IN HIS hugely acclaimed 2004 best-seller The Men Who Stare at Goats, Jon Ronson delved into the US military's long, strange history of experimenting with the paranormal, including attempts to weaponise mind-control – the latter allegedly resulting in a soldier managing to kill a goat simply by staring at it.
The book was eventually adapted into the 2009 movie starring George Clooney: however, according to the Cardiff-born, New York-based investigative journalist, author and podcaster, The Men Who Stare at Goats might never have been written were it not for a Q&A event in Belfast a couple of years beforehand.
"I had just snuck into Bohemian Grove with Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist," recalls Ronson, referencing one of the most popular chapters of his 2001 book Them: Adventures with Extremists, in which he and Jones – who eventually become a hugely popular, Trump-endorsed, right-wing radio host: he declared bankruptcy last year after being ordered to pay $1.487 billion in damages for repeatedly claiming the Sandy Hook school shootings were a hoax – managed to witness a bizarre pagan ritual conducted at an elite gathering of business moguls and politicians on the remote private campsite in northern California.
"I was telling the Belfast audience about how we'd witnessed this weird ritual that Alex was convinced was a human sacrifice. I thought that it was way less malevolent than that, and they had definitely only 'sacrificed' a papier-mache effigy – but then Alex had brought out his video where he said that "we may have witnessed an actual human sacrifice" and that it might have been an actual child that was sacrificed by the elitists for their Moloch owl god worship.
"When it came to the Q&A, somebody said, 'What I want to know is, what were the members of Bohemian Grove getting out of this?' And I thought, 'That's such an interesting question' – because they had seemed really into it.
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"Like, I remember thinking, 'I'm the only sane person in this entire Redwood forest', because the Bohemians themselves were just as into this ritual as Alex.
"I thought, 'If Them is about irrationality on the fringes of society, my next book has to be about irrationality in places of power' – and that book became The Men Who Stare at Goats. So yeah, I can really trace its genesis back to that question that I was asked in Belfast."
Who knows what creative spark might be produced by Ronson's imminent return to the city, for events at Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival (CQAF) and Belfast Media Festival. The former will be an 'in conversation' event hosted by BBC journalist Kathy Clugston, while the latter will find him participating in a panel discussion.
"I don't know anything about it," admits Ronson of the latter appearance.
"I was invited to do it, and the reason why I said 'yes' was that I'd rather be doing a panel than bouncing around the walls of the Europa Hotel."
To be fair, the author doesn't seem entirely sure what's going to be happening at the CQAF event either – although there is certainly plenty to talk about, from his other best-selling non-fiction books such as So You've Been Publicly Shamed (2015) and The Psychopath Test (2011), to his hugely popular documentary podcasts, The Butterfly Effect (2015), The Last Days of August (2019), The Debutante (2023) and Things Fell Apart (2021).
The latter BBC-produced series, which focuses on the often incredible human stories tied up in the origin of some of our most hotly debated 'culture wars' – from abortion rights to cancel culture – is due to return for a second run in the new year.
"I'm slightly embarrassed to say that I don't know exactly what it is that Kathy will want to talk to me about," says Ronson, who's also currently working on a new book.
"But if it's about Things Fell Apart, then I'm about to finish the second season, so I'm going to play a couple of clips from that."
Wary of being 'scooped' – Ronson says it almost happened with his podcast series The Last Days of August, a compelling and compassionate investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death by suicide of US porn star August Ames – he's not giving too much away about the new book or the new series of Things Fell Apart, although he does reveal that the latter's episodes will all be linked by the Covid lockdowns.
"Season one was the origin stories of the culture wars going back to the late 1960s," he explains, "just going back in time and finding these tiny little moments that then blossomed into the hell that we all live in today.
"For season two, what I realised was that, a little way into lockdown, a whole bunch of things happened in a very short period of time which engulfed the world: all of these different culture wars began within days of each other – and a lot of them were just the frustrations of being cooped up and people's brains spiralling."
Ronson will also be hosting a writing workshop in Dublin during his upcoming Irish visit, an intensive session aimed at helping those who wish to follow in his footsteps as an author of long-form non-fiction with addictive, page-turning qualities.
"It's incredibly detailed about every aspect of the process," he enthuses, "from 'how do you know which story you want to tell?' through to the sort of practicalities of how you do it.
"You know, from 'what's the best way of approaching people?', through to the best way of structuring it, the best way of writing it – 'how do you make things a cliffhanger?' and all of that kind of stuff – and the overall structural arc and then sentence-by-sentence structure.
"I spend most of my life thinking about this stuff, and 'how do you do it?' is the question I get asked the most: so this writing workshop is for people who share my level of ambition of trying to make a non-fiction book as interesting as a novel, with twists and turns and unreliable narrators and all the techniques you expect from fiction."
Jon Ronson will be in conversation with Kathy Clugston on Wednesday November 15 at the Mandela Hall, Belfast, as part of the Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival. Tickets via cqaf.com. He will also take part in a panel discussion at the Belfast Media Festival on the morning of Thursday November 16 (ticket and event details via belfastmediafestival.co.uk) before travelling to Dublin to run a masterclass writing workshop in long-form non-fiction. Tickets and information at tuesdayagencystore.com.
News! I’m embarking on a whole new Psychopath Night in 2024 - telling new stories, reopening the case! UK and Ireland. #psychopathnight All details at https://t.co/EwCGC5OxuJ https://t.co/jnrrwO25dl
— jon ronson (@jonronson) November 1, 2023
