency to, you know, because we're so conformist, to, I don't want to use what overdiagnose, but I suppose there's a tendency to see, use the great phrase, see people's maddest edges all the time. And actually, I did do that. You know, when I read that book, oh, I've got a list. Did you start diagnosing your enemies, a psychopath? So did you start thinking maybe that you were a psychopath?

Yeah, I did actually. Right. That was a really unexpected thing from that book. People kept saying to me that they were reading the book thinking, oh my God, am I a psychopath? And I never anticipated that because I am so convinced that I am not a psychopath. I never thought that people would read the book in that way. So many people have said to me over the years,

there's a moment in the book where I say that if you're worried, you know, if you're reading this and you're worried that you might be a psychopath, you're recognising these traits in yourself, that means you aren't one, because psychopaths never worry about being psychopaths. And I thought that was like just a throwaway line, but the number of people who've brought that line up with me saying, you know, I was convinced I was a psychopath reading the book, so thank God you put that line in.

Did you find yourself looking at people in a slightly different way? It'd be hard not to. I mean, do you, for example, I think if I was at a party and you were there, I would say to you, John, is he a psychopath? I couldn't help myself. I mean, once in a while, I still, without going into detail, somebody entered our lives quite recently, who I think is a psychopath. And it took me ages because, you know, you never think that somebody's a psychopath.

Because most, you know, most psychopaths aren't violence, they're not going to physically hurt you. They're just going to spread a sort of low-level, you know, it's just going to cause problems in your life in a sort of remorseless way. And yeah, so quite recently I was like, oh, I'm pretty sure that person's a psychopath. They're never said, oh, don't be ridiculous. But I think they are, actually. And so, you know, it's there as like muscle memory. My psychopath spotting skills are there as like muscle memory.

By the way, in the autumn, I'm doing a great big 15-year anniversary psychopath test. tour in Britain, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and one show in New York. Any psychopaths out there, please, I can't wait to see you. No, we know they won't turn up. No, no, there's always psychopaths in the audience, always. Because psychopaths surely can't resist going to talks about psychopaths. One of the items on the checklist is grandiose sense of self-worth. So I think there's always going to be a couple of psychopaths in the audience. And in fact, I've had a few people come up to me after shows and whisper that they're psychopaths. That's happened once or twice. The thing is it's all very well. People will admit,

you know, say, well, I'm autistic or I've got ADHD, but the psychopath, stop hiding your light on your brain. They'll never say, oh, really, I'm a psychopath. I mean, it's not dinner party friendly. I agree. And one really strange advancement in the world of psychopaths is that there's now a influencer. She's an Australian woman. I've forgotten her name, but she's a She says I'm a diagnosed sociopath, and sociopath and psychopath is really, it's the same thing, by and large. And she starts each of her TikTok videos with, as a diagnosed sociopath, I'm now going to give you dating advice. Or as a diagnosed sociopath, this is what I think about this. And I've been on her TikToks and I've read the comments and people love her.

She is destigmatizing antisocial personality disorder by being a sociopathic influencer. That's very new. Because you're right. Most psychopaths either don't know that they are or if they are, it doesn't benefit them to tell anyone. It's not link in bio normally for your psychopaths. No, but it is with this woman. I mean, this is one, this is,

each time I redo my psychopath stage show, I look at, you know, how our relationship with psychopaths has changed. And this is a big change. Like in this great expansion of mental health diagnoses, which I personally think are sometimes positive, sometimes negative. So, for instance, And I'm going to talk about this, I think, in my psychopath night show in the autumn.

I'd say that the expansion of trauma as a diagnosis has downsides, it has problems. Because let's say you're working in a newsroom and somebody wants to publish something controversial and somebody in the newsroom says, oh, you can't publish that. It'll be traumatizing to people. That's an example of an expansion of a mental health diagnosis being troublesome because it negatively impacts free. speech, whereas the expansion of diagnosis of autism, I think, has been very positive. I think there's huge, and people like Fern Brady have been so good in that regard because I think there's loads of people out there who are autistic and just have no idea.

So there you go. That's an example of an expansion of diagnoses being very good for the world, I think. Do you think, you know, again, that's something you've said before that you think, arguably all of us exist somewhere in our madder stages. you like, somewhere in a Venn diagram of a diagnosis, if you had to pick one for you, which one would it be? Oh, well, I'm all manner of things. I mean, I'm sure there's some neurodiversity going on with me.

That's probably it for me. Because I have anxiety and stuff, but that's probably just from that. And actually, I don't have that much anxiety anymore, to be honest. I feel like I've left a lot of that behind. anxiety is really, it's quite often, it's an illness about being unsure. Because you know, you get anxious when you can't weigh up risks, right? Like, I can't get my wife on the phone, she must be dead. But then as you get older and each time you can't get her on the phone, she's not dead,

then that anxiety starts to diminish. which is why I think a lot of children grow out of anxiety disorders. I think, you know, there's a lot of kids with OCD, for instance, who kind of grow out of it because they become more accustomed to how the world works, and so their anxiety goes away a little bit. This is, I mean, I realise I'm making a huge sweeping statement here, but I think there's some truth to that, certainly for some people. And I think that's true for me.

I don't feel that much anxiety anymore, to be honest. Do you think also you just build up other often terrible experiences, experiences to compare it to, you know. So actually things, and I think that perspective that you can only really acquire with accumulation of years, really, allows you to put things in perspective a bit more. And you're thinking, well, every time I've not been able to get hold of my wife, Elaine, she's always been there in the end. Exactly.

I think you weighed that up. Because anxiety has always been, for me anyway, and I think for most people, It's always about stupid shit. It's never about serious stuff. You know, I remember when my son was like three years old, I used to think, God, you know, you're convinced that a bear is going to come into your room at night and attack you, but you don't look left and right when you're crossing the road. And that's very often the case with anxiety.

You can't get your wife on the phone, so you're convinced she's dead. But then when something genuinely anxiety is, inducing happens, like, for instance, a looming pandemic, we're all fine. You know, people with anxiety disorders handled COVID with plon, by and large. Well, that brings me on to your documentary, which I want to talk about. And it's series two, sorry, you're talking to us from America, John. I should say season. It's much cooler, isn't it, season?

Yeah, I like season. Series is very, this is the BBC from Alexander. Pondra Palace, whereas season is very succession and Netflix. It's much cooler. You've crossed into the season world. Yeah, the whole thing is the series. Exactly. The whole thing is the series.

And each new chunk of stories is a season. That's how I've done. I've just been in America too long. We're into the second season and it's called Things Fell Apart and I loved the first season. And this season, it goes into a whole new area really because it's all it's examining, you know, I suppose all these things. As a result of the pandemic in some ways, I felt that was the kind of the inciting incident, wasn't it, for a lot of these things? Yeah. Well, so the first season of Things Fell Apart takes place over like 50 years. It's these origin stories from culture wars, stories that took place in the 70s and the 80s and the 90s. So it's this huge sort of epic 50 year scope. And then when the BBC wanted me to make a second season, I thought, well, season one of things fell apart was kind of like my life.

lockdown project. I recorded the whole thing for my laundry room in upstate New York. So I thought, well, season two has to be about pandemic, has to be about lockdown. So season one takes place over 50 years and season two takes place over about 20 days. What I realized from researching was that almost all of the culture wars that consume us today really blew up within 20 days from mid-May, from early May 2020 to early June, like over the course of a month, pretty much every culture war that still tears society apart began. So, you know, the murder of George Floyd,

pandemic, all the COVID conspiracy theories, the rise of Antifa and Black Lives Matter, Ron DeSantis and, you know, don't say gay and, you know, trans rights and all of that stuff, it all like bloomed after, you know, for six weeks of lockdown, we were like, we were compliant. And then we became like coiled springs. And we just like started like tearing, you know, our neighbours apart and lost trust in our institutions and so on.

So yeah, season two of things fell apart is about that moment. I know you spent something like 10 months putting this together. And it does show, you know, it's so rigorous and it's so, they make sense. These stories are connected and there's an arc. I think back to, you know, when you look at a lot of the other documentaries and they're literally just wheeling out someone from a speaker's agency saying, hi, I'm a legal expert. And I think, I don't think I can ever go back, John.

You've ruined documentaries for me. Well, I'm very anti-expert. I always, I always, I will only ever have an expert in a documentary if they have for some reason become part of the story. Why is that? For narrative reasons. I just think experts kill narratives. So then if you, if you have a no expert,

role, then you have to go to the people whose lives were personally impacted by whatever the story is, and that's just much better. I always sort of think, I don't know, we're the experts. Why do you need a talking head? Let's let the people who were part of the story tell their story. It takes you out of the story in a way as well, doesn't it? Because you're all detached. And actually, what's great about the way you do it is that I find myself going, oh my God, he's talking to them, he's actually talking to the person, you know. Yeah, exactly. When you have like a no expert policy, then you're forced to fill the story with participants.

And it just always makes it much better. And also, you know, the reason why things fell apart is good, if I'm allowed to say that about it. It's kind of because of my introversion. Like I just love being alone working on stories, fiddling away, making them perfect. Nothing makes me happier. So I just work and work and work. It's good for my lifestyle. There are times in this documentary series

where you have to sort of ask, I suppose, slightly challenging questions. And how do you deal with that aspect of it? Do you fear those sort of confrontations? Do you have to psych yourself up or does it not worry you? I think I have to cite myself up just to interview somebody. It's always, because I, you know, I don't. love, you know, just meeting new people.

I'm like, you know, so just like social awkwardness, I have to psych myself up. But once I'm doing the thing, like, you know, the anxiety always goes away once the interview starts. And then I'm just so enthusiastic and curious that I, if I ask a difficult question, it comes from enthusiastic curiosity as opposed to conflict. So, so yeah, once the story starts, I'm fine. And actually, because I ask those difficult questions in such a curious way, people don't mind it quite as much. Can you hear New York noise?

We're just saying those are New York sound effects, which, John, he's not in New York. He's in Finsbury Park in a basement flat, and he's pretending that he's living in New York. I'm in Greenwich Village. I'm just north of Washington Square Park, which means... So I'm right in the middle of NYU, which means there's been an awful lot of protest marches lately. A lot of, I stand on my little balcony and watch people underneath, you know,

marching from Washington Square to Union Square. My dad made documentaries. He worked for a documentary features at the BBC and he made shows called 40 Minutes and Man Alive and things like that. Oh, yeah, I grew up with those shows. Well, so he was, I suppose, he would, I mean, you were very much up his straza.

I always used to hear them saying this thing, which was you, he used to say, you cannot just show the exotic fruit. You have a responsibility to show the entire orchard when he was making documentaries. And I thought, oh, I reckon John would probably agree with that. I think that's a great thing for him to say. I'm working on a story at the moment for my next book. You know, I'm spending time with this guy. And I'm not going to get to the big thing that happened in his life until probably, you know,

4,000 words into the chapter. So it's 4,000 words of what of his life before the thing happens for that very reason. Nobody's ever interviewed this guy before, but one person did an email interview with him, and I was listening to this person's book. And I was so pleased that they just went straight to the thing with this guy, whereas I'm not getting to the thing for several pages. And yeah, I'm hearing about his childhood. I'm hearing about it all works.

That context just makes the thing so much more human. and explicable. So yes, I very much agree with your father. Tell me about when you came over to America, where you now live, and you brought the dogs with you. Yeah, we brought them over on the Queen Mary too because we didn't want to subject them

to the baggage hold of an aeroplane. In the end, I'm not sure whether that was the right decision, because instead of three days of absolute hell, they went through like eight days of semi-hell. So actually, maybe the plane, you know, would have been like ripping off. the Band-Aid. So every morning, we were allowed in the dog deck for 10 hours a day. And we became like this little cult, these like, you know, eight dog owners sitting on the dog deck with our dogs

for 10 hours a day. And then on the last day, and our dogs, you know, they were so, they hated it, they were holding it. They didn't poo once for the entire eight days. It was just as soon as they got to New York, they just let it all out. And, but yeah, on the last day, we discovered that there was another dog on the Queen Mary that we hadn't seen because this other dog had permission to sleep in its owner's bed. And this other dog was Pudsey, winner of Britain's Got Talent 2012. Pudsey was emigrating to New York like a fucking king. And we were in the baggage.

We were in the dog deck. So that was inauspicious. And I had voted for Pudsey. It gave me a real kind of existential thing. Like I was thinking like in London. In London, like I was Patsy. I knew how to walk like a human. And now I was going to New York in the, you know,

like Leonardo Tacchio and like third class. And Patsy was Kate Winslet with all of the palm trees. John, do you know what? I think you have something about you. And I know you've got to go, but I have to tell you this. I'd never forgive myself if I didn't. You have something about you. And just from chatting to you,

I see why you're so good at your job. I see why people open up to you. You have this thing where I think I really want to be your friend. And I think, I don't know what it is about you. It's an energy you have that I can see why, if you were interviewing me for a documentary, I'd tell you fucking everything. I really would. I'd be like, I just want this man to like me and respect me.

What is that quality and why do you have it? It just has curiosity and enthusiasm, but I don't want to, I don't want to, I don't want to hurt people. You know, I want to, I want to portray people at their best, I think. But Emma, on that delightful note, I need to go. My wife is standing there with her pointing at the watch. Elaine, I'm so sorry. Emily's saying that she's sorry to have kept me.

That's okay. We need to go that we have this meeting. Oh, Elaine's Scottish. I love Elaine. Yeah, she's some company old. Bye, Ray. Bye, Josie. I'd like to meet you soon.

Oh, yes. She's saying she's waving with her little paw. Bye. I really hope you enjoyed that episode of Walking the Dog. We'd love it if you subscribed. And do join us next time on Walking the Dog wherever you get your podcasts.