Part One: 'What does electricity taste like?' 'Like a planet around a star.' — The Things We're Willing To Believe I was thrilled beyond belief to hear he had a new book coming out. Ronson's writing style is forever readable, even when it's on topics I don't care to read. This book is a compilation of short pieces divided by loosely defined categories. The pieces range from the ridiculous to the infuriating. I Make it Look Like They Died in Their Sleep. Incredible story of an American priest who helps people without physical illnesses to commit suicide.

Jon Ronson is fascinated by madness, extraordinary behaviour and the human mind. He has spent his life investigating crazy events, following fascinating people and unearthing unusual stories. Collected here from various sources (including The Guardian and GQ America) are the best of his adventures. Always intrigued by our ability to believe the unbelievable, Jon meets the man preparing to welcome the aliens to Earth, the woman trying to build a fully conscious robotic replica of the love of her life and the Deal or No Deal contestants with a foolproof system to beat the Banker. Here I felt that Ronson was laughing at a group of odd religious people who meant well, albeit in a rather strange way by offering to donate their kidneys to strangers. I felt I was supposed to laugh with him at them, but I didn't.

There’s no talk of it, but many people on board know something terrible occurred on this route – to Puerto Vallarta and Cabo San Lucas – earlier this year. At 5.45am on Tuesday 22 March, a CCTV camera captured a young woman on the phone in the crew quarters. Her name was Rebecca Coriam. She was 24, from Chester, and had recently graduated from a sports science degree at Exeter University. She’d been working in Youth Activities on board for nine months, and apparently loved it. But on the phone she was looking upset. Ronson investigates the strange things we're willing to believe in, from lifelike robots programmed with our loved ones' personalities to indigo children to hypersuccessful spiritual healers to the Insane Clown Posse's juggalo fans. He looks at ordinary lives that take on extraordinary perspectives, for instance a pop singer whose life's greatest passion is the coming alien invasion, and the scientist designated to greet those aliens when they arrive. Ronson throws himself into the stories--in a tour de force piece, he splits himself into multiple Ronsons (Happy, Paul, and Titch, among others) to get to the bottom of credit card companies' predatory tactics and the murky, fabulously wealthy companies behind those tactics. Amateur nuclear physicists, assisted-suicide practitioners, the town of North Pole, Alaska's Christmas-induced high school mass-murder plot: Ronson explores all these tales with a sense of higher purpose and universality, and suddenly, mid-read, they are stories not about the fringe of society or about people far removed from our own experience, but about all of us. I call Mike and Ann. I tell them about my week on the ship. When I get to the part about the waiter saying, “It didn’t happen”, Mike sighs and says, “Oh. Yeah.” It's very hard to describe this collection of Guardian and GQ columns written by the author of Men Who Stare at Goats. On the surface, the topics sound decidedly dark - a high-school murder plot in North Pole, Alaska, the suspected cover up of the disappea That pertains to specific details about the investigation and so it’s not appropriate for us to share that kind of information,” she replies.

Ronson has spent his life investigating crazy events, following fascinating people and unearthing unusual stories. Collected here from various sources (including the Guardian and GQ America) are the best of his adventures. Always intrigued by our ability to believe the unbelievable, Jon meets the man preparing to welcome the aliens to earth, the woman trying to build a fully-conscious robotic replica of the love of her life and the Deal or No Deal contestants with a fool proof system to beat the Banker. Jon realises that it’s possible for our madness to be a force for good when he meets America’s real-life superheroes or a force for evil when he meets the Reverend ‘Death’ George Exoo, who has dubiously assisted in more than a hundred mercy killings. Is She For Real? The “psychic” Sylvia Browne sounded like a real bitch. Jon went on a Mediterranean cruise with her.Now Carver leads a lobby group called International Cruise Victims. Over the phone, he told me theories of murder, negligence and cover-ups. Sometimes he sounded angry and xenophobic; at other times he was incredibly compelling. Finally he ends on a story about actually being lost at sea. Apparently every two weeks someone disappears over the side of the cruise ship. International waters are essentially lawless, especially as cruise companies register their ships in “flag of convenience” countries.

Ronson paints himself as a cowardly, neurotic type, but his subject matter tells another story, and he’s got more guts than I do. The people he talks to in Lost at Sea are strange, and rather than indulge them, Ronson asks the tough questions and gets to the root of things. The Chosen Ones. A look at the concept of ‘Indigo Children’. Are they highly evolved souls sent to guide the human race towards a better future, or just kids with ADHD and deluded parents? This contains, to my mind, the second funniest bit in the book. I don’t think drunkenness is an issue on the Disney Wonder. You’d have to drink a frozen piña colada the size of a glacier to get drunk, such are the measly measures they serve here.And then Melissa starts telling me some odd little things. She says after Rebecca went missing, Disney had a little ceremony. They put flowers at the wall next to the crew pool, “where they think she might have jumped from. But they didn’t say. They put these flowers down but refused to answer any questions as to why. It was left unsaid. It really stirred things up. Why are they putting them there? Nothing was clear.” Have You Ever Stood Next to an Elephant My Friend? Jon interviews the Insane Clown Posse. Hilarity ensues. Completely mad. That ship absolutely seethes with rumours,” Melissa says. “Yes. She was in a relationship, and there were problems, and it was upsetting her. It was a very, very intense relationship. It was great and then it was awful. They were both fiery, passionate personalities.” interviews Bryan Saunders, an unusual man who has devoted his life to drawing self-portraits, but who found unexpected fame on the internet after drawing himself while on a variety of drugs.