and i thought that's like you for books right now. >> i am a high school junior and i have been interested going into publishing particularly editing. i'm taking english and i served on the board of my school's literary magazine. my main question is what should i be looking for in terms of now during high school and during college and after that to kind of get into the industry and help prepare myself? ..[laughter] >> well, i think it's safe to say we didn't go the trust fund route. >> yeah, exactly. >> there are great internship programs you know, in college, you can apply to those and after college nyu, denver and columbia all have really good

postgraduate publishing programs which are expensive and not totally necessary, but a very good way to get a foot in the door and contacts. good luck. >> and it's really it's an apprenticeship business. i mean, we all started as assistants, and you learn by doing. and it really is that's like way the business works. .. more we are getting the no. i want to thank you for coming and our wonderful guest. [applause]

>> is there an author you would like to see featured on booktv? tweet us post on our wall or e-mail us. >> and now on booktv. jon ronson author of "so you've been publicly shamed," "the psychopath test," and "the men who stare at goats" and more. we discussed this works on in depth. >> host: jon ronson, who is them? >> guest: two secret holders of the world who exist and don't exist depending on what you bring to the situation. it is a book in which i hung out with conspiracy theorist and

tried to sneak into the rooms behind their discussions. them are the extremist and conspiracy theorist and possible delusions. >> host: did you find the secret room? >> guest: yes i did. and found two secret rooms. i went to the ceaser hotel with a conspiracy theorist from a town with a man who is now deceased. we moved around the hotel and then left and got chased by men in dark glasses.

i can tell you i wasn't sure such a group existed. i went there because i thought this is what conspiracy theorist believe and i thought it was a fantasy. i went there thinking something is happening but it wasn't important. but be and victor tucker went around the hotel trying to get contact with waitresses and madesids and we left. i noticed someone was following us and i chase ensued when i say chase i was going 30 miles per hour and so was he. so i am panicking. i have never been chased by the shadow hedgemen of the secret rulers of the world.

i have been yelled at before but never chased by men in black glaesses from on organization i didn't know about. i stopped the car, he stopped his car, i went up to his window and there was a man in dark glasses. i knocked on the window to explain myself and he would not look at me. i got back in the car and carried on driving and he carried on. the first thing i did was phone up my wife and i said this is really bad and i am being chased by the group and i am really upset and i don't know what to do and i am really out of my depth. and i am not even sure i will

ever see you again. my wife said oh you are loving it. then i phoned up the embassy and said i am being followed by a group and the woman went gasp and go on. and i said i'm sorry i heard you take a sharp breath and she said what are you doing here? and i said i am essentially a humorous journalist out of my depth. do you think you might phone the group and explain that to them and tell them i am here with a conspiracy theorist named victor tucker and maybe you can explain i am in the car with tucker. and she said the big news is if

you know you are being followed they are probably trying to intimidate you and the dangerous ones you would not know were following you. and i thought what if these people are just messing with me. we got back to our hotel and this is three hours into the day and we go back to the hotel and the woman from the pacific embassy telephoned me saying i spoke to the office at the hotel and they said no body is following you and how can they call off a man who doesn't exist.

and i said he is behind the tree. and he was behind the tree stare starring at us. i imagined myself being chased for weeks but at some point it stopped and i wasn't being surveilled anymore. >> where do they get their names? >> from the first hotel where they met in 1954. that is to say the next day we went to the hotel and staid and watched the lim seens with david rockafellor, ceo's like heinz.

i talked to two important members soon. dennis heely, one of the founding members and explained what the group meant to him and that is this was after the second world war and they lived through hitler and they believed giving power to business who have no ideaology and believe in money and it was sacred. so the idea was we will be globalist and invite up and coming politicians and have private conversations and try and promote the idea of globalism to up and coming policies. >> host: jon ronson, did you enjoy your time with tucker?

>> guest: it was terrifying but now i am older. i snuck into bohemian grove where they have rituals thrown in the fiery bellies of giant stone owls. i snuck into one of their meetings. more successfully. at the time you want to do nothing less than this stuff. i am not an adrenaline type of person. but looking back these are the great things. these were great days. who is >> host: who is omar and how did you become his driver?

>> guest: i realized he lived a couple miles away in north london and i thought it would be funny -- but in these days it was like if you ask me why was i doing these stories, this was my mid and late 20's and it is always the same; it might be funny. things have changed. but i thought it might be funny to sneak into the meeting and might be funny to hang out with omar while he establishes the islamic state and called him in bin laden in great britain. he is now a successful movie director. and i think it was spending a year with him turning it into a democracy and he said okay. and we went to his house and on the first day the first thing he did was watch the lion king

because he said that was the only way they could relax. they call me the lion the great warrior and fighter. he needed a collection box and we went to the local wholesale ware warehouse and they had giant plastic coca-cola bottles and i said isn't it funny you are collecting money to overthrow the west with symbols of western corruption and he was like yeah and didn't want to engage in the comedy. and then we spent a few months taking him to the cast and carry and office world where he got the islamic british teacher award with the special price of if you find a photo copy service it is cheap skwr office world

gives you double the difference or something. i remember one time i was with omar and he was getting leaf lets that is crush the pilot state of israel and there was a hucytic jew getting sheet music for a barn event. and he was making sideway glances at omar and omar turned to me saying very sensitive moment. he said i have let you in my life and i would like something in return and i said what and he said can you drive me to this meeting up in birmingham? i drove him to what was basically -- i don't want to say a secret terrorist movie but a secret radical -- meeting --

islamic meeting and they would not let us in. omar got in trouble for bringing us and we had to wait in the parking lot and he bought us chuck ice and he was inside this house in birmingham while we sat in the car. and then omar outted -- outed me. he had training camp and he said i had been with him for a year and never discussed by religion. but he suddenly said look at me with the infidel, jon, who is a jew and they all gasped and i

said it is better to be a jew than an atheist. and i don't know why i said that because i am an atheist. and they all surrounded me and asked me what it was like to be a jew and treated me like a rare person. and this was like 1996-1997 and i remember at the time i met someone from the board of deputy, and he said you know britain, i think he meant me as well britain has not woken up to what islamic terrorism means. and i remember thinking and then

four years later in 2001 omar's people have been implicated for terrorism. there have been occasions where a suicide bomber blew someone up and omar's number was in his phone. one of the drivers where the training camp was ended up blowing himself up and omar is in prison now. a few people said were you naive this was happening and you were making a kind of comic story. this is like a terrorist thing and you are in the middle but presented it like a comic story and i guess my answer is everything that happened happened. all of the comedy and the

absurdity happened and we were there. we were there by luck in a way. but we were there filming it. and so i think it is a kind of valuable record of the world being about to change with no body knowing it was happening. >> host: was your time with randy weaver and his family for the same reason? >> guest: no. of all of the stories in my book, that was the one story that i took a completely different attitude. it was you know, a terrible human, what i love about that story is that it is the first time i ever really told a story where the people who most people would represent as villains come over as humanistic and flawed.

i am sure it feels partly responsible for what happened. i am sure he does. but none the less it was an interesting story for me as a journalist where the weaver fm family were kind of half of the story in what it entails. i have never written a story where the people most people think are the villains actually were the people i was feeling great empathy for. i think a lot of people have forgotten this story. a family of white staffers believe in world order and they live on top of a mountain in idaho and think if we can't live

free on top of a mountain in idaho where can you live. and they would be to the white supremacy place and insisted he was never a white supremacist and it was overlap of what they believed and the white supremacist believed. and they would go for the picnics and the kids were young like nine and ten including one i got to know very well and liked. and any way like a lot of white supremacy hangouts this was in infiltrated by the government. can i take a slide detour?

i went to the aryan nation and drove up past the sign that said no jews and jews turn back now and so that was you know. and immediately got surrounded by these skin heads. terrifying young men. aryan nation was about to be closed down but they had nothing to lose and these men surrounded be and started yelling at me what is your geneology and i said i am church of england. and one of these guys made a joke to alleviate the situation. a church that makes you give all of your money and made a joke and everyone relaxed. and i wonder if that one might have been an undercover agent

covering byme at the moment. and presumebly thought we can work with a slightly crazy person but they asked randy if he would be an informant and he said no in quite a grand standing way. like a big no. so then they sent somebody to entrap him and got him saying will you sell us a gun and he said yes and they said will you sell the gun there, the one he stored away, and was below the legal limit and they said you sold us an illegal weapon and you will go to prison if you say no. and randy said no dug his heels in put his family in the cabin

and stayed there saying you will never take me off this land. and the agents were watching and one day one of the agents atf, got too close to the cabin and the dogs started barking and the dogs started chasing the agents and his little boy who is 12 chased the agents down the hill the agents hid in the bush came out, and shot and it dog and killed it and the family said you shot by dog you son of a bit bitch, and fired and didn't hit anybody, but fired. and the agents opened up and shot and sunny yelled dad i am

coming home and the agents shot him in the back and killed him. one of the agents got shot and killed at the same time and it was maybe the family friend maybe it was friendly fire we don't know. then they dragged sammy's body into the shed and the next day randy came out and the fbi shot him and they shot rickey weaver in the head and then a siege ensued for about 12 days until finally the family came out. the girls were awarded a million each in compensation. that was the story -- i guess the whole thing about them is it

is a book about a pressure cooker of craziness. you know the conspiracy theorist were getting crazier and our response to them as well. things were going up and up and the book came out just before 9/11. >> host: and randy weaver is still alive. what is happening? >> guest: last i heard he was selling his book at gun shows and having your photograph taken with randy weaver for $5. randy, i hope you won't mind me saying this. in public he was very -- and he said he is not worth more than my dog to me and implied that i

rarely got the sense that randy shoulders a terrible burden. he knows he was part of the escollation of hostility and his family and vicky would be alive if he didn't act the way he did. >> host: jon ronson how do you get to know these people? why do they say yes to you? >> guest:uest: well the older i get the more i see my older human beings being fully rounded and

empthetic complicated human beings with a mix of wisdom and stupidity. there are exceptions for the people of course. but most people you meet are lovely people. randy is a complicated person but lovely. i spent time with diagnosed psychopaths in secure units and found many positive traits. with my new book "so you've been publicly shamed" it is all about that. it is about let's find the people that we we social justice people despite the people who of society have no merit and you know it has been chasing human qualities.

and emathy and passion. i only tell stories i want to passionate passionately tell and i think they can see the passion. >> host: >> host: let's watch a rital little video here. >> there are no perimeters about how many people can observe you and put you in a public stalk aid. there is a personal price to public humillation and the growth of the internet has jacked up that price. for nearly two decades we have slowly been sewing the seed of shame and public humilitation in our soil on and off line. gossip websites reality

programs politics and hackers even track in shame. the environment online lends to trolling, invasion of privacy and cyber bullying. >> guest: it is true. social media, i feel like we are unpaid shaming interns for google and twitter. like they all make good money out of people shaming and we are getting nothing. worth than nothing. a cold conformist society. yeah, you know, i was talking about the weavers and the people being demonized in my earlier book. right now at this moment the people have the most power on

social media. people very much in my world, social justice people were finding it really hard to distinguish or differentiate against transgression and someone that make as joke that comes out badly suddenly that person is being torn apart and their lives bothered because of the foolish believe some badly worded joke is a clue to that person's inherent evil. i write about this in "the psychopath test" and in "so you've been publicly shamed," this terrible ludicrous tendency we have as human beings to want to define somebody by their outer most aspect. we do it in the mainstream media and we do it because it is fun

and makes us feel good. it is like a cathartic progress. and we do it because of human beings we love nothing more to declare other people insane and we do it to make ourselves feel good and we do it because on social media we surround ourselves with people the same way we do and we become this mutual grooming. people like monic lewinski get torn apart, and everybody approves of it and that is the

dope mine rush. and >> host: how does that work? >> guest: i think it is the earnest desire to do good is where it comes from. because we do do good. i mean just you know constantly good things happen. social justice is making enormousenormou

sshgs enormous in roads. if a columnist writes something racist in thewe can punish the newspaper. the black lives matter protest works. there is power there. but we fall in love with it so much that a day without it feels like a day picking fingernails and certainly there is a huge amount of collateral damage and i want to write a book about collateral damage. the people we demonized. >> host: here is a picture of justine sack arriving at the cape town airport. who is this? >> guest: i really love justine in my story. this book has been written about a lot. i have done a lot of editoral and

why did they have to make justine this empathy character and don't tell me i am allowed to right about this wronged person but not this one because of the baggage. so new york city 170 twitter followers, her avatar she looks like you know she is good looking, she is blond, she has fun at parties in new york and there is a lot of people out there. so anyway she would tweet a joke to her twitter followers

and one of them, the worst joke she ever made was on her way to cape town and tweeted don't ask, hope i don't get aids just kidding, i am white. and she chuckled to herself. >> host: i will share that tweet on air. >> guest: she chuckled to herself and checked twitter and got no replies. and got that bad feeling when the internet doesn't congratulate us for being funny. when "the new york times" followed her saying are you surprised no answers? and she said no body every talks back to me on the internet.

got on the plane, slipped off her phone, fell asleep and there was a text when she turned on the phone there was a text from a friend from high school saying i am so sorry what is happening to you. and another one saying you need to call me right away you are the worldwide trending topic on twitter. she didn't intend for this. like everybody else lying in bed and tweeting she slept and that tweet went around the world. everybody from donald trump was retreating and everybody was united saying this woman is a terrible human being. and she was asleep on a plane and oblivious to her destruction

and that was part of the story she didn't know. then it was like oh man, i can't wait for her to land. we are about to watch this bitch get fired in real time before she even knows she is fired. and hoping she was raped by someone hiv-positive and see if that works. no body went after that person. everyone was going after justine and no one could go after the person going after her inappropriately. and my first thought was wow

this is exciting let's watch this person get destroyed. and 30 seconds later i thought i am not sure that was intended to be a racist tweet. there is a tradition of people doing this type of humor. mocking the glee of the situation with south park and colbert and i thought maybe as i lay in bed maybe her crime was not being as good at it. when i met her a couple weeks later and he was broken and torn a piece.

and she said she lived in a bubble. someone was reading by book a woman called helen lewis and wrote in the review like me she was on twitter and tweeted that night i am not sure that joke was intended to be racist and got this flurry of you are just a privileged bitch, too and she told her shame to shut up. a journalist as human beings we are supposed to stand up to the bodies and to injustice and people were just too afraid to stand up to justice and that made me all of the more

interested. >> host: did she want to talk to you? >> guest: not at first. justine agreed to talk to me and finally agreed to meet me three weeks after it happened. but the deal was i could tape the conversation but she would like to say if she would like it being used. and i was twiddling by fingers for a couple weeks and she decided she wanted to give one interview to show people how insane it was and that the punishment because disproportioniate to the crime. and i met her again and as the

book was coming closer to publication and started regretting talking to me. there were some trolls and it was nice people and hundreds of people were saying this. and the book came out and she said i am so glad you told my story the way it should be. >> host: what is she doing now? >> guest: she has a new job in public relation. this is after a year probably. and she has a new job in public relations.

what do you get when a racist women tweets on google? her name. but she is fine and happy now. a lot of people said to her after the book came out i cannot believe what we did -- well no one said i cannot believe what i did to you but i cannot believe what those people did to you. then i got the backlash. i realize i am bias here.

but one i remember i didn't reply to any of them well one thing, i wrote this isn't a stand alone article. i said this is from my book. and now people are saying now jon ronson is saying this is an ex extract from his book. and i thought what does that mean mean. somebody tweeted out why isn't jon ronson replying to us and someone wrote because jon ronson only replies to men. it was said y to remember i am a blank canvas for people to put their ideas on to and i realized

that was me. i realized there were two types of people in the world. people who value humans over ideas and then people who value ideas over humans. maybe that is too simplistic but if there are those two types of people in the world i am the first time. >> you are watching booktv on c-span2. this is our in-depth program. once a month we invite one author on to talk about his or her body of work and this month it is best-selling author jon ronson. jon ronson first wrote a book in 1994 called scrub class and we will ask him about that. "them: adventures with extremists" came out in 2011 the men who stare at goats in 2004 and became a movie, "the psychopath test: a journey through the madness industry" came out in 2011 and that is being made into a movie.

lost at sea, the mysteries of 2012. frank; the true story that insphirein inspired the money came out last year. and this year is this recent book called "so you've been publicly shamed." what is club class, mr. ronson? the producer said you made a name when we asked you about that and you make a face every time. >> guest: in the early '90s i made a show for the bbc. i was really young and early 20's and unprepared to make a series. and hated everything about it. you turn up with the giant cameras and i was a journalist. anyway the series was a slump

and i was in the wilderness. and the only work i was given was to write a book really fast. and the idea was that i would feel like i am a young person and the idea was to lack my way around the world in this five-star way. i went to africa and the most exciting thing that happened was i ended up in a mini war in south africa.

i was there and landed in a city with a war which was kind of exciting but i just in the absence of having my own voice i was trying to do detailed work. it wasn't my voice and that is why i am embarrassed. i found my voice in 2011. >> if you would like a conversation with jon ronson. 202-748-8200 for the east and central time zones.

748-8201 for mountain and pacific and further out in hawaii as well. and booktv@cspan.org or tweet booktv or facebook comment us. we will be with us for another two hours and 15 minutes. mr. ronson, what is a psychopath? is there a definition? >> guest: according to the man who made a check list of 20 traits there is. i could probably name them. lack of self worth

irresponsibility, the main one is lack of empathy. there is an absence of empathy. another doctor who is called jane gillagan and according to her what makes them different is where they could have empathy is a trait like grandiose self worth. the reason i stumbled on the story and wrote about psychopaths is because of a story i was doing for my fourth series about this woman who was

named mary turner thompson. this isn't in the book. but she was internet dating and met a guy who was will jordan and was gallant and he held the door door open for her, bought her flowers, and walk on the road side of the side walk which i didn't know was a thing. i am so bad at gallant that i open the door way too early and they have to break into a slightly running motion. they fell in love and they were going to get married and she

realizes i don't know anything about him and looked him up on a website where you can find stuff. she discovers he had another house she didn't know about and she drove to it. it was this mansion and he confronted him he went in the other room and talked on the phone, came back and said i can tell you. but i work for the cia and that house you stumbled upon is our safe house. and you know okay? so for the next seven years she was married to him and she would get messages from the cia saying

he was in the hospital but fine. she got a call saying are you ms. jordan and the woman said yes and she said i am the other ms. jordan and it turned out he wasn't working for the crick cia. he was a biggomist and a pedophile and i came cross her story because i wanted to write about victims of cons. and i said you must have been upset. and she said no he is a psychopath. so the will to be upset sort of like being chased by the lion. and i thought i never thought of

it that way. then i talked to the this psychologist and she said yeah not only do they exist, but it is way more than you think and this is the kicker for me they rule the world. and i said you are telling me there is a particular mental disorder that is so powerful that it is like remolded society? she said yes, you are much more like to have a psychopath at the head of your business than anyone else. and i remember saying this is a huge thought. this is like, if you think about it, this is a huge thought. and she said yes, it is a huge thought. and that thought stuck with me.

and so then i started talking to this psychologist called kevin ducker and i think he told me about robert heir and then i started reading the dsm because i was interested in labels. >> host: which is? >> guest: the manual for mental disorders. it used to be a pamplet and now it is bigger than the biggest book on your shelf. 886 pages long.

d i started looking through it and saw things like generalized anxiety disorder which you know was like a whole page, parent-child relational problems, i thought yup. arithmetic learning disorder? i was like yes. either i am much crazier than i thought i am i thought or maybe it isn't a good idea to diagnose yourself with mental disorders or maybe the profession has a strange desire to label what is normal human behavior as meanting

meanting meanting -- mental disorders. i did notice psychopaths are not in there. but what is in there is anti-social personality disorder. but that is vaguely -- then i thought i should not worry about this going on right? that is the purpose of -- okay. good. i would like to meet critics of this. and i thought it would be fun -- there is a great piece that mocks this. and i ended up having lunch with a science tologist.

i had lunch with brian, one of the british leagues, and you can imagine how nervous i was because there are so many stories about strong armed tactics. and in fact, a movie was made about them and then they were making a movie about him. and that was funny. i was really nervous. but actually i got along quite well with him and there was no pressure. and i said to him, you know okay prove it. prove to me your view that phschyitry shouldn't be trusted. and he said i can introduce you to tony and i said who is tony

and he said tony is at broad more and it was known as a hospital for the criminally insane. and i said what did tony do? and brian said hardly anything he beat someone up with something like that but that is not the point. but the point is he faked madness to get out of prison sentence and he is stuck therein therein -- in there and no one believes he is sane. he said do you want us to get you in there and i said yes. and brian got me into broad more and i have to say i was a scholar instead of a journalist. and i thought that was slightly ridiculous. but i went to the hospital and

the guy at the desk said have you gotten a phone, a cake with a knife inside and we were making jokes. and then we were put in this waiting area between fences with this woman, and i am like, who are you here to see and she said both of my sons are here. and later on i saw her. it was like sunday lunch time. and she was dressed up in her best clothes to see her two boys both locked up there. and she was seeing them one at a time. and anyway, we got taken through, me and brian, into the place where you get to meet the patient which is a wellness

center. he said tony is the only person with permission to meet in the wellness center. and i said what does this stand for? dangerous and severe personality disorder he had. and that is like the most dangerous people. and the patients started arriving and they were quite overweight and wearing sweat pants and looked like they had given up. and then someone said to me i am medicated. and brian said here is tony. the guy was walking toward me wearing a suit and he had his arms stretched out like someone from the apprentice and it was obviously someone's outfit who wanted to convince me he was very sane.

he sat down and i said to brian a year later you gave me the best story, thank you. but is it true you faked your way in here? and he said yup i beat somebody up when i was 17 and my cell mate said to me you are looking at 5-7 years in prison what you need to do is fake madness and you will get sent to a cushy hospital with your own play station, nurses bringing you tea. i said why did you do it and he said i just saw the film crush when people get sexual pleasure from crushing cars into walls. well i asked to see the ... psychiatrist and i had just seen a film called crash in which people get sexual pleasure from crashing cars into walls. so i said i get sexual pleasure