TRIGGERnometry - March 01, 2026


ICE, Immigration and Cultural Suicide - Lionel Shriver


Episode Stats


Length

1 hour and 10 minutes

Words per minute

147.80125

Word count

10,436

Sentence count

22

Harmful content

Misogyny

13

sentences flagged

Toxicity

18

sentences flagged

Hate speech

32

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In honour of International Women's Month, we're celebrating the life and legacy of the women who shaped who we are, and the legacy they left behind, with a special episode featuring the author of "A Better Life" about immigration.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 this is all the result of individual political decisions the Biden administration opened that
00:00:09.000 border on purpose there is design behind it we are not acting out of self-interest the gender
00:00:15.960 dynamics in the book between who it is that actually is inviting these people and who it
00:00:21.500 is that's resisting this movement has brought out the worst in women I'm a big fan with mess 1.00
00:00:29.960 and I mean that on an individual level but also on a cultural one we have poo-pooed them for a long
00:00:37.600 time our countries are being overrun by strangers because nobody is stopping them 1.00
00:00:44.040 every family tree holds extraordinary stories especially those of the women who shaped who we
00:00:53.460 are in honor of international women's month ancestry invites you to shine a light on their legacy
00:00:58.980 until march 10th enjoy free access to over 4 billion family history records and discover
00:01:04.980 where they lived the journeys they took and the legacy they left behind start with just a name
00:01:10.440 or place and let our intuitive tools guide you visit ancestry.ca to start today no credit card
00:01:16.160 required term supply getting ready for a game means being ready for anything like packing a spare stick
00:01:26.300 i like to be prepared that's why i remember 988 canada's suicide crisis helpline it's good to know
00:01:32.980 just in case anyone can call or text for free confidential support from a trained responder
00:01:38.220 anytime 988 suicide crisis helpline is funded by the government in canada
00:01:43.220 driver welcome back to trigonometry third time lucky third time great to have you uh you are the reason we have
00:01:52.020 you on regularly you're a prolific writer as i was saying before we started you've just written the
00:01:55.860 new book called a better life and as always you stay away from the controversy don't you lionel
00:02:00.280 oh yeah i tried to go for the safe subject well this book of course is a novel but it is about
00:02:06.360 immigration and i think you actually go very deep and very hard at an issue that has become
00:02:13.460 completely toxified impossible to talk about and also impossible to be honest about uh is that why you
00:02:19.960 wanted to to talk about this issue well i i am always looking for a gap in the cultural library
00:02:27.780 there's no point in writing a book that has been written multiple times um i i'm trying to look for
00:02:37.220 something that people are not writing about and there's usually a reason people are not writing
00:02:43.540 about something because it's dangerous it's too polarizing um and there have certainly been plenty
00:02:53.700 of novels about immigration but they're always implicitly pro-immigration because they are reliably
00:03:02.740 told from the perspective of the immigrant and um and they're not necessarily all bad novels and in fact
00:03:10.580 uh i think the the format of the immigrant story is um a narratively appealing in in intrinsically you know
00:03:24.580 someone who's seeking a better life right is on a journey is literally going from a to b and therefore
00:03:32.900 perhaps making another kind of spiritual political social journey um and has has to face obstacles to
00:03:43.940 overcome is usually at a disadvantage often often that's an economic disadvantage uh all of these things
00:03:54.020 are a formula for a sympathetic character and when you have a sympathetic immigrant
00:03:58.900 you are you are implicitly writing a pro-immigration book i mean that's just the way it works um insofar as
00:04:07.540 as is you have any political content uh i i i know of only one other novel that portrays the experience of the
00:04:19.540 host community and that would be tc boils uh the tortilla curtain that goes back to 1999
00:04:27.380 and i really can't name another one one one of the interesting things that i think you explore in
00:04:33.700 the book is why this is all happening in the west why there's been these gigantic waves of mass
00:04:40.660 immigration in the last 20 years in particular and it was interesting i was listening to you uh on another
00:04:46.420 podcast with our friend winston and he asked you about the comments that jim rackliff made when he said
00:04:51.940 england's been colonized by immigrants and he said do you think that's true and you said 0.99
00:04:57.780 of course which i thought was surprising actually because i think that the reason i don't agree with what
00:05:03.860 he said even though i understand why he said it is that i think to say something is colonization
00:05:09.380 is to imply that the people who are coming are responsible for it was what your book actually explores
00:05:14.420 is the people who are responsible for the ways of mass immigration the people who are encouraging and
00:05:20.820 making it possible um i i agree with you uh i'm not sure that uh being willing to use the word
00:05:28.340 colonization uh means that that the cause of that colonization is just the force of people's desire
00:05:40.340 certainly that's part of the explanation but it is being permitted right without without doubt
00:05:46.900 encouraged and in fact invited i would yes yes and and you know i was doing an event last night and
00:05:53.700 and somebody said well you know isn't it inevitable it is not inevitable uh and politicians
00:06:02.100 uh of certain stripes have encouraged us to believe that it is is an inevitable and you know this book is set
00:06:11.540 in the united states the u.s has been taught to believe that uh that the transformation the demographic
00:06:20.980 and ethnic racial transformation of the country which has been drastic since 1965 is almost like a natural 1.00
00:06:30.420 process like photosynthesis it's like um the sun shines and the immigrants come you know or you water the 1.00
00:06:38.820 garden and you get flowers and it's it's it's as if nobody's making any decisions that makes such rapid
00:06:49.540 demographic change possible but these are all there are the these are this is all the result of individual
00:06:57.860 political decisions and um and it's the same in the uk you know and they're being let in or as you say
00:07:06.420 actually invited in and the plot of the book deals with an ordinary middle-class family american
00:07:14.020 family who invite this immigrant into their house and then as it progresses it has awfully tragic 0.99
00:07:21.060 consequences as i was reading the book two words kept coming up into my mind which is an idea which
00:07:29.780 started with gad sad former guest of the show which are the two words are suicidal empathy i knew that's
00:07:34.740 what you were going to say and it really struck me is that something that you'd agree with
00:07:40.420 oh sure i mean it's my only problem with that expression is that i think often what you're
00:07:47.220 dealing with is not genuinely empathy it's it's suicidal vanity right it's a it's a conceit about yourself
00:07:59.060 being a good person and you're going to inflict your your goodness on everybody else you know it's
00:08:08.980 sticking it's sticking it's it's sticking up for people who are uh vulnerable um but
00:08:19.060 i often feel with these people that the the the groups of people they are defending
00:08:25.380 they're almost irrelevant because it's an exercise in in moral display absolutely and one of the things
00:08:36.260 that you see when we talk about moral display is how the people should we just say the characters
00:08:41.940 let's call them progressives or hyper liberals whatever whatever term you want to use to describe
00:08:47.060 them is not only do they have this suicidal vanity but they're also quite patronizing as well to these
00:08:55.220 immigrants they treat them as lesser than and they can't really see that yeah i know it's it is conspicuous
00:09:01.860 at any distance that um that the progressive view of minorities is terribly condescending and one of 1.00
00:09:11.940 one of the things that's condescending is the assumption that all these illegal immigrants are
00:09:22.180 are innocent you know and and in the united states uh there's also this conceit that
00:09:29.380 that they're just you know not only are they just seeking a better life which is itself a you know
00:09:38.260 portrayed as a faultless process um but they they admire the united states you know they love america they
00:09:48.660 want to become a part of it they want to make contribution um they just they they they are patriots in
00:09:57.220 waiting and waiting and that's really what's motivating them um this admiration of the country
00:10:03.700 and of the culture and wanting to be part of it and of course at the same time progressives think
00:10:09.860 the country is evil but you know inconsistency never bothers these people um
00:10:16.820 um and and and so there's no there's no giving of credit that this is in many instances in the era of the
00:10:26.900 welfare state a transactional process right the immigrants for the most part knew know your immigration 0.88
00:10:35.060 law better than you do way better so they've done their homework in advance they have the stories prepared
00:10:43.060 for their asylum claims even though that they're overwhelmingly economic migrants um and they they
00:10:51.620 know what benefits they can get and that's that's a lot of it that's part that's a big part of the
00:10:58.100 motivation they're smart right this is smart this is acting out of self-interest what's odd about our
00:11:07.300 immigration policy again i talk in terms of both countries uh is that we are not acting out of
00:11:13.460 self-interest the laws are not in our self-interest and that's a really profound point because there's
00:11:20.020 moments where the police get involved and the what the main characters realize is there's no way of
00:11:26.580 getting these people out of their house and then you suddenly make it very clear in the book that the
00:11:31.540 system is biased against the people that it's meant to in inverted commas protect yes and the british will
00:11:38.340 recognize that right away quite and why you mentioned that you agree with me that this is being invited
00:11:45.940 what do you think is the motivation for all of this or the motivations i'm sure there's more than one
00:11:51.860 i think it's especially mysterious in the uk um though there there may be an intersection there i resisted
00:12:00.020 for a long time this notion that democrats were deliberately inviting masses of uh foreigners into
00:12:07.780 the country uh because they wanted to to grow little democrats and create a one-party state um i've i've
00:12:18.420 started to come around to that view i also i before trump uh effectively closed the southern border
00:12:27.860 i imagined a lot of it was incompetence and fecklessness now there may be an element of that
00:12:34.340 but i think it was more intentional the biden administration opened that border on purpose
00:12:40.740 and shipped people all over the country wherever they wanted to go
00:12:44.580 in fact they put illegal migrants with no id onto commercial airplanes
00:12:53.380 with regular passengers who all have to have you know an impeccable national id i mean it's just it's it
00:13:02.180 there is design behind it and i i don't have any other theory aside from this pathological passion for
00:13:12.660 minorities and a weird uh notion that uh people who are non-white are superior um
00:13:22.820 i i i don't see any other reason for inviting so many people in especially because you know on the
00:13:29.060 one hand the left talks about oh we need these people economically you know we have this aging um age
00:13:34.980 structure and you know social security's um imperiled and and uh medicare costs too much and
00:13:42.420 we need young people to fill out the workforce but then you know they support family reunification 0.99
00:13:51.460 which means these these people can bring in their parents right i mean so much for improving the age
00:13:58.580 structure and furthermore the people that that came in um illegally during the biden administration were
00:14:06.180 largely um unskilled or underskilled poorly educated these people i mean they've done the research these
00:14:16.820 people are going to be uh net usurpers of social resources over the course of their lifetimes so that
00:14:25.460 is definitely not going to fix the public finances so you know you use the economic argument to open the
00:14:33.220 border but then you don't do the economically rational thing which would be to let in high 1.00
00:14:39.540 skilled immigrants who are going to walk into um jobs with uh substantial salaries they'll pay taxes 0.99
00:14:48.820 etc that makes sense but that's not what that's not what we're doing in either country i'm about to
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00:17:11.860 well in britain there is another motivation which is um and we've talked about this a lot which is
00:17:18.900 if you measure economic growth in terms of the total gdp of the country and you're not capable of
00:17:25.460 delivering actual growth as in improvements and productivity the creation of new jobs new businesses
00:17:30.900 then the one thing you can do to avoid if you're the prime minister going out and having to say well
00:17:35.300 actually the economy shrank by 0.3 percent is just to bring more bodies in yeah but that's assuming
00:17:42.420 that if you have an intelligent opposition they're not going to point out the gdp per capita has gone
00:17:49.780 down well i've been pointing this out for a long time but it's only until it's only now that the
00:17:54.820 supposedly intelligent opposition is starting to catch on to this idea but i i think there's another
00:17:59.700 thing that you touch on and this is a very very difficult and controversial thing but i think the gender
00:18:04.260 dynamics in the book you that you explore between who it is that actually is inviting these people
00:18:10.740 and who it is that's resisting is interesting because it's men and women or women and men i i think
00:18:18.180 that's very accurate you know that's it's it's um i mean the women in the book i i tried not to make
00:18:27.380 uh caricatures uh and i honestly in comparison to the the lunatics i see uh trying to interfere with
00:18:38.420 ice operations in the likes of minneapolis uh the mother in my book is really quite sedate and reasonable 0.98
00:18:46.420 and rational and and calm right she's she's not screaming at the top of her lungs or something so
00:18:53.460 um and so i i think i'm fair to her i think she it's a it's a realistic portrait and she believes in
00:19:03.620 her own stick you know uh we can step outside her and see that moral vanity but i i don't think most of 1.00
00:19:17.140 these people are aware of it it feels like passionate concern for others that's that's the experience
00:19:26.100 and so i give her credit and the two other women um to slightly lesser extent but they they all 0.98
00:19:35.860 they all they all buy themselves the ui they all um they all sincerely embrace their their beliefs
00:19:51.220 and can't see can't see their own vanity and can't see for example their own condescension
00:20:00.020 and it's quite interesting because as well as talking about the women you don't spare the men
00:20:05.700 particularly the protagonist the main character nico the young man i mean it's a pretty devastating
00:20:11.860 analysis of young men that you do in the book uh the entire book is seen through the eyes of nico who is
00:20:21.700 26 when the book starts he has earned a degree in engineering from a decent university
00:20:29.700 but had an epiphany uh shortly before he graduated that he doesn't want to be an engineer and he
00:20:39.380 doesn't want to be anything else either he just doesn't want to be a grown-up there's nothing in it
00:20:48.660 that attracts him uh this is very different from how i felt at that age uh there's always something
00:20:57.060 intimidating about your 20s you're supposed to be an adult and you don't really feel like one
00:21:04.500 um and you're making decisions that are probably going to influence the rest of your life and you
00:21:09.380 don't know which they are and i can see just deciding not for me right um the idea of just not having any
00:21:25.060 ambition at all is weirdly attractive it's restful you can't fail right no pressure no pressure whatsoever
00:21:37.060 it's you know your life is calm um nico is uh has so little to do with other people that he has
00:21:46.500 deleted the calendar app on his phone and um i when i was writing this character i came to see his point
00:21:56.820 of view that uh being an adult is hard assuming responsibility especially for your own life can feel
00:22:06.820 onerous um and as long as you can get away with it uh i can see just resigning from adulthood right
00:22:20.180 and this is typical of a certain kind of young person now and i think we've gone through a couple
00:22:28.260 of generations where a percentage and i think it's especially been a problem with men a percentage of
00:22:36.660 that their generation has um tried to hide under the bed but one of the things that your book explores
00:22:46.340 very intelligently is incentives yes the women of the family behave the way they do because of 1.00
00:22:53.460 incentives social incentives you know being seen to be a good person the migrants behave in their
00:23:00.180 own way because of incentives because they know that if they come to the us they're going to have
00:23:03.940 a better quality of life far better than when they came from before and there will be opportunities 1.00
00:23:09.380 for them to have a much better quality of life but nico is also responding to incentives
00:23:15.700 being an adult is hard it's tough you have responsibility you have unpleasant days at work
00:23:20.980 you're getting involved in a relationship it might not work you get involved in a career
00:23:24.980 you might get fired you get knocked back you get rejected so in a way isn't every character
00:23:32.500 just responding to the perverse incentives of our society um yes there's a an exchange in the book
00:23:41.460 between nico and an old friend of his that he hasn't seen in a long time and his friend is that is
00:23:49.780 he's the he's the grown-up he's the the alternative he he has a job he has a career he's going to get
00:23:58.020 married he wants children wow where'd you come from um and his friends says you know nico
00:24:08.900 i don't know you were um you were really popular in high school
00:24:16.420 how have you why have you stalled why are you what happened is it basically he stalled because i can
00:24:29.060 because i can as you were saying been enabled his mother's not going to kick him out of the house
00:24:36.020 he has a little inheritance from his grandfather and there's a way in which that's that is all the
00:24:43.620 the book is full of metaphors but that even that little inheritance from his his grandfather
00:24:50.020 is metaphorical like the too many young people are spending their inheritance and not contributing to 0.98
00:25:01.700 what would they would pass on even this refusal to have children is a is a spending of your inheritance
00:25:09.140 without amassing another fortune to pass on a kind of a genetic fortune a social fortune an economic
00:25:16.420 fortune even um there is a widespread i don't want to i know these are generalizations i don't want to
00:25:24.740 trash young people everyone's not like this but there there is a proportion of of young people who 1.00
00:25:35.220 who just who are doing what nico is doing writ large not not embracing a future and there's the whole 0.91
00:25:45.140 way of thinking behind that i'm very convenient i mean i think this whole thing of um climate change
00:25:51.780 is a big fat excuse right oh there is no future we're all going to die well yeah that's right we
00:25:59.300 are all going to die um and if you keep thinking that like that uh there will be no future that's a
00:26:06.900 very self-fulfilling you know if you don't have if nobody has kids that's that's it and most of all
00:26:13.860 there is a the rejection of the western heritage um that's convenient too if you reject it you don't 0.85
00:26:21.300 have to learn it you don't have to appreciate it you don't have to read any of those long books um
00:26:27.940 uh you you just say it's all evil you don't have to learn anything about history if you decide
00:26:34.500 all history is bad you make it very simple you know you you reduce it to americans reduce it to
00:26:40.100 slavery and the slaughter of the indians that's all you need to know about history oh and you need to 1.00
00:26:45.620 know a little bit of world war ii so you can call the enemy nazis and fascists that's about it and
00:26:53.460 it's it seems as if the the the left in in both our countries is is utopian but they're not utopian
00:27:03.460 they are dystopian in fact they are nihilistic i don't think there is any positive vision for the future
00:27:10.660 that's just a complete blank no future that's nihilistic and it's easy you know it's staying
00:27:20.900 home it's not building anything it's not making anything and it's not appreciating anything it's not
00:27:28.420 it's not humbly accepting that many people have come before you that make your smartphone possible and
00:27:35.380 your your your sewage and your supermarket full of infinite array of food i mean it's it it's an
00:27:45.460 ungrateful position and that's all that's that's easy too because great gratitude requires humility
00:27:55.300 it's it's not something that that makes you vain right it is it is and gratitude requires some
00:28:06.100 some energy uh uh generosity and and i think this whole the whole progressive left which i talked
00:28:16.180 to a little bit um with winston um is just incredibly narcissistic and i find that ironic because they
00:28:26.180 this is in the guise of caring so much for others i was going to say as well because
00:28:31.060 focusing on the men in the book particularly nico his constant search for comfort has meant that he
00:28:40.020 has become demasculinized when you compare him to the immigrants coming in who've had a much harder
00:28:45.540 tougher way of life they're far more masculine than he is yes they're far more assertive they're far more
00:28:52.100 not only are they mentally they're mentally dominant they're far more physically dominant
00:28:56.580 so what you show is this comparison between somebody who's been raised in the west and you look at
00:29:02.580 him you go this isn't a man this is a glorified pet i thought you're going to say girl no i like pet
00:29:09.700 better yeah it's a glorified pet no because it's an insult to women to say that because that's 1.00
00:29:14.740 it's it's not it's not feminine it's something deeply pathetic that can only be maintained 0.94
00:29:20.180 if someone looks after them that's not a woman that's a pet yeah well 1.00
00:29:23.300 for the first long part of the book nico seems to be very uh contented with this uh demasculi demasculinized
00:29:38.580 version of himself and many of his peers but there is a crucial point at which
00:29:46.740 he realizes that he needs access to the masculine virtues
00:29:53.300 uh even physically he needs strength he needs to be able to express aggression
00:30:00.340 um and he needs to most of all he needs to be able to protect his mother who is in
00:30:07.220 profound danger and he doesn't know how he feels he has no no tools uh in a literal sense and also
00:30:18.100 in a characterological sense uh he can't he can't rise to the occasion i of course don't want to give
00:30:29.780 away the ending but in his own small struggling way he does start to embrace being a man toward the end of
00:30:41.860 the book doesn't come naturally he doesn't really want to but you know it's it you can see that
00:30:52.660 somewhere out there waits his salvation and
00:30:58.100 you know i'm i'm a big fan with masculine virtues and i and i mean that on an individual level but also
00:31:04.900 on a cultural one and especially on a cultural one uh we have we have poo-pooed them for a long time and
00:31:18.980 and and so i think in my own small way i'm defending a more um a more traditional manhood
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00:33:56.100 on that subject i mean the reason i brought up the men and women dynamic in all this i think that that
00:34:01.220 comes across quite clearly and it reminded me of a conversation we had with a lady called helen
00:34:06.980 andrews when we were last in america i don't know if you caught that episode but her thesis essentially
00:34:12.740 is that a lot of people say that the woke moment is a product of ideology and her argument is not so
00:34:18.900 much ideology it's what happens when you have women becoming dominant in institutions and imposing 1.00
00:34:28.340 their values and their mindset onto those institutions so for example the idea that you
00:34:34.340 talked about at length already in this interview about well the immigrants or the minorities they
00:34:39.300 can't put it for wrong because they're they just need protection and looking after her argument is well
00:34:44.580 if you kind of see vulnerable people effectively as babies then that is how you're likely to add
00:34:50.500 towards them is that is there any truth on this do you do does that make any sense to you
00:34:55.460 yeah definitely i mean i'm afraid that in discussing the male female uh dynamic in in relation to to woke
00:35:03.220 world um i i don't speak very warmly about my own sex um this movement has brought out the worst in women 1.00
00:35:13.860 and you know women women are capable of the masculine virtues also and we have allowed them to run riot 1.00
00:35:26.580 uh feeding their worst impulses some of the some of their those impulses are masculine they're just
00:35:34.500 disguised because that that crowd can be extremely aggressive and violent and vicious right and um
00:35:48.980 it's true that it's a the traditional cancel culture uh has has has had a caddy female side you know that 0.70
00:35:59.300 um assassination of of character and assassination of career uh that's that's pretty female um 1.00
00:36:11.700 but you know even physically a lot of these people in um in protests and stuff
00:36:16.980 they're frightening right um and and i i i feel that a lot of the emotions that that dominate the
00:36:31.220 the progressive left are not just girly emotions you know fury um
00:36:39.860 uh and a a a a malign intent you know an intent toward destruction and harm it's very very negative
00:36:54.420 well i think there's also another thing that maybe you could say does code more masculine which is a lot
00:36:59.620 of it from what i see is um you know you talk about the character the male character in your book who's
00:37:06.900 sort of pacified and contented and also for the women as well but ultimately within every human being
00:37:14.580 there is the desire for a cause to to to be contributing something of value to to stand up for
00:37:21.700 what is right all of these things still exist and also the desire to have status that corresponds with
00:37:27.060 that i know i think a lot of progressives look to the previous generation of people who fought for
00:37:32.660 certain rights and absent any other meaning in their life that is what they're trying to emulate so when
00:37:38.100 you go and get shot by an ice agent while quote unquote defending immigrants not quite in my opinion 0.99
00:37:45.220 what they're doing there is an attempt at some to seek greatness as part of that is what i see as well
00:37:51.380 there is a a huge sense there that you are doing something important and willing through your own 0.99
00:37:57.060 stupidity to put your life on the line and frankly also objectively speaking to go down in history 1.00
00:38:04.340 right because you know millions of billions of people around the world are going to know your name 1.00
00:38:08.740 i think it's a little tricky uh to to unravel when you're when you're um you're pursuing your own
00:38:23.300 causes leaving the left aside um and i'm talking about us not not the others humans um i mean i have
00:38:32.260 lots of beliefs also they're not the same beliefs uh but and you know i i wrote this novel partly out of
00:38:41.060 my own beliefs about immigration that it's been excessive and often damaging to the to western culture 0.99
00:38:50.340 in particular uh you know we'd like to see it slow so i i have strong feelings about this issue
00:38:58.340 and maybe you know maybe there is also a vanity in my thinking you know the the vast majority out there
00:39:07.380 needs somebody to speak for them that's what i'm trying to do and maybe you could step outside of me
00:39:14.100 and say well you're just actually self this is just an act of self-promotion right this is this is
00:39:21.060 narcissistic this is your books are narcissistic this is just this is a kind of moral display in other
00:39:27.300 words it's possible to turn all that stuff on yourself you know and and i and and therefore
00:39:33.700 i think it's important even when disagreeing with the progressive left to at least give them credit
00:39:40.660 that i think they do they do believe that they believe what they say but there is a huge difference
00:39:47.220 between these two things lionel and i think this is comes down to uh creativity versus destruction
00:39:53.300 right what you've done is you've written a great book now people might read that book and say i
00:39:58.020 disagree with the views that are implied by the plot and the storylines here but they won't deny
00:40:03.860 that it's a well-written book if they've got any sense to them creating a good book is a hard thing
00:40:08.980 to do it takes skill it takes practice it takes the willingness to have people write negative things
00:40:14.500 about you and deal with that emotionally that none of those things are easy
00:40:17.300 going to a protest and putting yourself in harm's way it may in some ways you could argue is courageous
00:40:24.820 but it's not hard it takes no skill it takes no intelligence it takes no creativity and i think
00:40:30.500 that's the difference i think the the difference and you talked about nihilism the difference is that
00:40:36.020 this is an easy way to access status it's an easy way it's a way of getting the things that take work
00:40:42.660 without putting any work in because if you really care about immigrants there's ways to contribute 1.00
00:40:47.620 you could go and start some kind of uh non-profit organization that teaches them english or that
00:40:52.660 teaches them job skills or that allows them to do this xyz all of that is creative and i think most
00:40:59.060 people would respect that right if people already hear they don't speak english you'd want to teach
00:41:02.900 them english you could do that but if you go to a protest you don't have to do any work you just
00:41:07.540 turn up and start screaming in someone's face i also think there was an element of um assumed imperviousness
00:41:16.180 in these anti-ice protests uh i do not think that either of the people who got shot in minneapolis
00:41:25.300 believed that they were genuinely putting their lives in danger their middle class and imagined that
00:41:32.900 um no harm would befall them it's a kind of entitlement that you know um so in that all of this is the
00:41:46.260 performance it feels like theater and they didn't actually believe that uh trying to stop armed law
00:41:55.780 enforcement from doing their job was was potentially putting themselves in harm's way i i i just don't
00:42:07.060 think that was the world in which they were mentally living um i mean i didn't i i was not convinced that
00:42:16.900 either of those shootings was righteous uh i think it showed poor judgment on isis part um
00:42:26.580 but at this at the same time they did make it it it was a joint effort right there there were um
00:42:36.980 misjudgments on both sides how much of this and the ideology people's behaviors
00:42:45.940 everything really is down to the fact we're simply not having enough kids i don't think it was an accident
00:42:50.980 in your book not an accident the three of the characters they didn't have any kids the mom was
00:42:57.940 in a house a big house on her own that maternal in those maternal instincts have to go somewhere 0.96
00:43:04.420 arguably this wouldn't have happened if the two daughters had all had kids and nico had a kid
00:43:09.700 because mom would be so busy with grandkids and babies and ferrying them to hockey practice or 1.00
00:43:15.940 whatever it may be i don't know wouldn't have time for any of this stuff um yes i mean the martin the
00:43:22.660 the immigrant who's invited into the house the first one um she she makes that point very uh specifically
00:43:31.860 that it looks as if this whole family is going to disappear right none of them have had kids
00:43:40.580 and and therefore there will be no one left in the house nico's nico who doesn't take any of this stuff
00:43:49.140 very seriously um said yeah okay well let me have the house for 70 years and i'll leave you the keys
00:43:57.780 and it's but but you know that's that's also that's the country the house is the country
00:44:03.140 and if we don't have children then we're handing the keys to somebody else if you watch or listen to
00:44:09.860 trigonometry regularly this won't surprise you the cost of everyday life has crept up to the point
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00:45:23.860 and i think not enough people realize that because again our civilization at this moment seems to be
00:45:32.260 built around comfort i don't want anything that will make me uncomfortable i don't want to test
00:45:38.020 myself because then i might feel anxious i might feel stressed so what i'm going to do again using
00:45:44.500 the analogy of a pet i want to be looked after but the reality is that has very real trade-offs
00:45:50.500 particularly when it comes to kids and families if you don't have kids then what happens is
00:45:57.540 you don't have a legacy that's right and by the way i i need to clarify i have not had children 0.90
00:46:05.380 so i'm a i'm a hypocrite um i i had my um in fact i'm the only non-hypocrite at the table
00:46:14.820 good for you good for me i um i came around to my um pro natalism late in my life and it in all
00:46:27.460 honesty i still don't feel specifically regretful on my own account my life worked out pretty much
00:46:34.660 the way i wanted um there is some parallel universe in my mind in which i had children
00:46:43.460 and and i think in in a lot of ways the latter part of my life would be much more interesting
00:46:50.020 if i'd had children and that's where it really gets me um because there'd be so much more plot
00:46:56.980 and i like plot unlike most literary like writers i like plot and um i i follow what happens to my
00:47:05.780 nieces and nephews my um my younger brother has four kids and uh with with real eagerness you know
00:47:14.260 as if i'm i'm getting back to a novel that i'm in the middle of not and but one that someone else is
00:47:20.260 writing and uh it's just more story and some some of this not all the story is good but it's uh it's
00:47:30.020 this stuff you know it's more life and um and i'm that aspect of my brother's life i'm actually you know
00:47:39.860 envious of so my life is now too simple and people keep dying and if my husband dies i will be very by
00:47:54.020 myself you know if there's i have some friends uh and i still have my brother but the family's getting
00:48:02.900 littler on my side and and it's it's kind of shocking
00:48:09.860 you know when when you realize your friends start dying i've lost any number of friends already
00:48:16.740 uh i did not grow a crop of
00:48:23.700 social connections deep social connections meaning familial connections and uh and there's a price to
00:48:32.420 to pay for that and that's something that i don't think we acknowledge in our society
00:48:37.780 by seeking comfort by avoiding what's important by things like career becoming an adult testing
00:48:45.140 yourself what you are not doing is you're not investing in your future that's right and you're
00:48:51.620 not investing in everyone else's future you're not investing in a future that you will not experience
00:48:56.900 that having children is an act of generosity in every sense and i i one of the things that's changed
00:49:03.140 i i never you know was disapproving of people who had children but i it's i'm now actively approving
00:49:12.100 of people have children i admire people who have children those who say oh climate change i'm not
00:49:18.500 going to have any i i think it's uh i think it's a lie i think it's a cop-out and i it's just it's getting
00:49:26.820 out of it because it's too much trouble it is trouble but it's trouble that's worthwhile and if
00:49:36.340 you don't if we don't have kids as shown in the book you invite a different sort of trouble yes you're
00:49:42.340 never going to escape from trouble life is trouble so wouldn't it be better to have trouble that has
00:49:50.900 meaning instead of doing what the characters do in this book and look for meaning in places where
00:49:56.100 there really is no meaning yeah it's really like returning to basics um it's what people have always
00:50:04.820 found meaning in always is having children having a family that's where your your deepest bonds are
00:50:13.940 and your biggest problems um and and we need to we have we need to become a more old-fashioned well
00:50:25.540 i i think it francis is totally right to hone in on the idea of comfort because i think what having
00:50:30.900 children does it it's i think maybe i spend too much time in my in my youth playing computer games but
00:50:35.860 i think of a lot of things as a video game and having kids is is is literally going to the next level
00:50:42.980 you up the difficulty level you up the reward level and if what you want is to be comfortable
00:50:49.140 as nico in the book does or if you want to just stay you know you kind of got you know you you're
00:50:54.020 content like content is the right word you put it very well why increase your difficulty level
00:51:00.100 why do it if you're not aspiring to a bigger reward for example of any kind whether that's
00:51:05.380 meaningfulness or anything else why push yourself and i think that's just seeped so much into the
00:51:12.500 culture now um but it's interesting because i think the question i was going to ask you is
00:51:18.180 do you think you know your book is one aspect of this but there's a bigger thing going on where
00:51:23.380 actually a lot of people are starting to realize that this just isn't sustainable
00:51:27.540 the immigration thing isn't sustainable the birth rates aren't sustainable i mean i saw mark 0.99
00:51:32.580 a ruby in munich and he was talking about security global security but he talked about mass
00:51:38.100 immigration as part of that and you just go people are starting to get it now the tide is starting to
00:51:43.380 turn obviously the example of what's happened in the us where you've actually closed the border i mean
00:51:48.660 you have right um do you think this is about to turn around the immigration situation yeah
00:51:56.500 uh i think on the ground it turned around a long time ago uh and that's why there is so much popular
00:52:06.740 rage on this point um in the uk the electorate has opted to uh elect uh government after government
00:52:19.700 which has promised them beforehand that they're going to bring down uh immigration to the tens of
00:52:26.340 thousands um and people are furious indeed furious they've been ignored and lied to lie to totally
00:52:41.620 now even you know i think brexit wasn't was a a vote of desperation i supported it for sovereignty
00:52:52.340 reasons as well as you know to get a handle on on immigration but it was like
00:53:01.460 there was so much anger on the immigration front that they would that the country the country voted
00:53:10.260 to do something drastic right and were willing to take a kind of risk that i thought was very un-british
00:53:17.460 um you know the british have have always been uh uh a slow to anger uh population and um very orderly
00:53:27.540 oriented towards the status quo and not into radical change so that's one reason that vote really is
00:53:34.340 astonished me because it was it was outside the popular character but it was it it was it was it was
00:53:43.780 very specifically to do with immigration and none of the other votes had helped so let's try this
00:53:50.820 and it's one of the fascinating things when you talk about immigration or you talk about different
00:53:56.660 cultures and as people my mother's from a different culture constance from russia what people in the
00:54:03.300 west don't seem to realize and we talk about this a lot and we talk about it between ourselves is
00:54:07.460 they think everyone thinks like them the reality is they don't people in afghanistan do not think 1.00
00:54:14.180 the same way as people living in a flat in mayfair and by the way there's another thing you and i've
00:54:20.260 talked about this a lot on the show there's another thing i just realized that we should add on top of
00:54:23.460 that western people if they lived in the circumstances that people live in afghanistan in
00:54:29.540 also wouldn't act like western people act today living in a flat in mayfair that's that's another
00:54:35.780 aspect of it which is when you're confronted by real hardship for example your mentality has to
00:54:41.140 change and either changes because you want to survive or it changes because you die right so all
00:54:45.860 the people that are refused to adapt they die off and then what you're left with is the people who
00:54:49.860 actually know how to survive in a difficult environment and therefore they're much more connected to the
00:54:54.100 reality of the world you know completely and that's what the characters in the book they think
00:55:00.580 everybody thinks this to put it bluntly they've got every the whole world thinks in these demented
00:55:06.180 progressive values yeah they don't nice neutral statement there's one character in the book i
00:55:14.580 especially like it's he's a side character his name is alonzo you remember him and uh alonzo uh
00:55:24.660 thinks that the most americans are incredibly gullible and and don't give immigrants credit for
00:55:35.780 for being conniving right for knowing how to game the system both the immigration system and the benefit
00:55:42.580 system and he's very good at it he's he's a an excellent and very clever shyster and proud of it um and 0.96
00:55:53.060 and he thinks that that americans are fools and he says you know you think that we we admire you and 0.99
00:56:01.940 and we're grateful that that you let us into your country but no i'm we think you're fools we have 0.99
00:56:07.860 contempt for you and uh he says if uh if i had a country if it's my country right i have a country 0.99
00:56:17.620 and and someone crosses my border without my permission i'd shoot him 0.96
00:56:22.980 and then his friends will think twice about crossing my border without permission
00:56:32.580 end of migration crisis no and i and that's and that is how people in the rest of the world think
00:56:40.980 by the way yes that is how they think yes and and and in fact the kind of uh numbers that we've been
00:56:48.260 confronting like during the biden administration and even um like a thousand people in a day rocking
00:56:56.180 up on the on the southern coast of england at any other time you know that would be a military incursion
00:57:07.060 and that would be met with a military force that would be regarded flat out as an invasion but that
00:57:14.100 of course is one of the words that we cannot use anymore or so we're told let's be honest when your
00:57:20.660 hair starts thinning it affects more than just your appearance it hits your confidence and most
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00:58:27.700 may vary based on studies of topical and oral minoxidil and finasteride you know it's so funny
00:58:35.060 the the entire conversation we're having i just had a flashback when i was in my early 20s i was
00:58:41.620 living in a flat share with a girl uh and one day her dad came around and i remember him talking to
00:58:49.700 me and he was telling me the story about the fact that there was a we were talking about immigration i i
00:58:55.620 you know and he told me the story about how he used to work with this afghan guy i think he was from
00:59:02.020 afghanistan somewhere like that uh who used to say to him directly he used to say you brit you know you
00:59:07.620 british you're gullible you're easy to take advantage of and he said the the father of the
00:59:14.500 girl i was living with he said and i said to him well if you feel that way then you know if you if you
00:59:18.500 don't if you if that's how you treat us you should leave and his daughter said dad dad let's not talk
00:59:24.900 like that here and i think that's the entire thing in that one conversation this is how i think the dad and
00:59:32.660 i i remember saying to her i agree with your dad i'm an immigrant i agree with your dad because he's
00:59:37.220 right because a lot of people if you let them they will take advantage of you and you have to not let
00:59:41.460 them take advantage of you and if people are here who are taking advantage of you they should go home
00:59:46.660 and she was horrified by what her dad said and by the fact that i agreed with her dad and this that's
00:59:52.900 the entire conversation isn't it well i mean if you think about it imagine how all those uh boat people 1.00
01:00:04.100 in being put up in hotels all over britain what what do they really think what do they really think
01:00:12.100 about this about this country um
01:00:14.740 um why on earth are british taxpayers putting these people up and giving them three meals a day
01:00:25.220 actually in in most circumstances they have snacks and food on offer 24 7. um they've done nothing to
01:00:34.500 deserve this it's actually a kind of theft right it's a theft from the taxpayer they've they have not
01:00:43.140 contributed anything to the system there is no reason that britain has responsibility for these people 0.98
01:00:49.780 so if you're one of those people don't you feel that these that you're surrounded by fools 0.74
01:00:57.780 i mean what why why are these people rewarding your having broken the law and arrived and you just 0.87
01:01:07.540 arrive and and they're taking care of you indefinitely why would why would you not hold these people in 0.69
01:01:15.540 contempt what is wrong with them it would never happen where you're from you know if if the the if british
01:01:24.260 show up on in in in in afghanistan or albania or so you think that they they're going to be taken
01:01:30.820 care of and put in hotels no so why wouldn't that engender contempt rather than kind of gormless gratitude
01:01:42.260 you know i watch quite a lot of sports and sometimes you see a really great team or with
01:01:49.380 really talented players lose against another team with less talented players and in a moment of honesty
01:01:55.140 they'll ask one of the players and they'll go why did you lose and they'll go you know what
01:02:00.100 they just wanted it more and i look at the characters in your book i look at what's happening
01:02:07.700 in society writ large i look at these people coming over i see the way that they behave and i think
01:02:14.820 maybe they just want it more than us yeah there there's an element of that and and i think that's
01:02:21.620 pretty clear in in the novel that the the people who are taking action for the most part in in the book
01:02:32.180 are the immigrants they're going out and getting what they want and and
01:02:37.700 and and and the and the the locals are passive and you know nobody's
01:02:48.820 our our countries are being overrun by strangers because nobody is stopping them 1.00
01:02:54.820 so one of the things we don't want enough is to stop them
01:03:02.100 so it's just happening and you know when you were talking about the illegal boat
01:03:09.780 immigrants in a hotel um and the way you were talking about it i felt this pang of like
01:03:15.940 but what and and i real and i think what was the pang you know what it was i think it was almost like
01:03:24.100 isn't that exactly what the people who didn't let those fleeing the holocaust and world war ii
01:03:29.060 would have said and that is what they said and they didn't let lots of people into their countries
01:03:32.900 and lots of people died as a result and i think the guilt that we feel about that
01:03:39.300 still even now is so profound that it has deranged the way we think about this issue completely
01:03:44.500 yeah well that's where the uh european convention on human rights comes from that's why the we have
01:03:50.340 the whole asylum system but it's been long enough that maybe we should get over it and update well
01:03:57.460 what i think is is actually i not not even update i just think we have to be honest and recognize that
01:04:05.620 if people are fleeing the holocaust we actually do want to let them in and look after them but if 0.97
01:04:11.780 people are economic migrants who've worked out that if you claim that you are gay or whatever
01:04:17.540 and you're fleeing afghanistan we're going to let you in all of a sudden it's all like that thing with
01:04:23.700 you know we had i mean what was happening in syria during the civil war meant that there were
01:04:28.660 hundreds of thousands of people actually fleeing for their genuine refugees but but if you come to our
01:04:35.700 country and claim you're 12 years old and go to school when you're 24 and we don't even bother to
01:04:41.380 check so the point is that the guilt and shame we felt i actually think was somewhat appropriate
01:04:49.140 it's just it's now been misallocated you know if i you know if i uh if i was driving in in a careless
01:04:57.620 way and i hurt somebody i should feel guilt about that but if that the result of that is i now decide to
01:05:04.180 burn down all the cars in the country maybe that's another reaction and it sort of feels like that's
01:05:08.980 what's happened here well i think the big mistake uh in the asylum system is making it legally uh
01:05:17.540 required so that all is all that it is necessary is that uh someone from wherever sets a single foot
01:05:26.180 on your territory and suddenly you're responsible for them right and they and they can make claims on
01:05:31.140 your benefit system and they can also make claims on your judicial system which is not free either
01:05:36.740 uh and that whole system has got to go i would can all of asylum but as you know that doesn't mean
01:05:44.020 that voluntarily countries couldn't say you know here's this conflict over the over there let's say
01:05:50.340 ukraine right um russia's invaded new ukraine there are a lot of people in danger especially in the east of
01:05:59.060 the country we will take our share we will invite them voluntarily that's what we do right uh but not
01:06:08.420 because we have to because we've inverted it so it's it's required charity and and therefore it's it's
01:06:19.220 it's an open invitation to game the system and it's now a farce isn't now it's now an embarrassment
01:06:26.500 but also as well there's another part to this argument is look we've spent the last however
01:06:32.420 many years in universities in the media in conversations denigrating the rest we're racist
01:06:41.700 we're evil we're not we all know the tribes and if that's the case if we are genuinely those things
01:06:48.980 and our civilization is that then why would you defend it why would you defend your uncle if your
01:06:56.100 uncle is a is a nazi or he's a sex offender you wouldn't you'd go enough about the raw family
01:07:02.740 but yeah but why would you you wouldn't you would just go this person doesn't deserve to be defended
01:07:08.980 well and our culture is the same yes and and this uh this incursion this mass incursion on western
01:07:17.220 territory uh is a is evidence of a lack of cultural self-confidence because why would you want to to
01:07:29.220 protect your culture from from and from people incursion by others you don't if you don't if you
01:07:38.180 don't care about it you're not going to try to protect it and and we're raising we're raising people
01:07:45.940 to not care about it i mean it it's not it's it's you don't even have to go so far as to 0.96
01:07:51.620 to hate your own country but if you just you can passively not give a shit about it 0.81
01:07:58.660 that'll do it yeah that'll do it lionel fantastic to have you back on uh congratulations on a better 0.86
01:08:04.820 life i hope it does very well which i'm sure it will do um thanks for coming back on we're going to
01:08:08.820 ask you a bunch of questions from our supporters uh on substack in a second but before we do what is the
01:08:14.340 one thing that we're still not talking about that we should be
01:08:26.740 water
01:08:29.380 we don't talk enough about water tell me more well it's this is especially in the u.s
01:08:36.900 right now uh the u.s always acts as if we can increase our pop this is it's related to immigration
01:08:43.540 because it's demography we don't uh we think that we can absorb an infinite number of people
01:08:49.540 and keep growing the population indefinitely there was even a a book published not that long ago about
01:08:56.180 one billion americans and it was a it was it was that was supposed to be a positive vision the biggest
01:09:03.460 limitation on whole sections of of the united states is is is groundwater is fresh water
01:09:12.740 water it's um and uh we're sucking out the aquifers and that's uh and nobody talks about it
01:09:23.620 lionel so well i look forward to reading your next book which no doubt will be about water
01:09:28.580 nope
01:09:32.820 thanks for coming on head on over to triggerpod.co.uk where lionel can answer your questions
01:09:40.020 if you were a young person currently seeing what you're seeing and you had the opportunity to move
01:09:44.500 and settle down in some other country what would be your top picks of the same countries in the world
01:09:57.060 broadway's smash hit the neil diamond musical a beautiful noise is coming to toronto the true
01:10:10.500 story of a kid from brooklyn destined for something more featuring all the songs you love including
01:10:15.780 america forever in blue jeans and sweet caroline like jersey boys and beautiful the next musical mega hit is
01:10:22.900 here the neil diamond musical a beautiful noise now through june 7th 2026 at the princess of wells
01:10:29.700 this theater get tickets at murbush.com