Lionel Shriver On Human Limitations

Lionel Shriver is an author and journalist. She’s written 17 novels, most notably We Need to Talk About Kevin, and in 2022 she published her first book of nonfiction, Abominations: Selected Essays from a Career of Courting Self-Destruction. She’s currently a columnist for The Spectator, and her new book is Mania, a satirical novel about a dystopian movement that claims that everyone is equally smart.

We recorded this conversation last month. You can listen right away in the audio player above (or on the right side of the player, click “Listen On” to add the Dishcast feed to your favorite podcast app). For two clips of our convo — on the relief that comes with personal limitations, and whether feminism has run its course — pop over to our YouTube page.

Other topics: raised in North Carolina by a family of liberal Dems; her dad a Presbyterian minister and her mom a homemaker; Lionel a tomboy with two brothers; how she hated her birth name and changed it to a male one; David Bowie and how gender nonconformity has changed; the far left’s obsession with equality at all cost; the resentment toward achievement; trans sports; the far right and Bronze Age Pervert; the class structure of the UK; the English fondness for eccentrics; Farage and Trump; how conservatives are transgressive now; Plato and Aristotle; the past systemic racism against black Americans; when identity politics is needed; minority groups policing their ranks; epistemic closure on the right; 2020 election denialism; Montaigne and Shakespeare inventing the modern individual; Lionel living in London and now Portugal; her fierce independence in publishing; the tragic death of her brilliant older brother; Bill Clinton’s appetites; Hitch’s compulsions and work ethic; why the most gifted are often the most troubled; the loss of desire on O-zen-pic; the high standards and judgements of the old gays; the Oppression Olympics; why beauty shouldn’t have moral qualities; the DEI industry; the collapse of readerships within the MSM; how male friends mock each other; and how women and wokeness dominate the book industry.

Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy (the first 102 are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Jeffrey Toobin on the Supreme Court, Anne Applebaum on autocrats, Eric Kaufmann on reversing woke extremism, and Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy on animal cruelty. (Van Jones’ PR team canceled his planned appearance.) Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.

On last week’s episode, a listener writes:

I’m sorry for your mother’s passing. My mom was also bipolar. Somehow through the many episodes and hospitalizations, my sisters and I were able to deal with it through humor — after the fact, of course.

I could listen to Stephen Fry speak about anything; I always enjoy hearing him. It was a wonderful discussion between you two. And thanks to you both for introducing me to Philip Larkin. I was laughing out loud when you two recited “This Be the Verse.”

Another fan:

When I was a teenager, I loved Craig Ferguson’s late-night show, and hearing Stephen Fry discuss his journey coming to terms with being gay was very moving and inspirational to me as a young, bookish, gay nerd.

On another part of the Fry pod:

I supported Brexit and still do, but not for any of the silly reasons mentioned. I was fine being in the EEC when it was still an international organization (like NATO), but I am not fine with the creeping movement of the EU towards becoming a true union of nations. Under Maastricht, the UK lost its sovereignty. EU laws, passed by unelected officials, were rubber-stamped by the UK parliament, while elected members of the EU parliament blathered on with no real authority for anything.

The big thing for me was that as long as the UK had its own currency, it could still escape, albeit not easily. Greece — which hasn’t experienced economic growth for two decades — was not so fortunate. Brexit presents the possibility of opening up the UK to the rest of the world, all of which is growing faster than the EU. Certainly the examples of Norway, Switzerland and Iceland — all of which are richer by far than most EU countries — make such an outcome theoretically possible, though whether Britain joins them depends on what Britain does with its independence.

I support cooperating with our friends and allies in the EU and NATO as much as is feasible, without sacrificing our sovereignty. I don’t know why this position is so vilified, since that is the default for most countries in the world and for all countries of the EU until recently.

I haven’t vilified it, though Stephen has. On another episode:

I look forward to listening to the Stephen Fry episode; I suspect it’s another beauty. I shall never forget your amazing conversation earlier this year with Christian Wiman, one of the greats. I thought you might be interested in reading his new essay on Seamus Heaney in the latest issue of Harper’s.

A more recent episode:

I very much appreciated your gentle pushback with Erick Erickson on his characterization of concern about the climate as scientism. Your reader last week made the case that the scientific community is burying legitimate, alternate theories to explain non-anthropomorphic causes of global warming. This listener succumbs to a number of fallacies that I feel should be countered:

1. There is no effort by the scientific community to prevent alternate theories from being published. There is a reason that the scientific literature is largely devoid of scholarship positing these theories: they simply are not supported by objective data. If they were, they would be published. I am not a climate expert, but I am a scientist. I have worked in the field for over 30 years and have published peer-reviewed articles, so I understand how the process works. In my experience, the system works brilliantly — just look at the miraculous world around us. The scientific process does not give equal weight to all theories; it favors those that are supported by the data. It is driven by a marketplace of objectivity, not a cabal.

2. Google should not be confused with the scientific community. If the company is censoring “global warming skeptics,” it is doing so because of business reasons, whether these are defendable or not. That said, I think it is responsible journalism to ensure that content reflects scientific consensus, more or less. Since most readers have little ability to evaluate competing claims that rely on deep technical knowledge, it is irresponsible to present theories that are not accepted by the scientific community as on equal standing with those that are. One can be skeptical that the world is round, but this does not mean flat-earth theories are worthy of an equal platform.

3. Your reader falls into the trap of citing “respected scientists” to support his narrative. For every crackpot theory out there, there have been “experts” brought forth to testify. These people are, more often than not, not actually experts in the field, nor have they produced any original research to support their contention. The tobacco companies had “experts” producing research that proved smoking did not cause lung cancer. During the AIDS crisis, Peter Duesberg was cited by the HIV denialists. Vaccine skeptics all but canonized Andrew Wakefield after his research, since discredited, that linked autism to the MMR vaccine. Your reader cited John Clauser, a Nobel laureate in physics. Kudos to Dr. Clauser for his physics research, but he has performed exactly zero climate research.

4. Your reader repeated a couple tired tropes: first, that the climate has always been changing and that today’s changes are of lower magnitude than historical extremes; and second, that our models are not perfect. I, for one, have no desire to experience the tropical climate of the Cretaceous era or the ice age of the Pleistocene. More importantly, there is no credible climate scientist who is arguing that we are seeing unprecedented climate change. It is the rapidity of the change we are experiencing that is of grave concern. Prehistoric changes occurred over time spans of tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands or even millions of years. We are seeing dramatic changes in the span of less than a hundred — and it is accelerating. The world has little time to adapt.

5. With regard to imperfect models, the truth is that the hundreds, if not thousands of models that are employed in climate research indeed yield different results. There is a great deal of uncertainty in the magnitude and rapidity of change. This is widely acknowledged and nearly every realistic prediction provides a range of scenarios, together with honest degrees of uncertainty. But they all point in the same direction. I have never seen a single model predict a stable climate or a cooling one.

Lastly, I will say that those who present this issue as a zero-sum game that sacrifices global “wellbeing” for progress on the climate are selling human ingenuity short. You are entirely correct that moving to a post-carbon economy can, if done correctly, reap enormous economic and quality-of-life benefits, on top of climatic ones. And, like you, I am open to persuasion on empirical subjects. It’s just that there really is not much credible empirical evidence on the side of climate denialism. I think that it you are very overdue to tackle this topic, in earnest, on the Dishcast.

Thank you for this wonderful email. I am not a skeptic of carbon-based climate change or the urgency of tackling it. Substantively, it’s easily my biggest substantive policy problem with the GOP. It’s one reason I won’t vote for them.

Another listener has more suggestions for the pod:

I just listened to the episode on Oakeshott. You indicated early on you were hesitant to do an episode like this, but don’t be! As Nellie Bowles said in your lovely chat with her, one of the things about you she really admires is, you know stuff. That’s the refreshing thing about you!

Look, you’ve had on people like Noah Smith and Kara Swisher who strike me as mired in presentism. They know oodles and oodles about ephemera. But talking about Oakeshott, having John Gray on the show, or even my sometime theoretical nemesis, George Will — that’s got substance. I’d much rather hear references to Voegelin, Strauss, and Worsthorne than Trump, Trump, Biden etc. I can get that anywhere, and to be honest Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn are more interesting and funnier on current events than you are.

You’re different, so honor your difference. I’m not saying detach yourself from present reality, but your real strength is you have a broader, more informed perspective than most of the people who comment on “what’s going on.”

Here’s a suggested guest: Tara Isabella Burton. I’ve listened to her talk to Francis Fukuyama and Bishop Robert Burton, and she’s interesting. I find her new book, Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World, flawed, but she seems like a natural for you.

Also, keep after Camille Paglia. The University of the Arts just collapsed, so maybe she has time. 

Thanks for the tips. Not everyone agrees, and I try to maintain a mix of guests. But I’ve long been gratified by the success of many of the more esoteric conversations. Another guest rec:

I’m a longtime Dishcast listener writing to offer a request: David Sacks. Please get him on the show! For many of us, David became a leading voice of reason on Big Tech censorship during the Twitter Files revelations. With the media clamor around his recent endorsement of Trump, his upcoming convention speech, and the exploding popularity of his podcast “All In,” it seems his influence is growing by the week. Your listeners need to hear dialogue with principled pro-Trump conservative intellectuals from outside the DC bubble. 

Next up, readers discuss the chaotic presidential race. The first: