Jon Ronson: ‘What will be the next culture war? Autism. And climate migration’ | Jon Ronson

If you could have learned one lesson earlier on in your life, what would it have been?

Don’t tweet. I remember right at the beginning of Twitter – and this is really indiscreet, so I hope the parties involved won’t mind – but I remember Matt Stone from South Park said to me, “Look at Lena Dunham. She’s got this incredible show on HBO. She’s can express herself in these beautiful ways on HBO. And then she goes and fucks it all up on Twitter.” And I agree. People who are able to write for a living shouldn’t fuck it all up on Twitter.

At the beginning I thought, “This is a place where you can be unselfconscious. You can splurge out any old shit, and that’s the joy of it!” But people didn’t want me talking about my breakfast. I wish I’d maintained a bit of mystique. Also, I got into fights with people. I really should have listened to Matt Stone and my friend Adam Curtis – they knew really early on what was going to happen.

Also, X is despicable now. It’s absolutely impossible to know what’s true and what’s not. The right were going on about how terrible leftwing cancel culture was, and now they’re the ones doing it, like assholes!

If you could change the size of any animal to keep it as a pet, what would it be?

I’d want a tiny little bear! It’d have to be very small because they’re deadly, so it would be up to my ankle.

Who is the most famous person in your phone contacts?

Robbie Williams.

From the alien thing!

Yeah, we stayed friends. You know, I messaged him just the other day because – have you seen the trailer for his biopic that’s coming out? The monkey one? I watched it and thought it was brilliant, so I texted him and we had a bit of a chat. I’ve got a feeling it will be a big Christmas hit.

What is the most dangerous thing you have ever done?

I think I was in genuine danger going to Aryan Nations. I was walking past all these signs that said, “No Jews”, “Jews turn back now”, and I was like, “Oh, they’ll be fine with me!”

That was the worst time to go to Aryan Nations as well, because they’d just been made bankrupt in a lawsuit and had nothing to lose, they were about to shut down. I was making a documentary and all these skinheads surrounded me. They knew I was Jewish, and they were asking me what my genealogy was. That was the phrase they used – “What’s your genealogy?”

This older guy came over and made a joke, and that alleviated the situation – so somebody in Aryan Nations saved me from the Aryan Nations. But that was genuinely dangerous. They were violent white supremacists living in a fucking compound together and they had no reputation to protect any more. That was dangerous.

What’s the most recent book you’ve read that had a huge impact on you?

Jennette McCurdy’s book I’m Glad My Mom Died. It knocked me for six, I couldn’t believe how well she writes. I’m so much more about the way somebody writes than what they write about. Even if it’s incredibly emotional and upsetting, I’m just concentrating on the sentence structure. Jennette McCurdy is an incredible writer – she’s like George Saunders! I was too old to watch her on Nickelodeon, so I came in knowing nothing but that people liked her book. It totally blew me away.

What is a matter or belief you have unexpectedly changed your mind about?

Oh, I’m always going back and forward on things. I would be the worst fucking jury member, because I believe whatever anybody’s saying to me. I listen to the prosecution and go, “Of course this person’s guilty! Oh my God!” Then I listen to the defence and it’s like, “This person’s the most innocent person in the world!”

I’m like that with everything, even culture wars. If somebody says something to me with conviction – unless it’s completely insane – I tend to see the world from their eyes. And then right at the end, when everything’s died down, I think, “OK, well, what do I believe? What’s the appropriate thing to believe?” But in the moment, I’m constantly flipping back and forward.

What do you think is going to be the next culture war?

This is plagiarism, because I heard somebody else say this – but climate migration. Like this little village where I am living, in upstate New York, loads of people are coming over from California to escape climate change. There’s climate migrants heading to the Hudson Valley, and they’re rich Hollywood people. But that’s how it starts. And I think that’s going to cause a lot of conflicts.

And autism. I’ve noticed that people on the right have tried to make autism a culture war – they’re comparing people who call themselves neurodiverse and autistic to trans people, saying stuff like, “They think they’re autistic, but they’re not really autistic.” And then high-functioning autistic people are pointing out that there’s actually surprising little difference between them and more severely autistic people. The outward manifestation is different, but the underlying condition is the same. I think that’s all fascinating.

I think the people on the right are wrong about this. It’s like they just find autistic people annoying and think they just want to be special.

Do you have a nemesis?

Well, nemesis is different to enemy, right? Nemesis is more positive. It used to be Louis Theroux. We were very competitive, in a positive way – we were both driving each other to do better things. I used to be unable to watch his documentaries. I’d get so worked up, because he’s good! I’d be like, “Fuck, he’s better than I am on TV!” But then I started to write really good books, and it was like, “Well, he can have TV – I’ll have books.”

Me and Louis really healed our wounds a few years ago. Since then, I honestly can’t think of anyone I feel competitive with in that way. I feel pretty content.

What do you do when you can’t get to sleep? I need to tell you that when we did this with Carrie Brownstein from Sleater-Kinney, she said she listens to your podcasts to go to sleep because you have a soothing, mellifluous voice.

Oh my God! I loved her audiobook so I could definitely reciprocate. I thought her voice was fantastic!

But lately I listen to podcasts that have nothing to do with with my work. Like the BBC show In Our Time, which is really interesting but not in a way that’s going to wake you up. And an unbelievably good podcast called Fall of Civilizations. This guy takes a different civilization and talks about why it fell apart and what it would have been like to live through the death of ancient Egypt or Roman Britain.

Do you have a party trick?

Quite often I tell the story about how I was nearly killed on a Concorde flight sitting next to Keith Richards. I guess that’s my party trick.

WHAT?

[Laughs] Shall I tell you that story? This is like my top-shelf anecdote.

It’s about 1996. I’m invited to a party at Paisley Park where Prince is going to be performing his new record, and they’re going to fly me on Concorde.

I’ll skip some of the details. But I sit down next to Keith Richards. I’m thinking, I’m going to have to spend the next four hours pretending I don’t know I’m sitting next to Keith Richards. But Keith Richards immediately hooks me in the ribs and starts saying things like [Keith Richards voice]: “I’ve done everything, man!” I swear to God, he said that.

The plane takes off, and it reaches Mach 2 – you can feel it when it beats the sound barrier, and there’s a little ripple of applause. But then the plane starts to slow down, and the captain comes on the tannoy and says: “You may have noticed that CHHK-” and the tannoy is not working! “- hydraulic fuel, CHHHK.”

The person in front of me, who was the head of Capital Records in London, said, “Apparently the last time this happened, they gave everybody £500 Marks & Spencers vouchers!” And people were like, “Ooh, did you hear that? We could get some vouchers!”

So the captain comes out of the cockpit and starts addressing people four by four, because the tannoy isn’t working. He gets to me and Keith Richards and says, “We’ve lost all of our hydraulic fuel, we’re going to turn back to Heathrow, we may or may not make it.” The guy in front was whispering: “The vouchers! Ask him about the vouchers!”

Keith Richards was like: “I don’t care. But I tell you who is going to be really pissed off? Mick – he’s down at the front.” So Mick Jagger comes over and they’re going, “Fucking hell, we’re never going to get to the party now” – and he and Keith Richards are standing there having this big conversation right in front of me while the plane is leaking hydraulic fuel. And I’m thinking, if this plane crashes, all the headlines are going to be: “Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Liam Neeson and 97 others … ”

We get back to Heathrow. We get on another Concorde. We go to New York. At Prince’s house, this journalist says to me, “I heard that you were in an incident on Concorde, sitting next to Keith Richards. Were you scared?” And I said, “Yeah, I was a little bit scared.” And he said, “Was Keith Richards scared?” And I said, “No, Keith Richards didn’t seem that scared.”

The next day, my wife phones me up and says, “Have you seen the papers?” She read out a page from the Sun and it was like: “‘I was terrified!’ said passenger Ronson, ‘but not Keith. Keith just knocked back another Jack Daniels.’”