Speaker 1: You're listening to an airwave media podcast.
Speaker 2: Are you afraid to take a shower behind a translucent curtain,
Speaker 2: unable to escape the image of a crazed killer with
Speaker 2: a butcher's knife, Or perhaps you worry about the mysterious
Speaker 2: plane van slowly patrolling your neighborhood looking for what exactly.
Speaker 2: Many of us only know psychopathy through fiction and pop culture,
Speaker 2: and the history of psychopathic killers is quite real. The
Speaker 2: good news is that most psychopaths are not killers. The
Speaker 2: bad news is that psychopathy is probably more malevolent and
Speaker 2: prevalent than you would imagine. The psychopath Test. Next on
Speaker 2: Monster Talk, it's actually.
Speaker 3: Quite unlike anything we've ever seen before.
Speaker 4: A giant airy creature, part ape and part of mass
Speaker 4: in Luckness, a twenty four mile long bottomless lake in
Speaker 4: the Highlands of Scotland. It's a creature known as the
Speaker 4: luck Yest Monster.
Speaker 2: Monster t Welcome to Monster Talk, the science show about monsters.
Speaker 2: I'm Blake Smith and together with Ben Radford and Karen Stoles.
Speaker 2: Now we talk about monsters, myths and science fact. Today's
Speaker 2: topic is one that we will be visiting again. Our
Speaker 2: guest is John Ronson, whose book The Psychopath Test just
Speaker 2: came out in paperback. It's a fun read about a
Speaker 2: very unfun topic. Psychopaths are in some respects quite like
Speaker 2: pod people from Invasion of the Body Snatchers. They look
Speaker 2: like you and me, they act like you and me,
Speaker 2: but inside they could be quite alien. Of course, most
Speaker 2: psychopaths are not serial killers or child molesters, but they
Speaker 2: quite simply don't have the same emotional underpinnings as most humans,
Speaker 2: and therefore no internal punishment system to prevent bad behavior.
Speaker 2: They feel no remorse, they feel no guilt, and some
Speaker 2: of them even doubt such feelings exist in everyone else,
Speaker 2: having never experienced such things themselves. This episode of Monster
Speaker 2: Talk will not protect you from psychopaths. It won't tell
Speaker 2: you how to avoid being manipulated by them or deceived,
Speaker 2: but it does give you an overview of both psychopathy
Speaker 2: and a bit of info on Ronson's book, which of
Speaker 2: course goes into much more detail. The psychopath Test isn't
Speaker 2: just a story about identifying such people. It's also a
Speaker 2: story about the abuse that can happen when people believe
Speaker 2: that they have a full proof method for such identification.
Speaker 2: For you, see, there's no cure for psychopathy, and once
Speaker 2: you're so labeled it could be nearly impossible to get
Speaker 2: rid of that label if it's been misapplied.
Speaker 4: More instrutle.
Speaker 2: Okay, today we're gonna talk to John Ronson about his
Speaker 2: This is your most recent book, right, okay, so this
Speaker 2: is The psychopath Test.
Speaker 3: It's now coming out in paperback.
Speaker 2: But you're also people our listeners may know you from
Speaker 2: the Men Who's Derek, Goats Are Them? Or any number
Speaker 2: of really cool British documentaries.
Speaker 3: So that's nice. But how did how did you come
Speaker 3: to write about psychopaths?
Speaker 5: God, I'll tell you what it was.
Speaker 6: It was.
Speaker 1: It was I met a woman who was who married
Speaker 1: a guy internet dating, and he was he was a
Speaker 1: very gallant man. He would always walk on the road
Speaker 1: side of the pavement, for instance, which I didn't even
Speaker 1: realize was a was a gallant thing to do. That's
Speaker 1: how ungallant I am.
Speaker 6: And you know, he was very suave.
Speaker 1: And she married him and he told him that he
Speaker 1: worked for the CIA, so he'd go off for months
Speaker 1: on end to Janine your Palestine, and she'd get these
Speaker 1: texts from the CIA, like protected texts saying he's okay,
Speaker 1: he's fired, he's been injured, but he's fine. And this
Speaker 1: one for about eight years, and then she discovered that
Speaker 1: he wasn't in the CIA at all. He was a
Speaker 1: fraudster and a bigamist, and when he was in Janine,
Speaker 1: he was actually at his other family's house just down
Speaker 1: the road. So two things came from the story that
Speaker 1: just stayed with me. One was I said to Mary,
Speaker 1: so do you feel hurt by it all? And she said, well, no,
Speaker 1: because does the wilderbeast feel hurt when it's being chased
Speaker 1: by the lion? No, the wilderbeest knows it's not personal,
Speaker 1: and he's a psychopath and it's not personal. So I
Speaker 1: thought that was an extraordinary thing to say about a
Speaker 1: human being. And also I spoke to a psychologist named
Speaker 1: Martha Stout who said that the condition that this guy
Speaker 1: suffers from is the condition that effectively rules the world.
Speaker 1: That psychopathy is so powerful it's remolded society or wrong.
Speaker 1: And that reminded me of David Ike, who I wrote
Speaker 1: about in my book Them and David Ike said that giant,
Speaker 1: blood drinking, pedophile, child sacrificing lizards secretly ruled the world,
Speaker 1: and of course nobody paid David like much. Heed yeah,
Speaker 1: everyone was paying Martha stout Heed. She's a halfward psychologist,
Speaker 1: And it was basically the same theory, this race of
Speaker 1: people that aren't quite human.
Speaker 6: Are secretly ruling the world.
Speaker 1: So these were just big questions, and I want they
Speaker 1: were the questions that led me to write the book.
Speaker 3: I think It's free.
Speaker 2: You said he suffers from psychopathy, but isn't He doesn't.
Speaker 1: Psychopathy is the most pleasant feeling of all the mental disorders.
Speaker 1: There's no suffering at all because the amygdala, which is
Speaker 1: the thing that basically provides a lot of us suffering, guilty, remorse,
Speaker 1: and anxiety, underperforms in people who are called psychopaths. And
Speaker 1: so you're absolutely right, is zero suffering.
Speaker 7: John, What makes someone a psychopath? And is it a
Speaker 7: clinical term as well?
Speaker 1: Right now in the DSM, the term is APD antisocial
Speaker 1: personality disorder. The word psychopath really belongs to a man
Speaker 1: named Robert Hare, who invented the checklist, the hair PCLR checklist,
Speaker 1: which is like the gold standard for diagnosing the condition
Speaker 1: and his but you know, when you look at definitions
Speaker 1: of sociopathy or psychopathy or APD's yeah, it's the same thing.
Speaker 1: So it is a clinical thing, but unfortunately it's very
Speaker 1: hard to spot in people. It's malevolent and it's hard
Speaker 1: to spot. And so Hair came up with this twenty
Speaker 1: point checklist of sort of nuances of behavior that if
Speaker 1: you're qualified in the checklist, you can learn to spot them.
Speaker 1: You can learn to root them out even when they're
Speaker 1: pretending to be normal by their linguistics, their terms of
Speaker 1: praise and so on, which struck me again as a
Speaker 1: huge thought, is not open to terrible abuse. So I
Speaker 1: decided to become a psychopath spotter, and indeed immediately started
Speaker 1: abusing my.
Speaker 5: Power, as one might expect you would have, you know,
Speaker 5: with achieving this newfound power, I was curious about when
Speaker 5: you know in your book, obviously, in your new book,
Speaker 5: you're exploring psychopaths, although in your previous books you know
Speaker 5: particularly them. I think you've obviously spoken with you talked
Speaker 5: about David a before and others as well. I'm wondering whether,
Speaker 5: in light of your new research in your new book,
Speaker 5: if there are people that you interviewed previously for your
Speaker 5: other books, or if your article or anything else, that
Speaker 5: you are now either more or less concerned about having
Speaker 5: more having more experience and insight into psychopaths, or you know,
Speaker 5: maybe people who you said, well, actually they seem to
Speaker 5: be fine, or really, oh my god, I'm surprised you
Speaker 5: didn't rip my eyes outneath them.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 1: Well, I certainly have one or two suspects in mind
Speaker 1: from previous books, as there's one person I can think
Speaker 1: of in the Minister at Coats. Everybody else in the
Speaker 1: Minister at Coats, I think no way they in any
Speaker 1: way psychopathic in them, you know what, It sounds sort
Speaker 1: of funny because them is populated with your white separatists
Speaker 1: and white supremacists and hardcore conspiracy fists and Alex Jones
Speaker 1: and and in them, I can't really think of anyone
Speaker 1: who would strike me obviously as a psychopath. We can
Speaker 1: talk about that some more if you like. I can't
Speaker 1: think of because there's somebody who I interviewed one time,
Speaker 1: and I don't want to name him because he would
Speaker 1: probably sue me, and he's such a bastard, he'd probably
Speaker 1: pursue me to the ends of the earth. Well yeah,
Speaker 1: and so consequently would just take enormous pleasure from doing it,
Speaker 1: So I won't name him. But I can certainly think
Speaker 1: of one person who I've encountered over the years who
Speaker 1: there's no question in my mind is psychopathic. And there's
Speaker 1: another person I've just thought I feel I would suspect.
Speaker 1: But I feel bad about sort of just labeling like
Speaker 1: like some kind of you know, gun for hire, like
Speaker 1: just labeling people with such a huge with such a
Speaker 1: huge rose. I mean, for a while, I sort of wondered, No,
Speaker 1: I can't say. I mean, I'd love to say, I
Speaker 1: just feel like I can't. Well, this is what I
Speaker 1: will say that, and some people might disagree with what
Speaker 1: I'm about to say. But if you're an ideologue, if
Speaker 1: you believe in something bigger than yourself, doesn't that mean
Speaker 1: that you're not psychopathic? Because if psychopathy is a very
Speaker 1: very selfish thing, it's all about it's all about boosting
Speaker 1: yourself in society at the.
Speaker 6: Cost of everybody else.
Speaker 1: So if you if you're a genuine ideologue, if you're
Speaker 1: Oma Bakri Muhammad or David Iiic or you know, people
Speaker 1: who seem to really really believe what they what they say,
Speaker 1: that sort of negates the idea.
Speaker 6: That they're psychopathic.
Speaker 1: I think, as I say, some people might disagree with that,
Speaker 1: but that feels logical to me.
Speaker 7: A delusional instead or something else not.
Speaker 1: Even oh yes, yes, yes, yes, yes absolutely, But David Aika,
Speaker 1: it's very hard to work him out, very hard.
Speaker 2: Well, it seems like it would be tricky though, to
Speaker 2: distinguish between someone who's a true ideologue and someone who's
Speaker 2: using that sort of ideology to fulfill their own personal
Speaker 2: power goals like certain religious leaders come to mind where
Speaker 2: it turns out that you know, they're actually quite selfish
Speaker 2: or doing things against their religious creeds behind the scenes
Speaker 2: while espousing certain values.
Speaker 1: Most certainly that's the giveaway unctionably, Yeah, definitely, because you
Speaker 1: know one of the items on the checklist is cunning, manipulative,
Speaker 1: and another item is callous, lack of empathy, and all
Speaker 1: the things that would say, yeah, you would use religion
Speaker 1: as a way of kind of cloaking your true intentions.
Speaker 3: Gotcha? So can you just tell us a little bit?
Speaker 2: I mean, I would like people to actually read the book,
Speaker 2: But what is the psychopath test itself?
Speaker 3: What does that actually entail doing?
Speaker 1: So it's this twenty point checklist which I learned over
Speaker 1: three days in a marquet in West Wales with Robert Hare,
Speaker 1: who's the king of psychopath spotting. And as I say,
Speaker 1: unlike a lot of disorders, the diagnose isn't usually invited
Speaker 1: to take part in their own diagnosis because if the
Speaker 1: psychopath it means they will manipulate, they'll manipulate the test.
Speaker 1: So they're diagnosed from a farm more often than not.
Speaker 1: And it's basically through studying the way they respond to
Speaker 1: certain questions. So I'll give you one example from my book.
Speaker 1: I went to meet a man named Toto Constant who
Speaker 1: was a Haitian death squad leader. I met him in
Speaker 1: prison in Upstate New York where he's sting twelve to
Speaker 1: thirty seven years for mortgage fraud. So not only was
Speaker 1: he a death squad leader, he was also a mortgage
Speaker 1: fraud so which is item twenty on the checklist Criminal Versatility.
Speaker 1: So I went to see him and he kept saying
Speaker 1: to me, you know, I just want people to like me.
Speaker 1: It's really important that people like me. And after a
Speaker 1: while I said to him, isn't that a weakness, just
Speaker 1: desperately wanting someone to like you? And I said, no,
Speaker 1: it's not a weakness. And I'll tell you why. If
Speaker 1: you can get people to like you, you can manipulate
Speaker 1: them to do whatever you want them to do so
Speaker 1: straight out of the checklist, and it proves I came
Speaker 1: away from this with no doubt in my mind that
Speaker 1: the hair checklist is accurate, but I have huge doubts
Speaker 1: about the way that it's used in society.
Speaker 7: So if APD is a clinical disorder, is there some
Speaker 7: kind of treatment for this?
Speaker 6: No treatment?
Speaker 1: This is a kind of nihilistic story. Well, I say
Speaker 1: no treatment, but I'm going to caveat that in a
Speaker 1: secon The majority of people who work with people with
Speaker 1: ABD or psychopathya or whatever you want to call it,
Speaker 1: will say no. You know, they only they only stop
Speaker 1: being malevolent when they just get too old and lazy
Speaker 1: to get up off the sofa. So it's a kind
Speaker 1: of dark story. So, for instance, I was in Stockholm
Speaker 1: last week and I met somebody who works with psychopaths,
Speaker 1: and he said, re offenders who aren't psychopathic tend to
Speaker 1: stop around the age of fifty, but re offenders who
Speaker 1: are psychopathic tend to just carry on until they literally
Speaker 1: can't crawl out the door. Saying that, there's other people
Speaker 1: who will say that there's some evidence that cognitive behavioral
Speaker 1: therapy can work if you can convince the person that
Speaker 1: it's in their own best interests to change, and there
Speaker 1: are units that you know in Britain and America that
Speaker 1: try that out.
Speaker 6: Also.
Speaker 1: Since my book came out, obviously, I've had huge amounts
Speaker 1: of correspondence with everybody, from psychopaths, to people who believe
Speaker 1: that their wife or husband or boss or father is
Speaker 1: a psychopath, and to people who believe it almost certainly wrongly.
Speaker 1: And I've had a couple of emails and people who say,
Speaker 1: I am a psychopath. I've been diagnosed with a psychopath.
Speaker 1: It's no question. I'm definitely a psychopath. And I'm sick
Speaker 1: of it. I'm sick of just leaving a kind of
Speaker 1: trail of malevolence in my way, and I want to change.
Speaker 1: I want to use my psychopathy for good. And one
Speaker 1: of them said I want to use it to become
Speaker 1: a better church missionary, and another one said to become
Speaker 1: a better salesman. And you know, on both occasions, I
Speaker 1: believe them.
Speaker 7: And I'm just wondering, where do you draw the line
Speaker 7: between mental illness and some kind of ethical or moral
Speaker 7: position that they have or lack thereof.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, it's not a mental illness, it's it's mental
Speaker 1: illness is defined pretty much when you have you know,
Speaker 1: loucinations or delusions or you know, things that can be
Speaker 1: helped with medication. And psychopathy is is probably better described
Speaker 1: as a as a as a moral deficiency because there's
Speaker 1: no empathy because that part of the brain underperforms, there's
Speaker 1: no real morality. Is just a sort of you know,
Speaker 1: feel or sort of field of dead crops where empathy
Speaker 1: and remorse and guilt should be. Well, yeah, it's I mean,
Speaker 1: this is everything I'm saying here is kind of difficult
Speaker 1: for me to say because it goes against all my
Speaker 1: liberal sensibilities, you know, because I'm raised to believe, and
Speaker 1: basically do believe that everyone's basically the same. You know,
Speaker 1: everyone's basically just like me. So yeah, empathetic and wanted
Speaker 1: to do good and wanted to be a good person.
Speaker 1: But yeah, the evidence is that, you know, there's one
Speaker 1: one hundred of us who actually aren't just like us,
Speaker 1: that they're completely different. But you can see that everything
Speaker 1: that I'm saying is open to like real abuse because
Speaker 1: if you start thinking of these people as like not
Speaker 1: quite human, Yeah, imagine the things you can justify yourself
Speaker 1: doing to them.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I was.
Speaker 5: Actually, it's interesting in a couple of places in your book,
Speaker 5: and also in your earlier book. Then I found what
Speaker 5: seemed to be some slightly surprising statements. For example, you
Speaker 5: that I quote, he says, I'd always believe to say
Speaker 5: to be a fundamentally rational thing. And I'm wondering, is
Speaker 5: this true or is this just a journalistic conceit? I mean,
Speaker 5: did you know you really, you really did believe the
Speaker 5: society was fundamentally rational.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I don't mean that an insulting way. I'm just kind
Speaker 5: of surprised.
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, you know, I mean, yeah, I guess. I mean, obviously,
Speaker 1: I know there's an awful lot of irrational people in
Speaker 1: the world, and I know that, you know, irrationality.
Speaker 6: Quite often drives me.
Speaker 1: It's a more powerful engine in my life, the rationality.
Speaker 1: But you know what popped into my head when you
Speaker 1: when you asked me, that was my father, you know,
Speaker 1: saying to me, I remember that nineteen seventy or not,
Speaker 1: in sentiated Margaret Thatcher gets in to power, I'll take
Speaker 1: us all.
Speaker 6: Out for dinner.
Speaker 1: You know, my father was a was a conservative small
Speaker 1: businessman who believed that our leaders are political leaders were
Speaker 1: rush and all beings, and I guess I came you know,
Speaker 1: I came up with a similar you know, I was
Speaker 1: influenced by that, and I don't believe it anymore, But
Speaker 1: but I did believe.
Speaker 5: It, and you certainly hadn't been through the the the
Speaker 5: experience of George W. Bush, otherwise that would be crystal
Speaker 5: clear that that, certainly our rational is not quite the same.
Speaker 1: Yeah, unquestionably, But I always kind of saw that stuff,
Speaker 1: you knows, as the exception that proves them rule.
Speaker 6: Although of course I don't live.
Speaker 1: In the country that's you know, how many people believe
Speaker 1: in God and Americans and that sort of like eighty
Speaker 1: percent or ninety percent or something something. Yeah, so obviously
Speaker 1: I don't come from a country like that, so it's
Speaker 1: probably easy too, fair point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And next on philosophy talk, I mean, I do
Speaker 2: I do understand, like you know, I mean to say,
Speaker 2: it's a I don't want to get off on a tangent.
Speaker 2: But there is the whole thing about Thomas Hobbes and
Speaker 2: social contract and even in the most dysfunctional societies, you'd
Speaker 2: have to suspect that there is some rational basis for
Speaker 2: allowing a government to exist which protects the people. It's
Speaker 2: just that the flavors of protection can range from you know,
Speaker 2: some sort of almost anarchy to fascism, you know, so.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sure absolutely, and it's and yeah, I'm just the
Speaker 1: sort of idea that you know, people rise up the
Speaker 1: ladder on the basis of merit. I mean, as I say, obviously,
Speaker 1: now I'm in my forties and I can see the
Speaker 1: world much more for what it is now. But you know,
Speaker 1: growing up in a in a sort of suburban house
Speaker 1: and way, I just kind of believe that. I just
Speaker 1: believe that, you know, that the further you go up
Speaker 1: the ladder, the more rational and we were the crazy
Speaker 1: ones going to go out down below. And obviously that's
Speaker 1: clearly not true, but it's certainly what I believe.
Speaker 2: Let's let's get back onto psychopathy and more specifically the
Speaker 2: role of psychopaths and monster lore. Well, let me ask
Speaker 2: you this way, did did doing this research change your
Speaker 2: opinion on the image of psychopathy and popular culture?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Well, well, Hair said to me almost almost at the
Speaker 1: very beginning, you know, there there are no accurate portrayals
Speaker 1: of psychopaths in the movies. And then he caveatd that
Speaker 1: by saying that actually there is one. And what he
Speaker 1: told me who it was, I thought, you know, you're
Speaker 1: absolutely right, and it's it's the Sissy Space character in
Speaker 1: bad Lands Holly, you know the way that she If
Speaker 1: anybody listening to this hasn't seen bad Lands, you've got
Speaker 1: to go and see it anyway, because it's, you know,
Speaker 1: one of one of the greatest movies ever. But there's
Speaker 1: what she really displays is one of the items on
Speaker 1: the checklist, which is shallow affect and inability to experience
Speaker 1: a range of emotions, and so you ape other people's
Speaker 1: emotions totally constant. The Haitian Desk godly To at one
Speaker 1: point pretended to cry and from to me and it
Speaker 1: was just obviously pretending it wasn't real. And in bad
Speaker 1: Lands Holly, Holly's entire voiceover is like cliched statements that
Speaker 1: she had read in movie magazines. And so that's a
Speaker 1: beautifully drawn portrayal of somebody who has this condition. But yeah, certainly,
Speaker 1: people like Anthony Hopkins in Science of the Lambs, that's
Speaker 1: that's much too kind of baroque to be true. They're
Speaker 1: not that their charisma is superficial. That's another really interesting
Speaker 1: thing about them is that they're they're not massively charismatic. There,
Speaker 1: they're ostensibly charismatic. And the more time you spend with them,
Speaker 1: the more you realize that the charisma is like a
Speaker 1: sort of it's like a front, it's like a it's
Speaker 1: like a it's like a sort of film as you know,
Speaker 1: as opposed to being any modern skin deep.
Speaker 7: And is that an easy thing for us to identify
Speaker 7: or is there any way for lay people to be
Speaker 7: able to see that others?
Speaker 1: Yeah, but of course, you know, it's incredibly dangerous, and
Speaker 1: I've had so many I mean, I see my book,
Speaker 1: I see the psychopathest as a cautionary tale where I
Speaker 1: sort of take people into the world of the power
Speaker 1: crazed psychopath spotter and then take them out again by
Speaker 1: pointing out that actually it's you know, it's difficult and
Speaker 1: morally dangerous. You know, being a psychopath spotter can turn
Speaker 1: you a little bit psychopathic, so obviously it's it's a
Speaker 1: really dangerous hobby. Yet yeah, I think you can spot
Speaker 1: certain things.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 1: The weird thing about human nature is that when our
Speaker 1: brains go wrong, they go wrong in uncannily similar ways.
Speaker 1: A classic example of that is OCD where you know,
Speaker 1: it's basically the same rituals all over the world. And
Speaker 1: I think psychopathy is another example of that that it's
Speaker 1: obviously it's the opposite. I mean literally, psychopathy is the
Speaker 1: opposite to OCD because OCD is an anxiety disorder and
Speaker 1: psychopathy is an absence of anxiety disorder, you could say.
Speaker 1: But but weirdly, it's kind of similar that they use
Speaker 1: similar terms of phrays, they behave in similar ways, and
Speaker 1: you can find ways to you know, you can notice
Speaker 1: it if you know how to.
Speaker 5: I'm wondering about whether psychopathy seems to be a sort
Speaker 5: of a long and short term thing. Obviously it can
Speaker 5: be both. But you know, typically when when I think
Speaker 5: of of psychopaths, and like maybe when that when the
Speaker 5: public does, it tends to be in the sort of
Speaker 5: this glorified baroque context of you know, you know, we
Speaker 5: think with serial killers whatever else. But in the case
Speaker 5: of serial killers, serial killers are by definition successful because
Speaker 5: they have been successful in eluding capture in order to
Speaker 5: kill you know, several people in case in some cases
Speaker 5: you know, it does or more. And so by definition,
Speaker 5: if you're a serial killer, you've gotten away with it
Speaker 5: at a certain number of times. But if you're psychopath, you
Speaker 5: may or may not have been, you know, fooling people
Speaker 5: and basically leaving leaving a trail of victims for for
Speaker 5: you know, months or years or decades. Can you tuggle
Speaker 5: about that?
Speaker 6: Yeah? Absolutely? I mean, I think.
Speaker 1: One great tool that they have is the fact that
Speaker 1: they sort of use our liberal sensibilities that we just
Speaker 1: don't believe that other people aren't quite like us, and
Speaker 1: so they tend to get away with an awful lot
Speaker 1: of stuff because we just can't imagine.
Speaker 6: That people have.
Speaker 1: Motives that are completely different to ours, I think on
Speaker 1: a sort of everyday office type basis. Also, you've got
Speaker 1: the problem that the capitalism, but it's it's most remorseless,
Speaker 1: tends to reward psychopathic behavior. So we tend to make
Speaker 1: them our leaders. So we're sort of dazzled by them,
Speaker 1: and and so we make them our leaders.
Speaker 6: Am I answering the question right here?
Speaker 8: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I was just curious in terms of again the
Speaker 5: notion that you know, for example, you might just encounter
Speaker 5: someone who is just sort of temporary psychopath who who
Speaker 5: isn't who isn't you know, a hardcore at their at
Speaker 5: their on a fundamental level psychopath. But they do exhibit
Speaker 5: psychopathic tendencies now and then versus somebody who you know
Speaker 5: for thirty or forty years in the example you gave
Speaker 5: it as we opened up, who manipulated someone into believing
Speaker 5: that you know this, they had this, you know, this
Speaker 5: double life of a CIA operative.
Speaker 1: Sure, sure well clinically speaking that there really isn't such
Speaker 1: thing as a temporary psychopath.
Speaker 6: It's it's you just you.
Speaker 1: Are one from from the age of ten to the
Speaker 1: day you die, which again sounds instead of being thehilistic.
Speaker 1: But the reason why I say the age of ten
Speaker 1: is because you know, one of the items on the
Speaker 1: checklist is is early behavior problems, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: extreme bad behavior that starts around the age of ten.
Speaker 1: You can see, you know, when you start bringing kids
Speaker 1: and children's behavior into it again, it becomes open to
Speaker 1: like incredible abuse because kids go through all sorts of
Speaker 1: stuff as we all know. However, it tends to always
Speaker 1: start around the age of ten. So there's no such
Speaker 1: things a temporary psychopath. But there's every such thing as
Speaker 1: a psychopath who can go through life without ever hurting
Speaker 1: somebody physically, certainly physically, you know, almost every psychopath doesn't
Speaker 1: become a serial killer. It's a tiny, tiny minority. So,
Speaker 1: but Hair would say they are always malevolent. There's no
Speaker 1: such thing as like a positive psychopath. You know, there
Speaker 1: will always be a cheating husband or a terrible both,
Speaker 1: you know, and so on, so that they can probably
Speaker 1: go through quite a long time without committing, you know,
Speaker 1: without doing that much harm. But Hair would say they
Speaker 1: will always do harm, and they'll do it forever. Again,
Speaker 1: you can see why this stuff is kind of dangerous
Speaker 1: sounded because you know, this is a this is a
Speaker 1: monster podcast, and there's a terrible danger in thinking of
Speaker 1: other human beings as monsters.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 1: A concept for me is this is a very kind
Speaker 1: of contradictory thing because I agree with the checklist. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm you know, I find it's a really morally, you know,
Speaker 1: difficult area.
Speaker 2: So you just touched briefly on the idea that a
Speaker 2: psychopath might be able to rise high in business, and
Speaker 2: and here in America, and I don't know how this
Speaker 2: plays out in the UK, there's this big movement to
Speaker 2: treat corporations as a kind of in any almost like
Speaker 2: a human being. Have you give any thought to how
Speaker 2: corporations themselves, not just.
Speaker 3: The people who run them.
Speaker 2: But if you treated them as hypothetical humans, how might
Speaker 2: corporations fare on the psychopath test? Because I'm wondering, like,
Speaker 2: what percentage of powerful corporations, if not run by psychopaths,
Speaker 2: might literally be psychopaths.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I've got to say it's hard to not
Speaker 1: look at I mean, this gets into sort of polemical termtory,
Speaker 1: which I'm always slightly suspicious of, but it is hard
Speaker 1: to see certain industries is not, you know, as not
Speaker 1: being like a sort of physical manifestation of psychopathy. For
Speaker 1: instant journalism at its worst can be that it's all
Speaker 1: about manipulating people for profit. At its worst, you know,
Speaker 1: the phone hacking scandal that's going on in Britain at
Speaker 1: the moment, and so on, the subprime banking business when
Speaker 1: they were deliberately seeking out vulnerable people to ensnare with
Speaker 1: loans that would keep them enslave for the rest of
Speaker 1: their lives. The American healthcare industry strikes me as a
Speaker 1: really problematic and mystery. So so yeah, you know, it
Speaker 1: wasn't it Mitt Romney who said corporations to people my friend?
Speaker 1: And yeah, the answer, Yeah, it's like they are. They
Speaker 1: can be real bastards at times, they can be psychopathic.
Speaker 7: So, John, did you talk to many psychopathic killers in
Speaker 7: your research?
Speaker 1: No, I went to I mean there was Toto, the
Speaker 1: Haitian death squad leader, and there was a man called Tony,
Speaker 1: who I write about a lot in the book, who
Speaker 1: beat somebody almost to death but didn't actually didn't actually
Speaker 1: kill him, thankfully. So the answer is that is kind
Speaker 1: of is.
Speaker 7: Sort of so that it normally have tendencies to kill.
Speaker 8: No.
Speaker 1: I mean Tony's problem was, and he's one of the
Speaker 1: main characters in the book, was He's not predatory like
Speaker 1: a lot of psychopaths. This is where you get into
Speaker 1: the kind of nuances by the way of the checklist,
Speaker 1: because one of the items on the checklist is cunning, manipulative,
Speaker 1: and another another item on the checklist is impulsivity. And
Speaker 1: critics of the hair checklist will say, well, how can
Speaker 1: you have those two in one checklist? And what Tony
Speaker 1: was was impulsive and with poor behavioral controls. But he
Speaker 1: would but he would never has never stalked somebody. You know,
Speaker 1: He's never kind of plotted, coldly plotted. He's much more
Speaker 1: kind of impulsive. He's a kind of bar fight type
Speaker 1: guy as opposed to a cold plotter.
Speaker 5: I have to say one of the one of the
Speaker 5: particularly interesting examples from your book is a woman named
Speaker 5: Rachel North. I was wondering if you could tell us
Speaker 5: a little bit about her.
Speaker 1: Sure, I mean this is this gets to a part
Speaker 1: of the book which isn't really about psychopathy. It's more
Speaker 1: about the use of of of madness in journalism.
Speaker 5: But it's such a fascinating story you have to tell us.
Speaker 1: Oh, it's an incredible story. She was well, she is
Speaker 1: a friend of mine, and she was on one of
Speaker 1: the trains on July seventh, which blew up. She was
Speaker 1: in the same carriage as one of the bombers, but
Speaker 1: she was okay, and she became a spokesperson for the
Speaker 1: July seventh survivors. They were pushing for a public inquiry
Speaker 1: and they were meeting in pubs, this kind of support group,
Speaker 1: and she came a spokesperson. And one day she was
Speaker 1: googling herself and she discovered that there was a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of people talking about how she didn't exist and
Speaker 1: was in fact a team of mi I five officers
Speaker 1: who were tasked was spreading disinformation about the truth of
Speaker 1: July seventh, which was that it was not an inside job.
Speaker 1: This is a different it's a different theory that it
Speaker 1: was an an accidental power surge had knocked out the
Speaker 1: London underground and to cover it up, the Blair government
Speaker 1: had blamed Islamic militants, which has to say, does does
Speaker 1: seem like using a sledge hammer to cracking.
Speaker 6: I don't know what.
Speaker 1: No, and no one died on the bus. It was
Speaker 1: it was fake. It was actors and stunt men on
Speaker 1: the bus. So Rachel emailed them and said, I do exist,
Speaker 1: and it's not nice, you know, to be told you
Speaker 1: don't exist when you've just been blown up on the tube,
Speaker 1: which they took as more evidence that she didn't exist.
Speaker 1: And the more the more she tried to convince them
Speaker 1: she existed, the more they were convinced that she didn't.
Speaker 1: And there were like discussions going on about her, like
Speaker 1: I bet it ain't real, somebody said about her, I
Speaker 1: bet it ain't real. I first heard about Rachel because
Speaker 1: some nine eleven I accidentally typed my name into Google
Speaker 1: and search one day and discovered a nine to eleven
Speaker 1: truth this site that said John Ronson is is is
Speaker 1: just another Rachel north So I thought I wanted to
Speaker 1: be Rachel Norths and that's how I found out about her.
Speaker 1: And yes, we became VINDO and she ended up confronting.
Speaker 1: She ended up going to a meeting where they were
Speaker 1: all going to be discussing, you know, the truth behind
Speaker 1: July seventh, and she stood up and confronted angrily, confronted
Speaker 1: them all and got into a huge fight with them.
Speaker 1: And the ring leader of the truth is is a
Speaker 1: guy called David Shayler who was an m I five
Speaker 1: officer who became kind of hero to people, you know,
Speaker 1: to be kind of anti government left because he leaked
Speaker 1: some secrets and had to go on the run. And yeah,
Speaker 1: he kind of cropped up again as a as as
Speaker 1: the head of the July seventh Truth movement.
Speaker 6: It's incredible.
Speaker 5: I just I just thought it was a fairzing part story,
Speaker 5: partly because of the whole the whole conspiracy element and
Speaker 5: just the you know, the because the show is sensibly
Speaker 5: about monsters, although we bring in a lot of other
Speaker 5: skepticism and conspiracy and stuff. And I just thought that
Speaker 5: was such a great example of how you can have
Speaker 5: someone stand up in front of people saying I'm the
Speaker 5: person you're claiming doesn't exist, Like I.
Speaker 6: Doubt that, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: The fact that you tell me it exist is more
Speaker 1: evidence that you don't exist. I've kind of lost my
Speaker 1: sense of humor a bit about it after. You know,
Speaker 1: I've always felt very glad that I wrote Them before
Speaker 1: nine to eleven because Them is a is a sort
Speaker 1: of funny, in some ways quite sweet natured book about
Speaker 1: conspiracy theorists. And you know, when the truth of movement started,
Speaker 1: or you know, it turned conspiracy theorists into a much
Speaker 1: nasty you know, there, there was much less room for
Speaker 1: being kind of humanist about them.
Speaker 3: I thought, I enjoyed the book, but it's such a
Speaker 3: dark topic.
Speaker 2: So it was nice that there was a little humor
Speaker 2: mixed in. But it is a it is a depressing topic.
Speaker 1: Read was getting she was getting death lets, and her father,
Speaker 1: who was a country vicar, was getting you know, weird
Speaker 1: letters through the door saying you know, your daughter is
Speaker 1: a tool of you know, desiredist governments. Except so they
Speaker 1: became you know, this was a woman who nearly died,
Speaker 1: you know, terrible.
Speaker 2: So it seems like a psychopathy, like like a lot
Speaker 2: of psychology represents a spectrum of behaviors, and in the
Speaker 2: statistics about how prevalent psychopathy is, it doesn't seem to
Speaker 2: break out between the physically dangerous psychopath and the manipulative
Speaker 2: but maybe not going to stab you psychopath. Is there
Speaker 2: really a distinction there? Or is every psychopath dangerous?
Speaker 6: Well?
Speaker 1: How would say every psychopath? Yeah, is dangerous because they
Speaker 1: are always malevolent. They will always cause you trouble, but
Speaker 1: more often than not it will be you know, just
Speaker 1: nasty as opposed to violent. So they'll, you know, they'll
Speaker 1: screw with your head, They'll they'll manipulate you just for
Speaker 1: their own either for their own pleasure or for their
Speaker 1: own personal gain.
Speaker 6: But they will be you up.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, it's quite often a ven diagram.
Speaker 1: You know, there's probably an awful lot of ped de
Speaker 1: fellers out there who will never do anything about it
Speaker 1: because they would feel too much guilt and shame and remorse.
Speaker 1: And those are the things that kind of keep us
Speaker 1: on an even keel. It's the ped of fellers who
Speaker 1: are also psychopaths are the ones, you know, who you
Speaker 1: have to worried about.
Speaker 7: So I was going to ask if there's any correlation
Speaker 7: between our psychopathy and intelligence at all? You mean old
Speaker 7: do they tend to be more highly intelligent?
Speaker 6: So?
Speaker 7: I think with some conditions people tend to have to
Speaker 7: be more intelligent. I think with like bipolarism. But is
Speaker 7: there a link with intelligence and psychopathy, you.
Speaker 1: Know, I don't. I don't think so. I could be wrong,
Speaker 1: but I don't think so. Because one of the items
Speaker 1: on the checklist is need for stimulation, proneness to boredom,
Speaker 1: which implies you know that you don't want to You're
Speaker 1: certainly not going to be studious. You're not going to
Speaker 1: you're not going to be interested in learning that much.
Speaker 1: And in fact, I remember Hair saying to me that
Speaker 1: they could often seem on the surface to have like
Speaker 1: a kind of great depth of knowledge about many different things,
Speaker 1: but when you start to question them, it kind of
Speaker 1: all falls down, and again it's like it's superficial. Their
Speaker 1: knowledge is superficial and not deeply held.
Speaker 6: It's used.
Speaker 1: It's like a sort of veneer of knowledge, which is
Speaker 1: basically something that they use to further themselves.
Speaker 5: In the one of the course the threads running through
Speaker 5: all your books and especially this one, is you know,
Speaker 5: meeting with different people that you know, not only psychopaths
Speaker 5: and people with weird ideas and use And I'm wondering
Speaker 5: what's the as a as a writer and a journalist,
Speaker 5: what's the line between befriending and interviewing a person and
Speaker 5: sort of exploiting them for your book? For example, you
Speaker 5: talk about, you know, the pleasure of getting nutty quotes
Speaker 5: and wacky situations from your book and your colorful interviews,
Speaker 5: and you know you're meeting these people who are genuinely colorful, weird,
Speaker 5: strange characters. But at the same time, you know there
Speaker 5: must be sort of this weird gray area where you
Speaker 5: you want to encourage them and get their story and
Speaker 5: tell it sincerely. I mean, they're not not necessarily exploitation,
Speaker 5: But on the other hand, you also don't necessarily want
Speaker 5: to encourage the behavior that you're reporting on. So how
Speaker 5: do you how do you juggle that?
Speaker 6: Well?
Speaker 1: I have to say that the older I get, the
Speaker 1: easier that gets for me, because I'm so much more
Speaker 1: aware of my own you know, colorful eccentricities and rational
Speaker 1: and so when I'm with somebody and I am trying
Speaker 1: to you know, I am exploring with them, it's some
Speaker 1: kind of strangeness. I totally feel that we're in it together,
Speaker 1: you know, the madness of life. We're in it together,
Speaker 1: and it's fine. And I really feel that, you know.
Speaker 1: I think probably when I was younger, it was much more.
Speaker 1: I was much more like kind of Dr Livingstone, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of packing.
Speaker 6: My way through the jungle.
Speaker 1: But that was when I wasn't really I was kind
Speaker 1: of less clever. I suppose I was less kind of
Speaker 1: aware of of you know, what guides all of us,
Speaker 1: which meant me, which made me, you know, I was,
Speaker 1: I was younger, and with it, I was probably a
Speaker 1: bit more patronizing, but for not anymore, and not for
Speaker 1: a long time. Nowadays, I feel, you know, as I say,
Speaker 1: I feel like we're in it together. And I'm very
Speaker 1: open with people. You know, you can tell when you
Speaker 1: listen to my radio documentaries and my TV documentaries. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't fall back. It's not like I ask one
Speaker 1: question but then right, you know way, And I'm very
Speaker 1: very open with people in quite a sort of cheerful
Speaker 1: and cheerful way, and so people just sort of talk openly.
Speaker 1: And it's because I don't feel in any way patronizing
Speaker 1: towards them. Nowadays, and I sort of feel I feel
Speaker 1: like we're all on this sort of you know, crazy
Speaker 1: irrational journey together and exploring the irrationalities is a kind
Speaker 1: of pleasant thing for us to do together. And also,
Speaker 1: by the way, I like to think that my readers
Speaker 1: feel the same way too. You know that people don't
Speaker 1: tend to read my books from a from a position
Speaker 1: of superiority. You know, I like to leaders all in
Speaker 1: together as well.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean I didn't. I don't want to suggest
Speaker 5: that I got the sense of, you know, exploitational thing.
Speaker 5: Just that just from from my own experience and as
Speaker 5: a journalist and doing other things that you know, when
Speaker 5: you're interviewing people who you clearly disagree with and yet
Speaker 5: you have you want you respect them, and you're sincerely
Speaker 5: trying to understand them and sympathize with them, there's this
Speaker 5: sort of weird line where you know you're you're trying
Speaker 5: to not be deceptive. On other hand, you don't want
Speaker 5: to go in there with a hard nose, skeptical attitude
Speaker 5: saying what the hell are you talking about?
Speaker 1: I totally totally know what you mean, and you know
Speaker 1: what I think the answer stab This is the word
Speaker 1: skepticism because because I am a skeptic. However, when I'm
Speaker 1: in those situations, I very unless I'm with somebody who's
Speaker 1: really horrible, really mean, and I can think of one
Speaker 1: or two people like that. I mean, Sylvia Brown is what.
Speaker 1: I was on a psychic cruise with her one time,
Speaker 1: and she did fail to me. You know, the thing
Speaker 1: she was doing was so bad. I did feel like
Speaker 1: a kind of investigative journalism out to investtournalists, out to
Speaker 1: expose her.
Speaker 6: But that's really really rare. You know.
Speaker 1: Most of the time, my sort of skeptical hat kind
Speaker 1: of comes off when I'm with people or its it
Speaker 1: sort of regains itself when I'm back at home writing
Speaker 1: a bit and I want to make sure I get
Speaker 1: things sort of actually right, and I don't go into
Speaker 1: a sort of postmodern, you know, arena. But when I'm
Speaker 1: with people I don't feel, you know, particularly skeptical. I
Speaker 1: sort of tend to immerse myself in their way of being,
Speaker 1: I think, and for me, that's, you know, it's the
Speaker 1: the best way of being. I mean, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: a great fan of the skeptical movement, but that's the
Speaker 1: one part of it that I've always you know that
Speaker 1: I'm slightly critical about. You know, it can sometimes be
Speaker 1: slightly dehumanizing of of of the you know, the people
Speaker 1: who we don't agree with, and sometimes that's completely valid
Speaker 1: and justified, but on other occasions I think it's not.
Speaker 2: Well, that's sort of the bigger issue in skepticism, I
Speaker 2: think is there's that activist, you know, trying to stop
Speaker 2: you know, all medicine that doesn't work, trying to protect
Speaker 2: against scams, and at the same time.
Speaker 3: There has to be.
Speaker 2: Hey, this is a really useful worldview. Why don't you
Speaker 2: try it right? And if you if you've got like
Speaker 2: the the I don't know what they call it, the
Speaker 2: activists who want to change the world by stopping bad things.
Speaker 2: A complementary sort of group that wants to say, hey,
Speaker 2: and this is a fun way to live. You know,
Speaker 2: it's a great thing to sort of be able to
Speaker 2: have this tool set to evaluate what's real and what's.
Speaker 1: Not absolutely absolutely, but at the same time, you know,
Speaker 1: try and see it from their perspective. And obviously there's
Speaker 1: some things which you just can't you know, scammers and frauds,
Speaker 1: there were certain people out there there's just no point
Speaker 1: in drum City welcrom their perspective.
Speaker 6: But then there's other people. You know.
Speaker 1: I was in Iowa the other week talking with some
Speaker 1: people from a church group, and I had to feel
Speaker 1: the need to say to them, you know, these sex addiction,
Speaker 1: gambling addiction, you know, support groups that you have in
Speaker 1: your church. You know, it's based on a false premise.
Speaker 1: You know that I didn't. I didn't feel the need
Speaker 1: to said to them. I sort of thought, Okay, you know,
Speaker 1: if it works for you, and if people's lives are better,
Speaker 1: then that's okay.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 1: And so you know, so I guess I'm a little
Speaker 1: more humanistic about it than some people in the movement.
Speaker 2: Well there is that whole. Well again, that's that's the whole.
Speaker 2: There's people who are let's say, atheists who think that
Speaker 2: religion is bad and should be gotten rid of. And
Speaker 2: there's people who are atheists by definition but don't like
Speaker 2: the word atheists because of all the connotation of anti religion,
Speaker 2: which they may be perfectly okay with. So, you know,
Speaker 2: way off topic from monsters. But yeah, yeah, that's sort
Speaker 2: of that, that kind of.
Speaker 3: Self assessment by the skeptical move.
Speaker 2: I guess it's one of the reasons why I embrace
Speaker 2: a skepticism over and I think of myself as a
Speaker 2: positive humanist and a skeptic and don't spend much time
Speaker 2: working on the athm agnosticism side.
Speaker 1: Of things, right, And yeah, a humanist and a skeptic together,
Speaker 1: I think is a very good combination. That's the right
Speaker 1: combination to.
Speaker 2: Well, of course you and I think no. I actually
Speaker 2: had a question. Now that you're a little more removed
Speaker 2: for the book by time, do you still find yourself
Speaker 2: mentally testing people you encounter for psychopathy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I'm less but I'm more self aware about
Speaker 1: it now and I understand the pitfalls of it now.
Speaker 1: At the same time, you know what, I think it's
Speaker 1: kind of positive thing to have. It does solve some mysteries.
Speaker 1: For instance, I can think of lots of occasions when
Speaker 1: I've interviewed people over the years where they just haven't
Speaker 1: answered my questions. It's like I wasn't in the room, and.
Speaker 6: That is a.
Speaker 1: Potential sign of psychopathy, because I think interviews are kind
Speaker 1: of based on empathy, and if you have no empathy,
Speaker 1: you feel no need to please you know, the other
Speaker 1: person that you're talking to. And I said, there's no
Speaker 1: need to answer their questions. And quite recently I was
Speaker 1: interviewing somebody who just completely ignored all my questions and
Speaker 1: went off for these, you know, forty five minute answers,
Speaker 1: and I thought to myself, God, you know, this guy
Speaker 1: is incredibly annoying. And I sort of remembered what Robert
Speaker 1: Hare said about that, so I started asking him questions
Speaker 1: about his childhood. I said, you know, what kind of kid.
Speaker 6: Were you were? You were?
Speaker 1: You were a bully? I said, yes, yes, I was.
Speaker 1: I was a terrible bully. I used to jump up
Speaker 1: from behind the tree and hit people with a brick.
Speaker 1: And I said, then did you enjoy? I said, how
Speaker 1: did you feel about it? So I felt good? And
Speaker 1: I said and now looking back on it, because he
Speaker 1: was like seventy, I said, how do you feel now
Speaker 1: looking back on it? And he said, yeah, I still
Speaker 1: feel good. So there's an example of you know, using
Speaker 1: my psychopaths. I'm not going to do anything with that,
Speaker 1: but it was it was a good you know, it
Speaker 1: was a solution to the mystery of why was that
Speaker 1: guy behaving in the way that he was.
Speaker 7: Well final question time, we always like to ask our
Speaker 7: guests what their favorite monster is, so, John, what's your
Speaker 7: favorite monster?
Speaker 6: WHOA.
Speaker 1: I guess Thor doesn't count as a monster, does he?
Speaker 5: Sure?
Speaker 3: Are you frightened by Thor?
Speaker 8: No?
Speaker 6: I ad by a thought.
Speaker 1: I only chose thought because we sat down and watched
Speaker 1: the movie the other day and I thought it was fantastic.
Speaker 1: So Thor is at the topmost of my mind. But
Speaker 1: I guess there was a bad answer.
Speaker 3: Okay, well, no, you could do Thor if you want to.
Speaker 3: Did you not find low Ki a bit repulsive?
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's right, there was.
Speaker 2: There were some frost giants in that movie. It's the
Speaker 2: hymns worth it. It's all of his abs. It just
Speaker 2: takes over your mind.
Speaker 1: And then, do you know what, I've just decided my
Speaker 1: favorite monsters come up with a better monster.
Speaker 6: My favorite monsters is Jeffrey Tamble because Hank Kingsley is
Speaker 6: the best ever intelligions fair enough.
Speaker 1: And also I was listening to my own podcast the
Speaker 1: other day and oh, that guy from Scott Pilgrim was
Speaker 1: on I've Got his Name, Michael Sarah Michael, and he
Speaker 1: told the story about how when he was in arrested development,
Speaker 1: he was there with his mother on the first day
Speaker 1: shooting and Jeffrey Tambull walked past and Michael Sarah said, oh, Jeffrey, Jeffrey,
Speaker 1: and come and meet my mother. And Jeffrey Table said,
Speaker 1: I don't want to.
Speaker 6: Meet your mother.
Speaker 1: I don't carry on walking, and then turned around and
Speaker 1: came back and gave her a kiss.
Speaker 6: So he was he was kidding with it.
Speaker 1: But I just thought that that was a great monster so.
Speaker 5: Plus, of course he was in max headroom, so he
Speaker 5: gets extra points.
Speaker 6: I didn't even know he was in mac hedroom. It
Speaker 6: was oh wow's.
Speaker 2: Ben would know. Thank you so much for spending an
Speaker 2: hour with us. We appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Thank my pleasures. I'm I'm very happy to have done it. Okay, cool,
Speaker 1: It was good talking with you guys.
Speaker 2: Thanks, Thanks more. Thanks for listening to another episode of
Speaker 2: Monster Talk. I'm Blake Smith, and in this episode, together
Speaker 2: with Karen stoles Know and Ben Radford, we've been talking
Speaker 2: to author John Ronson about his book The Psychopath Test.
Speaker 2: A link to Rons's book is in the show notes.
Speaker 2: Thanks again to everyone who's been helping out with our
Speaker 2: transcript project. If you'd like to contribute to that work,
Speaker 2: a link to the PayPal button, as well as contact
Speaker 2: information for your hosts in all of their social media
Speaker 2: guys is in the show notes at monster talk dot org.
Speaker 2: Your Talk is an official podcast of Skeptic Magazine. The
Speaker 2: views expressed on this show are that of the host
Speaker 2: and the guests and do not necessarily reflect the opinion
Speaker 2: of Skeptic Magazine or the Skeptic Society. Monster Talk theme
Speaker 2: music is by Peach Stealing.
Speaker 8: Monkeys hungry for more skepticism want to learn the truth
Speaker 8: about the scientific controversies of our time than describe to Skeptic,
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Speaker 8: in the field. To subscribe, visit skeptic dot com today.
Speaker 1: Hang on one second, because the plumbers are upmdoor. Just
Speaker 1: hang on set.
Speaker 3: He means he's I five controllers with that