The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - Lionel Shriver - Author of ＂A Better Life＂ (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_989)

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00:01:05.740 Hi, everybody. This is Gatz out. Today, I've got another, a fellow HarperCollins author,

00:01:12.340 Lionel Shriver. How are you doing? I'm very well, and I always like to meet other writers

00:01:20.200 with the same publisher and not only same publisher same publicist at the publisher

00:01:26.540 correct perhaps even more important even more so we really are especially this publicist so 0.52

00:01:33.340 she she is a a honey badger as i like to say she she's assiduous in her uh and you know in her 0.92

00:01:42.180 mission so i think we can all both agree to that let me before we get going uh discussing your 0.66

00:01:47.240 latest book and other great stuff. I just want to mention to the people who may not know who you

00:01:52.100 are, so you've published, I think, 17 novels. Is that the right number? Is it 16 or 17?

00:01:57.720 I think it's 17.

00:01:58.920 Okay, 17 novels, also a few collection of essays of other writings, sort of like tomes,

00:02:05.500 compendiums. You've been a columnist with The Spectator since 2017, and your journalistic work

00:02:13.020 has been featured in you know many outlets including the guardian the new york times and

00:02:17.640 the wall street journal i won't read all 17 novels but i will mention that your most i guess

00:02:24.380 your most sold the one that sold the most we need to talk about kevin over 1 million sold

00:02:31.060 that is unbelievable you you're you're in a very rarefied world but today we're talking about your

00:02:37.280 latest which is this beauty right here a better life came out earlier this year maybe we could

00:02:42.180 start there. Tell us what the premise is here, and we can tell you from there.

00:02:47.520 It's a novel that's focused on contemporary immigration. It took its cue from an announcement

00:02:56.080 by then mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, that he was going to start paying regular New Yorkers

00:03:05.620 to put up migrants in their spare bedrooms.

00:03:10.540 This was during the migration crisis of the Biden administration of 2023 to 2024.

00:03:20.680 And Adams was starting to get desperate.

00:03:24.460 But he never followed through on that program.

00:03:27.520 And when I first heard about it, I thought, well, that is a great setup for a novel.

00:03:33.300 And then when he didn't bring it to life, I knew I had to do so for him.

00:03:40.160 So it's a story of a mother who is living with her adult son in Ditmas Park in Brooklyn.

00:03:51.960 That's a very beautiful part of Brooklyn.

00:03:56.400 Really big house.

00:03:58.380 And it's just the two of them.

00:04:00.240 So she participates in this program. 0.88

00:04:02.720 and agrees to take in a single migrant, a female,

00:04:08.800 and this is over the dead body of her son,

00:04:13.220 who is much more conservative than his mother,

00:04:17.140 who's, of course, like so many New Yorkers, a good progressive.

00:04:22.160 Of course.

00:04:22.420 And he doesn't especially welcome the intrusion of a stranger

00:04:27.500 into his blissfully uneventful life.

00:04:34.140 So it does not end up being,

00:04:37.880 the story does not stop there, of course,

00:04:40.840 because the woman whom the mother has invited

00:04:45.480 doesn't turn out to be the last migrant living in the house.

00:04:50.620 So when I write my books, which are non-fictional,

00:04:54.120 and I told you offline that one of the things I want to talk about

00:04:56.400 are the differing processes of how you write fiction versus nonfiction. So I have sort of a

00:05:02.140 vision in mind, what would be sort of the key takeaway of my non-fictional book. So my earlier

00:05:08.860 books would be, how do you incorporate evolutionary psychology in studying human behavior in general

00:05:15.560 and consumer behavior in particular? Later, I got into, you know, cultural commentary,

00:05:21.400 looking at what what is affecting so negatively the west in your case you i mean you're trying

00:05:28.900 to make a point so you and i might might come at a criticism of open border policies you know and

00:05:34.340 we're sympathical in terms of our ideological bent but you choose the fictional form i choose

00:05:39.780 the non-fictional form is it because that's the the mode that you're most comfortable in or is it

00:05:45.660 conscious decision, I think I can persuade people about some of the lunacy more so if I tell it

00:05:51.940 through a storytelling mechanism. Well, first off, I've been a professional novelist my entire adult

00:05:59.600 life, so it's my job. And when I'm taking on a book-sized project, I more or less assume that

00:06:08.260 it's going to be fiction, partly because that's what I like to read. And on the rare occasions

00:06:14.220 than I have conceded to teach creative writing.

00:06:17.560 I always urge students to write what they would want to read.

00:06:22.920 So if you give me a choice with my free time,

00:06:28.920 am I going to pick up a novel or a nonfiction book,

00:06:31.880 I will always reach for the novel.

00:06:34.940 I think not to do down the difficulty of writing an excellent nonfiction book,

00:06:43.440 and I have regard for that, but I think that the novel is a more difficult form,

00:06:48.700 is a more challenging form, and it has a lot more leeway in it.

00:06:52.320 I enjoy the fact that it has virtually no rules,

00:06:59.040 and the few rules that you can cite, you can break.

00:07:03.780 So I like that.

00:07:06.740 It's actually what makes the form so intimidating,

00:07:10.860 is that it has no limits.

00:07:15.520 I think storytelling is an ancient way

00:07:18.740 of getting a point across.

00:07:20.860 Even nonfiction uses storytelling all the time.

00:07:23.960 Some of the best and most persuasive nonfiction

00:07:27.720 is illustrative.

00:07:31.200 It has many inset stories.

00:07:34.740 Or maybe the author, him or herself,

00:07:38.300 also has a personal story but story is is what engages our imagination and and it's also what

00:07:48.780 makes abstract arguments real so that's that's actually uh you know we both use narrative yeah

00:07:58.300 in in and you know and so it's the whole idea of fiction is a little weird when there's so many

00:08:05.400 people out there already with their their real stories why do you have to make up things that

00:08:12.440 never happened but there is something about the process of making something up that in some ways

00:08:20.000 becomes it becomes more real than stories of of about about real people because you you start

00:08:30.420 with from the point of absolutely nothing and therefore everything has to be created

00:08:36.100 has to be summoned and i find that alchemy fascinating and i i i one of the things i

00:08:44.620 like about it is that it is um it is a process that i have to undergo in the same way that the

00:08:51.860 reader does so i have to convince myself that these people exist and there's a point at which

00:08:58.640 you actually buy your own lies yeah right now but i like that i like i like i like the mystery of

00:09:07.000 that process and and i honestly i never tire of it i'll i'll come back in a second to you know

00:09:13.300 erect the bridge between fiction and actually my work in evolutionary psychology but let's

00:09:18.820 let's table that that discussion for a second i i liked what you were talking about in terms of the

00:09:24.480 the creative process of how you start with nothing you know so i've often said that when i'm writing

00:09:31.240 my non-fiction books there is both the element that you speak of there's the bottom up organic

00:09:38.000 element which i would not have a priori thought that i'd be going down that alley and that that

00:09:44.860 just arises during the process of of you know of my gathering the research and you know thinking

00:09:49.920 through whatever it is I want to say, but then there is a bottom-down a priori process, right?

00:09:56.060 I mean, I have a general idea how the narrative of my book is going to unfold. There are at least

00:10:02.660 these, you know, eight chapters that I'm thinking of covering, which of course might change a bit,

00:10:08.700 but it's a mixture of both bottom-up processes and top-down processes, whereas what you're saying,

00:10:14.620 i think is it's almost exclusively driven by bottom-up processes so actually that's not true

00:10:21.020 in my case there are a lot of novelists who do work that way and they're just feeling their way

00:10:26.500 in a fog and don't even know what's going to happen in the next page that's not how i write

00:10:31.740 uh i do uh map out a book ahead of time i know how the book ends without without uh so

00:10:41.640 And it sometimes surprises people that, why would you do that?

00:10:47.320 That just sounds so flat, and wouldn't you want to just be curious what happens in the same way that your reader is?

00:10:57.460 And actually, the weird thing about having a game plan, which saves you a lot of trouble, actually, is that it doesn't help that much.

00:11:10.960 And I think that's one of the biggest differences.

00:11:14.160 I mean, the writing is everything.

00:11:18.460 And I can design a character in the abstract.

00:11:24.000 I can design a plot in the abstract.

00:11:27.360 But it doesn't make it happen on the page.

00:11:30.200 So it's always fascinating to me how little that outline really achieves,

00:11:37.520 how little solace it is.

00:11:39.380 it doesn't really get you that far because it's the actual writing that is everything is going

00:11:47.240 to make or break the book got you uh as promised i'm going to now try to link it link your world

00:11:53.680 of fictional writing with my world in evolutionary psychology so there is a field uh called darwinian

00:12:00.700 literary criticism are you at all familiar with that term no i'm not i'm okay oh great so i'm

00:12:07.800 always excited when i sort of introduce a new a new concept to a guest so darwinian literary

00:12:12.700 criticism basically argues and i think it's going to resonate well with you it basically argues that

00:12:18.400 the reason why fictional literature titillates our senses engages our imagination is because

00:12:26.860 ultimately it is a window to our evolved human nature so if you look if you do a content analysis

00:12:33.540 of all great literature whether it be some japanese formed 500 years ago or some urdu story

00:12:41.620 from pakistan or some arabic story there is a few universal themes that we are absolutely sure

00:12:48.780 are going to pull at our strings in exactly the same way irrespective of when you're reading it

00:12:54.620 or where you're reading it which temporal period paternity uncertainty sexual longing sibling

00:13:00.100 rivalry parent child you know parent offspring conflicts and so there's a few of these templates

00:13:06.180 but then can be delivered in completely different ways but underneath all that difference lays those

00:13:12.580 lay those universals so well first what do you what do you think of that because what do you

00:13:17.940 think of that theory trying to link sort of the natural sciences to an art form like literature

00:13:23.300 i think there's something sound in that um

00:13:27.260 I am probably best known as a novelist who takes on contemporary social issues, which I have not done in every book and do not feel obligated to do in every book.

00:13:45.900 But yes, my work tends to be a little more political than a lot of my contemporaries.

00:13:51.700 that

00:13:55.100 that means that

00:13:58.940 of course I'm in danger of dating myself

00:14:03.020 that you know history moves on

00:14:06.980 the newspaper moves on

00:14:08.380 and these issues may not any longer be that germane

00:14:13.780 but the book will survive

00:14:18.160 if I have tapped into

00:14:20.740 a deeper and more eternal vein of human experience exactly so that that speaks to what i'm so you

00:14:28.800 know even if i mean that we need to talk about kevin you mentioned is the books that has sold

00:14:36.700 the most copies um even if school shootings which that novel addresses had completely ceased to be

00:14:46.620 a social problem i think that book would continue to resonate with with readers and that's because

00:14:55.280 what it really touches on you mentioned parent-child relationships in that list of

00:15:01.300 and that's what this is about and it's about it's about a mother's relationship to her child who

00:15:08.600 is the the mass killer at his high school and the resolution of that relationship and her

00:15:18.340 her anxiety that he turned out as he did because she didn't love him enough

00:15:26.460 and that problem is not going away the bonding problem with your own children

00:15:35.720 the anxiety about whether you're cut out

00:15:39.740 to be a mother or a parent

00:15:41.200 that's going to go, that's forever

00:15:44.960 and if a novel takes on a social issue

00:15:50.140 but does not reach those groundwaters

00:15:53.980 the aquifers of human experience 0.98

00:15:56.660 then it will be a crap book 0.96

00:15:58.420 and it will not last 0.98

00:16:01.080 Right. And I would say if you write a narrative in your fictional work that is inconsistent or incongruent with human nature, it will likely fail.

00:16:14.460 And so let me let me just give you one or two examples off the top of my head. So I remember in my first book, it was an academic book where I was doing a content analysis of various cultural products, art, film, you know, literature, poetry, song lyrics.

00:16:33.260 I said, well, look, if you look at the types of things that male singers sing about versus female singers in wildly different time periods across wildly different linguistic heritage, it's never the women that are more likely to be singing about the beauty of men.

00:16:56.640 it's always the women who are going to be denigrating the social status of a man that's

00:17:02.200 how you denigrate a man so there are certain again to our earlier point certain universal themes so

00:17:07.840 take for example i don't know if you remember the the movie with uh demi moore and robert

00:17:14.180 redford indecent proposal do you remember that movie i don't i don't remember it yeah okay so

00:17:22.420 it was I think I hope I'm not remind me yeah so I think it was 1993 maybe it's a movie about a rich

00:17:29.600 industrialist a dashing guy Robert Redford uh who uh meets this young sort of idealistic couple

00:17:38.440 our love will conquer everything played by Woody Harrelson and Demi Moore and as they're chatting

00:17:44.520 while playing you know pool in some you know bar uh they intimate to him that there are some things

00:17:51.220 that can't be bought and so he decides to put this to the test by proposing an indecent proposal

00:17:57.660 which is i'll give you a million dollars if i could have a night with your wife now of course

00:18:05.360 that creates a huge tension and but the screenwriters who wrote that while they may not

00:18:12.200 call themselves evolutionary psychologists are actually darwinian beings that understand what

00:18:17.680 resonates in their minds and in the minds of the audience which is if it were the opposite if it

00:18:23.420 were oprah winfrey that meets the couple and we and then she says to the wife give me a million 0.94

00:18:30.200 i'll give you a million dollars if you can go with your husband the wife is certainly more likely to 0.99

00:18:35.600 say here's the check here's the zurich bank account and don't let the door hit your asses 0.98

00:18:42.020 on the way out right now not not because women you know don't mind uh you know infidelity but the 0.99

00:18:48.500 the psychic pain of sexual infidelity looms much larger in a man's psyche if only because of

00:18:56.640 paternity uncertainty we know so men have evolved the cognitive behavioral emotional system to thwart

00:19:03.780 the greatest threat to them which is we're a bi-parental species i don't want to be investing 0.86

00:19:08.440 18 years and a baby that turns out to look like the really sexy gardener that used to come to our

00:19:14.040 house and so literature film what you write about if you're doing a good job i read that and i go

00:19:21.760 that resonates with exactly what i expect humans to act like does that make sense yes and and and

00:19:30.120 novelists are always also exploring the violation of of those rules and the you

00:19:42.040 know Kevin famously the mother doesn't love her son I mean that's against the

00:19:48.280 rules that's against evolutionary rules and in fact it tends to break standard

00:19:55.180 narrative rules that's just that the mother-son relationship is sacred and i violated that so

00:20:02.180 novels experiment with breaking the darwinian rules but of course by the end of the novel

00:20:11.040 they have reconciled so you break the rule in order to verify the rule interesting what's your

00:20:19.520 typical, you know, regiment when you're writing. So in my case, for example, I mean, there are

00:20:25.600 many sort of principles that I might use, but certainly I'm very dogged and disciplined in that

00:20:32.740 it becomes very easy for me, you know, I lead a, you know, a busy life, as I'm sure you do,

00:20:37.780 for me to say, well, maybe not today, I don't have to write. But no, every single day, I could

00:20:42.820 be suffering from a nasty bronchitis i'm going to sit down and try to you know uh go through

00:20:49.840 200 300 400 words do you have such mechanisms that you sort of try to abide by so that you can

00:20:58.480 get harper collins that book on time um no really you're free if i have a book on i try to get to it

00:21:09.300 If I can't, for whatever reason, don't freak out.

00:21:13.860 It's not going anywhere.

00:21:17.720 I tend, you know, when I first started out, I was very rigid and I had rules

00:21:24.560 and I had word counts that I had to meet.

00:21:28.740 That's fundamentally fearful and expresses a lack of faith in yourself.

00:21:33.600 and after that many books uh i have faith in my ability to get the job done sooner or later so

00:21:41.160 no no it's not i'm fairly relaxed about the whole thing do you like to work uh and i mean i'm asking

00:21:52.220 these questions because i know for a fact that there are you know everybody is an aspiring actor

00:21:57.040 aspiring author even if they've never written anything right so they are more and more importantly

00:22:02.500 everyone is an aspiring writer, even if they never read anything.

00:22:05.860 Fair enough. So it's in that spirit that, you know, I want the people who are listening to us

00:22:11.980 and certainly the people who want to write fiction. I'm sitting and chatting with someone

00:22:15.800 who's done it very well for many years. You know, I'm speaking as you now. I like to work with music

00:22:22.440 in the background. Or no, it has to be completely quiet. I like to work in my cave in my study. Or

00:22:27.780 no i need to get out and be in a cafe give us a sense of you know where it is that you can paint

00:22:34.560 your canvas in an optimal manner i i do better it in my study i don't tend to write in hotel rooms

00:22:43.240 fair enough uh what about we were talking earlier uh because you said hotel room so it made me think

00:22:51.200 of travel I know that you live partly in Portugal a few years ago my family and I for the first time

00:22:59.680 ever went to the Algarve kind of covered almost all of it the whole coast loved it what made you

00:23:06.720 decide to go to that enchanting country we had friends who moved here in advance and scoped it

00:23:15.620 out. So we already had a small ready-made social circle. And I was ready to leave the UK where I

00:23:26.400 had lived for 36 years. So some of it was negative. It was a sense that the UK was in a state of

00:23:35.920 profound decay and I didn't have to go down with the ship. That explains by the way, I think I

00:23:44.200 hadn't coded that you lived in the UK that explains why you you and I pronounced the word

00:23:49.920 I-S-S-U-E very differently I noticed that you pronounced it in a more British manner and I was

00:23:56.780 kind of confused yeah that's right it we I wouldn't say it this way right my pronunciation

00:24:01.420 is not nearly as screwed up as it really should be but uh by screwed up it means more British

00:24:09.080 Um, yes, it should be more British than it is, but we both know that Americans detest other Americans who adopt English accents. 0.66

00:24:21.420 So I don't know how conscious it was, but I more or less resolved to resist putting on airs as our compatriots would perceive them and have kept my American accent with some resolution.

00:24:49.100 And I think that was, I think that is an expression of self-respect.

00:24:54.620 Fair enough.

00:24:56.700 I know that.

00:24:57.700 By the way, I would add that I lived for 12 years in Northern Ireland and there, and that is a very infectious accent.

00:25:05.640 It did change the way I talk.

00:25:08.600 It took me a long time to get over that.

00:25:11.020 But I finally decided, and it was a conscious decision to bring back my original accent, I thought that the adoption of some of the local lilt was an expression of a desire to please.

00:25:35.300 Gotcha.

00:25:36.800 And it's just not attractive.

00:25:39.740 Authenticity is important.

00:25:41.020 Yes. Tell me, I was looking through some of the material, and I think one of the topics that you were more than happy to talk about, and I can understand why, is sort of the wokeism, you know, parasitic stuff that's in the publishing industry.

00:25:56.680 I can imagine when you're writing a book that in one form or another is anti-open immigration policy

00:26:04.080 I can imagine how many you know publishers would huff and puff at the audacity of saying that

00:26:09.880 not everyone should be equally welcome and so on but is this something that you've been experiencing

00:26:14.760 I mean throughout your career where you may have a political bent that's somewhat to the right of

00:26:22.660 the typical publisher and that you've had to deal with? And if yes, maybe you can tell us about how

00:26:27.000 you navigated that. My orientation politically probably started splitting off from the more

00:26:40.280 acceptable progressive path, especially around 2010 or so. And I think you can see that in the

00:26:49.900 work. I was raised as a liberal Democrat and my transformation into what I have finally resolved

00:26:59.660 to call conservatism was gradual. Although living in Northern Ireland was

00:27:12.340 a big contribution because liberal Democrats at that time, and this was during the trouble

00:27:19.820 were big supporters of the IRA, and as soon as I got to Belfast,

00:27:24.840 I found the IRA completely repulsive, morally and also personally.

00:27:31.940 So that classed me in the context of that conflict more conservative.

00:27:40.660 But it has been tricky to navigate publishing and literary circles as one of the only conservative fiction writers in the Western world, as far as I can tell.

00:28:01.480 I mean, you can name some others. I'd love to meet them.

00:28:05.840 Try to meet a conservative professor. It's even less likely.

00:28:09.040 Exactly.

00:28:10.660 And that has been a complicated situation.

00:28:17.720 In some ways I have benefited from being one of the only conservative fiction writers

00:28:24.840 in the Western world because that obviously gives me some prominence and very little competition.

00:28:34.060 On the other hand, it also means that lots of people hate me.

00:28:40.240 And that would include some of the reviewers of my new book.

00:28:45.100 And I would say that A Better Life probably takes more risks than any of the other previous

00:28:50.880 books because I regard immigration as probably the ultimate litmus test as to whether you 0.77

00:28:59.660 are on the left or right.

00:29:01.420 I mean, there really is no such thing as a progressive Democrat in the United States

00:29:07.300 who has a restrictionist perspective on immigration.

00:29:14.740 You wouldn't call yourself progressive if you did.

00:29:18.220 And it just seems like this issue is the dividing line.

00:29:23.160 Now, you know, because it is a book of fiction, it isn't a polemic,

00:29:28.860 It isn't arguing a straight-line policy perspective.

00:29:36.800 It isn't aiming to persuade you of a very specific thesis as one would in nonfiction.

00:29:47.560 And there are many pitfalls to writing about this divisive subject in fiction.

00:29:54.280 obviously if you take it on with non-fiction you have a premise you mostly put up opposing

00:30:04.660 arguments to knock them down i can't do that if i put opposing arguments in the book and there are

00:30:10.840 opposing arguments in the book uh they have to be persuasive which is a little tricky because

00:30:20.020 Because I am completely forthright in nonfiction, in my spectator columns, that I am an immigration

00:30:27.820 restrictionist.

00:30:29.060 I don't believe in open borders. 1.00

00:30:31.660 I would completely get rid of the asylum system, for example.

00:30:38.200 But in fiction, I have to put all that aside. 0.82

00:30:45.100 And I find that interesting.

00:30:48.040 I mean, that is, it's a good discipline.

00:30:53.720 So there are a lot of arguments about immigration in this book, but both sides have to be well-argued.

00:31:02.620 I can't stack the deck too much or, you know, I show my hand and therefore I come across as a propagandist.

00:31:14.040 propagandist right in fact that's one of the big differences again between non-fiction and

00:31:18.580 in fiction because in non-fiction you're expected to have a line that you're hawking

00:31:24.400 but in fiction you're not really supposed to be having a non-fiction line that you're hawking

00:31:30.760 um maybe in relation to those deep waters we were talking about right that would be okay

00:31:40.320 that you have a perspective on romantic love or something and but not that you want to

00:31:51.440 to eliminate the asylum system you can't you know that's just not going to fly artistically

00:32:02.300 Right. And, and, but it's also a little tricky when, when I, you know, one of my ambitions is, was to explore the immigration issue. I find it fascinating. I've been interested in immigration for at least 30 years.

00:32:18.480 i was i was thinking as when when you started your answer you were saying you know i'm one of

00:32:24.140 the only if not the i guess not the only but one of the only conservative fiction writers i was

00:32:30.040 thinking in other genres where we would have a similar reality and so i thought about when i

00:32:35.700 first moved to canada we moved from lebanon in the mid-70s and one of the shows that i think

00:32:42.080 shaped me very early on which was very much of a political show where a sitcom one of the

00:32:50.120 characters was very conservative although you may not want to claim him because he was somewhat

00:32:55.360 spicy in some of his bigotry do you know do you know where i'm going with this do you know which

00:32:59.560 show i'm thinking of let's see if we're simpatico here there used to be a comedy in the early to

00:33:06.120 mid-70s, where really the underlying current was always about social issues. Any thoughts that

00:33:13.600 come to mind? This is a second city? I was going to say all in the family. So all in the family.

00:33:18.860 Yeah, I loved all in the family. Right. So all in the family. I mean, when I was a kid, I mean,

00:33:24.460 yes, I understood it, but at a certain level, right? I was 11, 12, having recently come to

00:33:30.580 the United States learning English, when I've seen subsequently clips from it, you know, it deals

00:33:37.140 with many issues that are eternal, right? That are as relevant today. Now, the way that they deliver

00:33:43.360 the dialogue might be considered incredibly risque today, but it's still dealing with the

00:33:49.500 same issues. So it seems as though really like in every possible artistic endeavor, as is the case

00:33:56.880 in academia, you could count on one hand the number of conservatives. So in journalism,

00:34:02.780 in film, in television, in fiction writing, everywhere. Why do you think that is? Why do

00:34:09.220 you think all the intelligentsia, I mean, I've got, of course, my own answers, but I'd like to

00:34:14.260 hear yours. Why is it so astoundingly tilted to the left? I find it a little puzzling. I have some

00:34:24.220 answers, but I don't think they're sufficient. I think conservatives tend to be more practical

00:34:31.140 in terms of just their choices of profession. And the arts are a bad bet in general. I mean,

00:34:44.680 my career has ended up being successful in the end, but it wasn't for a long time.

00:34:54.980 And my parents' concerns about my choice of career were well-founded. I was insulted by

00:35:03.440 those concerns to begin with. And now as an older and more mature adult, I am very sympathetic

00:35:10.260 with their worries for my future.

00:35:15.360 And I think that the fact that, especially in recent times,

00:35:22.000 people in the arts have usually gone to university,

00:35:26.000 and that would not have previously been the case, like in the 1800s.

00:35:32.900 That's an ingredient also, because as we know,

00:35:36.040 the universities are infected with left-wing ideology,

00:35:41.260 and that has been the case for quite some time.

00:35:44.080 So people in the arts would usually be products

00:35:49.340 of a certain kind of indoctrination.

00:35:56.260 But why would creative people as a class be left-wing?

00:36:06.040 I can propose something. And I mean, there are several possible mechanisms, but one of which to sort of build on what you just said, I think that leftist folks wake up every day with an existential angst about the current reality, the status quo, right?

00:36:25.980 they live in an evil capitalist society that's islamophobic transphobic misogynistic

00:36:32.460 living on stolen land and so on around the corner lays unicornia so if only we can you know get rid 0.98

00:36:41.880 i like that unicornia you like that uh so if we can get rid of the current status quo

00:36:47.880 then we can create that beautiful world that really we we are all deserving of and one of

00:36:54.240 the ways by which I can instantiate my journey to unicornia is through the arts, where I'm not

00:37:02.800 restricted. I could be fully decoupled from reality while I spin all of my ideological

00:37:10.260 bullshit. I think that might be one possible explanation. What do you think? 0.99

00:37:16.700 But it speaks to your point about practicality, right? That you said that,

00:37:20.180 And by the way, you see that. Sorry, I interrupted before I gave you a chance to answer the previous comment. You see it, for example, in the distribution of political orientations within medicine.

00:37:32.660 So the orthopedic surgeon, the anesthesiologist, the urologist, if memory serves me right,

00:37:44.360 very practical, just you got to fix the Achilles tendon, you've got to administer the right amount

00:37:50.480 of anesthesia given this person's sex and weight. It's very practical. It's very clear.

00:37:56.780 there isn't the intrusion of ideology the most leftist fields infectious disease pediatrics and 0.60

00:38:04.820 psychiatry have a much greater degrees of freedom for ideological bullshit to come in and so i think

00:38:12.780 that might explain what we're talking about um there it may also be an ingredient that

00:38:20.220 conservatives tend to be more contented yeah exactly and actually the research supports what

00:38:26.620 you're saying, because in my previous book, in my happiness book, I discuss the ubiquity of

00:38:35.420 research that has found that conservatives score higher on happiness than do the progressives,

00:38:42.840 to your point. Yes, and it's a significant difference. Yeah, indeed. And there may be

00:38:49.280 something about being drawn to the arts that suggests a an angst or a desire to resolve

00:38:59.160 something yeah indeed that uh that if you're truly contented you're not tortured in that way

00:39:05.980 and you don't you don't need to create something to sort something out because everything's fine

00:39:13.340 or at least maybe not perfect but i i mean i wake up every morning i say i've got a great family i've

00:39:20.580 got a great profession i live in the freest society possible it's not perfect but i'm not

00:39:26.300 you know painting my hair blue and going to free palestine rallies right because to your point i

00:39:32.160 am content i live in a great society i'm happy i've got existential gratitude uh i want to go

00:39:38.240 back to uh fiction uh quickly uh in your in this book let me put it up again so that people could

00:39:45.520 go get it better life came out a few months ago go get it people uh you said that eric adams had

00:39:52.720 you know was trying to enact some policy hey invite people into your home because we want to

00:39:59.000 be kind and empathetic so that might have been the trigger for the eventual book is it always

00:40:05.140 that mechanism for all your books. You see something that happens in society and then you

00:40:11.140 say, aha, I think I just found the topic of my next book. And if, if yes, okay, great. If not,

00:40:16.560 how do you come up? What's, what's your next book going to be about? Or do you not know it yet?

00:40:22.780 Yeah, I know it. But you don't talk about it. No, not really. I'm struggling with it.

00:40:29.580 I've wanted to write a novel about immigration for a long time

00:40:36.120 but having a topic is not having an idea for a book

00:40:40.740 so it was only when I heard about Eric Adams

00:40:44.700 and his announcement

00:40:46.840 and I'd been following what was happening in New York

00:40:49.800 with increasing horror

00:40:51.440 that was an idea for a book

00:40:54.600 that was a circumstance, a premise

00:40:57.320 that had a lot in it.

00:41:00.100 It would allow for a lot to happen.

00:41:08.220 And that's not a topic.

00:41:12.960 When you have a topic, you don't have a book.

00:41:15.440 So it takes some little trigger

00:41:17.580 that gives you a circumstance

00:41:20.460 that is going to produce story.

00:41:25.640 Right, makes sense.

00:41:26.880 OK, I was going to I was going to try. Usually when I end my conversations, I say, if you've got anything to plug like a next project, this is your time to do it.

00:41:35.600 But you said you don't want to discuss your the next book that's simmering in your mind.

00:41:40.560 Is there anything else that you would like to share with us, plug, promote other than this guy right here?

00:41:50.040 No, I'm promoting that book. It's my job right now.

00:41:53.820 And I would just say that fiction writers have written about immigration for many, many years, but they almost always tell the story from the perspective of the immigrant.

00:42:08.840 and this is one of the only books i know of that takes account of the experience of the host

00:42:16.980 population what it's like to be in a place that is being inundated with strangers from somewhere

00:42:24.960 else and it is a novel that is sympathetic with that experience even if it sometimes rouses

00:42:33.740 unattractive emotions like resentment and consternation.

00:42:41.560 But I think that most of the United States

00:42:48.260 falls into the category of the characters in my book.

00:42:52.140 They are the host population

00:42:54.320 whose experience is often completely discounted,

00:43:00.000 both in politics and certainly in literature.

00:43:02.260 so if you would like that perspective fairly represented this is the book for you

00:43:11.660 wonderful stay on the line so we could say goodbye one more time a better life check it out thank you

00:43:18.280 so much for coming on stay on the line and pleasure meeting you nice to meet you too cheers

The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - May 02, 2026

Lionel Shriver - Author of ＂A Better Life＂ (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_989)

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