{"id":125792,"date":"2025-05-23T17:13:13","date_gmt":"2025-05-23T17:13:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/125792\/"},"modified":"2025-05-23T17:13:13","modified_gmt":"2025-05-23T17:13:13","slug":"psychopath-spotting-turned-me-a-bit-psychopathic-myself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/125792\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Psychopath-spotting turned me a bit psychopathic myself\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

When strangers ask Jon Ronson<\/a> what he does for a living he says he\u2019s a non-fiction writer. But if they press him for details, it gets tricky. \u201cThen I get flustered,\u201d he admits. \u201cI say, \u2018Psychology, funny stories, crazy adventures\u2026\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s one way of putting it. From his first book, Them, 25 years ago to his BBC podcast Things Fell Apart, Ronson has specialised in people who go to extremes: conspiracy theorists, culture warriors, psychopaths, the radicalised and the disgraced. If superstar journalist <\/strong>Michael Lewis (The Big Short<\/a>) is famous for profiling mavericks whose ideas change the world, then perhaps Ronson is the Michael Lewis of people losing their minds.<\/p>\n

He laughs uproariously at this description, as he laughs at many things. With his Harry Potter glasses and tufty hair, Ronson\u2019s exuberance completes the impression of a hand-drawn cartoon. You can see why people feel comfortable opening up to him. In the US, where he has lived since 2012 and presented several episodes of NPR\u2019s long-running show This American Life, this genial, quizzical 58-year-old Welshman must seem disarmingly exotic.<\/p>\n

Ronson is speaking from his tiny apartment in New York\u2019s Greenwich Village. (He and his wife Elaine also have a former llama farm upstate, across the street from Alec Baldwin<\/a>. \u201cEvery time you see a viral video of Alec Baldwin being abused by a member of the public, it\u2019s right outside my window.\u201d) He\u2019s just returned from a reporting trip to Tennessee, in the heart of Trump country, which was more pleasant than you might imagine. Ronson likes to like, and to be liked, regardless of political differences.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always try to meet people on a human level and often it takes you to a more interesting place,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s not even tactical. It\u2019s just the way that I am. I very much believe in people being a complicated mix of positive and negative characteristics.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ronson is a master of listening to people\u2019s stories and crafting them into addictive narratives, full of strange connections and unintended consequences, which end up somewhere unexpected. For example, a typical episode of Things Fell Apart, which tells unexpected stories from the culture wars, arrives at the killing of George Floyd<\/a> via a serial killer in 1980s Miami. In his 2011 bestseller The Psychopath Test, Ronson embraced the practice of diagnosing people with psychopathic tendencies only to unravel it and turn the lens on himself. \u201cI got too drunk on my psychopath-spotting skills,\u201d he says. \u201cIt turns you a little bit psychopathic yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"(LeftGeorge Clooney and Ewan McGregor starred in the 2009 film adaptation of \u2018The Men Who Stare at Goats\u2019 (Photo: Laura Macgruder\/Westgate Film Services)<\/p>\n

Fourteen years later, he\u2019s back on the road with Psychopath Night, a live show that explores the psychopathic mind with the aid of wild stories from two mystery guests.<\/strong> He likes reviving it every few years to explore how our attitudes have changed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s so much greater awareness of mental health conditions,\u201d he says. \u201cBut there\u2019s also been a whole destigmatisation of psychopathy lately. You\u2019ve got psychopath TikTok influencers who give lifestyle advice on how to manipulate people.\u201d He boggles. \u201cIt feels like certain items on the psychopath checklist are being widely encouraged in our society. People are much happier to lie than they used to be. Of course, people are interested in Trump and what his potential disorder is.\u201d<\/p>\n

If The Psychopath Test was Ronson\u2019s big hit, and 2004\u2019s The Men Who Stare at Goats (about psychics in the US Army) was the one that became a George Clooney<\/a> movie, then 2015\u2019s So You\u2019ve Been Publicly Shamed was his greatest contribution to the public discourse. Ten years on, the career-ruining scandals in the book seem rather old-fashioned, but at the time the phenomenon of Twitter mobs felt new and challenging. To his dismay, conservatives greeted his compassionate study of the victims of public shaming (some innocent, others more deserving) as a broadside against left-wing \u201ccancel culture\u201d<\/a> and invited him onto their podcasts. He politely declined.<\/p>\n

\u201cI pissed off a lot of people who were saying nice things about the book because I thought they were saying them from a right-wing ideological perspective,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd at the same time the book was being attacked by people on the left. I could totally see in that moment why people would move to the right: when the left rejects, the right wait there with open arms.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps inevitably, Ronson soon experienced his own Twitter-mobbing after he tweeted sympathy for Rachel Dolezal, a white American woman who had claimed for years to be black. It was the scandal du jour. \u201cMy point was we\u2019re constantly making troubled people our playthings,\u201d he says. \u201cI wish I hadn\u2019t done that, even though I don\u2019t think I was wrong. All hell broke loose. For about a month I\u2019d wake up at three in the morning, go on Twitter, and there would be 900 notifications.\u201d He sighs. \u201cI went out for dinner with my wife and son and I said, \u2018They\u2019re like the Khmer Rouge!\u2019 And Elaine said, patiently, \u2018They\u2019re not like the Khmer Rouge.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The incident was a rare blip in a glittering career: books, podcasts, documentaries, screenplays. It\u2019s what he dreamed of growing up in Cardiff, the son of a warehouse manager and a social worker. He briefly played keyboards for the comedian Frank Sidebottom (fictionalised in his 2014 movie Frank) but his real passion was storytelling. He synthesised influences such as singer-songwriter Randy Newman, novelist Kurt Vonnegut and documentarian Nick Broomfield into a distinctive voice: sincere yet playful, ironic yet humane. \u201cDoing something ridiculous in a very serious world,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Ronson made his name with a weekly column of peculiar adventures in Time Out. He had no back-up plan. \u201cI was really ambitious. I couldn\u2019t imagine what I would do if I didn\u2019t have this career in non-fiction. All of my self-esteem and happiness is based around telling stories well. It feels like my reason for being.\u201d <\/p>\n

He was therefore acutely sensitive to obstacles. \u201cI was very aware of gatekeepers not being into me. For everyone who was supporting me there was someone who thought I was an idiot and shouldn\u2019t be at the The Guardian or the BBC.\u201d He still looks hurt. \u201cSo it never felt like an easy ride. I felt like I was constantly having to convince people to give me a chance, with this weird voice that I have and this lower-middle-class Welsh awkwardness.\u201d<\/p>\n

They\u2019re friends now but for a while in the 1990s, Ronson\u2019s arch-rival was Louis Theroux<\/a>, who covered similar terrain but was slicker, posher and more telegenic. \u201cThe Nirvana to my Pixies,\u201d Ronson jokes. \u201cThat was weirdly wounding. I thought, \u2018Shit, is he better than me?\u2019\u201d What changed? \u201cThem was a success so I thought, \u2018OK, well that\u2019s fine now. I can write books and Louis can make documentaries. I no longer feel like I\u2019m in competition with him.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Ronson has almost finished his first book in a decade. He doesn\u2019t yet know what to call it or how to describe it but he will reveal that it includes a chapter on people who self-radicalise online and sacrifice their careers and relationships to the obsessive pursuit of a political crusade. <\/strong>He\u2019s lost two old friends that way and wants to understand how it happened. \u201cThe way it\u2019s consumed them is horrendous,\u201d he says. \u201cI do think I might have come up with a new way of looking at that. Is it a choice to become another person or can people just not help it?<\/p>\n

As he explores in the second season of Things Fell Apart, many such cases date back to the cataclysmic rupture of the 2020 lockdown. \u201cI think lockdown cut a lot of people adrift in the world,\u201d he says. \u201cThey thought, \u2018We\u2019re on our own here.\u2019 People were spending more and more time online and getting paranoid and isolated. I think it\u2019s had a seismic effect on us that hasn\u2019t been properly acknowledged. Society wants to forget but maybe the residue remains.\u201d<\/p>\n

Has he ever fallen down the rabbit hole himself?<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s easy to slide in. When I did The Men Who Stare at Goats, a remote viewer told me that London Zoo was going to be hit by a dirty bomb. She felt the elephants screaming in agony. I was back in London a week later and looked over at London Zoo and thought, \u2018Oh, you poor civilians, you don\u2019t know what I know.\u2019 And then I realised that it can\u2019t be true because the elephants had all been moved to Whipsnade.\u201d He laughs. \u201cBut I did for a moment believe I had special knowledge.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many of Ronson\u2019s stories have an online dimension. He\u2019s like a detective who keeps arriving at crime scenes to find social media\u2019s fingerprints everywhere. In the new book, though, he\u2019s made an effort to move offline, encouraged by his filmmaker friend Adam Curtis<\/a>. \u201cThe last time we had dinner he said, \u2018Stop telling stories about the internet!\u2019 I suppose the question is: did social media turn us this way or were we this way anyway?\u201d<\/p>\n

Last night, he says, he was listening to Reza Aslan\u2019s Jesus biography Zealot. \u201cJust as I was drifting off to sleep, he was talking about how the Romans came into Jerusalem and murdered everyone,\u201d he says cheerfully. \u201cAnd I thought, \u2018Well, maybe things have always been bad. It\u2019s not just social media!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\" <\/p>\n

Jon Ronson\u2019s \u2018Psychopath Night 2025\u2019 tours from 1 to 23 November. The show is inspired by his book \u2018The Psychopath Test\u2019, published by Picador<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When strangers ask Jon Ronson what he does for a living he says he\u2019s a non-fiction writer. But…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":125793,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4317],"tags":[55716,4036,17977,105,466,218,22064,222,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-125792","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-arts-features","9":"tag-book-interviews","10":"tag-books-feature","11":"tag-health","12":"tag-interviews","13":"tag-mental-health","14":"tag-non-fiction","15":"tag-psychology","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114558273157154783","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125792"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125792\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}