TRIGGERnometry - Mania: How Societies Go Crazy - Lionel Shriver

Episode Date: May 11, 2025

Lionel Shriver is an American author and journalist, known for her sharp, often provocative commentary on political and cultural topics. SPONSOR. In partnership with Manual: Go to https://manual.co/TRIGGER for 50% off. Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Substack! https://triggernometry.substack.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Shop Merch here - https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media: https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod/ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod/ About TRIGGERnometry: Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. 00:00 Introduction 02:08 How Have You Been So Prophetic? 09:04 Is There A Mania Happening Now? 24:30 Being Forced To Pick A Side 39:30 Mania's Being Enforced By The Expert Class 52:08 Avoiding Discomfort 56:00 Are Humans Capable Of Reducing The Frequency Of Mania's? 01:06:41 What's The Thing We're Not Talking About That We Should Be? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The sequence of manias that I've seen during the last dozen years. The first and most dramatic in some ways was the sudden obsession with transgenderism. The Black Lives Matter thing. And then COVID was a mania and me too was a mania. The big red flag on climate change is you couldn't differ. You throw them all together. They were demonstrations of our. collective capacity to lose our minds.

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Best Network based on Root Metrics, best to overall mobile network From its U.S. second half, 2025, all rights reserved. It must provide a recent consumer mobile bill. The name of the person, reguing me the deal. Additional terms, conditions, and restrictions apply. Lionel Shriver, welcome back to Trigonometry. We were just talking about the fact that it's been six years since you were last on the show.

I've been playing hard to get. And we've been pretty useless. But actually, it's so wonderful to have you on. We were going to, truthfully, just going to talk to you about it. Everything is happening in the world. Your opinions on things are always fascinating. But then we read your latest book, which came out last year. and it was an amazing read for a number of reasons,

so beautifully written obviously and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But actually, the thing we were reading in both of us with the same impression, which is, oh, this is a great satire of woke culture that's been going on this entire time. It's a world in which I hope I'm not giving too much away, but social justice reaches the point where you can't differentiate between people based on intelligence.

And so to criticize people for being incompetent in their job becomes a thing. thing that's not done. And people get fired for using the D word, the D word being done or the S word being stupid and so on, so on. And then you get to the logical conclusion of it in which the protagonist who speaks up against this is punished, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But then you get through to the other side in which the whole thing flips and things start

moving the exact opposite direction. And that's what I thought really separated it from everything that has been written about these movements in recent years. How, it sounds like a sucking up question, and I'm happy to suck up in some ways. How were you able to be so... Oh, go ahead. Yes, yeah, exactly. I don't want to show you mind.

How have you been able to be so prophetic about what's happened and what's happening now? Well, the reason the book is titled Mania is that I wanted to look at the larger phenomenon of social hysteria, the way that whole culture has suddenly become consumed with an idea or a problem. practice and it doesn't seem to take any time at all. And in fact, it seems to take less and less time now, obviously, because we have the technology to communicate ideas more quickly than ever. And I find this terrifying. You know, ideas are powerful things and can contort a culture almost overnight. I'm hesitant to resort to World War II as the triteest possible. example, but it's obvious. And what inspired me to write the book was the sequence of manias that I've seen during the last dozen years. The first and most dramatic in some ways was the sudden obsession with transgenderism. And it seemed to just come out of nowhere. Once you do a little reading up, it didn't actually come out of nowhere. There is a background, and I think

that's the case with a lot of these things that it takes a little while and it's on a very low level and a few people and then suddenly just but what was most striking about that particular mania was that it came with the instruction on the box that you may not criticize it in any way or your career is over and indeed that was the case That was a self-fulfilling warning. And there was a good three years after this suddenly occupied a large proportion of our television schedule, all these little boys and dresses that I kept my mouth shut. I talked to my husband behind closed doors about how weird this is. and where is this coming from? And why is this the new, you know, the new test of your liberality?

But I did not write anything about it. And that's not like me because I found it disturbing. But I wasn't going to take my career in my hands. So you were afraid of getting canceled. I was. And that sober's me. Wow. Because, you know, I have a reputation for being outspoken, even idiotically.

And yet, I was so aware of it being a dangerous subject that I just steered clear of it. And finally in 2016, which I have, in my meager defense, that was early. Agreed. Yeah. I did an essay for Prospect magazine that was submitted. admitting my sense of myself, especially just alone in the room, is not especially female. That is fundamentally androgynous. And I think that a lot of people feel this way, whether they express that to themselves or not.

And a lot of women especially came to me afterwards and said that's exactly the way they feel. But I think the experience of sex is usually a social one, but not in private. what you're not, it's about the experience of being and whether the fundamental experience of being has a sex, and I don't think so. And I also observed that the concepts of male and female are in the whole gender ideology. It's based on crude stereotypes. And even at that time, that was a very dangerous assessment. to write and I'm impressed I got away with it.

But that was the beginning of this long string of manias. The Black Lives Matter thing, boy, that blew up overnight. It became an international sensation within about two days of George Floyd being killed. And you even had people trooping around. in South Korea, and they don't have any black people. It was just like. And then COVID was a mania. COVID spawned little sub-manias about the vaccine and the mask mandate.

And, you know, we never used to lot people in their homes, basically, whenever we had a contagious disease around. And then suddenly that's the new thing. And that's what the entire world does. And Me Too was a mania. Started out reasonably sensible. There were some men who were getting away with murder. Rapidly turned into an indiscriminate and vicious movement,

which people used to wreak revenge or... make themselves more important, you know, have their 15 minutes in the sun. Every woman needed to have some kind of story of terrible sexual abuse to be a part of the conversation. You know, that one depressed me too. They all depressed me, but they were most of all, as a whole, you throw them all together. They were demonstrations of our collective capacity to lose. our minds. And that's what I wanted to write about. And it does not have a political character.

It's not a problem of the left or right. It is a problem of the species. Well, why do you say that? Because all the ones you listed would, I think, be considered left-wing manias by most people. Yes. So what's the evidence for the point? Actually, there's nothing about the COVID thing that is necessarily left-went. Yeah. It became that. It became that. Because we were already used to separating along those lines, that it was always going to end up being owned by the left or right because everything, everything is.

It still is. And is there a mania now that's happening? Climate change. I actually think climate change is on the ebb. But, yeah, the giveaway with climate change. I mean, I'm not going to get into the ins and outs of the science, but it's anything but settled. The big red flag on climate change is you couldn't differ, right? You couldn't say a discouraging word. That will get you canceled. And if a political perspective does not admit any kind of criticism or debate, then it is not any longer a political perspective.

It is a social hysteria. It is a mania. It's such a great point because in your book, your character talks about not understanding how the Holocaust happened, not understanding how the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge happened and all of these great atrocities. But having seen what's happening with the mania in the book,

which is about IQ and dim discrimination. against people who have low cognitive ability, suddenly she understands how these events happen. Yes, and that was my experience of COVID. Watching a democratic country, not just this one, but we shouldn't pick on the UK. It was virtually every democratic country in the West. just turn on its principles completely, renege on all civil rights, and the way everyone just got with the program because they were frightened.

That really took me back. I will never feel about our system of government the same again because it is obviously so full. fragile and so easy to just say, well, that doesn't apply anymore. And it's what was chilling for me was how easy people turned on their neighbors, their friends, their families, with this self-righteous fury that I was, it was, it seemed religious to me at the time and it still does. Yes, and it, you know, it hit on all the, the, the, what religions are concerned with, and issues of purity and contamination and, um,

self-sacrifice and in a rational discussion of the real dangers of the disease, which were known pretty early on, that just went out the window. And people were hysterical. And it was very disappointing. I was a little proud of the United States in this instance because at least the U.S. did spawn a few pockets of resistance. I wouldn't say the entire country said, no, we're not going to do this.

We still believe in the Bill of Rights, and we think that we should give people the information they need to protect themselves and then otherwise let people get on with their lives. No, of course not. Most of the United States did the same as everywhere. But, you know, Florida was pretty relaxed about it. They didn't have any worse mortality stats as a consequence.

And I think it was South Dakota was also pretty cool. And there were a few protests. In the U.K., there were very few protests. I attended one of them. There was about 70 people. Good for you. Yes. Yeah. And they were never, and they never got any coverage.

Pretty much. What's interesting is just a linguistic point there is when you were looking for the right word to describe Florida's approach, the word that came to my mind when you were saying Florida was pretty, I nearly jumped in with liberal. Yeah, that word's gone funny. Hasn't it? Hasn't it? It's become meaningless. because it usually means illiberal.

And that's when you know you have to throw a word away. You mentioned language, and it's one of the things that I had a lot of fun with this book. Because once I started making lists, I discovered how much of our language is contaminated by words that means stupid or smart. For example, no more smartphones. My protagonist's joke.

So what do we call them now? Mediocrity phones. And that was a lot of the playful side of that book is, you know, okay, you can't use the word dumb anymore, but can you have a dumb waiter? No, you cannot. A waiter might take exception. Can you have a dumb president more instantly in terms of...

Oh, we're not going to get into that. But sticking with this, the one thing I wanted to slightly push you on further is you said something that I think to many people, particularly people who are kind of somewhere in the center, as I feel we are, something that instinctively sounds true that what you said, which is manias aren't a political thing, they're a human thing. But then you gave a bunch of examples of manias that are excluded. exclusively left wing. And if I were on the right, I would say, well, look, you're claiming that the right is equally culpable of this, but you're only giving me examples of left wing.

So is it that the left is, it's not a human thing, it's a left wing thing to engage in these crazy manas. Well, I just have to observe that the, it's been the left that has been generating social manias recently. And you're right. That doesn't illustrate my thesis. But then that's one of the reasons that I made up my own mania and I had control over it. And in fact, I've deliberately put it in an alternative 2011 before any of the things that I just listed out had happened yet. So I got it behind them and let the mental parity movement take over and None of this stuff happens. And in fact, one of the things that never happens is the marriage equality movement.

There's no gay marriage because my mania takes over and just all these other things don't happen. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. No, I'm not talking about a bad breakup. I'm talking about losing your hair. But here's a twist. It's 2025. Losing your hair is a choice and you can choose differently with manual. Manual brings together science, tech and medical expertise to create personalized hair loss treatment plans that actually work. Whether you're just starting to thin or have been hiding under hats for years, manual's got you covered. 92% of men who use manual's plans saw improvement. You'll get your first treatment in as little as two days.

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The reason I'm digging deeper on this, I guess, is certainly in America the right is now in power, are quite happy to use that power. Which has its own manic side. Such as? Well, there's even in the texture of the Trump administration this time round, a literally manic feeling of not being able to get enough executive orders out the door. they seem a little crazed. Maybe I give the New York Times too much of my time and attention, but that's certainly what the impression

that the legacy media is generally promoting is that these people are in some kind of weird frenzy. They're in a hurry, people. A more steelman version of the argument is they feel like they've got four years. Yes, but they don't. They don't have four years. Right.

Right. They're likely to lose the House. Even if they keep the Senate, then they can't pass any significant legislation. And that even the majority in the House is slender. Yeah, there's a reason they're in a hurry. They're not going to be in real power for very long. one of the characters that I found really interesting in the book was the character of Emery, who is more intelligent than the protagonist, more talented, more beautiful, more charismatic, a better communicator.

And at the same time, utterly cynical. And that to me reflects a lot of the people who end up quite influential in these types of manias, in that you look at them and you think, do you actually believe? believe what you're saying, or is this just careerism for you? Yeah. And those people are common as dirt. In fact, the people who go for the mental parity movement in the book are the people you'd think would be the last sort to sign on because it's the intellectual class. And they have the most to lose.

but they immediately know which side of their bread is going to be buttered, so they'd better get on board. And so they're some of the earliest adopters. And I think that's also commonplace. And so the people who are well educated and you would think would be the last to be susceptible to something that's basically crazy, are some of the first people. There's some of the early adopters.

Because the more intelligent you are, the more able you are to make an argument, the more able you are to convince yourself of your own, should we just say, retarded argument. Yes, let's. You know, I have to say, I have been so happy to see that word resurrected. As have we all.

I have so missed it. It's been at least 20 years, if not 30. I don't know what decree came down that gave us permission again, but yes. But I would glad you brought up Emory because this book is sometimes misunderstood as purely a political satire, and it's certainly a political satire. But it's also about a friendship, and the friendship part is sincere. It is, and I wanted to write about a friendship that was progressively under strain from, not just, not exactly political opinions, but different approaches to the circumstance, right? You either go with it or you fight it. So my protagonist thinks that saying there is no such thing as variable human intelligence is, retarded. And Emery is an opportunist, and she's always had ambitions to be a media commentator. She stuck in a kind of under-listen-to stupid little afternoon radio show, and she wants to be on TV,

like everyone. And so this is her opening, if she really goes with, this and eventually the relationship blows up. That attracted me partly because I hadn't written that much about friendship and I think it's an interesting relationship to explore in fiction, I think under-explored. But also because I've lost friends during this period, not scads of them, but enough to be really concerned that this is happening to a lot of people. That, and I have to say here, it is usually during these manias. It has been the friend who's further to the left who usually flounces out in a huff.

I mean, most of my friends are to the left of me. You know, the nature of London and New York and that's kind of inevitable. And they put up with me. Most of them put up with me. But it's very painful to have a friendship that, you know, you've nurtured for years. And suddenly, you know, you have cooties. You know, it's like get away from me. And there's, in one instance in particular, I suspected that it wasn't just that this person was disturbed by my political positions, but that she didn't want to be associated with me.

It was bad for her career, bad for her reputation. And I think that that goes on also. And what the book describes so beautifully is, how these particular manias, when they start out, you can keep them at bay. They're only in the professional world. That's, you know, you just have to go in, you have to present a facet of yourself, a professional side, shall we say. And, you know, that's what happens in every job.

What's wrong with that? But slowly but surely, it starts to encroach into the personal space. Yes. And then you have no choice but to pick a side. And that is, that's what's so insane. insidious about these manias is they don't just affect the professional. They affect everything about our existence. Yeah. I mean, if you think about how difficult it has become to talk about anything to do with race, and that includes your closest friends, that it's, especially during the

pitch of the Black Lives Matter, you really had to, you really had to watch the mouth because almost anything could be misinterpreted and willfully and maliciously so. But you gradually couldn't trust even people close to you to get a joke, you know, to realize that you were just tossing something off. You couldn't relax talking. And one of the interesting things about the book is that the protagonist, the heroine of the book, is not an is not it's with terms of IQ I think it's in the book she's got IQ of 107 it turns out at the end so she's not someone who's particularly bright academically but what you explore really interestingly

is a lot of this is about temperament there are people who are very bright very sharp but they don't have the temperament of somebody who is unwilling to go with it there are people who just temperamentally can't stand bullshit and then eventually they take so much and then they go fuck it, I can't yeah and I saw myself a lot actually

in the in that in the protagonist so you take and you take and you go I can't do this anymore a man can't be a woman can we just can we stop you know not every white person is a white supremacist

can we stop with the nonsense but there are some people were able to deal with it or accept it far better, should we just say? And are they wrong? This is the question for, because I want to ask you, because if you look at the last 10 years, there's mania after mania after mania, as you've described. And if you took the position that trans women couldn't actually be women, you'd be fired from your job like my four starter.

That's right. Until the supreme course of the United Kingdom had to rule that actually biology is real. Right. But if you were, I don't know, someone else working at the desk next to Maya at the job that you used to have, and you didn't engage in any of these manias and you didn't say anything and you just kept your mouth shut and you got on with your job and you paid the mortgage and you raised the kids, fast forward to X number of years later, problem solved. What's wrong with that?

There's something to be said for the agnostic route. It's not a dramatic root So it's Under-explored in the book, but there is one character Who represents that, and that's the The partner. The partner. Yeah, he's a tree surgeon.

Right. So, I mean, I couldn't think of anything More apolitical Because it doesn't even involve language. He spends all day not talking to anybody. But even there. Well, he gets hurt. He gets hurt.

Right. But there are a lot of people who will say... Because he's forced to employ somebody who's incompetent. Oh, he gets hurt physically and then he gets hurt because he's married to someone who isn't willing to be like him. He gets hurt on several levels. Yes. But what I'm saying is, you know, is it really the case that everyone has to take a position when if you look objectively, these manias blow over after a couple of years, because a few people say something about it. A few people fly for it.

on you about just keeping a head down, Lionel? There's something to be said for it. I agree. And I'd also say the people who stick their necks out on this stuff

and put up resistance. I mean, I wrote my first anti-lockdown column the third week of March in 2020. I don't think I've benefited from that. In fact, as usual,

The truth is being ahead of your time never profits. Right. Never. And the people who have been punished during this era are going to stay punished. Or eventually they'll emerge, but the injury will be real and lasting. I mean, I've been astonished that David Starkey, for example, has been able to raise himself from the dead. but he still suffered real damage, permanent damage to his life and over a single word, which is shocking.

But I don't think in terms of your self-interest, it is wise to resist. I admire it. I'm like you. I think you can tell. I don't have a lot of patients with irrationality. There's something missing in me in terms of getting easily infected by other people's obsessions. It's just like it just doesn't happen.

Something just doesn't happen. It's like carrying a kind of medical immunity. But it is not in your... interest to indulge that immunity socially and professionally. You will only suffer. I think that the conformist gene is actually in your interest. And even on an evolutionary level. Yes, other than it's the free rider problem, which is you can only do that as long as someone says something sufficiently so the thing you actually don't want to happen, stops happening. If no one an anti-lockdown column ever, we might still be in lockdown, right? And so this is, I guess,

the opposite side of the argument I made earlier, which is someone does have to say something. Yes. And I guess what, you know, Francis and I think are both very stubborn about things like that. And the reason for me is that you said it's being ahead of your time. I don't think it's about time. It's being ahead of the mob, ahead of the crowd. Yes. It's getting it before most people get it, is what tends to get you in hot water, right? And I guess the question is, how does one process those decisions? Or do you think it's ultimately, it's like you're wired this way, so you're going to say the thing that you're going to say?

I think Francis is right. It's a matter of temperament. And it's not entirely in our control. And there are people who are to give them the benefit of the doubt are naturally self-protective enough to keep their heads down and or to mouth whatever it is you're supposed to be mouthing now and they get through. That is their nature.

That's not our nature. I don't think it's your nature either. I think that's fair to say, Lionel. I have a lot of scars to show up for it. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I know, I know what. what kind of people I like to hang out with. Yeah.

And the best part of this period, you know, we all hate the word woke and we all end up having to use it. So the whole, the best thing about the woke thing has been that a variety of individuals have distinguished themselves and have put their reputations at risk and have been willing to stake out lonely positions just for the sake of staking out a position that they believe in, not necessarily to benefit from it. And little by little, I mean, this is where a lot of podcasting has come from. It has been people providing a forum for dissenters.

the people who are mouting the latest whatever they don't need a forum the whole world is there for them so podcasts have been a way for people like me or Helen Joyce for example

with the transgender thing and I was just telling you I really enjoyed your Maya Forstadter interview she was great it's been a very important form to make sure that in an ideological monoculture, other voices can be heard. And I've, you know, I found it, this is the glass half-fold version, I've found it very encouraging that there are people out there who are not conformists

who are still capable of independent thought. And little by way of I think we found each other. We're not all best friends or something, but there is a loose, dare I say, community. Another word I hate. Of people who they're just temperamentally ornery and can't be manipulated. Yeah.

And again, going back to the book, I find it interesting that your character is somebody who is just in terms of IQ very regular because it is a temperament thing. I think a lot of people like to think it's an intellectual thing. And, you know, they were so much smarter than everybody else. And I don't think it is. I think you're right. I think it's just that person.

And you can see them. You can see them. in their jobs, they're the ones who get fired, because they physically, that's me, because they physically can't stop themselves from going, no, no, it's just bollocks. That's just bollocks. And everybody else swallows it, but for whatever reason, you have this kind of gag reflex where you can't swallow it. Yeah, the intellectuals can talk themselves into anything. And there's something about the academic world that not only does it foster. or mediocrity, but it has a group think sense.

In a way, I find that surprising. It's not what universities are supposed to be like, but it's certainly what they've become. And I, but also as well, what we've currently seen in the present climate is an overcorrection, just like there was an overcorrection in the book, where suddenly people were fetishizing IQ.

It was the most important thing. You couldn't vote unless you had, a certain level of IQ. You had, there were mandatory IQ tests. It became the most important thing. Your IQ is on your credit card. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But we all know the ability to regulate your finances is, it's got nothing.

It's about discipline. It's not necessarily to do with IQ. But just as we've seen an overcorrection in the book, we've now seen sign to see, particularly with the Trump administration, an overcorrection in culture and politics and society. Yes. And my biggest worry is that the overcorrection will be clumsy enough that we boomerang back to what we were doing before, you know, the progressive Democrats.

The progressives say, they're doing all the things we told you they would do because they actually are Nazis and then you need us. Yes. Now chop your bollocks off or whatever is that follows from that. Yeah. It's, it's, I don't have that sense that the overcorrection. means that we naturally swing back gently to the middle. But I guess the question is, again, what do you see as that overcorrection? Because I think, like when Francis talks about it, again, it's something that sounds reasonable,

but what does one point to say that overcorrection is happening? I mean, I don't know. I mean, I've got an event tonight with the spectator about Trump. I have no idea what I'm going to say. But it is a problem for people like me because I wish him well. I don't like him personally. I've never been a big Trump supporter,

but I would like that correction to take place. I don't want the overcorrection. And I hate seeing the way he gives the opposition fodder for, you know, yes, he's an authoritarian. You know, he's talking about a third term, which is unconstitutional. I think he does this to a degree tauntingly, you know, some of it's on purpose, some of its temperament. It's just his nature.

He's a scorpion. But if he just had some discipline, some self-control, he could bring. about some very useful change, but in being too aggressive and not obeying some of the rules, he may just self-destruct. And then we're stuck with these Democrats again. Look at your face as you say that. I guess the question I'm also curious to get your thoughts on is there has been a big debate about, you know, for years now, part of the the way the manias of the left have been enforced is to say, well, all the scientists agree that blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. All the scientists agree that the vaccine is this. All the

scientists agree that climate changes that. All the experts agree that this, this and that. All the people agree, all the professionals agree that this is Russian disinformation, which was completely fraudulent. Those of us who saw through it clearly thought that this was wrong for them to do that and in the process what they would do is undermine institutions and organizations and the credibility of things that actually was very important to run a cohesive society. And now we are through the looking glass on that. And now increasingly the sense that expertise exists at all is entirely in question for some people. And so I don't know if you caught the debate between Douglas Murray and Dave Smith, for example, but there's been a lot of talk in the context of that I don't

want to get into that specifically. But I guess what I feel is happening is in the podcasting world, which was so important for giving the opportunity to dissent and a different voice, we've become, I feel, my view is slightly edging towards the idea that dissent equals truth, that someone who disagrees is by the very nature of things right about things, as opposed to a perspective that ought to be considered. And if it's wrong to be rejected. Are you, do you see any of what I'm talking about? Sure, I do. I didn't, I haven't seen the Joe Rogan podcast yet, but I'm familiar with the parameters. And it, the criticism of Douglas Murray in that case hinged on credentialism,

which is similar to the issue of expertise and if there's such a thing. Based, by the way, on that criticism, you don't need to see the podcast to comment on it, so please go ahead. Not knowing what I'm talking about, never stopped me. We certainly don't want to get into a world where we don't believe any experts. That all the scientists agree, everyone agrees, the experts agree, that number was, has been and probably still is being in force because we all agree that the Trump administration is imploding, for example. Everyone agrees.

Do they? Or are you being satirical? I'm super confused at this point. No, it's another everyone agrees thing that the left is trying to put over. You've been reading a lot of the mainstream media, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I see a lot of people who don't agree. Yeah, no, that's the New York Times version of events.

Yes, okay. But if we go to climate change, for example, the, all, you know, 99% of, I don't remember what number they use, it's usually around there, of the scientists agree that it's all caused by human activity, et cetera, et cetera, the whole paradigm. They can get away with this because they are actively censoring anyone who disagrees. and therefore all the descending voices are silenced. And then it seems, you know, the legacy media also says the same thing. And therefore, you do give this impression that all the experts agree. It's not true. And there are plenty of scientists out there who have either a completely different version of what's going on or a more moderate one.

You know, a more complicated one, a more nuanced one, a less hysterical one. But they do not get grants in universities. They do not sponsor successful NGOs, and they do not get into newspaper op-eds. They do not get in scientific journals. a lot of the media that promotes the voices of expertise has been captured, and therefore they speak with one voice. And that does totally contaminate the whole notion of expertise. But I don't, you know, I totally agree that just because you are being contrary doesn't make you right.

And what we want is a fluid and open system that sponsors voices on multiple sides of an important issue. And since we're talking about the left-wing medias, they are displaying a real insecurity about their positions. because not permitting debate saying, oh, you're a climate denier, you know, and that suggests you're insecure about your position, because if you are secure, then it should speak for itself, and you're not afraid of your observations being refuted because you have confidence in them. But here's the difficulty, Lionel, and this is, I think, why this conversation is being had the way that it is, which is 99% of scientists also agree. that this table is made of wood and gravity is real. And unless we're all prepared to spend the

rest of our lives working out for ourselves, whether gravity is real or not, whether by jumping off buildings, for example. Correct. Yeah. Among other things. Then this idea that we simply need to debate everything endlessly and simply listen to podcast as a pymie. about these synchip podcasts like us. I include ourselves and I'm trying to work this out. I don't feel I have a conclusion on this. What I'm trying to feel for is how do we differentiate between the areas in which credentialism and expertise is

and has been misused and areas where we can say, you know what, actually 99% of scientists do agree, gravity is real. My observations seem to confirm that. Let's move on and not waste three hours on a podcast talking about this. Right. Well, there's no substitute for thinking for yourself.

Right? And making individual judgments. You have to make those individual judgments all the time deciding who to have on this podcast. Sure. Who's worth the time? Who's going to be interesting? Who's going to be persuasive? Sorry to interrupt. I'm very sorry to interrupt.

But what if the metrics by which these things are adjudicated internally are not the metrics of truth-seeking? What if the metrics are, as they often are in the mainstream media, numbers, clicks? What if the peculiarities of the individual person who's in charge of that podcast, whose interest may not be the pursuit of truth, but maybe entertainment? Those are not the same thing. How do we, if we, the podcast space is largely replacing the mainstream media as people keep saying we are, how does that all get? can this be the space where

where truth is pursued? Among other things. Yeah, sure. Among other things. I mean, when I'm deciding whether to watch a podcast, there's a certain kind of podcast that I can watch a couple minutes of and it makes me feel a little guilty because what this person is saying, it seems true, you know, And maybe even enlightening.

Maybe it's about something that I could stand to be better informed about. But this person is boring. And I don't want to watch it. So, I mean, that's part of the format. It's one of the requirements of the format that it be entertaining. And that has very little necessarily to do with truth. And I admire you guys for seeking out people who have some. something to contribute that does seem true. But there's also the requirement that it be

stimulating in some way or amusing or, you know, somehow engaging beyond the actual information. The other aspect of this debate that I find very frustrating is the thing that we can't trust the experts. And the moment when people say that, I go, that's a lot of bollocks. Because if your daughter had an epileptic fit, you wouldn't be there going, oh, let's not trust the experts, no, you'd be trying to get, you'd be wanting medical intervention ASAP, and you'd also want the best doctors, if not the best neurologist, to come in and look at her. And you would be deferring to their experience, unless you were a moron. I agree. But then on the other side of that, you look at the junior doctors in the UK,

who have all just got up in arms over the Supreme Court decision. on, you know, weagle sex is biological sex, and claim that this is in defiance of medical reality. They do not believe there are only two sexes. They think, you know, gender, whatever that word means. That's when I try to which you avoid. That is a spectrum, which is a load of nonsense. And that means these people, these are people who are trained in medicine, who not. who no longer believe in the reality of biological sex.

That is scary. And that is experts who have corrupted themselves. You would see your epileptic daughter if you took her to the hospital. Or who would have your daughter cut her breasts off. Right. And this is why neither of us is bringing a view to the table. It's rigid and fixed. But I can see a gigantic problem, which is if the pursuit,

if what happens is we've gone to a place of the mainstream media, which had a bias, but I would say in my lifetime, the BBC had a pretty clear focus on the pursuit of truth, mostly, with a bias, right? That's not quite the same as the pursuit of truth, but it's not the same as a podcast which focuses on entertainment first and truth as a byproduct of that, or if at all, right? So in the same way that the mainstream media needs to improve, I'm curious how we adapt to this new reality. And maybe, you know, maybe interrogating you about the podcast world is unfair. I don't know. I've been enough of them.

So no, it probably is perfectly fair. Okay. Well, so how do we negotiate our way through this technological revolution that's now causing revolution about the way we think, the way we, what we believe about what's true? Well, the Internet has made information chaotic. It seemed as if at first it would just be, we'd all become so much smarter because we'd have access to the truth. But no, it gives us access to our truth. And I'm sure I'm guilty of that as much as anybody I naturally seek out. information with bias that confirms what I think already.

I waste a huge amount of time reading things that are telling me what I already think. But that's a natural human impulse to be affirmed all the time. Because what we don't want to do and what most people actively avoid for understandable reasons is discomfort. Yeah. And discomfort, part of discomfort is having your opinion challenged, realizing that you're wrong. Yes. That actually what you believe is factually incorrect, which happens to every single person.

It's far easier to listen to ingest information, expose yourself to podcasts, and even surround yourself with people who think the same things that you do, even if they are a load of nonsense. Yeah. Well, it takes a lot of discipline. to constantly expose yourself to information or people disseminating information that you don't want to be true and messes up your position on something. And I don't think I'm that much better at that than most people.

Because it's not just your position on something. It's your whole worldview. For instance, if you are, like there's a lot of people in our space, they're naturally contrarian. That very easily lends itself to a particular set of views on a range of different topics, whether it's COVID, whether it's whatever it may be. Ukraine. Ukraine, it's blah, blah, blah.

If the government says this thing, then there must be that the government is wrong or they're lying to you. So it's very easy to take that position. But actually, once you start challenging yourself and you start exposing yourself to certain other voices that may be correct, all of a sudden maybe it's not one grand conspiracy. Yeah. And one of the painful aspects of this era has been the way that we separate out into left and right and therefore we just, we have these set menus of opinions. And there's no substitute for taking them one at a time and deciding what you really think. I mean, for example, with

Ukraine, just because the right of center position has gradually developed into it's their problem. Why don't we defend our own borders? I don't have to think that. I don't, I think I can look about at Ukraine and think that's just horrible. I can't stand why. I can't stand why. I watching Putin get away with it. Right? I don't know how to solve it, but I'm not going to naturally just adopt this new viewpoint because that's what people like me think.

And I sometimes have to really push myself on things like, or people, not just things. People, do I have to align myself with this person? Trump. I mean, I like some of what he's doing, but I do not feel pushed to be his advocate just because my side has adopted him. I don't want to have a side. And I think thinking in terms of sides is part of the whole problem where we're dealing with. In fact, it relates to expertise. It's everything. It's the whole concept of groupsterism. And party politics is part of it.

And it disables your brain. That's very true. And it's understandable to some extent because on election day, it's a team game. It's a team sport on election day. But once you've got past election day, it's a different conversation. I suppose your book being called Mania, the most obvious question is, do you think human beings are capable, I don't think they're capable of avoiding manias, but are they capable of reducing their frequency, reducing their intensity? Are we able to

learn from manias we've had and go, well, this thing is just like that thing, so maybe how about we don't do this? Or do you think we're just going to go round and round and round on this carousel? I think we're going to go round and round. I mean... Excellent. I mean, I wrote the book because I wanted to come to a better understanding of the whole phenomenon. It was an interesting It was interesting to go through my made-up mania. It brought out in relief a few things that I've observed along the way. But I think it is an aspect of this species where highly social, even those of us who like to think of ourselves as loners still operate in a swarm.

And that's just what swarms do. What about an individual level? Is there, for example, a set of kind of like personal principles that, you know, I don't stop speaking to people because they think something or whatever. Is there in some way in which we can all be slightly cognizant of the fact that we're constantly living through periods of this madness? And so when the latest madness comes along, it might not be a good idea to do the thing that we did last time that caused us to X, Y, Z. Yeah.

Well, I mean, I'm big on independent thought. Don't farm out your brain to other people. And it's useful to be aware of the whole concept of social hysteria, be constantly. in the midst of it, it just seems like the way things are. Right? And you're just supposed to accept that. And it helps to try to push yourself to step outside and look, well, that's weird. We didn't used to think that.

Like last year we didn't ever say anything about this. And why is everyone saying the same thing? And why is it that suddenly there are these things? things we can't say anymore. I think that's one of the biggest red flags is that suddenly these taboos are in. And so it's, to the best of our small individual ability, it would be good to just be alert to the isn't this weird response, right? This is strange. Suddenly, we've got this thing that everyone thinks. And do I really think that? You know, do I really think it? Do I really think that the U.K. or the U.S. is systemically racist, an expression that burst onto the scene and suddenly

it's in every newspaper article? I mean, what does that mean? Aren't things better than they used to be? There's no substitute for that just keeping a grip and noticing change. And when change veers off into what really ought to be a radical, perceived to be a radical direction. I mean, when we started cutting bits off of young people, I mean, that's pretty drastic, right? put the brakes on, like, this is weird, this is too weird. So don't lose your weirdness antenna. Yeah. And but like the point that you've highlighted in the book, it's a temperament thing. It is. I just think there's a lot of, most people will go along with something, not because they're cowardly or whatever it may be. It's that they have the capacity to persuade.

themselves. It's almost like a self-defense mechanism. You have the capacity to intellectualize and persuade yourself that what you're doing is morally correct. What you talk about in your book, people with low cognitive ability have been discriminated against, they've been mocked, they've been sneered at, they've been dehumanized, let's be honest. Right from the dawn of time, I imagine. And I've seen the way that we treat kids who struggle with maths and English, in my time as a teacher. I talk about it in my book. There was this one boy who I said to, I was covering for a teacher,

and I had to set them an exam. This is a little boy who was six years old, seven years old, and he had to do an English test. He was profoundly dyslexic, profoundly dyslexic. He looked at me and said, Mr. Foster, I can't do it. And I said to him, Billy, just do your best. He goes, I can't do it. I go, do your best.

And I was told that he had to take the test. The little boy put his head on the table and wept. And in the end, you couldn't even read the test paper because it was sodden with tears. And yet, and yet, where it ended up being in this book and in our society is just chaos. It's just chaos. So there is always that need to balance the empathy for those types. people but also realize that your empathy can't be ruinous and it can't destroy what we know to be true?

Well, one of the things that makes the mania work in mania, the mental parity movement, is that they've got a point. That's exactly what you're saying. That it isn't nice to treat people who are stupid. It's not, you know, intellectual capacity is not any different from other, as we We once called them God-given traits. It's not within your control to have a greater IQ. It's not something you can go out and buy.

It's not something you can earn. You can become better informed, but you can't increase your natural mental ability. It's true of all abilities that you can get more skillful. I'm not ever going to be a great singer, right? There are all these abilities that we have in varying degrees, and it's not fair. It's not fair that they vary so much, and that there are really smart people out there and really pretty thick ones also, and it's not the thick person's fault, and there's no reason to treat that person worse just because he or she was not born as

very smart. But the other thing that I was also looking at in this book, and this is a left-wing proclivity, the obsession with equality, and wanting everyone to be the same. And that fairness that I was talking about, it's not fair that I have a terrible voice, I mean, that I can't sing. It's not fair. I want to be able to sing. And the left wants to address that kind of unfairness with a devastating leveling, which means that the society is less competent. When you're going to level something, you have to take it down to the lowest point. And it also doesn't admit of the joys of human variation. And I'm big on that.

I don't really have a problem with inequality. I have an objection to economic insufficiency. So I want people to survive. I want them to at least be provided the means to be physically okay. But it doesn't bother me that people achieve different degrees. of excellence, of success in their fields. I want to live in a world where success is possible, which means by definition failure has also to be possible.

And I can live with that. I can live with the pain that induces on people who experience failure. I've had plenty of experience of failure in my own life anyway. So, yeah, it comes into cost because I was ambitious. ambitious. And when you're ambitious, you risk what can turn into real agony, the agony of failure. But I like that world better than one in which we all make the same amount of money. We're all equally sub-mediocre. You can't really have a great life, but at least you can't have a really crap life fundamentally. This has to do with taking on the socialist vision. I find

that vision anti-human and it is not a world I want to live in. Lionel, what's the one thing we're not talking about that we should be? Before Lionel answers a final question at the end of the interview, make sure to head over to our substack. The link is in the description where you'll be able to see this. Have you watched out a lesson and what did you think of it if you have? Do you share my sense that anti-Trump liberals are in denial that their political culture and social behavior set the table for this populist backlash? Will America regret voting Donald Trump back into office and why? Lionel, what's the one thing we're not talking about, that we should be? Okay, but I've advanced this idea before.

I think it's important that we start questioning things that have been in existence in a long time and we take them for granted. And I would say in particular, and this is by way of paving the way for my next novel out in January, that I think that we should either reform or completely scrap the asylum system. I think both the U.K. and the U.S., but right now, especially the U.K., is being taken advantage of. And it's a system that has outlived its usefulness. It was designed after World War II, as we know, and to try to prevent what happened then, especially before the war,

people did not open their borders for Jews fleeing persecution. But it's now being used for almost entirely economic purposes. And it's so widely abused that the few people for whom it should be useful, it sometimes isn't useful for it because they get lost in all these cases that the system wasn't designed for. So that's, tell me more. I think the vast majority of people will actually probably not have any idea what you're talking about. So what is happening in your opinion that you're raising the alarm about? We have a mass migration from the global south to western countries that is too fast and is leading to social division, cultural dilution. I hate seeing in the UK the

factionalization with Muslims and the majority culture I would like to slow that down and it's not that I am hostile foreigners, I am a foreigner and we're all foreigners when we go somewhere else but I think that you know, what's been happening in the United States under Biden was really socially destructive,

economically destructive. And the best thing that Trump has done is effectively close the border. So, and I'd like to see this country get a grip on its immigration also because then maybe Britain can start to, assimilate the people who are already here and create a unified country again. Well, I'm glad I followed up because for some reason, inexplicably, I heard you say mental asylum and I thought you had raised some really important issue about the mental health, psychiatric hospitals, etc. system. So, yeah, well, that's, maybe that's my next book. Well, there you go. If you do happen to do that, I'd like 10%. Anyway, head on over to Substack. Eight.

That's a deal. There's a lot of the deal happening in real time for you. Head on over at the substack where we ask line all your questions. Do you think the nuclear family is the healthiest form of social units or is the extended family unit that you find in many places around the world a better environment for children to grow up in? Mother's Day has a way of sneaking up on you. But when it does, 1-800 flowers makes it easy to send mom something beautiful, thoughtful,

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