Are you a psychopath? Jon Ronson brings his Psychopath Test to Scotland

Obesessive and anxious yes, but the bestselling author, podcaster and screenwriter is happy to fail his own test

Jon Ronson has spent decades researching psychopaths which led to his bestselling book, The Psychopath Test, and his most popular show, Psychopath Night Live. Pic: Emli Bendixen

Have you ever worried you might be a psychopath, be friends with a psychopath or work for one? Journalist, filmmaker, and author Jon Ronson has, to the extent that he developed a psychopath checklist and wrote a bestselling book about it, which turned into a show that has proved so popular. Ronson is not alone in his fascination with the subject and 15 years on, The Psychopath Test is as popular as ever, so he has revisited it with a new edition of the book and has hit the road with an updated show, Psychopath Night Live Tour, that he’s bringing to Scotland.

As well as The Psychopath Test, the 56-year-old’s hit books include So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, Them: Adventures with Extremists, Lost at Sea and The Men Who Stare At Goats, with the latter which is based on the true story of a US army unit devoted to psychological warfare, made into a film starring Ewan McGregor, George Clooney and Jeff Bridges. He worked on the screenplays for another two films, Frank (Michael Fassbender, Maggie Gyllenhaal), inspired by his time in a band with the reclusive singer Frank Sidebottom, and the Netflix original Okja, (Tilda Swinton, Jake Gyllenhaal) and his two TED talks have been watched more than 30 million times, with Strange Answers to The Psychopath Test being amongst the 25 most watched TED talks of all time. His BBC podcast Things Fell Apart (2021- 2024) won the Broadcasting Press Guild Award for podcast of the year and his audible Original audio series, The Butterfly Effect and The Last Days of August topped the charts.

You’re bringing your show, Psychopath Night Live to Edinburgh and Glasgow. Tell us about it.

Jon Ronson's BBC podcast series Things Fell Apart (2021- 2024) won the Broadcasting Press Guild Award for podcast of the year and his audible Original audio series, The Butterfly Effect and The Last Days of August topped the charts. Pic: BBC/PA

Of my shows, the Psychopath show is definitely the one that fills the big rooms. I don’t know if it’s because people really like the book or they’re interested in the subject matter but it’s popular. It’s like a 3D version of the book, so there’s a whole lot of things that are going to happen that aren’t in the book, interviews with mystery guests, including an Edinburgh woman who has the MOST extraordinary twisty turny story, and inspired the book when I was interviewing her for something else. But I’m reluctant to tell you any more…

And there’s another Scottish person doing some of the shows, and very rare film clips that people have never seen before of experiments undertaken on psychopaths in the 1960s, the wildest stuff. In the 1960s this psychologist called Elliott Barker came up with the theory that the problem of psychopathy is it’s buried deep within so if you want to treat it you need to bring it to the surface. He got all the psychopaths in his unit in a mental hospital in Canada to take all of their clothes off and take vast amounts of LSD and he would handcuff them to each other. The idea was these mammoth naked LSD sessions would bring psychopathy to the surface and they could treat it, and I’ve got film of these experiments.

So the psychopaths change and become more empathetic and there’s clips of these guys who murdered people talking to others so lovingly. They’re declared cured and get released and then years later psychologists did a long term recidivism study to see how many of them went on to re-offend. In usual circumstances 60% of high scoring psychopaths go on to reoffend, but of the ones who had been through the naked LSD sessions, it was 80%. It had made them worse. It had taught them how to fake empathy better.

The second half of the show and book are about how you can get a little bit too drunk with the psychopath spotting powers and how the proliferation of mental health diagnoses becomes a bad thing. It moves away from psychopaths to a still darkly funny and surprising, but broader look at when is a mental health diagnosis good and helpful and when does it make everything worse?

As well as The Psychopath Test, Jon Ronson's hit books include So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, Them: Adventures with Extremists, Lost at Sea and The Men Who Stare At Goats, which was made into a film starring Ewan McGregor, George Clooney and Jeff Bridges. He also co-wrote the screenplay for Frank (Michael Fassbender, Maggie Gyllenhaal), inspired by his time in a band with the reclusive singer Frank Sidebottom, and the Netflix original Okja, (Tilda Swinton, Jake Gyllenhaal). Pic Jonathan Hordle/Shutterstock

The show poses the questions: Do psychopaths rule the world? How do we define normal? Are you worried you might be one? Can you answer those briefly for us?

I’ll answer the last question first, Are You Worried You Might Be One? So many people read The Psychopath Test and were worried that they might be a psychopath and my answer to that is always if you’re worried you are a psychopath then you aren’t one, because psychopaths never worry about it.

Do psychopaths rule the world?

I’m not sure they rule the world but I would say you’re significantly more likely to find a psychopath at the top of the pyramid of power than at the bottom. Capitalism rewards psychopathy so I journeyed into the corridors of power to try and secretly spot psychopaths so I’d say yes, to an extent.

Jon Ronson's Psychopath Night Live Tour comes to Glasgow and Edinburgh. His Strange Answers to The Psychopath Test TED talk is amongst the 25 most watched of all time. Pic: Contributed

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How do we define normal?

That’s not something I can answer concisely but the question about when is increasing diagnosis positive and when is it negative is really interesting to think about.

Are you friends with a psychopath?

Jon Ronson on stage ahead of one of his popular live shows. Pic: Erin Brethauer

No. I’m friends with a couple of narcissists. Ones who aren’t too malevolent or self involved but are a little bit lower down the spectrum. Am I friends with any psychopaths? Not that I know of. I’ve worked with psychopaths and it wasn’t fun. I’ve done stories on psychopaths who have tried to screw up my life.

Do psychopaths reject the diagnosis?

Because psychopaths don’t have empathy sometimes it’s hard for them to realise they’re psychopaths because they think nobody has empathy, that it’s the normal state of being, so I think some are probably deniers. Others know and I’ve had people say they know they’re psychopaths and don’t want to be malevolent any more, but put their psychopathy to good use, like becoming a better salesman, or one person said becoming a better church missionary. That was interesting.

Dp you think there will be psychopaths in the audience?

Yes. I’m pretty sure psychopaths want to go to a show called Psychopath Night, so I think there will be.

You put yourself in dangerous situations with dangerous people. Do you ever get scared?

Journalist, author, podcaster and screenwriter Jon Ronson is taking his most popular show, Psychopath Night Live on the road. Pic: Contributed

Yeah, I don’t love it. I’m not a thrill seeker. The only reason I put myself in dangerous situations is because I really love being on my own in a room constructing stories, and because I’m no good at making stuff up I have to do dangerous things to give myself something to write about. I get no pleasure from it.

But over the years, my god, going to Jihad training camps and sneaking into Bohemian Grove [a private gentlemen's club in California whose members are some of the most prominent men in the world] and the Bilderberg Group, and hanging out with Nazis and people who really hate Jews, there’s been a lot. Writing So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, that was like throwing a hand grenade into society, and I’m a very conflict averse, quite an introverted person, so that was scary.

But when you’re on a train of thought, you just have to keep going and if you’re sincere about it, you’re not being a provocateur, you’re writing what you genuinely believe and you just have to keep going. The story and integrity are everything.

Are the stories all true?

Yeah. The only times I’ve ever veered into fiction is in screenplays and they were co-written, and that never felt as comfortable. I’m much better with the truth.

Frank ended up very different, very fictionalised. There’s almost nothing in the movie that really happened and we took from other stories, so there’s as much inspired by the life of Daniel Johnston, and this weird band called The Shags and Captain Beefheart as there was about Frank Sidebottom; we pilfered from many different true life mythologies in that film.

Were you pleased with how the films turned out?

Yeah, I like all three. Okja I was very much in service to Bong Joon-ho, it was his thing entirely and I just helped with sub-characters in some scenes. Frank was different. Me and Peter wrote Frank imagining something a bit more madcap and slapsticky, maybe like Withnail and I, and by the time it became a movie it was more sort of gentle and Scandinavian and low-key than we anticipated, but I thought that interesting.

And The Men Who Stare at Goats, I didn’t write the screenplay, only the book, and I really liked the film. I think some of the funniest stuff in the movie was written by the screenwriter Peter Straughan, like when George Clooney and Ewan McGregor are driving along trying to burst clouds and they hit a rock, which is such a funny scene and was completely Peter’s invention.

Is there anything you think all three films have in common?

Okja obviously is about power corrupting and trickling down and affecting everyday people on the ground, which is kind of what Things Fell Apart is about and what So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed is about to an extent. And Frank, what I really like about it is how the character based on me is the villain. It reminds me a bit of the book The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters, where the protagonist is a villain who has no idea he’s a villain. For Frank, I’m the baddie and just don’t know it. I’m ruining everything, not through villainy but mediocrity and I think that’s a lovely thing to make a film about. And The Men Who Stare At Goats is just about human absurdity, which is in all my work I guess.

You’re described as somebody that’s searching for the ‘gems’, the ‘diamonds in normality’. What is it that attracts you to a story?

I’d like to think all the stories I tell are funny and surprising and sometimes absurd and sometimes silly, always mysterious, but they always matter. They are always metaphors for something big and important. The stories have to resonate, be something big about the world. I think if I have that combination that’s the wind behind my sails.

What’s your current obsession and what’s next?

I am writing a book but I’m not going to tell you what it is because I’m at the stage where I think it’s important to kind of internalise it. Also I would be looking at your facial expressions and any disappointment would destroy me. And I’m not quite sure what it is yet. But I am obsessed with a particular thing right now. Thank god. If you’re working on something and not obsessed, then it’s not going to be a good story.

Your wife Elaine is from Scotland. Is she coming with you on tour?

No, I like to be like Zorro when I do my shows, turn up, do it, then disappear. I like to be on my own, separate my touring from my real life. I think if she was in the audience I’d be more self-conscious. So Elaine’s never travelled with me in all of these decades. She’s probably been in the audience of three or four shows in 30 years.

I think it’s healthy. Our home life is very small and we’re not flashy, don’t go to parties very often. We watch TV and sometimes go out for dinner. We have a very modest life and I think it’s good to keep that separate from going on stage in front of 1.500 people.

I have a bit of superstition that if Elaine comes to a show that will be the one that’s shit and maybe that will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. That’s a stupid, irrational superstition but I have that. Very often she reads stuff for me and tells me if she likes it, so she’s a good sounding board.

You’ve talked about your anxiety. What do you think is behind it, such as thinking your wife was dead if she failed to answer the phone when you were away?

I think it’s just a disorder. I actually don’t really have that one any more. Paul McKenna hypnotised me and cured me of that particular anxiety, but I should have got him to cure me of all the anxieties. Maybe in 40 minutes the best you can hope for is to be cured of one anxiety. I think it’s just a disorder I was born with.

We’d be anxious too if we did your job…

Well, it’s interesting. When Covid started I Tweeted something along the lines of are other people suffering from anxiety feeling weirdly calm now, and I got literally a thousand responses, 95% of which were saying ‘yes, isn’t this weird’.

That’s the thing about anxiety - you worry about stupid shit that doesn’t matter, irrational nonsense, and when something genuinely anxiety-inducing happens, like a pandemic or me being outed as a Jew at a jihad training camp, you feel pretty calm.

So you felt calm being outed at the jihad training camp?

Yeah. In genuinely anxiety inducing situations I feel very calm, and in stupid situations I feel anxious. I don’t think that’s particularly unusual for anxiety sufferers, I think that’s a pretty common thing.

Did you feel anxious about the incident later?

No, it’s just a good story. When I’m back at home I think thank god that happened because now I’ve got something really funny to write about. That’s why I do the dangerous things, to be writing about them back at home.

Do you ever thinkg ‘I’ve taken this too far?’

There have been one or two occasions. When I was being chased by the Bilderberg Group through Portugal and their henchmen were following me, that was genuinely terrifying and I was genuinely scared in the moment. I wasn’t calm then. And when I went to Aryan Nations and all the skinheads surrounded me and asked me if I was Jewish, I was genuinely scared then. And sneaking into Bohemian Grove was terrifying, so there have been a few occasions where I was genuinely scared in the moment.

What did the skinheads do?

When I said I was Jewish something interesting happened. This guy, he wasn’t a skinhead but he worked at Aryan Nations, alleviated the situation and made a joke and all the skinheads drifted away, and to this day I don’t know whether he knew I was Jewish but didn’t want there to be a big fight, or maybe was an undercover agent or informant helping me out.

You said journalists should be obsessive and paranoid. Why?

Obsessive because going down rabbit holes is a great way of telling stories. Getting obsessed with the story increases its quality, as long as you know when not to let it control your life. Paranoid I’m not sure about, but I definitely think journalists should be independent outsiders, not aligned.

And you don’t become friends with your subjects?

That has rarely happened to me, almost never. Robbie Williams I’m friends with, and one or two others.

What about Paul McKenna?

No, Except I met him one other time. With Robbie Williams in fact, who he was having dinner with, so I went over and said to him, ‘you know you really cured me of that thing with my wife, it really worked’ and he gave me a massive hug, pleased he’d helped.

How did you do on the psychopath test yourself?

I’m prone to boredom, but that’s pretty much it. I don’t think there’s any other item on the checklist I score high on. Anxiety is the opposite of psychopathy, so people with anxiety, I don’t think can be psychopaths. I’m definitely not a psychopath.

Jon Ronson’s Psychopath Night Live Tour, 22 October, Pavilion Theatre, Glasgow; 23 October, Usher Hall, Edinburgh. Tickets are available via: fane.co.uk/jon-ronson

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