Jon Ronson
Jon Ronson
Jon Ronsonis a Welsh journalist, author, documentary filmmaker and radio presenter whose works include the best-selling The Men Who Stare at Goatsand The Psychopath Test. He has been described as a gonzo journalist, becoming something of a faux-naïf character himself in his stories...
NationalityWelsh
ProfessionJournalist
Date of Birth10 May 1967
flown planes telling trade
I did feel like they were telling me that something like that was going to happen. Not specifically - not that planes were going to be flown into the World Trade Center or anything like that - but in the general sense.
april arts center chose fitness florida head heard martial matter maybe military name perhaps reputation rodriguez scattered security taught took turned uniquely
In April 2001, Bert Rodriguez took on a new student. His name was Ziad Jarrah. Ziad just turned up at the US 1 Fitness Center one day and said he had heard that Bert was good. Why Ziad chose Bert, of all the martial arts instructors scattered around the Florida shoreline, is a matter of speculation. Maybe Bert's uniquely occultic reputation preceded him, or perhaps it was Bert's military connections. Plus, Bert had once taught the head of security for a Saudi prince. Maybe that was it.
bohemian cracks narrative sort takes
Without sounding too pretentious, I was sort of a slave to the narrative. When the narrative cracks in, I have to go where it takes me. I had to go to the Bohemian Grove. It was the obvious end to the book.
opposites shooting faces
I am the neurological opposite of a psychopath, in that I feel anxious almost all the time. It must be great to not constantly feel like you’ve got someone living inside your face, shooting you with a mini Taser.
confirmation bias seeing
Ever since I learnt about confirmation bias I've started seeing it everywhere.
nuance online posts
We're living in post-nuance online times.
rejection sides talk-to-me
But on the extremist side I didn't get any rejections at all. Everyone agreed to talk to me.
say-anything accepting ideology
You can say anything to David Icke and he will accept it and put it into his ideology.
manifestation remorseless capitalism
Capitalism, at its most remorseless, is a physical manifestation of psychopathy.
avalanches needs snowflake
The snowflake never needs to feel responsible for the avalanche.
paranoia force ends
My paranoia never ends, but I haven't been paranoid about being spied on my shadowy forces for some time now.
fearless type persons
I'm not what you'd call a fearless type of person.
adventure trying littles
Nothing uniquely bad has happened to me in my personal life, but all the regular little bad things have accumulated to make me a neurotic person. And these adventures are my way of trying to make sense of that.
relationship childhood understanding
We have to understand how the extremists got the way they are. Without that kind of understanding, we'd never really get to know them. I put in nothing about their childhoods. But what I have put in is stuff about the weird symbiotic relationship between us and them.