Home Reading: 'Lost at Sea' by Jon Ronson

I've talked about my fascination with the lives and experiences of others. Its the premise of the podcast and is highlighted by the way I like to travel - "Ego-Tripping", the exchange of stories and CouchSurfing.

Jon Ronson is a British writer that is a inspiration of mine. The back of his latest book 'Lost at Sea' aptly describes him as being "fascinated by madness, strange behaviour and the human mind, and he has spent his life exploring mysterious events and meeting extraordinary people". A man after my own heart.

'Lost at Sea" The Jon Ronson Mysteries' by Jon Ronson

Jon Ronson on the power of the mind, spending time with NLP Co-founder Richard Bandler and TV Hypnotist Paul McKenna

Don't worry, get therapy by Jon Ronson (The Guardian. May 2006)
... The NLP training manual we delegates have been handed is a confusing mix of psychobabble and diagrams marked "submodalities" and "kinesthetics", etc. But from what I can gather, NLP is a way of "re-patterning" the human brain to turn us into super-beings - confident, non-phobic, thin super-beings who could sell coals to Newcastle and know what people are thinking just by their eye movements. It is the theory that we are computers and can be reprogrammed as easily as computers can. You were abused as a child? Forget therapy: just turn off the bit of the brain that remembers the abuse. You want to become a great salesperson? NLP will reprogram you. Our winks, our ticks, our seemingly insignificant choice of words - they all make up a map of our innermost desires and doubts: read the customer and make the sale.

Jon Ronson on Hyperreality, spending time with Real life Superheroes

It's a Bird! It's a Plane! It's...Some Dude?! by Jon Ronson (GQ. August 2011)
... It's the next afternoon. There's a comic convention in town, at the Washington State Convention Center in the business district. There are something like 30,000 people here, families and costumed comic fans, packing the modern glass building. I spot Knight Owl and another Seattle superhero named Skyman.
He is only semicostumed. He's unmasked and goateed, and he's wearing a white T-shirt with a Skyman logo of his own design. "Ooh, look, the Rocketeer!" he says at a passing costumed attendee. "You never see Rocketeer costumes! That is priceless! I gotta get me a photo of that! Ooh! Lady Riddler! Nice!" Skyman approaches a Batman. "Is that a real bulletproof outfit?" he asks him. "No," Batman replies a little apologetically.
"This place," I tell Knight Owl, "is full of costumed people who would never confront drug dealers in the middle of the night. You and Phoenix and Skyman exist in some shadow world between fantasy and reality." "Yeah," Knight Owl replies. "What we do is hyperreality!"

- Ego Tripping: (A vacation from yourself)
- Louis Theroux, Couchsurfing and Holland
- Other people's stories - Tales of: Adventure
- Trigger: Ego Tripping in Portugal - Sintra, Obidos, Ericeria, Coimbra
- Trigger: Egotripping II - England, on the road again
- Albert Camus on the Writer, the Actor and the Traveller