Lost at Sea collects 22 Guardian articles Jon’s written over the years, and they are fascinating portraits of people and groups a few standard deviations away from the middle of the normalcy bell curve.
Subjects include: Insane Clown Posse and their announcement that they are born-again Christians who have encoded secret messages in their songs for the last decade, the billionaire transgender woman who invented satellite radio and her attempt to create a lifelike robot of her partner, the culture of Indigo Children, a British pop star’s fascination with UFOs and aliens abductions, the contents of Stanley Kubrik’s archival boxes, the tiny town of North Pole, Alaska, where Christmas is celebrated 365 days a year and where a group of high school students were caught trying to duplicate the Columbine high school massacre, a profile of Neuro-linguistic Programming co-creator Richard Bandler, a Children of God offshoot that donates kidneys as part of their religious practice, a profile of psychic Sylvia Browne, and many more stories. I was enthralled by every one.
David and I spoke to Jon last year on Gweek. Listen to that episode here.
