Jon Ronson on Conspiracy, Masculinity and Writing
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Who is Jon Ronson and what is he best known for?
Dangle from the jangly balcony, you scandalous Anthony's. Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. If this is your first episode, consider going back to an earlier podcast. So familiarize yourself with the lore of this podcast. And if you're a regular listener, you know the crack. This week's podcast, I think you don't need to familiarize yourself with the lore. This is a very straightforward podcast this week. Cause I'm having a wonderful chat with one of my fucking heroes, John Ronson. He's an internationally best-selling author. He's a journalist, he's a documentary. Entrymaker, he's done screenwriting. What I adore about John Ranson is his his skill as a storyteller, his ability to find a riveting story within factual information without needing to retreat into fiction.
I've been consuming John's work in one way or another since I was a teenager. Chances are if you're listening to To this podcast, you're already a John Ranson fan. And if you're not familiar with him, you are familiar with his work. Cause like some of his books, like The Men Who Stare at Goats, was turned into a Hollywood blockbuster called The Men Who Stare at Goats, starring George Clooney. He's been like consistently way ahead of the curve when it comes to Putting his finger on the fabric of culture, identifying the zeitgeist. He's the first person to like identify and highlight the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones in the documentary The Secret Rulers of the World, which I watched when I was a teenager.
It came out, I think, in the year 2000. That documentary would have been the first time that I encountered. Like the Illuminati conspiracy theories. Things which unfortunately now are just mainstream news. And I speak to John about that, I speak to him about. When I gr when I was a kid, conspiracy theories were fun. They were they felt safe, they were enjoyable, they were interesting. You had the X-Files. It was okay to be interested in UFOs in Bigfoot. If you were interested in these things, they weren't necessarily a dog whistle, that you had maybe more extremist or darker racist beliefs. They were just a bit of crack. It was okay to speak about these things without needing to distance yourself from them.
I'm talking about the Time when The X-Files was the biggest TV show, or you could pick up a copy of a ridiculous newspaper called Weekly World News. The monoculture. When we understood what information was reliable and from a trusted source, and what information was ridiculous. Before algorithms. So me and John sat down for 90 minutes and had the best crack in the whole world. World and chatted about everything and anything.
What is Jon Ronson’s new book “The Castle” about?
Check out any of John's work. His books, The Psychopath Test, So You've Been Publicly Shamed, which came out in 2015, I believe, which was again what one of the first pieces about what would become known as cancel culture. And John is on he's on this week because he has a new book out. right now called the Casa. I'm halfway through it because it just came out. It's a banger. It's about alienation. Male alienation. Online radicalisation. And like a crisis of purpose and meaning right now. Any of John's audiobooks that I've listened to over the years, or podcasts that he's made, have been a massive influence on how I make my podcast. His work helped to show me how to tell a story over an audio medium. Johnronson.com is his website if you want to check out all his crack.
J O N, not J O H N, John Ranson. So anyway, I am literally just about to leg it for a flight right now. I'm heading over to London to do some promotional work for the upcoming tour of England, Scotland and Wales, which is next month. I'm hoping I can get even an hour to flake into a museum for a tiny bit of downtime, but it's unlikely I think I'm gonna to be incredibly busy. The chat I had with John, it's so much crack, I don't want to interrupt it. I d I want to leave it run through. So I'm gonna do the ocarina pause right now before I get into the the chat that I had with John Ranson. First off Patreon. If you're a regular listener to this podcast, if you enjoy it, if it brings you mirth, merriment, a sense of routine.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Who is Jon Ronson and what is he best known for?
0:00–3:06
2
What is Jon Ronson’s new book “The Castle” about?
3:06–6:54
3
How does Ronson describe the shift of conspiracy theories from harmless fun to dangerous belief?
6:54–9:32
4
How has Jon Ronson’s autism diagnosis changed his creative process and daily life?
9:32–12:36
5
What ethical dilemmas does Ronson see in true‑crime journalism and podcasts?
12:36–15:34
6
What are Ronson’s main concerns about AI and its impact on society?
15:34–18:39
7
How does Ronson deal with writer’s block and the fear of failure?
18:39–21:45
8
What final thoughts does Ronson share about purpose, creativity, and the future?
21:45–1:44:39
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