"Okja" and Other Strange Stories by Jon Ronson

Summary

Podcast Summary: The New Yorker Radio Hour

Episode: "Okja" and Other Strange Stories by Jon Ronson

Date: June 30, 2017
Host: David Remnick
Guests: Jon Ronson, Tracy K. Smith (brief segment)
Produced by: WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

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Episode Overview

This episode of The New Yorker Radio Hour, hosted by David Remnick, centers on the strange and powerful storytelling of Jon Ronson. It features a lively conversation with Ronson about co-writing the screenplay for the film "Okja," his fascination with odd and extreme personalities, and his investigations into social media shaming, the porn industry, and public figures like Alex Jones. The episode also briefly includes poet Tracy K. Smith, who reflects on nature, creativity, and writer's block.

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Main Discussion: Jon Ronson on "Okja" and the Weird Side of Storytelling

1. Co-Writing "Okja"

• The Origins of the Film
  • Ronson describes his initial, secretive meeting with director Bong Joon-ho and team, comparing it to joining an exclusive inner circle.
  • Quote:

    "His idea had lived between him and his producer Duho and Tilda Swinton and Tilda's partner, the artist Sandro Karpzo. The four of them had lived with this as a kind of secret for a couple of years. Then I was to be the fifth person brought into it."
    (Jon Ronson, 04:00)

• The Secret Premise
  • The film is about "a giant pig the size of an elephant" that is kidnapped by an evil corporation, with its best friend (a young girl, Mija) on a rescue mission.
  • Reaction:

    "I said I definitely want to be involved."
    (Jon Ronson, 04:47)

  • "Okja" is not a "Babe"-like children's film; thematically, it's closer to Upton Sinclair's The Jungle due to its critique of the meat industry and corporate ethics.
• Tonal Shifts and Satire
  • The film moves from "an enchanting children's film" to "slapstick satire," with elements reminiscent of Terry Gilliam's "Brazil."
    (Jon Ronson, 05:01–05:40)

2. The Challenge of Making Unusual Films in Hollywood

• Ronson and Remnick discuss how unconventional films struggle to get made in Hollywood unless they are small budget, comic book, or franchise films.
• Quote:

  "You know, I have a friend who writes screenplays and he says...with films, unless you're presenting a Marvel comic...it's really difficult."
  (Interviewer, 08:21)

• When the "Okja" script made the rounds at studios, executives were anxious about scenes set in slaughterhouses and dialogue in Korean.
  (Jon Ronson, 08:53)
• Ronson contends that the emotional climax—the slaughterhouse scene that makes audiences cry—would have been cut by studios, muting the film’s power.
• Ronson contrasts "Okja" with polemical films like Linklater's "Fast Food Nation," which are affecting but don't elicit such a deep, human reaction.
  (Jon Ronson, 09:21–10:09)

3. Social Media and Public Shaming

• Discussion turns to Ronson’s book So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, focusing on social media's capacity for outrage and collective shaming.
• Early examples include the Justine Sacco incident: Sacco tweeted a poorly considered joke, and by the time she landed after her flight, she was a global pariah.
  • Quote:

    "We fell in love with righting wrongs so much that a day without shaming felt like a day kind of picking our fingernails. We lowered our standards."
    (Jon Ronson, 11:37)

• Remnick likens the social media cycle to "a narcotic effect."
  • Quote:

    "So it was like a narcotic effect."
    (David Remnick, 11:56)

• Ronson sees Trump as a product of this polluted digital atmosphere:
  • Quote:

    "Donald Trump emerged from these polluted waters like a kind of mutant fish from the milieu that we all created."
    (Jon Ronson, 12:50)

4. Extremism, Platforms, and Alex Jones

• Ronson recounts his early encounters with Alex Jones at Waco and their infiltration of Bohemian Grove—an early, pivotal story for both men.
• He reflects on Jones’ rise to political relevance and the controversy over Megyn Kelly’s decision to interview him on network TV.
• Ronson, skeptical of "no-platforming," explains the risk of giving extremists mainstream attention, conceding that such interviews can backfire or be manipulated by skilled propagandists.
  • Quote:

    "If we start [no-platforming] all the time, it just becomes unlikable. People move away from us."
    (Jon Ronson, 15:19)

5. All the Strangest People Now in Power

• Ronson points out the oddity and danger of seeing the most extreme figures—once mere fringe subjects—now in seats of global influence.
  • Quote:

    "All the worst people...the most extreme...I've ever interviewed are in power now."
    (Jon Ronson, 16:23)

6. Upcoming Project: "The Butterfly Effect"

• Ronson teases his next big project: "The Butterfly Effect," an investigative podcast about the consequences of the free online porn economy.
  • He identifies "the slaughterhouse" of the porn industry—how tech giants profit while performers lose income and social status.
    (Jon Ronson, 17:21–17:58)
• Stories include the impact of early exposure on minors and the adaptation of former industry workers into bespoke, custom pornography for individuals.
  • Quote:

    "I've spent a lot of time in the world of bespoke porn lately because it's such an incredible window into people's inner lives..."
    (Jon Ronson, 19:17)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "I definitely want to be involved." (Jon Ronson, on hearing the premise of Okja, 04:47)
• "A day without shaming felt like a day kind of picking our fingernails." (Jon Ronson on social media outrage cycles, 11:37)
• "Donald Trump emerged from these polluted waters like a kind of mutant fish from the milieu that we all created." (Jon Ronson, 12:50)
• On interviewing Alex Jones:

  "Alex Jones will basically walk all over you because he's so good at it."
  (Jon Ronson, 15:19)

• On the adult industry’s transformation:

  "All the money's flowed from the San Fernando Valley... into the pockets of the tech giants... A porn star can't get a checking account... Whereas a tech giant... can get a $362 million loan from a hedge fund."
  (Jon Ronson, 17:58)

• "I've spent a lot of time in the world of bespoke porn lately because it's such an incredible window into people's inner lives..." (Jon Ronson, 19:17)

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Additional Segments

Tracy K. Smith: Nature and Creativity (22:06–27:09)

• Walking through Nature
  • Poet Tracy K. Smith, recently named U.S. Poet Laureate, takes listeners on a walk near her home in Princeton, NJ, reflecting on the beauty and solace of green spaces.
  • She discusses the relationship between quiet, silence, and creativity, quoting her teacher Linda Gregg:

    "If you're quiet after about 15 minutes, your mind is imaginative enough to come up with an idea..."
    (Tracy K. Smith, 24:41)

  • Smith finds inspiration in images and nature—especially in bird and deer sightings—offering insights about overcoming anxiety and writer’s block:

    "An image can do such amazing lyrical work and it can free you from the need to make statements and explain." (Tracy K. Smith, 25:08)

• The segment closes with a moment of wonder at a group of deer in the woods.

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [04:00] — Jon Ronson on joining the secretive Okja project
• [04:47] — Ronson’s instant excitement about the film
• [08:21] — Insights into Hollywood’s resistance to originality
• [09:21] — The emotional impact of the Okja slaughterhouse scene
• [10:14] — Social media shaming: the Justine Sacco saga and its lessons
• [12:50] — Trump as a product of toxic digital discourse
• [13:18] — Early encounters with Alex Jones and media controversy
• [15:19] — Platforming extremists and media responsibility
• [17:21] — The real-world "slaughterhouse": Ronson's investigation into the porn industry and "The Butterfly Effect"
• [22:06] — Tracy K. Smith on green spaces and the creative process

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Tone and Style

The episode blends wit and seriousness, reflecting Jon Ronson’s signature style—curious, empathetic, and unafraid to investigate unsettling corners of modern life. The conversation is lively and often laced with humor, even when discussing weighty topics such as corporate ethics, social media mobbing, and the fate of those marginalized by technological shifts. Tracy K. Smith’s segment introduces a contemplative, lyrical interlude, underscoring the restorative power of nature and imagination.

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Conclusion

This episode delivers a rich and engaging dialogue with Jon Ronson—delving into the making of "Okja," the dark satisfaction of social media shaming, the mainstreaming of extremism, and the untold consequences of tech disruption in the porn industry. Interwoven with literary depth and levity, it is essential listening for those interested in the complexities and oddities of modern culture.

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Transcript

[David Remnick]

Hi, it's David Remnick and I've got a quick but important note before we start. Up till now, the podcast of the New Yorker Radio Hour has been the same hour long program that we put on the radio, but as of this week we're changing that. We're going to give you two episodes, same contents, but we've rearranged it for the best podcast listening experience because we know an hour can be a lot to tackle sometimes. So we'll post the second part of the show in a couple of days. If you want to hear exactly the hour that we broadcast on the radio, no problem. You can always do [e-mail] you can play it right off the homepage and listen, this is important. Please let me know what you think of the new format. Email us@newyorkerradio nyc.org and here's the episode.

[Interviewer (possibly Ryan Kantz)]

These are just anecdotes, but it's building up into something more coherent.

[Jon Ronson]

I think it would be interesting to.

[Interviewer (possibly Ryan Kantz)]

Really try to unravel what his ties.

[Jon Ronson]

There's a sort of country city divide.

[Weather Commentator]

How about this weather? I know it is so much weather.

[Narrator/Announcer]

Right now from one World Trade center in Manhattan. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker.

[Weather Commentator]

I was considering staying home instead of dealing with all this weather. No one can drive in this weather. As soon as weather comes, it's like people have never seen weather before. Do you remember yesterday's weather? Compare that to today's weather. It's like, are we even living in the same weather? Did you hear this morning record weather? And that's not even if you count weather.

[Weather Commentator 2]

Speaking of weather, did you see that hilarious video where animals react to weather?

[Jon Ronson]

What? Right into the weather?

[Weather Commentator]

Have you seen that crazy picture? The lady who opened up her door only to find weather?

[Weather Commentator 2]

Typical weather.

[Weather Commentator]

But even I have to admit, I don't mind the weather in this month. And yet I'm already dreaming of the next weather. Of course, once it's weather, I'll probably start missing weather. Isn't that typical?

[Weather Commentator 2]

You know, one day it's weather and.

[Weather Commentator]

The next day, bam. Weather. Used to be, whether it was weather or weather, we would say, well, weather and just keep on at the weather. I guess that's where the saying comes from if you don't like the weather. Weather, weather, weather, weather, weather.

[Interviewer (possibly Ryan Kantz)]

Wow.

[David Remnick]

Weather.

[Interviewer (possibly Ryan Kantz)]

I know the feeling. That's a piece by Ryan Kantz from.

[David Remnick]

The New Yorker's Daily Shouts column. It was performed by Sherrock O. Dunlap and Christian Achimovich. And I'm David Remnick. Today on the New Yorker Radio Hour, we've got a special invitation for you. We're going to a very exclusive, very swank party at Mar a Lago, the resort in Palm beach where Donald Trump played golf this winter and conducted affairs of state, possibly at the same time. That's later this hour. Jon Ronson is a journalist who's worked very productively on the weird side of the street. He's covered subjects that you think really can't exactly be true. He's written about conspiracy nuts who believe space alien lizards walk among us. He wrote about the Pentagon's experiments with psychic powers. And one book covers his years playing keyboards for a bandleader who performed in a giant paper mache head. Still, those things were true. Jon Ronson's first completely fictional project has just come out. He co wrote the screenplay for a new movie called Okja with the director Bang Joon Ho. Jun Ho is from South Korea and is most known in the United States as the man behind the absolutely terrifying movie the Host, as well as Snowpiercer. But he's been making movies for over 20 years.

[Jon Ronson]

In my first meeting with Bong, he didn't want to tell me anything. He was very guarded. His idea had lived between him and his producer Duho and Tilda Swinton and Tilda's partner, the artist Sandro Karpzo. The four of them had lived with this as a kind of secret for a couple of years. And then I was to be the fifth person brought into it.

[Interviewer (possibly Ryan Kantz)]

And what was the secret?

[Jon Ronson]

That it was gonna be a film about a giant pig the size of an elephant. And the pig gets kidnapped by an evil corporation run by Tilda Swinton. And the little girl, the pig's best friend, is a little girl called Meja. And Meja has to use her wiles to get her pig back.

[Interviewer (possibly Ryan Kantz)]

I want your honest answer. When you first heard the secret, what the story was to be about, what was your reaction?

[Jon Ronson]

I said I definitely want to be involved.

[David Remnick]

I'm all in.

[Jon Ronson]

Count me in.

[David Remnick]

Pigs or no pigs, this is not.

[Interviewer (possibly Ryan Kantz)]

A movie that's like babe. It's more like Upton Sinclair's jungle in some way thematically.

[Jon Ronson]

Yeah. Well, it has huge tonal shifts. It starts off as this kind of enchanting children's film of Mija and Oksha playing about in the mountains of North Korea. And then it becomes a kind of slapstick satire, I guess, a little bit like Terry Gilliam's Brazil with these hapless Animal Liberation Front activists, we have a detailed plan on how to rescue her from the event in New York City. We promise to bring her back to you. If our mission succeeds, we'll be able to shut down Miranda's super pig project completely. Until the Swinton places, she's this evil.

[David Remnick]

CEO, Tilda Swinton, 10 years in planning.

[Weather Commentator 2]

On the cusp of a product launch that will feed millions. And what happens? We get tangled up in this terrorism thing, and somehow we end up being the ones who look bad.

[Interviewer (possibly Ryan Kantz)]

Is it based on any CEOs that we know?

[Jon Ronson]

Yeah. I gave a ted talk in 2012 when my book the Psychopath Test came out. And when I was in the audience, Regina Duggan, who was the head of darpa, came on stage. DARPA is the US Military unit that invents the experimental weapons. So she comes on stage, and it's full of scientists, but they build weapons. So she comes on stage wearing a black polar neck like Steve Jobs, and is very poised and very graceful. And the first thing she says is, you should be nice to nerds. And so we all, you know, sort of melt. And then she brings out a hummingbird, a robot hummingbird that floats over the audience, and everyone's looking up and gasping. All these tech billionaires.

[David Remnick]

It's beautiful, isn't it?

[Tracy K. Smith]

Wow.

[Jon Ronson]

And then it dawns on us kind of later that, you know, what are they gonna do with this robot unread? It's like it's a drone that's gonna kill people. And I thought that was extraordinary. And so I thought a lot about that with Tilda Swinton's character in Oakshire, because the film starts with this wonderful set piece of Tilda giving this six minute kind of TED Talk where she's announcing her new endeavor. And it seems so lovely. It's so kind of. It's so woke. It's so Brooklyn. Yet what it actually is is a livestock initiative to raise and kill magical pigs.

[Weather Commentator 2]

Our super pigs will not only be big and beautiful, they will also leave a minimal footprint on the environment, consume less fe and produce less excretions. And most importantly, they need to taste fucking good.

[Interviewer (possibly Ryan Kantz)]

It's two days before the film's released, but I actually have access to the advanced New Yorker Review from one Anthony Lane, who concludes with a very short sentence. Okja is a pearl among swine. I'm telling you, it's a rave.

[Jon Ronson]

Excellent. And you know what? The reason why people like this film is because Bong was allowed free reign to be a tourist.

[Interviewer (possibly Ryan Kantz)]

But this Tells you a disastrous thing about movie movies today. Disastrous.

[Jon Ronson]

It really does.

[Interviewer (possibly Ryan Kantz)]

You know, I have a friend who writes screenplays and he says, look, I go to meeting after meeting after meeting. When it's about a film, the answer is no. I go to meeting after meeting after meeting with television, and sooner or later the answer is yes, that the creative freedom in television is comparatively immense. Whereas with films, unless you're presenting a Marvel comic, a DC comic, a very, very conventional thing, to get 15 year olds in the seats. It's really difficult.

[Jon Ronson]

Yeah. Unless it's a really low budget film when you can still get it made. But you're right, it was. I was getting these kind of reports back from when the screenplay, kind of fifth draft of the screenplay was going around the studios and it was all anxiety. Are you really gonna shoot this slaughterhouse scene? Are you really gonna have half the film in Korean?

[Interviewer (possibly Ryan Kantz)]

What's the film without the slaughterhouse scene?

[Jon Ronson]

Ugh. It's a.

[Interviewer (possibly Ryan Kantz)]

It's flavorless. It's.

[Jon Ronson]

Yeah, it's. I mean, I know I keep talking about slaughterhouse scene, but that's so representative of everything that's so wonderful about this film because it's this, you know, it's this funny popcorn movie with slapstick and chase scenes. Then it becomes truly haunting and disturbing and very moving. And all of those things are the things that the studios, the big studios would have cut out. You know, I went to a screening quite recently and there's a scene towards the end which is so sad, and all around me in the cinema, people were sobbing. It's the scene where Mija goes inside the slaughterhouse and is confronted with the reality. And as much as I love a movie like Linklater's Fast Food Nation, which I love very much, that's not a movie that makes you cry.

[Interviewer (possibly Ryan Kantz)]

No, it's a polemical movie.

[Jon Ronson]

Yeah. And this is not a polemical movie.

[Interviewer (possibly Ryan Kantz)]

Your most recent book, which I read, is amazing. It's called so youo've Been Publicly Shamed. And it's about all the instances of shaming, particularly on social media, with the.

[David Remnick]

Very notable anecdote of that young woman who wrote a very, very bad joke about AIDS in Africa before going on a trip to Africa. And by the time she landed there, she'd become a pariah, an international pariah. And it seems to me that the debates it incited over free speech and social media, political correctness and all the rest have only become more fervent since you published that book a couple of years ago.

[Interviewer (possibly Ryan Kantz)]

So how do you see your book now?

[Jon Ronson]

Well, the first great Twitter shaming was the Justine Sacca one, which was the one you allude to. Before that. I think what happened was we realized we had power. If a Daily Mail columnist, if some right wing columnist wrote something racist or misogynistic, we could do something about it. We could shame that person and we'd notice that the Daily Mail would lose advertising or, you know, these were like, you know, these felt like good times, like the egalitarian. And then we took it a little bit further. So if accompanied, you say we, by the way. Yeah, I was one of those people. I remember. It's just a little thing, but I remember a gym called La Fitness refused to cancel the membership of some of a pregnant woman.

[Weather Commentator 2]

And.

[Jon Ronson]

And we shamed La Fitness and they immediately backtracked.

[Interviewer (possibly Ryan Kantz)]

Right.

[Jon Ronson]

We thought, whoa, this is amazing. But then what happened was we fell in love with it so much. We fell in love with righting wrongs so much that a day without shaming felt like a day kind of picking our fingernails. We lowered our standards.

[David Remnick]

So it was like a narcotic effect.

[Jon Ronson]

Yeah, we loved it. And then somebody like Justine Sacco came along who all she was actually doing was a terrible joke, but all she was actually trying to do was be like south park or Randy Newman, tell a kind of a joke mocking her own privilege. And the joke was.

[Interviewer (possibly Ryan Kantz)]

And it backfired in the most colossal.

[Jon Ronson]

Way, most colossal way while she was asleep on a plane. And the fact that she was asleep on a plane and oblivious to her destruction fueled people even further. And I just thought, whoa, if this was an actual trial, we are trying and convicting somebody before they even know it's a trial.

[Interviewer (possibly Ryan Kantz)]

You follow Donald Trump's Twitter?

[Jon Ronson]

Yes. In fact, Donald Trump was one of the people who was shaming Justine Sacker that night. He was one of the people who powed onto her.

[Interviewer (possibly Ryan Kantz)]

And what do you make of him? How do you read him, his Twitter personality?

[Jon Ronson]

Well, this is the thing. See, I think on Twitter, every side of us polluted the waters. We all polluted the waters. And then I think Donald Trump emerged from these polluted waters like a kind of mutant fish from the milieu that we all created. And it wasn't just the right doing it to the left, it was everyone.

[Interviewer (possibly Ryan Kantz)]

You've also written about extremists. You wrote a book about extremists. And one of the subjects was someone who's now even better known. Alex Jones.

[Jon Ronson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer (possibly Ryan Kantz)]

And Megyn Kelly just interviewed Alex Jones for network television. She was accused of Giving him, quote unquote, giving him oxygen. What did you make of all that?

[Jon Ronson]

Well, I mean. So I should backtrack slightly. I gave Alex Jones probably his first interview back in the mid to late 90s. I wanted to sneak into this secret club in Northern California called Bohemian Grove, where conspiracy theorists think that's where the ruling elite have their. Have human sacrifices and so on. But I didn't want to go on my own because basically, if I failed to get in, it would just be me sitting in a motel room in.

[Interviewer (possibly Ryan Kantz)]

Northern California, not getting the story.

[Jon Ronson]

Not getting the story. So I thought, what if I can go in if I don't get in with Alex Jones? And I'd met Alex Jones a few months earlier.

[Interviewer (possibly Ryan Kantz)]

How did you meet him? At a diner. Just over scrambled eggs?

[Jon Ronson]

No, I met him in front of a bonfire at David Koresh's church at Waco.

[Interviewer (possibly Ryan Kantz)]

You get around.

[Jon Ronson]

I really do. I went to Waco with Randy Weaver from the Ruby Ridge tragedy. And when I was there, Alex Jones was personally rebuilding David Koresh's church. And he was only 26 years old, but he was so charismatic. I knew he was gonna be something, so I asked Alex to come with me. And it became like a big story for him. He brought out a documentary called Dark Secrets Inside Bohemian Grove. I kind of forgot about Alex for several years. And then suddenly, suddenly I'm at the gym and Trump's giving a stump speech. And this was at the period when it was all so new and strange. I immediately plugged in my headphones to hear what crazy Trump, who's never gonna be president, had to say. And it was. Somebody shouted from the audience, are you gonna go back on the Alex Jones Show? And Trump went, alex Jones. Nice guy. I couldn't believe I nearly fell off my elliptical.

[Interviewer (possibly Ryan Kantz)]

It's the title of your next book.

[Jon Ronson]

And anyway, the Megyn Kelly thing. So, as you can probably tell from the people that I've interviewed over the years, I don't really believe in no platforming people, because I feel like you'll always find people who don't deserve a platform. But if we start doing it all the time, it just becomes unlikable. People move away from us. But I do think that there's very limited appeal in doing what Megyn Kelly did to Alex Jones, which was just sit him down and talk to him for an hour. Because you can do one of two things with that. Alex Jones will basically walk all over you because he's so good at it. But that's not what happened with Megyn Kelly. Instead, every time it cut to Megyn Kelly, she was being very poised and like, no, Alex, you're wrong. You're very, very wrong. And every time it cut back to Alex, he was like sweating and stammering.

[David Remnick]

And you think she got the best of him?

[Jon Ronson]

Well, I think they edited it.

[Interviewer (possibly Ryan Kantz)]

The combination of writing about social media, conspiracy theories and now we live in the age of Trump. What does it make you think about what's happened to us? Have we gone nuts in some way?

[Jon Ronson]

Yeah. All the worst people. When I say by worst, I suppose I mean the most extreme, the most trenchant people I've ever interviewed are in power now. Ian Paisley, the head of the Democratic Unionist Party in the United Kingdom. I spent time with him who believed that the IRA are in league with the Pope to secretly rule the world. And his right hand man was ahead of the Save Ulster from Sodomy campaign. His party's now in alliance with the British Conservative Party. Alex Jones has White House credentials and he's close to Trump.

[Interviewer (possibly Ryan Kantz)]

What's your next project? When you think about you've just done something both fun and unusual, but also political, the film. Where do you propel yourself next?

[Jon Ronson]

Well, I'm just finishing a project that's taken me the last year. It's called the Butterfly Effect. And it's another look inside the slaughterhouse, as I think my so youo've Been Publicly Shamed book is, and Oakshire is, and this is about the adult industry. And the slaughterhouse in this case is the way that hundreds of millions of people now watch their porn for free on streaming services like pornhub. And don't think about the consequences, like, nobody cares when music's been pirated and this is porn. So, like, no one cares.

[David Remnick]

What are the consequences?

[Jon Ronson]

All the money's flowed from the San Fernando Valley, which is where the world's porn has been made all of these years, into the pockets of the tech giants. A porn star can't get a checking account because they're deemed unrespectable. Whereas a tech giant who wants to create a streaming service to host pirated porn can get a $362 million loan from a hedge fund. The consequences are extraordinary. I'll give you two examples very quickly. One is pretty much every child in the world gets to learn about sex through Pornhub these days. 10, 11, 12 years old. So one of my stories is about a, a kid in Oklahoma with autism who was trying to impress a girl but didn't know how to do it because he's autistic so he aped something that he heard in a porn movie, some dialogue, very disturbing dialogue that he heard in a porn movie and texted it to her. And he's now on the sex offenders registry for 25 years. I'm going to counter that with an upbeat example, which is a lot of porn producers who don't make any money anymore because all the money's gone to the tech giants have created a new industry in the Valley and it's the world of bespoke porn. They will make an entire porn film for one person to their most specific predilections. And I thought that was just fascinating. I've spent a lot of time in the world of bespoke porn lately because it's such an incredible window into people's inner lives, what films they would commission if they could commission. Like any porn film in the world.

[Interviewer (possibly Ryan Kantz)]

John, you never cease to amaze, to entertain, and to capture our interest. I really appreciate you being here. Thank you so much.

[Jon Ronson]

Thank you. Delighted to have come in. Thank you.

[David Remnick]

That was Jon Ronson, the film he co wrote. Okja is streaming now on Netflix and his new podcast is called the Butterfly Effect. I'm David Remnick and this is the New Yorker Radio Hour.

[Interviewer (possibly Ryan Kantz)]

More to come.

[David Remnick]

David I'm David Remnick. Welcome back to the New Yorker Radio Hour. Next week on the show we've got interviews and live performances with two giants of American song, Lucinda Williams and James Taylor.

[James Taylor]

The idea of that song is it was sort of like one note samba. It's just that da na da da da da and then the changes underneath it. And that's a very Brazilian, very jobim thing to do. So I was hugely impressed by that stuff. Unbelievable. You impossible me a fool who fell out of the family tree Fellow who you found a philosopher's stone deep in the ground like a dinosaur bone who fell into you. And of course you will a tear in your eye for the fourth.

[David Remnick]

James Taylor. Don't miss. Now, we're going to close the show today with a terrific poet, the poet laureate of the United States, as of a couple of weeks ago, Tracy K. Smith. The first piece of hers we published in the New Yorker not long ago was a poem about Levon Helm of the Band, which really warmed my heart. And today Tracy is going to take us on a little journey near her.

[Interviewer (possibly Ryan Kantz)]

Home into the woods.

[Tracy K. Smith]

We are at my home in Princeton, New Jersey right now, and we're heading into what is known as the common land or the common woods that sits in this neighborhood, which is called the Grey Farm neighborhood. And that's my dog, who's jealous that she's not coming. And it leads out to Lake Carnegie. We're walking along, like, a bed of bark, this path. And there's some tree stumps that have been lined up to create, like, a little guide to the path. To the right, we see some of the houses that look out onto the lake. You can see the bridge up ahead, the cars going into town. To the left, one of our neighbors planted, I think, thousands of daffodil bulbs, so we'll pass those. Some people have what my kids called bamboo forests. You'll see some neighbors up here have bamboo at the back of their property. And it's just kind of this open space. I loved being a young writer in New York and having my community of people and our signs of a hunger and excitement. And then I had kids and my father died. So we left New York City and moved here. And I had a little bit of. I was anticipating having heartbreak about leaving Brooklyn, where I'd lived for so long and was so happy. And then I came here and I was like, oh, my God, this is. This is the real world. Like, there are these trees that are just electric, electrically green. And I feel like something in me has changed as a result. Like my. I don't know. I feel like the trees are doing more than just giving oxygen. I think they're these old souls that kind of console in different ways. And so there's something beautiful about this as a backdrop of what feels like a new beginning or the beginning of what of kind comes after youth. And maybe I feel sort of consoled by the fact that the landscape just keeps going despite all of the things that we do. That's really been the really most beautiful surprise of being here.

[Interviewer (possibly Ryan Kantz)]

How.

[Tracy K. Smith]

How much silence and green space has fed the inner silence that I think most writers are seeking. I had a teacher once who. Linda Gregg, the poet Linda Gregg, who said, if you are suffering from writer's block, it's really just anxiety that's keeping you from being quiet. If you're quiet after about 15 minutes, your mind is imaginative enough to come up with an idea to prevent boredom or. And I feel it's so true. In my 20s, I couldn't write. I had so much anxiety about what people were saying, what my classmates and teachers were saying about what I was writing, that I just kind of stopped for about nine months, which really hurt. And my strategy at that time was to take. Take a photography class just to be doing something creative and learning to look at things through that lens. And I think it helped bring me back to the page because I recognized something I hadn't quite articulated to myself before, which was that an image can do such amazing lyrical work and it can free you from the need to make statements and explain. If you can just describe, a feeling can emerge that the reader can't help but participate in. And before that, I thought poems were a series of wise statements that someone who had discovered things laid out one after another. And so I was. No wonder I had writer's block. I could figure out maybe one thing that seemed genuinely interesting and then a couple of other things that were in imitation of a wise person. And then I couldn't get past that. The first thing I want to look for is something that has to do with a bird or something natural. I feel like there's an effortless sense of clarity that I can locate in some of those types of sources. Yeah, sometimes what I know is, look, there's a deer, there's several.

[Interviewer (possibly Ryan Kantz)]

Wow.

[Tracy K. Smith]

No matter how many times you see one, you still get that same feeling of how lucky. I'm sorry, guys, I'm bothering you. Wow. I can't believe we made it back the way we came in this. This almost never happens to me when I'm by myself. Hi, Coco.

[David Remnick]

The poet Tracy K. Smith. You can find her poems in the new [e-mail] and that's it for today. Join us next week for James Taylor and Lucinda Williams. And until then, keep up with us on Twitter New yorkerradio and have a great week.

[Narrator/Announcer]

The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Meryl Garbus of Tune Yards, with additional music by Alexis Quadrado. This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Emily Bottin, Ave Carrillo, Rhiannon Corby, Jill Duboff, Karen Frillman, David Krasnow, Sarah Nick, Michael Rayfiel, Michael Lee Rao and Steven Valentino, with help from Susan Morrison, Emma Allen, Jessica Henderson and Eric Malinsky. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.