 Evening, welcome to the British Library or our temporary home, at least for tonight over here at the Shore Theatre, while our own theatre is out of action, but we've got much more space here, so great to see you all here, congratulations on your impeccable taste in choosing to join us, either in person or watching online from wherever you may be around the world. My name's John, I look after the events programme for the library. The events event is supported by the Eccles Centre for American Studies at the British Library and also by the US Embassy, who approached us a few months ago saying, thanks to our great relationship with the British Library, we'd like to facilitate a speaker coming from the US to speak at the British Library, so we decided, what about John Ronson? And they were only two please, so it was absolutely fine with us and of course he lives there, he talks about America, he is not fully American as you'll find out in a minute, but he certainly has a good insight, so we're all good, we're all good with him being an American speaker. So as I say, tonight we have people online, later on you'll have the chance to put your questions and if you are watching online, you have a little form below the video window, you can put some questions in there, we'll try and get to some of those as well. After the event, John's going to be outside signing books, there's no less than seven titles out there, so you know plenty to choose from, so decide now which one you like the best if you can. So they'll be out there, the event today is going to be about an hour and a half, about an hour of conversation and then questions. John will be joined on stage by of course by Miranda Sawyer, who is one of our finest broadcast and cultural journalists, she reviews radio for the Observer, she's often on the Culture Show, on Radio Six, you'd probably come across her many times. She's also an author and her third book, Long Term is coming out next year, so they're good friends and we were only two delighted to pair up Miranda and John again tonight. I think that's it from me, so please welcome to the stage John Ronson and Miranda Sawyer. Hello everyone, nice to be here, I'm Miranda as you may have guessed, this is John. I have an introduction for John, I always think we should start with a nice introduction and then we're going to get into the chat, here it is. John Ronson, Love Voila, is a journalist known for many things, his perceptive writing, his inquisitive presenting, the fact that he was a keyboard player in Frank Sybottom's band, but mostly is known for his ability to hang out with the kind of people that many of us dismisses unpalatable, even scary, and to not only reveal such people as complicated human beings, but also in so doing skewer their power. He's written many excellent books including them, The Psychopath Test and So You've Been Publicly Shamed, he's written a couple of fab films, Frank, Occha, did you say Occha? Occha. Occha, and more recently he's made some great podcasts such as The Butterfly Effect and his recent VVC podcast Things Fell Apart. He lives in New York, as we know, and he's here to talk a bit about that, a bit about conspiracy theories, a bit about porn, and a bit about what he's working on at the moment. So let's do another round of applause for John. OK. So, given this is an American-British evening, should we talk about your move to New York? Yeah, a move to New York ten years ago in last August, for no reason, to be honest. Like John Kennedy said, sometimes you do things because they're hard. And yeah, we went on the Queen Mary too. Why did you not fly? Because of our dogs. We couldn't put the dogs, so instead of like 18 hours of like complete hell in the baggage hold of a plane, they had eight days of semi-hell. Fucking in these kennels. And we were allowed to be in the kennels with the dogs for like ten hours a day. And it was on the dark side of the ship, like so it was always cold and it was like, and we were just like sitting with our dogs and freezing for like ten hours a day with little flasks. This is terrible. I know. And I've got a picture coming. Can you switch to my slides? Thank you. There we go. Yeah, because on the last day, we discovered that there was another dog on the Queen Mary too. And this other dog had permission to sleep in its owner's bed. Yeah. And do you know who this other dog was? Pudsy. The winner of Britain's Got Talent 2012. Well, I mean, I'm surprised he didn't have his own bed, let alone his like owner. I was I voted for Pudsy twice. It was it was so dispiriting. It was like Pudsy was sailing to New York like a fucking king. Pudsy Pudsy was Kate Winslet and Floppy and Josie were Leonardo DiCaprio. He looks very pleased with himself, doesn't he? Well, that's the thing like all my confidence shattered. And I thought when I got into New York, I felt like it was like I thought in London, like back in London, I was Pudsy. Like I I could I could walk like a human. And here in New York, all my confidence has gone. He was having a nice time. But that was a that's a it sounds like it's a slightly unsalubrious way to arrive in New York then. Yeah. And it was actually it was a bit of a miserable first. I mean, on any, you know, everybody knows that moving to another place is just the hardest thing to do, even if you do it with all the privileges. So. And why was it hard? Because you kind of like one would assume, you know, you're a writer, you know, you obviously speak English, you know, you've done a lot of work in America. Why was it bad when you first got to New York? I don't know. I found myself like just bad me being inside my own head. Shit, you know, I was isolating and just felt homesick. I remember like I remember like I got offered eight hundred pounds to do a show in London. And I said, yes, that cost me about two and a half grand to get there. And yeah, and I was very homesick and I really missed. But out of that actually came, I don't think I'd ever written. So you've been publicly shamed if that hadn't happened. And what kicked off then? Well, I just, you know, I'd go online and I'd see people being piled in on. And it wasn't that nobody was so new, you know, parlance was so new that everyone was just excited about them and nobody was really thinking through the ethics of it. And the slide, actually, like it started off with us getting corporations that had, you know, LA Fitness. The first great shaming that I remember was LA Fitness. Has anybody been on Twitter since like 2008? I remember this. Yeah, there was a heavily pregnant woman who wants to cancel her LA Fitness membership and they wouldn't let her. So we just went for them. And then, you know, we tasted blood and then we got like, you know, politicians who transgressed and then, you know, and then we got too excited about our shaming powers. And so we started just like shaming like a day without a shaming felt just like a boring day, like, you know, like a day picking fingernails. So instead of getting powerful people who had actually transgressed, we moved to like private individuals who had misspoken. And I was watching this unfold and because I was feeling a bit miserable in New York and I was like and this woman, Justine Sacker, who was like the kind of ground zero of public shaming, I just looked at her night and just thought, here's somebody else failing in New York. So I found myself like identifying more with her then. And that's that was I think that's why about the book. And now it seems incredibly prescient, doesn't it? I mean, that almost seems like this is it's not entirely the motivation of the internet, but the internet does that all the time now. That's the that's what everybody's toying around, isn't it? You can't say the wrong thing in case you're publicly shamed. Yes. You know, that's a quite a move that way. Well, yeah, I mean, you know, what happened was we I think the other thing that happened, I've just written the psychopath test. And that book, I think, taught me to be to understand human beings is kind of complicated manifold. You know, a mess, you know, that taught me that human beings are a mess. We can't be slotted into a checklist where we're good and we're bad, we're clever and stupid, we're gray areas. And just when I was coming to that, and the best way to treat humans is with curiosity and empathy and patience and compassion. And I was coming with all these revelationary thoughts after 20 years of being more hierarchical, like going into situations and being a little bit, you know, a little finger waggy. Oh, yeah. OK, yeah. So then you kind of you were you were understanding that people might be more complicated and a different way for nonfiction people to regard our fellow humans. And while I was coming up with that thought at the same time, social media was coming along with the opposite thought that what was really valuable was cold instant judgment. And I thought, well, you know, when you fill your head with cold instant judgment, there's no room for curiosity and empathy. And in fact, social media punishes. I mean, social media is empathetic, but it's like a highly selective empathy. Yeah. And it punishes curiosity. The night of Justine Sacco, which we said, did people remember that night? She tweeted. She was like the ground zero, like the typhoid Mary of Public Share. And on her tweet, she was about to go to Cape Town. Oh, it's so long, isn't it? You want to say, can you do it short? No, let's not do this. Bring the night down. But basically she tweeted going to Africa. Hope I don't get AIDS. Just kidding. I'm white. And then she got on the plane and like fell asleep. And while she was asleep, Twitter took control of her life and just mangled it. Yeah. And and the reason why I bring that up is because anybody he said, can we just wait for her plane to land? Which they were powered in on, too. We don't need to wait for her plane to land. We already know that she's bad. Yeah. So she'd been tried, convicted and punished, sentenced while she was asleep and oblivious. And the fact that she was oblivious was hilarious to people. Yeah. We were created with torture. When I went to the minister at Goats, I discovered this torture technique called the Bucca Effect, which is basically equivalent to somebody jumping out in front of you in the dark. And you go, ah, then you realize it's your wife. And the American torturers say, if you can capture that moment of before your brain settles down, that's the gold standard of torture techniques, the holy grail. And I think what we were doing with Justin Sucker that night while we were waiting for a plane to land was like the holy grail of torture techniques. A million people just starting in the shadows, waiting to jump out and say boo. Yeah, goodness. Yeah, it's terrible. I mean, it's interesting with public shame because, you know, as you said, what you did was you started to understand that there's a different way, perhaps, to approach, you know, nonfiction subjects. And I mean, one of the things that you did after publicly shamed was you made the butterfly effect. And the interesting thing about the butterfly effect, which is an amazing podcast about porn, is that it starts off with a situation where you see a woman in a hotel bar and she's been disdained, isn't she? Yeah, absolutely disdained. Simply, you know, she's just a woman in a hotel bar. But because of what she looks like and who she is, she's disdained. Well, I tell the story very briefly. Yeah, yeah, it was a woman called Princess Donna de Lure. And she was a porn performer and impresario and dominatrix. And I was meeting, I thought I'd try to do something about porn and shame and how porn performers use, you know, filter their shame by turning it into pornographic scenarios. And I thought that might be kind of interesting. So so I approached her. Yeah, my first ever porn performer meeting. And I was at a fancy hotel where everybody was dressed like me, like, you know, James Perce and they phoned and said, you know, your guest is waiting for you downstairs. So I went downstairs and, you know, everyone was dressed in like hoodies and this, except for Princess Donna, who was dressed like a kind of great mad peacock and high heels and very tight dress. I was walking towards her and I looked over at the receptionist and he was looking at her and the look on his face was of total contempt. And I thought, I bet you don't feel that way about her when she's on your laptop. And so that was the moment really that gave me the I sort of stored that. And that became, I guess, two years later, the starting point of the butterfly effect. But it's interesting, isn't it? Because it's again a kind of feeling of contempt for another human being for a kind of somehow straying over a line that isn't even articulated. Yeah, yeah, it's not allowed. Yeah, he just felt more comfortable when she was safely on his laptop than in his vicinity. Yeah. So I thought, well, I don't know anything about the lives of porn stars. So I started, you know, I started reproaching porn directors. And I was on the set. My my my kind of eureka moment was on the set of stepdaughter cheerleader orgy where seminal work, right? The director, Mike Quasar, just happened to say, yeah, you know, when I started out in porn in the 90s, our films weren't called things like that. And I said, what were they called? It goes, well, they were called Women of Influence or The Billionaires Blonde. And I said, well, why are they now called stepdaughter cheerleader orgy? And because we need to load our titles with the most searched for terms, it's always search engine optimisation. And those are the most searched for terms. And now everything's about S.E.A. Yeah, SEO, yeah. Like hashtag really, isn't it? Yeah. So I said, so are there people who are the people in porn who, like, aren't easily searchable and then slip through the cracks? And he said, yes, if you're a 23 year old woman in porn now, you can't get work because you're too old to be a team and too young to be a milf. So I was like, that's very young, you know, to be waiting to get older. Well, that's what I said, like, so what do they do? Why they sort of sit there and sort of wait, wait to become a milf? Like, what do they do doing? There's like follow years between teen and milf. I've often wondered. I did think like the 23 year old porn star is a little bit like the political moderate on Twitter. And the answer was customs. And I said, what's customs? I said, well, look, if you've always wanted to see a porn film that is so bizarre, nobody would ever think to make it. Now you've got like all these professional porn people in their mid 20s who are just looking for work. So you can you can commission porn performers to make a porn film just for you. Everyone, you can commission porn performers to make a film just for you. So I then went on an odyssey to try and find like the best customs porn. And I've got a couple of clips if anybody would like to see it. They're great. I've seen them. They're very good. Well, I'll show you the yeah, the PG rated. Yeah, it's all right. It's OK. I didn't want to cause any difficulties. OK, I'm going to show you a couple of clips of bespoke porn. So the first one is Condomance Man. Oh, yeah. It's like Carrie. We know one thing about Condomance Man, which is the fact that he's a restaurateur who presumably deals with condiments all the time and has to make sure there's nothing in his restaurants. And then there's Fly Swatter Man. Some of them are crazy because they're just so normal. Yeah, the fly swatter. Oh, yes, the fly swatter. You wanted to watch a girl swat in flies. She remains fully clothed throughout the entire video. And she's getting frustrated because there's flies everywhere. Got another one. I couldn't help wondering what had happened in this man's life to her. Maybe he watched his mom swat flies. Oh, but probably so. And I've got I've got one more. I've got one more clip and it's Stamps Man. Stamps Man is fabled so this is a mysterious man from Norway who has he's got very expensive stamp collection, ten books of them. And he sends one at a time to different bespoke porn performers and wants them to destroy his priceless stamp collection. Yeah, a lot of money. So I've got a little clip from Stamps Man. He has had the stamp collection for 40 years. And we just accepted it and burned it. That's just my boyfriend's stamp collection. Stamp collection. Oh, I'm going to know you're about to see them burn the stamps too. Here we go. There you go in the fire. They said that they were wondering whether to. Yeah, so I got obsessed with Stamps Man and eventually we tracked him down. Yeah, to Norway. Yeah, yeah. I mean, did he explain he explained why? Yeah, he did. But what just popped into my mind was I was I was meeting a bespoke porn producer and I said to her, have you ever had a mysterious man send you their book of stamps for you to destroy? And she said, are you Stamps Man? Imagine if you just said yes. I don't remember like what is in a life. What happened in this in the life to make that happen. He was a big Stamps fan and he used to go to the big Stamps stores or all the intellectuals would meet and discuss, you know, these things. I know what they're all doing now. They're all like writing nice tweets to Elon Musk. I'm kind of proud. And then the stamps, the internet came and the Stamps stores closed down and he got he got depressed and lonely but carried on his collection. And he went to see a therapist and his therapist said to him that stamp collecting is a ridiculous hobby because it will isolate you and it will make you lonely. And that's why he started sending a stamp collection to porn stars to destroy. That's quite interesting, though, because you could just I mean, you could destroy them yourself, but obviously he cares about them so much that he's then elevated them into a kind of I suppose a sexual object. Well, apparently destroying valuable things is a well known fetish. OK, not when I have, I say, keep hold of your valuable things. Especially now with climate change. You could just give him to a cherry shop. Yeah, yeah, like, yeah, you could do that. And how did when you when you did the the porn, when you did Butterfly Effect, which was the porn, the porn series that resulted from that, that you ended up, you know, knowing about this, how did that? I mean, what did you, you know, it's a bit of a weird question. But what did you learn from that? Because it was a it was a very interesting thing that you found out, really, was how porn had changed. Oh, yeah, because of Fabian. Basically, it's all to do with, well, I mean, I kind of think the Butterfly Effect in a way is a kind of metaphor for tech utopians and the tech takeover of all the different industries from Uber through to everything else. And just this giant flow of money. Basically, this guy Fabian, this, you know, young Austrian guy, had an idea, which was to give the world YouTube for porn, like free porn. And just overnight, there was this vast flow of money from from the San Fernando Valley into Fabian's pocket. So much money, I had no idea what to do with it. Like he he in the end, he built himself an aquarium that was so big, it needed its own diver. Whereas the porn performers were like struggling and having to. So I think the reason I like that show is because I like turning. I like turning like who we're supposed to like and who we're not supposed to like on its head. Yes, it's interesting as well, because I think also people might assume about a kind of podcast about porn and if it's presented by somebody like you, that it's like in that style where you quizzically turn up to a porn shoot and like, oh, what are they doing here? Which is like a kind of, I suppose a kind of trope of investigative journalists. Yeah, we're really trying to do something different from that. Oh, yeah, we made our excuses and left. I mean, a lot of bollocks. And we're managing the story and so you've been publicly shamed about this vicar in North Wales who who was having these little orgies in a caravan. And people would meet in the pub and like four people turned up and two of them were undercover reporters from the news of the world. Yeah. And but this story ends badly, I'm sad to say. And the thing that I remember most of all was there was a little sign of the pub, so just in case anybody else would turn up, it was like caravan 2.3 miles that way. Anyway, the news of the world people revealed themselves and he said, I'm a vicar, you know, if you publish this, I'll kill myself. And of course, they published and he did. Yeah, that's like that is the element of publicly shamed, isn't it? Well, yeah. But, you know, when on Twitter, we hate tabloids, yeah, we act like them. Yeah, very true. Yes, I think that is very true. And when we when we think about your career, because obviously it started, you know, a long time ago, it just started a long time ago. And by the way, one of my very earliest adventures was with Miranda. That's true. We went to a sex cult in France. I was only on holiday. I just I was on holiday by myself, which sounds a bit weird, but it's true. And I got in touch with John and I said, what are you doing? He said, oh, I'm going to see a sex cult. You want to come along? And I went, all right, fine. Yeah, so we all went into this sex cult. They were called the Raelians. They hit the headlines a couple of years later for falsely claiming that they'd cloned the first baby, human baby. And it was a big kerfuffle about at the time. But my big memory of that day was that they they were pretending that they weren't a sex cult and what they actually were were a UFO cult. But I was there with like a crew and Miranda and they were just all they wanted to do was have I don't know if you remember it this way, but they just all wanted to have sex with each other. And they couldn't until we left. And then we're getting like more and more pissed off about it. Yeah, we were the unwanted guests. We were so unwanted. They were like sitting there by the pool just like, you know, basically just desperate to have an orgy. And we were just wondering why I'm taking custody of it. I do remember that. But that's what's funny about that, really, is that you've always been interested in these outsider things, but you your technique has changed. I would say so perhaps in those days, it was a bit more like we made our excuses and left it, so it was more like, oh, these are quite funny. Exactly. And I think you've changed now. Yeah, defining the boundaries of normality by mocking the people on the outside of it. Yeah, I guess that was I want to go as fast to say that was my beat back then. I would say I was veering a little too close to that. Yeah. I grew up admiring the Gonzo journalist and the new journalists. And there certainly was a distance between the writer, you know, Huntress Thompson and all of those, PJ O'Rourke. And so, yeah, I wanted to like go to the shadows and I did want to be a little. Well, I wanted to go to like really scary people and be funny. I was also really inspired by Kurt Vonnegut. So I wanted like a like a collision of comedy and horror. I think more than mocking people, that's what I wanted. I wanted a kind of Vonnegutty and like absurdist comedy, which often includes writing about the kind of absurd aspects of people's characters. Yeah, and also, perhaps, I mean, it reveals a kind of banality of some really terrifying people, doesn't it, if you if you are funny about it. Well, like in real life, these girls. Sorry, like Oma, that's that was my first adventure. Yeah, there's Oma. Yeah, that's Oma Bakri Mohamed, yeah, who announced that he wouldn't rest until he saw the flag of Islam flying over Downing Street. And then he outed me as a Jew at his Jihad training camp in Crawley. Bit of a fair. I spent a year with him. He said, John, I have given you much. I would I've let you in my life. Can I have something in return? And I said, what? And he said, can you drive me to office world? And so I became like a chauffeur for about six months, driving into like a secret terrorist meeting in Birmingham and that office world. And then office were because of their special price promise. So he was like using capitalism to destroy it. And then eventually he kind of outed me. There was a moment, actually, when he was without office world. And like he was getting crushed, the pirate state of Israel pamphlets done. And next to him was a rabbi getting sheet music for a bar mitzvah. And the two of them were like standing there. And there's a long shot of the two of them standing there. And then Oma just turns to turns to me and goes, very sensitive moment. And then he outed me as a Jew. He taught me to Jihad training camp in Crawley and said, look at me with the infant, old John, who is a Jew? And I said, surely it's better to be a Jew than an atheist. And I heard someone go, no, it wasn't. The thing is, I am basically an atheist. So I don't know why of all places to suddenly like to clear my Jewishness. I choose Jihad training camp in the middle of a forest in Crawley. Especially just reclaiming it like I am bigger. And how did that go after then? You know what? It went well. They all they all like this is probably 96, I think. And then they all like surrounded me and asked me loads of questions. Like, I've never I've clearly remember one of them saying I've never met a Jew. Like, you know, tell me about it. And we had a big chat and I left thinking, well, I fear I've solved the problem. Everything's. And now like loads of them became suicide bombers, like a surprising number of the people that you've met. Yeah, although certainly the people who went through that particular scout hurt that Jihad training camp went on to become an Omar ended up in jail for inciting terrorism in Lebanon. Yeah. I mean, that's what that's the weirdness of it, though, isn't it? If you're kind of exposing in vertical, it was the banality of all the you know, the incompetence, but the kind of everyday nature of it. Then do you like make them seem like, are you like doing a disservice? Yeah, or are you are you not allowing for the fact that people can be completely kind of banal and almost boring, but then also harbour kind of other terrible kind of terrible desires and terrible, you know, wants for for violence? Well, I think that's just that was just the truth about Omar Bakri. He was absurd and silly and, you know, there was there was comedy. But and he was also capable of inspiring people to do like some terrorism. Yeah. Those two things live concurrently within him. I mean, you know, I lived it. Yeah. And that's quite interesting because actually, you know, one assumes that you do sometimes meet people that you just think, whoa, you know, terrible, terrible vibe off your just edge over here. Yeah. Like mostly people contain both, don't they? I mean, you know, we contain like, you know, this is obviously a kind of Christian idea, but you contain like God and the devil within you. And we're perhaps taught to think that just you will be able to identify somebody as being terribly bad because they would kind of, you know, have horns or whatever. And, you know, you'll be able to see by the by the by the their very nature that's who they are. But a lot of your journalism is about saying that's not true. Yeah. I mean, it just I don't know. It just feels like it's a better way to chronicle and, you know, it's honest, more honest as well. Yeah. You know, and then you see on Twitter, there being a kind of stage for constant artificial high drama where everybody's either, you know, a magnificent hero or a sickening villain. Yeah. It's just not true. We all know it's not true. I mean, I do know that I, you know, skate with these early stories, I guess you skater, you skater. I'm quite thin ice because they are like properly dangerous people. And but I still think it's like ultimately better to just do these rounded humanist complicated gray area portraits. Yeah. I'm silly. And but in those early days, it was just silly and funny. That's me with the Ku Klux Klan. Klan puppy. And the puppies. Yeah, yeah. This was a politically correct faction of the Ku Klux Klan that had banned the robes and the hoods and the cross burning. So basically it was like the Ku Klux Klan, but without the kind of fun. Yes, I was going to say the bits that you get the party. Yeah. I mean, if I was in the Klan, those are the bits, especially the cross burnings. I mean, God, there would be so much like bonfire. But no, they weren't like they could do one cross burning a year. And they were so rusty, like rusty, they couldn't remember how to do it. They were all standing around the cross debating whether to soak it in kerosene and then raise it or raise it and then soak it. And then the leader came over, Tom Robb, and he said, Tom, do we soak it and then raise it and then soak it? And he said, do you soak it and then raise it? How are you going to soak it after you've raised it? And then he looks at me and said, like, I basically gave me a look to say, I'm sorry that my clansmen are such idiots. Tom Robb definitely definitely identified more with me than with the clans and wanted to impress me. Yeah. And and my funniest memory of being with them, though, was that they they he had an idea to get the clansmen to do multiple choice questionnaires about which strengths and weaknesses most apply to them. OK. And one of them was mixes easily, which normally would be a strength. But if you're in the clan, it's absolutely the weakness. Also, another one was warrior, warrior. And one of the clansmen thought it said warrior. And Tom Robb was like, it's a weakness. And the guy was like, no, it's not. I think being a warrior is a strength. And he's going, no, I think being a warrior is a weakness. So that was a funny misunderstanding. And how I mean, how was that for you in that? I mean, again, it's a weird environment for you to go as a Jewish person. Not only a Jewish person, but now I look at that picture. Someone who looks very fucking Jewish. And yeah, I was in the clan. They asked me at one point if I was Jewish on my third trip. But and I said, no. But I was actually I was going to tell them on my fourth trip. And then we realized we'd had enough. We had enough. We didn't need to afford to write a letter like that. Sorry, I forgot to mention. Yeah, no, I just didn't I didn't feel I owed the clan. They felt that they owed me something, though, which was that when it was finished, he wrote me a letter. I promise I didn't ask for this. I've still got it. He wrote me a letter saying to whom it may to whom it may concern. I have just been filmed by John Ronson, and I would like you to know that it was a wonderful experience. And if you're considering being filmed, please take this as a letter to say, you know, I recommend sincerely, Tom Robb, Grand Wizard, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Amazing. Have you ever used it? Is it my qualifications? I went to Aryan Nations at the same time and they asked me if I was Jewish. And that was much scarier. Yeah, I bet. Yeah, because they were like scary skinheads who wanted to kill me. And so you said, no. Well, they said, what's your genius? I drove up the drive past all these signs that said, like, no, Jews, Jews, turn back now, what would stop if you're Jewish? And I was like, because, you know, when you when you're gathering and when you're gathering material, you just you're not thinking about it. And with you surrounded me and said, what's your genealogy? It was that was their words. And I said, I'm Church of England. And then a guy said, oh, made a joke about Church of England and the all relaxed. And I think he might have been like an undercover agent saving my skin. Well, interesting. Maybe it's actually another situation where it's just all journalists. Well, you know, you know, the Gretchen Whitmer kidnapped plots, right, where a bunch of, you know, young men were arrested for plotting to kidnap the governor of Michigan. And it turned out that like 12 of them were undercover agents. Amazing. So one of the things that you did around that time, one of your early works was actually hanging out with Alex Jones, who's incredibly, I suppose, do we say famous, infamous? I mean, known. Yeah. Well, now he's the world's most nefarious and well known and powerful conspiracy theorist. Yeah, talk show host. I met him back in the 90s. Yeah. And what was he like then? I'm an exhausting. He's a he's an energy vampire. I'll tell you that. I've never invited you to dinner party. I've never known anyone so energetic in my life like you'd spend 10, 12 hours with him and you'd be crawling off to your room and then he'd phone you and ask you to come back because he had something else that he wanted you to do. Wow. And was it, you know, it's quite fashionable now for everybody to be to diagnose, self-diagnose themselves as AD or ADHD. Do you think he was like that or? No, he's got. Well, he was diagnosed by a court as having narcissistic personality disorder. Oh, so it's slightly different. Yeah, which I think actually, I think that's like, solves a lot of mysteries because people always say, does Alex Jones, yeah, does Alex Jones believe it? Does he not believe it? And I think the answer is if you if you were narcissists, if you've got a pretty severe case of narcissism, kind of doesn't matter whether you believe it or not. You want to be the smartest person in the room. And sometimes the way to do that is to come up with counterintuitive information that no one else has like a conspiracy theory. So maybe we're asking the wrong question. It's just like it's a different world view. Yeah, and it's also an attention. I mean, you know, an narcissist wants attention, so it doesn't really matter if it's true or false. It's just I'm saying something and you're looking at me. Yeah, totally. So we had this early adventure where I heard that there was a secret club in the Redwood forests of Northern California called Bohemian Grove, where world leaders have a ritual that culminates in a human effigy being thrown in a bonfire in front of a giant stone owl. So I thought, well, that can't be true. I thought you just thought that sounds fun. Well, I thought I'd want to try and get it, but I don't want to do it alone. So I'll ask Alex Jones. And why did you ask him? Well, I asked David Ike first and he said no, because that's where they transform themselves back into giant reptiles. So who's that? I said, I'm staying away. Pete said, people go missing in those forests. Right. And then I asked Alex Jones because we'd met him a year earlier. He was rebuilding David Koresh's Church at Waco. Wow. Yeah. We'd listen to donations. He was like a local talk show host there. And he was clearly like like most conspiracy talk show hosts in the 90s were so boring, they've just been like a public access TV show, talking about the all seeing eye on top of the dollar bill, just rolling on. And then Alex Jones came along and he was like mesmerizing. I mean, what? Why was he mesmerizing? Just brilliant at what he does. I mean, just just his archery skills, his imagination. I mean, you know, it goes without saying he uses it for very bad ends and increasingly bad as he got older, not so bad when I knew him in the 90s. But he was clearly like going places. I've got a little clip of just a little clip of just before infiltration of Bohemian Grove. So we were told that the way to get into Bohemian Grove, Alex had this idea to rent a boat, moor it, climb up the mountain and get in that way. OK, so we met a local lawyer called Rick, who said, if you go in that way, you're going to get yourself killed. And Alex wrote down going in that way, killed. We said, how do we do it? He said, just walk up the drive, just buy some preppy clothes, walk up the drive, giving the security guard a kind of I rule the world wave. Right, so you therefore look like you were a member of parliament from somewhere. Yeah, there's like a thousand people there. Just walk up the drive, just preppy, just look like you belong. So we went to the local Eddie Bauer preppy clothes store and Alex bought some preppy clothes. Honestly, went into the dressing room looking like some sort of far right wing Texan redneck nut and came out looking like Jay Gatsby. So here's a clip of Alex and his producer, Mike, practicing being preppy so we could infiltrate a secret club where Henry Kissinger was rumoured to have a mock human sacrifice. Just going to walk normally as we would, calmly, a lot of along. There's me guys sitting there and we're we're fat cats, so let's go ahead. But seriously, David, as fast as microprocessors are starting to move, it's getting down to a molecular level. The question is at what level will just the actual basics of science stop us from making these systems smaller? And I'm it's the entire nanotechnology revolution that I find the most dynamic. I agree. My thing. Well, guess what? Well, so Alex, the more verbose one, became the world's leading conspiracy talk show host. Yeah. But guess what happened to my cancer? Well, I only know this because I visited Alex Jones in 2016 and he told me my cancer inherited some land from his father, struck oil, became the richest man in his county, used the money to build an Alex Jones museum like in the middle of nowhere in Texas and the centerpiece of this museum. You can see it online. It's right there. Is that shirt that he's now got like encased in perspex because that was the shirt he wore when he infiltrated Bohemian Grove because what we saw when we got into Bohemian Grove was that. I mean, that's a that's a photo. I don't know where that photograph comes from. We've got a very grainy version of that footage. It was an actual. Yeah, yeah, it was a stupid like Midsummer Night's Dream type pageant that they put on where they do, you know, get this human thing and throw in the belly and it goes, you shall not burn me. And then they go, we shall burn the tonight for it's a show. It's a pageant. OK. And Alex was like, this is actual human sacrifice. Right. OK. Yes. So he was taking it a bit far, but it's also I mean, that's not very entertaining. Is it? I mean, I suppose a fire is entertaining. I mean, the guys liked it. I was sitting amongst like a thousand men and they were like burning, burning. That's where I agree with Alex. Alex was like, there was a weird, intense atmosphere and it was a little weird and intense. Is this the is this the place where you kind of like you saw like Peter Mandels will go in and all these other. No, that was the Bilderberg group. That's a different one. They didn't do that at Bilderberg. No, they didn't. The Bilderberg group is much more sitting at a conference table and then playing golf. OK. I think that's what I was expecting. Yeah. No, what the rituals about is we men of wealth and power come to this silver clearing in the forest. Glade. Glade. Yeah. At one point during the show, Alex never talks about this part. He talks about the human sacrifice part. But also there was a man dressed in leaf covered Laderhosen singing a song about like, oh, leaves, oh, trees. And they had like members of the San Francisco Orchestra. I mean, if this was a cult for, you know, in service to Moloch, their owl guard, it was a pretty broad cult with, you know, members of the San Francisco Orchestra, men in Laderhosen. And then and then they bring out this effigy, you know, we shall burn thee tonight. You know, no, you won't. Yeah, we will have an unparaphrasing. And who organized it all? Who were the? The Bohemian Club. They start in San Francisco. They started it in the 1890s. That's quite San Francisco, is it? Now you know, I understand. You see that you get this, you know, Yale in the Skull and Bones Club. There is a proclivity for elites to want to do weird rituals. That's a Masonic kind of thing. Yeah, that's worthy of reflection. Yes, that they want to show that they're joined in a club. They're special. Yeah. Yeah, they have special secrets. Yeah, that no one is. Which then gives them a mandate to feel superior to other people. Yeah, and only talk to the same people as them. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. But like the Soho House. So look, Alex Jones, I feel like we should talk a little bit about Alex Jones, because obviously he is now, you know, as you said, the kind of world's most famous conspiracy theorist. But I had. Yeah, I mean, I think we should talk about him because he's he's he's kind of got bigger and bigger and bigger. Yeah. And that is I mean, that is partly to do with him. It was partly to do with him. Well, because he is charismatic, as you said. I mean, he's not. He doesn't do anything for me, but I can see that he's charismatic. Yeah, he's but there's more to it than that. Like, like, you know, he aligned himself with Trump and Trump aligned himself with him and, you know, they fed off each other. Alex gave Trump, I think, permission to be more conspiratorial and Trump gave Alex permission to be more xenophobic. And actually, years later, I met because my story about Alex sneaking to Pehemian Grove was kind of silly and fun and Alex became much more malevolent. And as I'm sure everybody knows, has now had a billion dollar judgment against him for hounding the parents of children killed at Sandy Hook. I think it was a false flag operation and they were all actors. And people went off and, you know, hounded the parents like chasing down the street. Anyway, I wanted to do a second story about Alex, because I felt like, you know, I needed to, I don't know, balance it out because he got so bad. Yeah. Yeah. So I did this story about his teenage years. I discovered that at school, he was a he was like the worst bully at school. And he was like and he was a conspiracy theorist even at the age of 12. He'd run down the corridors yelling that he was Satan and that the headmaster was in league with the pool hall owner to spy on them for the DEA. And eventually he beat his friend, Bubba, almost to death over a girl. He still has like injuries. Good. Bubba knows Alex intimately. And then when I met Bubba, I told him that Alex was now, you know, an incredibly famous, like I assumed he knew that Alex was an incredibly famous conspiracy theorist and that Trump was a fan. And Bubba didn't know. And it was like very awkward. I've got a little clip of my conversation with Bubba. The fact is he's carried on saying all of these crazy things, but it's no longer about the school or the pool hall. Now it's about the globalists and the Muslims. People believe him now, including the president. I mean, I mean, I was to say, I mean, I mean, some of the stuff he says could be true. It could be. I mean, Obama, he could be a Muslim. He could back the radical Muslims and he could have been giving them money behind. I mean, who knows, you know, we don't know. I mean, we hear what they want us to hear and we see what they want us to see, you know? I mean, anything could be anything, you know. I mean, how dispiriting. He more than anyone knows that Alex talks crap. But there's a thing there, isn't there? Like the sometimes it's very, it's different in American than it is in in Britain, but there's a sense generally that people don't want to be, you know, I can't think of any better way of saying it, of taking the piss out of. So they they they and if you think that essentially, perhaps the government isn't always right, then you are more when I think everybody probably thinks that, then everybody is slightly predisposed to think, well, they say that, but they don't mean it. You know, they say, you know, don't, you know, don't go out during Covid, but we're having a party. So like, yeah. Oh, God, yeah. If you if you believe that, then I understand why people might think that you shouldn't believe in the kind of government. Yeah. Well, you get you always get renaissance of conspiracy theories when our leaders act in conspiratorial ways. Yeah. Yeah. Iraq, Iraq, run up to the Iraq was a very good example of that. Yeah. Yeah. No, absolutely. You know, I'm getting more and more interested in the mistakes that we make, like what we do to to fuel all this stuff. Yeah. Yeah. I've totally forgot what my next slide is. Can I have a little look? Yeah. Oh, yes. I know what this is. OK. So so one of the yeah, one of the things that we could talk about. And I think we will talk about with this this slide is there there's a kind of increase in conspiracy theories, one can say there is definitely an increase in theories you can think of a Q and on. But also, actually, I don't know if anybody knows about this. There was something that happened hamstered really quite recently where I know I know this because I heard a podcast about it, of course, and where essentially what happened was a parent accused of the parents of sexual abuse of children. They put a list of names on the internet, which then went around everywhere and hit the American conspiracy theorists. And they all turned up on the doorstep of this completely innocent school in Hamstered. But what was interesting to me was they used the same kind of ideas. So the idea was child abuse, so children disappearing and pedophiles kind of eating children, sucking their blood and and always doing it somewhere like in a small, you know, like pizza gate, there'd be like a small door that people go in and it all happens in there. And it's the same all the time. Well, that comes from I mean, that comes from antisemitism. That's the blood libel. That's the idea that Jews would, you know, bake their bread with with the blood of Christian babies. So that goes back to like the dawn of conspiracy theories. But it seems to be that absolutely that's the kind of stamp everywhere now. It's it's completely nuts. And this in your podcast, the last one for BBC Things Fell Apart, you look at the satanic panic, which is what that's from, isn't it? Yeah. So I think we should maybe talk about that. Yes, extraordinary. It was in the early 80s. And by the way, my collaborator on Things Fell Apart, I believe is here tonight, Sarah Shebbia, who I worked, you know, it was the whole show was really me and Sarah just working incredibly intensely for a year and and a joyful year it was. And yeah, so this happened in the early 80s. It starts with Chris. It starts with like crazy Christian radio shows. People claim that they'd been like kidnapped by Satanists and had to take part in rituals. One of the rituals is they were like to be like like babies will have to be born through a horse. Yeah, pass through a horse, head to Anus. Sorry, very specific ritual. Yeah. He said, we didn't make it up. And but then it spread and suddenly like, you know, the mainstream media, NBC would would be reporting on it, but not like listen to these crazy Christian Christians coming up with these crazy conspiracy theories, but they like sniff money. So they like maybe it's true. So then there's suddenly all of these like proper news reports about how Satanists were infiltrating our children's minds through through the media, you know, through Judas Priest songs and that kind of stuff. And then it turned into daycare centres because this was when this was this was the the dawn of daycare centres. Like women were going out to work for the first time, dropping off their young children at daycare centres, feeling terrible about it, suspicious, guilty, ashamed. Then they'd go home and then suddenly, you know, these rumors would start to spread about abuse happening. And then the cops would come in and the police would say, well, you know, you obviously you missed the signs of abuse. You missed the signs of abuse. And then they then they felt so bad that they'd been asleep and now they were awake. It became like, you know, fierce advocates for the prosecution. And then to this came this lovely woman called Kelly Michaels, just a sweet woman who was suddenly like accused of of playing jingle bells in them, because the claims were like these daycare people would put bombs in hamsters and explode them in front of the class. I mean, nuts. All believed, like uncritically believed. And Kelly was accused of, you know, playing jingle bells in the nude on the piano. This is in a daycare centre in a church where people are going in and out all the time. Yeah. And also, I mean, it's the classic thing that police or prosecutors would ask. This is what happened in the hamstered case as well. They would ask children and the children would gradually realise that if they said certain things, it would almost things would go better. Yeah. So if you said, yes, that's what happened. And also, they were young kids, so they were kind of interested in. Yeah, as kids are. And so exactly that becomes the thing. And so, yeah, what's so interesting is that Kelly's daycare centre. I'm going to play you a little clip from Kelly. This always moves me this clip. This is Kelly talking about at the end of because she ended up she was she was convicted. She was sentenced to 47 years. 47 years in jail. And the reason why she if there's any heterodox people in the audience, you're going to enjoy what I'm about to say, heterodox meaning, sort of skeptical centrist type people because the reason so she was in jail for like four years and then an older journalist called Dorothy Rabinowitz, who worked for Harper's magazine, went in there into Harper's and said, you know, I'm looking at the evidence against this woman, Kelly Michaels. And I think I think it's kind of absurd. And she said, all the younger journalists at Harper's were like, you know, journalists on the left were just outraged that she said that. I just refused to believe it. And I turned her entirely into a folk devil. And that made Dorothy Rabinowitz all the more, you know, convinced that she wanted to investigate. And she got Kelly out after four years. Yeah, I'm going to play a short clip of Kelly after she was out. That was it, the huge turn that went from parents to say, I know my child, there's no way this could have happened. And I wouldn't have known about it to, you know, I really. That's the wrong clip. We might have to just not show that clip. That was it. The huge turn to say it's all going to be chaotic. If I keep pressing buttons, let's just it's a sad clip. The show's online. Yeah, but I actually remembered the clip and what what happens in the clip is that she, you know, I can find the clip. Yeah, you can find it. Come on, I want to apologize. Like you can now see everything on my laptop. You know, one time I did this and everybody could see everything on my laptop. They've tastefully faded it. You know, one of the really bad I know, but do you know what? This was a Yale in front of like a thousand students. And do you know what one of the folders said? Forbidden animal love. That's the one we want you to click on. My son was you don't need to know. It was a school project of my son doing Romeo and Juliet. But you know what? It's already two minutes to eight. So I think we shouldn't show this clip. OK, that's fine. I mean, it's basically what I can I can kind of summarize it. And what happens is that she she goes and it's completely trumped up the whole thing. It's completely trumped up. She goes down for 47 years and then it is eventually comes out after four years because of the work of this journalist and another lawyer. But the thing that really breaks her heart made friends over the years. Here we go. That's good. Yeah, can we have this back? Thank you. I've made friends over the years and when people say, oh, so tell you about yourself. Where'd you go to college? And I dread this moment when I meet new people. I survived the story. I survived it, but it's still horrible to have to say the words. I was accused of abusing children. It's always painful. It'll always hurt. It'll always be. I'm getting emotional in the house I'm talking about because it because it's so it's unjust. And yet I can't do anything about it. It's woven into my story. It's who I am and that I lived through it that I was that person. So I made many friends over the years, but it's always been the very painful. They sit with their mouth hanging open. What? Because I'm this nice little church lady. You know, I have a bunch of kids and I, you know, I did social events. They think, what? You were in prison. So it never ceases to be very painful. And the people who got in prison weren't like, you know, sort of rednecks. And, you know, they were liberal lawyers, accountants, as Kelly says, you know, we're all we are all prone to to these moral panics. And it's something that we do every day on Twitter. Yes, very true. I think we do. So look, I'm conscious. I've got a little time. I'm conscious of time, but there is a little bit that I'd like to go through before we throw. I'm going to say it through open to the audience. Think of your questions. So what I'd like to talk to you a little bit about is about that kind of idea of prejudice. So we all bring our own prejudices to whatever situation it is. And I know that you wanted to kind of unpick that a little bit around the idea of a recent court case that we could talk about. But what we bring what we believe into a situation and we automatically kind of do as much as we can to bolster what our beliefs. Don't we? Yes. Well, I think I'm seeing I'm seeing a rise of conspiratorial thought on the left, which is a bit similar to that satanic panic. Yeah, it is. It is. I think in terms of like the crazy Q and on stuff on the right, I think we I think we've hit rock bottom when it comes to that and we're coming out the other side. And the reason why I say that is firstly, the election deniers were roundly defeated in the American midterm elections. Yeah. So all the people Trump was was promoting did very poorly. I think Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter is is, you know, people people rightly think it's just, you know, they don't want this shit. They're you know, when when Elon Musk tweeted that grotesque conspiracy theory about Nancy Pelosi's wife, Paula, like we knew what to do that advertises. There wasn't a frightening feeling of like, I don't know what's going to happen next. Like we knew what to do with someone like that. So I feel we've we've hit rock bottom when it comes to that stuff. You know, millions of Trump voters touched the stove and realized how hot it was. But I think while we've been looking at all of that stuff, there's been a rise of conspiracy theories coming from the left. OK. And what would you use as an example for that? Well, I've got I mean, I've got a number of examples. I think this doesn't completely answer the question. What I'm noticing more and more, I'm going to talk more in sort of vagaries about this. Yeah. What I'm noticing more and more. Look, we've all had that experience of like picking up a quality publication, quoting experts, and it happens to be about something we have special knowledge of and just being dismayed by all the errors and more and more. I'm noticing that the errors are all in one direction, which is to make the group we don't like seem even worse than we already thought that they were, which is quite tritory. Yeah. And it's absolutely seeped into the mainstream media, particularly I'm talking to particularly in America. Right. And now, you know, these sort of journalists and academics who are striving for high ideological excellence over factual evidence. I think that's happening more and more. It's like that's also a bit quite a tritory, isn't it? So it's a bit like being pure, it's almost like being pure of thought before looking for the looking for the actual facts. I'm not really caring about the facts because, you know, when we fill our heads with ideology, other things just don't matter as much. But for me, I personally would love a world. And, you know, this is the world I'm not being all, you know, this is the world we live in. We live in a world where there's lots of different types of journalism. There's activist journalism, there's there's humanist journalism, like the kind of thing I do where you just try and understand from every angle why people behave the way that they do. Then there's just objective journalism. And I think it's great to have a world where all of these different sorts of journalism keep each other honest and work in tandem with each other. What I don't like is the possibility that one type of journalism will then kind of subsume the other types, like a battle between different types of journalism and where the kind of journalism that I do is sort of suddenly rendered like suspicious. Did you know what I mean? Yeah, I mean, we had years of kind of a certain type of journalism, which is, you know, essentially, I think in Britain anyway, a kind of BBC type of journalist or journalism, I would say, which is like, you know, these are the facts and this is one side and this is the other side. And, you know, we are, but the facts are this, do you know what I mean? And I think that what's interesting is that the rise of the other approach actually has seemed much more successful. So you look at something like Brexit, you know, for instance, you know, kind of radio stations like LBC shot through the roof because of Brexit. Yeah. So opinionated journalism worked really well. And a lot of BBC journalists have left the BBC because they want to have be able to express their opinions. Right. Well, I mean, I've got a different thing to say, which is that I noticed like I live in the countryside now. And the only thing to do in the afternoons when you finished work other than smoke weed is to watch the Johnny Depp Amber Heard trial. I kind of watched it all and I watched it. I started late so I could fast forward the sidebars. Yeah. And I don't know if NB else did that. Did anybody else do that? Like just watch the trial in a bubble. People work in like. Right. I start, well, I start work at like five a.m. So by two p.m. I'm happy to watch Johnny and Amber. Well, look, watching that trial, the way that I did, which was just watching the case unfold without any commentary. You know, you agree with the with the jury, like you agree that that you agree with the jury. And then and you think there's not a jury in the land that would have come up with a different result. That's very interesting. And then you saw these editorial. Now, you see these editorials sort of basically saying, well, the thing that really survived, I thought this was like a big moment that there was a lot of people watched that trial and then would go on to these like YouTube channels that were run by lawyers and the lawyers would then dissect in a very lawyerly way what had happened in the trial. And it was like watching an expert, you know, in an objective way. And then after the verdict came out and some people didn't like the verdict. There was like there was an editorial in the Washington Post which attacked the lawyers on YouTube, who were the ones who were actually giving people what they wanted. That's amazing. That's the expert thing. Yeah, the mainstream media failed, didn't cover it, didn't realize that millions of people were watching it. People were just watching it on YouTube, like without any filter, just watching it unfold, listening to these lawyers who were being very sensible. And then you had like a grieved columnist in the Washington Post attacking the lawyers. Yeah, that's interesting because they had done. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting for me. Yeah, sort of cheating the lawyers like they weren't, you know, reliable. They weren't to be trusted. They were just trying to make a buck out of the trial. Yeah, they weren't doing that. Yeah, they weren't the expert. It felt to me that there was a massive disconnect between like the quote unquote legacy media and what they thought people were thinking about that trial and what people were actually thinking from watching the trial in the way that trials should be watched just objectively. Yeah, so you feel like the mainstream universe comes. I hate saying the mainstream media because it makes me think of Trump, the MSM. But like the mainstream media did failed. Hmm. And not only did they fail, but then they attacked the people who succeeded. Yeah, the legal you, you know, I kind of really understood in that moment why people were kind of drifting away from our sorts of media too. But they Robbie Williams said to me one time, I only watch YouTube now. Yeah, well, that's and I think that's a prescient. Yeah, I mean, you know, it's interesting, isn't it? It's because people watch YouTube or TikTok. Yeah, they want YouTube because they don't want to be. They don't want their news filtered by people they think are biased and actually are quite biased. And I think our media, CNN and so on, you know, spent the last five years offering the world a heavily curated version of the news, which is a form of lying. Yes, that. Yeah, that's that's interesting because it goes against that Brexit thing, doesn't it? And but I would say I think it's a bit of both. I would say personally, I did not watch that trial, but I was always on Amber's side because I'm a feminist. So I was always taking her side. But then I know people who watched the trial, as you did. Yeah, said you're wrong. I had dinner with an old school friend in Cardiff the other night and he said that he felt the same way that you did. And then it was a 16 year old daughter who said, No, you're wrong. Yeah. And I thought that was really interesting. While all of this happened, something else happened as well, which is that you've got men, you know, all over America beating up their girlfriends and saying you're just like Amber Heard. Yeah, a huge amount of violent misogyny came from it as well. Yeah, OK, that happens with the football. Right, OK, so I'm aware that we've kind of like got a certain amount of. All that's left is Frank and a little clip, but I could always open up to questions and maybe end with that. Should we do that? Hello, I'd like to see you all. Can we have the lights up and then we can see if we want because I bet they're dead good looking. Can we have the lights up? You could do that. Yeah, again, then we can see here a little bit. Does it? Oh, yeah, there you are. Hello. I hope you've enjoyed it thus far. And I'm going to ask you a question for you. And also, I've got, I think, maybe questions on here if it works, because there are people watching online and they can send questions. Yeah, hello, people at home. Oh, yes, hello, people at home. So let's have a question. So who has a question? I mean, in this room. So put your hands. Oh, there's one there. Yeah. Hi, is that working? Yeah. Thank you so much. I just had a question. So as you've made sort of like video documentaries, audio documentaries, books, is there a format you prefer and how does it affect your ability to get access? Like, do you find it easier to get someone to be in a book or on a podcast compared to TV? To be honest, access doesn't really, like, isn't impacted that I can remember. In terms of, I mean, the most fun, I think, is audio, is podcasting. Like, I really enjoy collaborating with, you know, Sarah or whichever producer I'm working with. And and it's fun and easy, like the hardest, but the best is books. And I think after, after season, I'm making season two of Things Fell Apart at the moment and I'm starting to write a book. And I kind of think once that's done, it's I'm going to just try and just keep writing books because, you know, they're insanely hard. And there's a reason why years go by between writing books. It's because, you know, it's, you know, kill you. It pulls your intestines out of your mouth of writing a book. It's long, isn't it? Books are long. I'm just so hard. You just come out of your room at the end of each day. Just like that. And also, you can't tell anybody. So you come out of your room with that and they're like, what are we doing? You're like, yeah. And of course, you know, if you're sitting on your own in a room, you forget that it's like an audience out there who might, you know, you're just some twat sitting alone in a room thinking he can write a book. I've learned nothing. Like, I've learned nothing from the books that I've written. Each time I'm starting from scratch. Yeah, it's a terrible way to spend time. Yeah. So don't write books. Other than that, fine. Yeah, so I'm going to really try and write more books now. OK, another question. Hello. Thank you. Hi, John, you've spoken a lot tonight about the sort of negative side of Twitter, social media, that sort of thing. I'm intrigued to know your stance on whether you think there are good sides of social media, whether there's a benefit to humankind. Oh, I mean, most totally. And in fact, you know, when people thought a week or two ago, that Twitter was about to collapse, it's like that, you know, Joanie Mitchell's song, you don't know what you got till it's gone. And you're suddenly thinking about all the things that you're going to lose, the friendships, the funniness. You know, people, you meet them in real life and they're so anxious that they've got selective mutism. And then on Twitter, they're funny and a bane. And so Twitter, you know, gave a voice to voiceless people in many different ways. And yeah, all that, if Twitter does go down, all that's going to go down, too. Not to mention how good it is at breaking news and so on. So yeah, yeah, there's much to love. Yeah. OK, another question. I feel like I should look over here. Come on, this side, put your hands up. And if not, we've got some more stuff. Oh, yeah, right down the middle. Oh, hi. Hey, hello. Hang on, are you coming down? Nice woman in pink jumper, lovely jumper. Yeah. This lady here. A nice humble. Thank you very much. Good evening. I think we've been really quiet whilst you've been talking, but I think we really have really appreciated you and listened to you. Oh, so nice. That's a comment, not a question. Thank you. Earlier on in your career, you said you spent a whole year with this person or you were a whole year with that person. That's such a huge part of your life. And it takes it over. How do you come out of that and still be you? Because that's such a commitment to the same with writing books. You've got to research it and live something in such a way. That's a real investment. How do you come out of that? Yeah, it's true. And especially when it's, when I remember like, there's weird, when my son was young, it would be really weird. Like I'd be at a G-head training camp on the Wednesday and then at Legoland on the Thursday. So that would help. To be honest, like, I love, I mean, I hate, like I hate travel and meeting people. And so, you know, it's being out of my comfort zone. But I also love, you know, a massing material and going off and having adventures. And so I can go back home and make it work as a piece of writing. I, you know, I mean, the honest answer is, like I don't enjoy the going out and getting the material, mainly because I'm old and anxious and I have all sorts of anxiety disorders. And, but I just love what I do so much. I love having gathered the material and then I go home and I start to sculpt it and put it in the perfect order. And it can take months. And honestly, a week of being out of my depth, having some scary adventure, then equals several months at home making it work as a story. So, you know, Louis Theroux was asked the question, like, why do you do it? And his answer was, because not doing it is worse. And I think that's true. So actually the answer is like, you know, I remember when I lived in, back in London, my doctor, Dr. Spate, had seen a documentary I'd made with David Ike the night before on Channel 4 and I went to see her. And she kind of said, oh, you know, your life is so stressful and, you know, with all these dangerous, scary people, you know, it must be having a terrible impact on your mental health. And I was like looking at her thinking, no, I just love it. Like, and the fact is I love it. Like, I love, I get all, I asked Randy Newman, like, why do you write songs? And he said, because it's how I judge myself and how I feel better. And I can't think of another way of feeling better than writing and doing these stories. It's the thing I love more than anything in the world, especially now my son's grown up. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, another question, hello. Hi, um, I just had a question about, like you spoke briefly about the different types of journalism. I was wondering whether you think there is, like a role for like activist journalists or whether you would rather have journalism be in the more BBC presenter facts. No, I think there's a great role for activist journalism. And I think, you know, the kind of activist journalism that we've seen over the last six or seven years has been kind of extraordinary. And it's taught, you know, we're not old stubborn fucks. Are we? They aren't going to learn from you. No, we're not. Yeah. And, you know, it's taught me stuff. I certainly felt that I'd spent my career thinking about flawed situations instead of flawed systems. And that's something that I learned. But on the other hand, I think it needs to adhere to like proper journalistic standards. And I don't think it always does. And I think that's the problem. And also, sometimes it's like a kind of lobbying thing, isn't that the idea, is that there's something that you need to think about. So we're just going to tell you, you need to think about it over and over until you think about it. And then that's the deal, that's the point. Yeah. And that's how things rise to the top of the agenda if people keep talking about it. Yeah. I think. Yeah. So, yeah. So, I'm just like, absolutely. Yeah. I do, yeah. Okay. Come on, this side. Right in the back. And there's people in the middle and others. I've got this microphone here, so I'm going to ask. Where are you? Oh, yeah, there. All right. You ask the question. Yeah. Hello. Two things. First one is, I just wondered whether you read the judgment from the defamation case against Johnny Depp, that the judge put out in the UK, which was absolutely amazing. I kind of sort of challenge anybody to read that and not think that he was guilty of all those things. And the second thing is I wondered how you feel about somebody like Russell Brand, who now has six million followers on YouTube and in some ways has become the mainstream himself, yet has very curated in the news that he gives and in many ways feels very, very biased. And I wondered whether you had a view on that. Well, I mean, it would be a little unfair for me to comment on Russell Brand because I'm aware of his kind of shift and other people's shift. Like, I'm not really laughing the other day because I've recently discovered Van Morrison, like... Oh, yeah. Yeah, like... Opium fellow. Yeah, Astral Weeks passed me by until last April. And it's like I heard it for the first time. And I'm like, oh, my God, this is like the greatest album ever. And then I was in the garage where I live upstate and it was coming out of like the tinny speakers. So I thought, people know these songs. And I'm just listening over and over again. And just recently I started to think, well, I'm going to listen to some later Van Morrison now. And later Van Morrison was all like, on March 20th, 2020, the government said this. And then boom, boom, boom, boom. But then two weeks later, they said this. Boom, boom, boom, boom. Not quite as jolly. No, it's not a sweet thing. So, and there is this kind of extraordinary shift with a lot of people in a way that I, you know, I find dispiriting that, you know, people banding together and getting more and more. And how popular it is, it's dispiriting. At the same time, like I've been on, when I went on Russell Brand's show a few years ago, it wasn't like that. It was fun. So I don't know like this Russell without really having watched, listened to much of his stuff, because I had good experience with him a few years ago. Yeah. And the Johnny and Amber thing, I mean, look, I don't think this is, it's right for us to be getting into the money show of like, you know, the UK case versus the US case and the different evidence that came in. I mean, it will swallow up the rest of the evening. All I can say is that if you watch the American trial, I think it would be very hard to watch the American trial and not come away thinking that the evidence led to the conclusion. Led to the conclusion, yeah. Yeah, it's interesting with Russell Brand, isn't it? Because I think it's almost like it's like somebody that has discovered an area where people are interested, isn't it? So that could be, I don't know, you could do it about trainers if you're interested in trainers, but he's found his niche. And I think there's lots of people like that that find their niche and then find their audience. And then go further and further. It's a bit like Alex Jones, isn't it? So you get more and more into that because your audience want more and more of the same thing. And that's understandable on all levels, but it's whether, it's again, I suppose, whether it's true or not. Yeah, across the political spectrum, facts are being issued for high ideological excellence. But I think sometimes, because fact-checking departments like me kind of come from the left, there can sometimes be less of an appetite to fact-check. Yeah, well, yeah. And also, actually, to be honest, as speaking as a working journalist, quite often there aren't so many people employed to... To actually fact-checking, yeah. Especially in Britain. I remember working for an American magazine, after a British magazine, the fact-checkers were unbelievable. They'd phone you up at 10.30 at night and go, did he really eat potato salad? And you'd go, yeah? Yeah. I mean, they're fact-checking in America is fantastic. You could be... Also, what happens when you fact-check that heavily in America is that your voice goes through the de-authorizing machine when suddenly it just doesn't read like you anymore. Yeah, it can be a bit of a glum. Yeah, I don't write... I mean, I love those magazines, like the heavy fact-checking magazines in America, but I don't work for them for that reason. There's no jokes. Yeah, they're not interested in people's voices. There was a line, you know, the New York Times magazine exited my book, Say You've Been Publicly Shamed, and they kept in a line, like a joke, where I say, I go to, like, this old museum, no, I'm looking through, like, the ancient American legal books. And I say, and I'm, like, rifling through them, like, the earliest court documents. And I say, for the first 100 years in America, all that happened, as far as I could tell, was that people named Nathaniel Purchase Land near Rivers. And the New York Times magazine kept it in. And people have said to me subsequently, like, you were so lucky that they kept that line. Yeah. OK, come on, this side. Yes, it's somebody in the back. You keep picking. I'm going to go to this side. Right, in the middle. You know, that's my place. I'm glad you're doing this. I'm terrible at that. And then we're going to go to that side, and then we're going to go to this side. There'll be one. Thank you both very much. On social media, the US's current affairs and politics are just so dominant. Do you think that spotlight is deserved, or is there another country or culture who's happening as you'd much rather see? Well, OK, so when Trump got elected, I just, I wanted to find like-minded, aghast people. So I went to CNN. I just spent four years watching, you know, brilliant monologues by Anderson Cooper and Jake Tapper and Aaron Burnett, and they were just telling me in a vain way everything that I was thinking, that Trump was a, you know, was a uniquely terrible failure. And after four years of that, he nearly won a second term. And I thought, you know, I've been a willing participant in receiving a heavily created version of the news these four years. How different was that to QAnon? Maybe I was in QAnon, but my Q was Anderson Cooper. And so, yeah, that gave me pause. And when Liz Truss got elected, I shifted wholesale to Radio Four News. Absorbed it. Yeah, I go where the craziness is. So you're quite happy to shift around. Yeah, yeah. I think it's true all the time, though, isn't it? It's always true that American news dominates and you're a bit like, there is other things going on. It's just that we understand that. Yeah, I see some American news dominating over here. It's hard for me to say because I'm over there. But I could say that, like, you know, Americans were enjoying with horror the whole Boris Liz Truss thing just as much as Brits were. Like, it was a big talking point in America, the whole Liz Truss Boris stuff. Yeah, okay. Great, we won. Okay, yes, this side. Oh, look at this, you see. Now everyone's got that. Oh, and by the way, like, everyone in America was jealous. Like, you can get rid of her. Lead with her. That's amazing. Yeah. One of the biggest shocks about living in America is how fragile democracy seems in America, much more so than in Britain. Meaning? Well, like, gerrymandering, voter suppression. Like, I know gerrymandering happens, or has happened in Northern Ireland, certainly, but you know, we're near to the extent that it happens in America. Democracy in America feels like a game that people manipulate. Democracy in this country feels a lot stronger, I think. Oh, that's, thank you. Great, we're assured. Okay, yes, next question. We're gonna go, yes, this one here. Hello. Hi, John. Hi. I think in terms of someone in the public eye managing to turn around to their, how they're perceived in society, Matt Hancock in I'm a Slep, and I'm not expecting you to have watched I'm a Slep, but I find it absolutely fascinating that prior to him going into the jungle, he's perceived as public enemy number one, and yet he came third place, and it's almost almost like a fast track way to public redemption, and I'm really curious to know what your thoughts are on that in terms of how the public now perceive him. Well, I didn't watch I'm a celebrity, and I was a bit jealous, because I would have, if I was in this country, I would have watched it like every night. So I can't, so I don't, so yeah, I was surprised, because on Twitter, everyone was saying that this is terrible, he should be dragged out of the jungle, and then he came third, so I did notice that. But it's again, it's that humanizing effect, isn't it, obviously? So like you see, you see him, and there's a kind of freeze on that, he's allowed, allowed, does that sound right? But he's allowed on our screens to do that, because he should be obviously representing his political constituents. And then once he's there, what, you know, initially, basically what happened is he just got, given all the terrible tasks, and then he was a bit boring, wasn't he? So like people just felt a bit sorry for him, so he got up to the third, but he wasn't interesting enough to win, which, you know, you can imagine him making a career of, he's doing S.A.S., about S.A.S.1 heroes, or whatever, he's doing that next. So he's just gonna be a reality contestant, I think. Sorry, everyone. It's gonna be Matt Hancock from now on, right? So look, I know that you've got a couple of things. Well, there's two more things I wanted to do. Yeah. Before we wind up. Well, thank you for those questions. Well, we should give the audience the things he wants to do. Well, we could either like carry on the questions, or I could... I think she's so a bit of Frank, and then, yes. Oh, and then my little... Okay, I've got two other things lined up that I thought I'd show you. Yeah, cool. Well, yeah, I came back. I showed my film, Frank, I co-wrote with Peter Stroud, a film, Frank, a few years ago, and which is like a fictionalized version of my years with Frank Sidebottom, and I came across my old Frank Sidebottom slideshow, so I thought I'd just... This maybe only makes sense to people who are from, as we are, from Manchester. Frank Sidebottom wore a big, fake head. Yeah, exactly. Timpely. Timpely, yeah. He wore a big, fake head that he never took off. Oh, that's not... Almost all of them. Oh, that's my... Oh, here we go. There's Frank. Okay. I've got to have my way now, baby. All I know is that it's good. You look like you're fucked to me. I opened up my loving arms and watch out, because here I come. You spit me right round, baby right round, like a raccoon, right round, right round. You spit me right round, baby right round, like a raccoon, right round, right round. You know you do, you really do. Hey, Frank. It is mesmerising. I was in this band. There I am back. Nothing makes a young man feel more alive than driving up the N6 at three in the morning, sitting next to a man wearing a big, fake head. And he just never takes it off, does he? Well, for long periods, he didn't take it off, and you couldn't call him Chris, which was his real name, until he took the head off. Yeah. He shyly moved away to take the head off, and I would look, and he had a nose peg that was digging in so much, it had deformed his nose, and he would like take the head off and then take the nose peg off and wince in pain, being Frank was painful. This is me with Mike, the manager. Anyway, I drifted like... They fired me for tax reasons. He owed £30,000 tax. He couldn't afford you? Yeah, he couldn't afford us any more. Even though he was only paying me £40 a night. But he stood up in court, and the judge said, do you owe a loss of money? Do you have a payment plan? And he said, would a pound a week suffice malud? And I said, no, it would not. So he fired me, and then 20 years later, I got back in touch and said he was putting the band back together. Amazing. And then he said, and I would like, would you write something in the Guardian about it? So he didn't want me to be in the band again. But he said that he'd had some new publicity photos done. Age hadn't withered him. Wow. Doesn't he look good? Yeah, he's barely, barely changed. And then I started writing a film with Peter Straude, sort of a fictionalised version of the story. And during that, he got cancer. And one of the last things he did was draw a picture of Frank Sidebottom having done chemotherapy. And then he died while we were still writing the film. And the Manchester Evening News said he was going to be buried in a porpoise grave. So we sent out one tweet, and within hours, we'd raised about £25,000, which frankly was enough to bury and then exhume him and then several times. I don't know if that is what they spent the money on. And then they made a sculpture of Frank. It was forged in the Czech Republic and was erected outside the dry cleaners in Timberley. Which is definitely the right place for him to be. And they sent me a photo of the sculpture on its way from the Czech Republic. I love this picture so much. Because I think in this picture, Frank looks like he's been disturbingly kidnapped, but is fine with it. And then the great unveiling. Yeah. It was great. And I wanted to show you that. I just found it and I thought it'd be fantastic. Yeah, I love Frank. I mean, I remember, I once went to the Hacienda before the Hacienda was into rave and they did a fashion show and he was the host. And they were just somebody who would walk past him like in a very unusual tarp and stuff like that. And he'd go, oh, look, it looks like my Newcastle strip. He was absolutely brilliant. I actually performed in them at the Shaw Theatre when it was in a different part of town. Amazing. Yeah. And I fell over on stage, tried to kick a football. You don't do anything fancy on stage, do you really? So I thought we could, no. I thought if you wanted to end with, I've got a little clip. I'm making a new show. Yes, let's have that. And I've got a tiny clip. This is unveiling of a show that I've nearly finished and it'll be out at some point maybe next spring. And gradually the first line, it's called The Debutant. And the first line of it is, this is the story of a debutant. I won't say where she's from because I wanna try and keep some of it private still. This is the story of a debutant who as a result of a series of unlikely and often very bad life choices she made in the 90s found herself in the midst of one of the most terrible crimes ever to happen in America. So who's gonna not wanna? That sounds great. Because we've all made terrible decisions in the 90s but we haven't ended up there. So I thought I'd play like a one minute clip of one of her first bad life choices. Excellent. Okay, this is very early from episode one. So she's just come back from Colorado and she's a former debutant from high society but she's lashing out a little bit and she's at a party and she meets a guy like a young stoner drifter called Greg. And after three weeks, she says, let's get married. So they drive to Vegas and get married. And then he meets her parents and it doesn't go well because they wanted her to marry a squire from the debutant ball, not a stoner drifter, Greg. Greg was just delightful, but they were very troubled duo. So I'm gonna play you a very short clip of after they'd been married three weeks, she announced to Greg that there was something that she wanted them to do. She wanted to get tattooed and she wanted her swastika. What Carol wanted specifically was for her and Greg to get matching swastika tattoos, very large ones on their arms, as big as Nazi armbands. We got outlines that night of it and it looked horrible the next morning. I went to the bathroom, we looked in the mirror and I'd seen what I had done to myself and I put the damn thing off. Mm-mm, wasn't coming off. I went to work and I showed a guy and he's like, oh my God, what did you do? I was like, yeah, I know, oh my God. My, you know, my wife taught me into it. Stupid. But. As drunken mistakes go, getting a massive swastika tattooed on her arms is a pretty big one. That is a really stupid move on my part. Greg's had his swastika tattoo covered over now. He's disguised it with little swirls and flowers, which to be honest, makes it look like an effeminate swastika. So that's a very small clip of the first of many twists and turns. It sounds great. Very good. Yay, so that's it. So look, I'd like to say thank you for being a really fantastic audience. I'd also like to say hi to Greg Stackelman because he really wanted to come. Oh, the magazine fell. So I'm just going to say that. Also, John will be signing books in the bar area, I believe it's called the foyer, the foyer. But I'd like to say thank you for being a fantastic audience and thank you to the wonderful John Ronson. Yay.