ICE, Immigration and Cultural Suicide - Lionel Shriver

21:49Lionel Shriver:He just doesn't want to be a grown-up. There's nothing in it that attracts him. This is very different from how I felt at that age. there's always something intimidating about your 20s. You're supposed to be an adult, and you don't really feel like one. And you're making decisions that are probably going to influence the rest of your life, and you don't know which they are. And I can see just deciding not for me, right? The idea of just not having any ambition at all is weirdly attractive. It's restful. You can't fail, right?

22:40Francis Foster:No pressure.

22:41Lionel Shriver:No pressure whatsoever. It's, you know, your life is calm. Nico has so little to do with other people that he has deleted the calendar app on his phone.

22:59Lionel Shriver:And when I was writing this character, I came to see his point of view, that being an adult is hard. Assuming responsibility, especially for your own life, can feel onerous. And as long as you can get away with it, I can see just resigning from adulthood, right? And this is typical of a certain kind of young person now. And I think we've gone through a couple of generations where a percentage, and I think it's especially been a problem with men, a percentage of that generation has tried to hide under the bed. But one of the things that your book explores very intelligently is incentives. Yes. The women of the family behave the way they do because of incentives, social incentives, you know, being seen to be a good person.

24:05The migrants behave in their own way because of incentives, because they know that if they come to the US, they're going to have a better quality of life, far better than when they came from before, and there will be opportunities for them to have a much better quality of life. But Nico is also responding to incentives. Being an adult is hard. It's tough. You have responsibility. You have unpleasant days at work. You're getting involved in a relationship. It might not work. You get involved in a career. You might get fired. You get knocked back. You get rejected. So in a way, isn't every character just responding to the perverse incentives of our society.

24:44Lionel Shriver:Yes, there's an exchange in the book between Nico and an old friend of his that he hasn't seen in a long time. His friend is the grown-up. He's the alternative. He has a job. He has a career. He's going to get married. He wants children. He's like, wow, where'd you come from? And his friend says, you know, Nico, I don't know, you were really popular in high school. How have you, why have you stalled? Why are you, what happened? He said, basically, he stalled because I can. Because I can. as you were saying, been enabled. His mother's not going to kick him out of the house. He has a little inheritance from his grandfather.

25:47Lionel Shriver:And there's a way in which that is all. The book is full of metaphors, but even that little inheritance from his grandfather is metaphorical. Like, too many young people are spending their inheritance and not contributing to what they would pass on. Even this refusal to have children is a spending of your inheritance without amassing another fortune to pass on, a kind of a genetic fortune, a social fortune, an economic fortunate um there is a widespread i don't want to i know these are generalizations i don't want to trash young people everyone's not like this but there there is a proportion of of young people who who just who are doing what nico is doing writ large not not embracing a future and there's the whole way of thinking behind that i'm very convenient i mean i think this whole thing of um climate change is a big fat excuse right oh there is no future we're all going to die well yeah that's right we are all going to die um and if you keep thinking that like that uh there will be no future that's a very self-fulfilling you know if you don't have if nobody has kids that's that's it And most of all, there is a rejection of the Western heritage.

27:25Lionel Shriver:That's convenient too. If you reject it, you don't have to learn it. You don't have to appreciate it. You don't have to read any of those long books.

27:36Lionel Shriver:You just say it's all evil. You don't have to learn anything about history if you decide all history is bad. You make it very simple. You know, you reduce it, Americans reduce it to slavery and the slaughter of the Indians. That's all you need to know about history. Oh, and you need to know a little bit of World War II so you can call the enemy Nazis and fascists. That's about it. And it seems as if the left in both our countries is utopian. But they're not utopian. They are dystopian. In fact, they are nihilistic. I don't think there is any positive vision for the future. It's just a complete blank, no future.

28:21Lionel Shriver:That's nihilistic. And it's easy. You know, it's staying home. It's not building anything. It's not making anything. And it's not appreciating anything. It's not humbly accepting that many people have come before you that make your smartphone possible and your sewage and your supermarket full of infinite array of food. I mean, it's an ungrateful position. And that's easy, too, because gratitude requires humility. It's not something that makes you vain, right? It is, and gratitude requires some energy, generosity. And I think this whole, the whole progressive left, which I talked to a little bit with Winston, is just incredibly narcissistic.

29:30Lionel Shriver:And I find that ironic because this is in the guise of caring so much for others. I was going to say as well, because focusing on the men in the book, particularly Nico, his constant search for comfort has meant that he has become demasculinized. When you compare him to the immigrants coming in who've had a much harder, tougher way of life, they're far more masculine than he is.

29:56Francis Foster:Yes. They're far more assertive. They're far more, not only are they mentally dominant, they're far more physically dominant. So what you show is this comparison between somebody who's been raised in the West and you look at him, you go, this isn't a man. This is a glorified pet.

30:13Lionel Shriver:I thought you were going to say girl. No, I like pet better. Yeah, it's a glorified pet. No, because it's an insult to women to say that, because it's not it's not feminine. It's something deeply pathetic that can only be maintained if someone looks after them. That's not a woman. That's a pet. Yeah, well, for the first long part of the book, Nico seems to be very contented with this demasculinized version of himself and many of his peers. But there is a crucial point at which he realizes that he needs access to the masculine virtues. even physically. He needs strength. He needs to be able to express aggression.

31:07Lionel Shriver:And he needs to, most of all, he needs to be able to protect his mother, who is in profound danger. And he doesn't know how. He feels he has no tools in a literal sense and also in a characterological sense. he can't rise to the occasion. I, of course, don't want to give away the ending, but in his own small, struggling way, he does start to embrace being a man toward the end of the book. Doesn't come naturally. He doesn't really want to. but you know it's it you can see that somewhere out there waits his salvation and you know i'm i'm a big fan with masculine virtues and i and i mean that on an individual level but also on a cultural one and especially on a cultural one uh we have we have pooh-poohed them for a long time.

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34:49Francis Foster:On that subject, I mean, the reason I brought up the men and women dynamic in all of this, I think that that comes across quite clearly. And it reminded me of a conversation we had with a lady called Helen Andrews when we were last in America. I don't know if you caught that episode. But her thesis essentially is that a lot of people say that the woke moment is a product of ideology. And her argument is not so much ideology, it's what happens when you have women becoming dominant in institutions and imposing their values and their mindset onto those institutions. So for example, the idea that you talked about at length already in this interview about, well, the immigrants or the minorities, they can't put it for wrong because they just need protection and looking after.

35:37Francis Foster:Her argument is, well, if you kind of see vulnerable people effectively as babies, then that is how you're likely to add towards them. Is there any truth on this? Does that make any sense to you?

35:48Lionel Shriver:Yeah, definitely. I mean, I'm afraid that in discussing the male-female dynamic in relation to woke world, I don't speak very warmly about my own sex. This movement has brought out the worst in women. And, you know, women are capable of the masculine virtues also. And we have allowed them to run riot, feeding their worst impulses. Some of those impulses are masculine. They're just disguised because that crowd can be extremely aggressive and violent and vicious. Right. And it's true that the traditional cancel culture has had a catty female side, you know, that assassination of character and assassination of career.

37:00Lionel Shriver:That's pretty female. um but you know even physically a lot of these people in um in protests and stuff they're frightening right um and and i i feel that a lot of the emotions that that dominate the the progressive left are not just girly emotions you know fury

37:35Lionel Shriver:and a malign intent, you know, an intent toward destruction and harm. It's very, very negative.

37:47Francis Foster:Well, I think there's also another thing that maybe you could say does code more masculine, which is a lot of it from what I see is, you know, you talk about the male character in your book who's sort of pacified and contented, and also for the women as well. But ultimately, within every human being, there is the desire for a cause, to be contributing something of value, to stand up for what is right. All of these things still exist, and also the desire to have status that corresponds with that. I think a lot of progressives look to the previous generation of people who fought for certain rights, and absent any other meaning in their life, that is what they're trying to emulate.

38:31Francis Foster:So when you go and get shot by an ICE agent while, quote-unquote, defending immigrants, not quite, in my opinion, what they're doing, there is an attempt to seek greatness as part of that, is what I see as well. There is a huge sense there that you are doing something important and willing, through your own stupidity, to put your life on the line. And frankly, also, objectively speaking, to go down in history, right? Because, you know, millions of billions of people around the world are going to know your name. I think it's a little tricky to unravel when you're pursuing your own causes,

39:18Lionel Shriver:leaving the left aside. And I'm talking about us, not the others. Humans. I mean, I have lots of beliefs also. They're not the same beliefs. But, and, you know, I wrote this novel partly out of my own beliefs about immigration, that it's been excessive and often damaging to Western culture in particular. And I would like to see it slow. So I have strong feelings about this issue. And maybe there is also a vanity in my thinking. The vast majority out there needs somebody to speak for them. That's what I'm trying to do. And maybe you could step outside of me and say, well, you're just actually self, this is just an act of self-promotion, right?

40:13Lionel Shriver:This is narcissistic. Your books are narcissistic. This is a kind of moral display. In other words, it's possible to turn all that stuff on yourself. And therefore, I think it's important, even when disagreeing with the progressive left, to at least give them credit that I think they do believe that they believe what they say.

40:39Francis Foster:But there is a huge difference between these two things, Lionel, and I think this comes down to creativity versus destruction. What you've done is you've written a great book. Now, people might read that book and say, I disagree with the views that are implied by the plot and the storylines here. But they won't deny that it's a well-written book if they've got any sense to them. Creating a good book is a hard thing to do. It takes skill. It takes practice. It takes the willingness to have people write negative things about you and deal with that emotionally. None of those things are easy. Going to a protest and putting yourself in harm's way, in some ways you could argue is courageous.

41:18Francis Foster:but it's not hard. It takes no skill. It takes no intelligence. It takes no creativity. And I think that's the difference. I think the difference, and you talked about nihilism, the difference is that this is an easy way to access status. It's an easy way. It's a way of getting the things that take work without putting any work in. Because if you really care about immigrants, there's ways to contribute. You could go and start some kind of non-profit organization that teaches them English or that teaches them job skills or that allows them to do this, X, Y, Z. All of that is creative, and I think most people would respect that.

41:54Francis Foster:If people are already here that don't speak English, you'd want to teach them English. You could do that. But if you go to a protest, you don't have to do any work. You just turn up and start screaming in someone's face. I also think there was an element of assumed imperviousness

42:09Lionel Shriver:in these anti-ice protests. I do not think that either of the people who got shot in Minneapolis believed that they were genuinely putting their lives in danger. They're middle class and imagined that no harm would befall them. It's a kind of entitlement. that, you know, so in that all of this is a performance, it feels like theater, and they didn't actually believe that trying to stop armed law enforcement from doing their job was potentially putting themselves in harm's way. I just don't think that was the world in which they were mentally living.

43:06Lionel Shriver:I mean, I didn't, I was not convinced that either of those shootings was righteous. I think it showed poor judgment on Isis' part.

43:19Lionel Shriver:But at the same time, they did make, it was a joint effort, right? There were misjudgments on both sides. How much of this and the ideology, people's behaviors, everything really is down to the fact we're simply not having enough kids. I don't think it was an accident in your book. Not an accident. The three of the characters, they didn't have any kids. The mom was in a house, a big house on her own. That maternal, those maternal instincts have to go somewhere. arguably this wouldn't have happened if the two daughters had all had kids and Nico had a kid because mom would be so busy with grandkids and babies and ferrying them to hockey practice or whatever it may be I don't know wouldn't have time for any of this stuff um yes I mean the Martine the the immigrant who's invited into the house the first one um she she makes that point very specifically that it looks as if this whole family is going to disappear.

44:31Right? None of them have had kids and therefore there will be no one left in the house.

44:40Lionel Shriver:Nikos, who doesn't take any of this stuff very seriously, said, yeah, okay, well, let me have the house for 70 years and I'll leave you the keys. and it's but but you know that's that's also that's the country the house is the country and if we don't have children then we're handing the keys to somebody else

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46:06Francis Foster:Call 866-885-1948. That's 866-885-1948. or go to americanfinancing.net slash trigonometry. And I think not enough people realize that because, again, our civilization at this moment seems to be built around comfort. I don't want anything that will make me uncomfortable. I don't want to test myself because then I might feel anxious. I might feel stressed. So what I'm going to do, again, using the analogy of a pet, I want to be looked after. But the reality is that has very real trade-offs, particularly when it comes to kids and families. If you don't have kids, then what happens is you don't have a legacy.

46:53Lionel Shriver:That's right. And by the way, I need to clarify, I have not had children. So I'm a hypocrite. I had my... In fact, I'm the only non-hypocrite at the table. Good for you. Good for me. I came around to my pronatalism late in my life. And in all honesty, I still don't feel specifically regretful on my own account. My life worked out pretty much the way I wanted. There is some parallel universe in my mind in which I had children. and I think in a lot of ways the latter part of my life would be much more interesting if I'd had children and that's where it really gets me because there'd be so much more plot and I like plot.

47:52Lionel Shriver:Unlike most literary writers, I like plot and I follow what happens to my nieces and nephews my um my younger brother has four kids and uh with with real eagerness you know 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 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 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 envious of uh so my life is now too simple and people keep dying and And if my husband dies, I will be very by myself. You know, I have some friends, and I still have my brother, but the family's getting littler on my side.

48:58And it's kind of shocking, you know,

49:04Lionel Shriver:when you realize your friends start dying. I've lost any number of friends already. I did not grow a crop of social connections, deep social connections, meaning familial connections. And there's a price to pay for that. And that's something that I don't think we acknowledge in our society. by seeking comfort, by avoiding what's important, by things like career, becoming an adult, testing yourself. What you are not doing is you are not investing in your future. That's right. And you're not investing in everyone else's future. You're not investing in a future that you will not experience. Having children is an act of generosity in every sense.

49:54Lionel Shriver:And one of the things that's changed, I never, you know, was disapproving of people who had children, but I'm now actively approving of people who have children. I admire people who have children. Those who say, oh, climate change, I'm not going to have any, I think it's a lie. I think it's a cop-out. And it's just, it's getting out of it because it's too much trouble. It is trouble. but it's trouble that's worthwhile and if you don't if we don't have kids as shown in the book you invite a different sort of trouble yes you're never going to escape from trouble life is trouble

50:41so wouldn't it be better to have trouble that has meaning instead of doing what the characters do in this book and look for meaning in places where there really is no meaning yeah it's really like

50:52Lionel Shriver:returning to basics um it's what people have always found meaning in always is having children having a family that's where your your deepest bonds are and your biggest problems um and and we need to we have we need to become more old-fashioned well i i think it francis

51:20Francis Foster:is totally right to hone in on the idea of comfort because I think what having children does, I think maybe I spend too much time in my youth playing computer games, but I think of a lot of things as a video game. And having kids is literally going to the next level. You up the difficulty level, you up the reward level. And if what you want is to be comfortable, as Nico in the book does, or if you want to just stay, you know, you're content. Like content is the right word. You put it very well. Why increase your difficulty level? Why do it? If you're not aspiring to a bigger reward, for example, of any kind, whether that's meaningfulness or anything else, why push yourself?

52:02Francis Foster:And I think that's just seeped so much into the culture now. But it's interesting because I think the question I was going to ask you is, do you think, you know, your book is one aspect of this, but there's a bigger thing going on where actually a lot of people are starting to realize that this just isn't sustainable. The immigration thing isn't sustainable. The birth rates aren't sustainable. I mean, I saw Marco Rubio in Munich and he was talking about security, global security, but he talked about mass immigration as part of that. And you just go, people are starting to get it now. The tide is starting to turn.

52:37Francis Foster:Obviously the example of what's happened in the US where you've actually closed the border. I mean, you have, right? Do you think this is about to turn around?

52:48Lionel Shriver:The immigration situation? Yeah. I think on the ground, it turned around a long time ago. And that's why there is so much popular rage on this point. in the UK the electorate has opted to elect government after government which has promised them beforehand that they're going to bring down immigration to the tens of thousands

53:23Lionel Shriver:And people are furious. Indeed. Furious. They've been ignored. Lied to. Lied to, totally. Now even, you know, I think Brexit was a vote of desperation. I supported it for sovereignty reasons as well as, you know, to get a handle on immigration. But it was like there was so much anger on the immigration front that the country voted to do something drastic, right? And were willing to take a kind of risk that I thought was very un-British. That's true. The British have always been a slow-to-anger population and very orderly, oriented towards the status quo, and not into radical change. So that's one reason that vote really astonished me, because it was outside the popular character.

54:34Lionel Shriver:But it was very specifically to do with immigration, and none of the other votes had helped. So let's try this And it's One of the fascinating things when you talk about Immigration, or you talk about different cultures And as people My mother's from a different culture Constance from Russia What people in the West don't seem to realize And we talk about this a lot, and we talk about it between ourselves Is they think everyone thinks like them

55:04Francis Foster:The reality is they don't People in Afghanistan do not think the same way As people living in a flat in Mayfair By the way, there's another thing you and I have talked about this a lot on the show. There's another thing I just realized that we should add on top of that. Western people, if they lived in the circumstances that people live in Afghanistan in, also wouldn't act like Western people act today living in a flat in Mayfair. That's another aspect of it, which is when you're confronted by real hardship, for example, your mentality has to change and either changes because you want to survive or changes because you die.

55:38Francis Foster:right so all the people that are refused to adapt they die off and then what you're left with is the people who actually know how to survive in a difficult environment and therefore they're much more connected to the reality of the world you know completely and that's what the characters in the book they think everybody thinks this to put it bluntly they've got every the whole world thinks in these demented progressive values yeah they don't nice neutral statement

56:06Lionel Shriver:There's one character in the book I especially like. He's a side character. His name is Alonzo. You remember him? And Alonzo thinks that most Americans are incredibly gullible and don't give immigrants credit for being conniving, right? For knowing how to game the system. both the immigration system and the benefit system. And he's very good at it. He's an excellent and very clever shyster and proud of it. And he thinks that Americans are fools. And he says, you know, you think that we admire you and we're grateful that you let us into your country, but no, we think you're fools. We have contempt for you.

57:02Lionel Shriver:and he says if if I had a country it's my country right I have a country and and someone crosses my border without my permission I'd shoot him and then his friends will think twice about current crossing my border without permission and the migration crisis no and i and that's and that is how people in the rest of the world think by the way yes that is how they think yes and and and in fact the kind of uh numbers that we've been confronting like during the biden administration and even um like a thousand people in a day rocking up on the southern coast of England, at any other time, you know, that would be a military incursion.

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59:27Francis Foster:You know, it's so funny that the entire conversation we're having, I just had a flashback. When I was in my early 20s, I was living in a flat share with a girl. And one day her dad came around and I remember him talking to me and he was telling me the story about the fact that there was a... We were talking about immigration. And he told me the story about how he used to work with this Afghan guy. I think he was from Afghanistan, somewhere like that. Who used to say to him directly, he used to say, you British, you're gullible. You're easy to take advantage of. and he said the the father of the 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 don't if you if that's how you treat us you should leave and his daughter said dad dad let's not talk like that here and i think that's the entire thing in that one conversation this is how i think the dad and i i remember saying to her i agree with your dad i'm an immigrant i agree with your dad because he's right because a lot of people if you let them, they will take advantage of you and you have to not let them take advantage of you.

1:00:36Francis Foster:And if people are here who are taking advantage of you, they should go home. And she was horrified by what her dad said and by the fact that I agreed with her dad. And this, that's the entire conversation, isn't it?

1:00:48Lionel Shriver:Well, I mean, if you think about it, imagine how all those boat people in being put up in hotels all over Britain, what do they really think? What do they really think about this country?

1:01:11Lionel Shriver:Why on earth are British taxpayers putting these people up and giving them three meals a day? Actually, in most circumstances, they have snacks and food on offer 24-7. They've done nothing to deserve this. it's actually a kind of theft, right? It's a theft from the taxpayer. They have not contributed anything to the system. There is no reason that Britain has responsibility for these people. So if you're one of those people, don't you feel that you're surrounded by fools? I mean, why are these people rewarding your having broken the law and you just arrive and they're taking care of you indefinitely, why would you not hold these people in contempt?

1:02:10Lionel Shriver:What is wrong with them? It would never happen where you're from, you know? If the British show up in Afghanistan or Albania or something, you think that they're going to be taken care of and put in hotels? No. So why wouldn't that engender contempt rather than kind of gormless gratitude? You know, I watch quite a lot of sports and sometimes you see a really great team or with really talented players lose against another team with less talented players. And in a moment of honesty, they'll ask one of the players and they'll go, why did you lose? And they'll go, you know what? They just wanted it more.

1:02:56and I look at the characters in your book, I look at what's happening in society writ large, I look at these people coming over, I see the way that they behave, and I think maybe they just want it more than us.

1:03:11Lionel Shriver:Yeah, there's an element of that, and I think that's pretty clear in the novel, that the people who are taking action, for the most part, in the book, are the immigrants. They're going out and getting what they want. And the locals are passive. And, you know, nobody's our countries are being overrun by strangers because nobody is stopping them. So one of the things we don't want enough is to stop them. So it's just happening.

1:03:58Francis Foster:And, you know, when you were talking about the illegal boat immigrants in a hotel and the way you were talking about it, I felt this pang of like, but what? And I think...

1:04:12Lionel Shriver:What was the pang?

1:04:14Francis Foster:You know what it was? I think it was almost like, isn't that exactly what the people who didn't let those fleeing the Holocaust and World War II would have said? And that is what they said. And they didn't let lots of people into their countries and lots of people died as a result. And I think the guilt that we feel about that still even now is so profound that it has deranged the way we think about this issue completely.

1:04:38Lionel Shriver:Yeah, well, that's where the European Convention on Human Rights comes from. That's why we have the whole asylum system. But it's been long enough that maybe we should get over it and update.

1:04:50Francis Foster:Well, what I think is actually not even up to date. I just think we have to be honest and recognize that if people are fleeing the Holocaust, we actually do want to let them in and look after them. But if people are economic migrants who've worked out that if you claim that you are gay or whatever and you're fleeing Afghanistan, we're going to let you in all of a sudden. it's all like that thing with you know we had i mean what was happening in syria during the civil war meant that there were hundreds of thousands of people actually fleeing for the genuine refugees but but if you come to our country and claim you're 12 years old and go to school when you're 24 and we don't even bother to check so the point is that the guilt and shame we felt i actually think was somewhat appropriate.

1:05:43Francis Foster:It's just it's now been misallocated. If I was driving in a careless way and I hurt somebody, I should feel guilt about that. But if the result of that is I now decide to burn down all the cars in the country, maybe that's an overreaction. And it sort of feels like that's what's happened here.

1:06:04Lionel Shriver:Well, I think the big mistake in the asylum system is making it legally required so that all that is necessary is that someone from wherever sets a single foot on your territory and suddenly you're responsible for them. And they can make claims on your benefit system and they can also make claims on your judicial system, which is not free either. And that whole system has got to go. I would shit can all of asylum. But as you know, that doesn't mean that voluntarily countries couldn't say, you know, here's this conflict over there. Let's say Ukraine, right? Russia's invaded Ukraine. There are a lot of people in danger, especially in the east of the country.

1:06:54Lionel Shriver:We will take our share. We will invite them voluntarily. That's what we did. Right. Right. But not because we have to, because we've inverted it. So it's required charity. And therefore, it's an open invitation to game the system. And it's now a farce. It's now an embarrassment. But also as well, there's another part to this argument is, look, we've spent the last however many years in universities, in the media, in conversations, denigrating the West. We're racist. We're evil. We all know the tribes. And if that's the case, if we are genuinely those things and our civilisation is that, then why would you defend it?

1:07:47Why would you defend your uncle if your uncle is a Nazi or he's a sex offender? You wouldn't. Enough about the royal family. But yeah, but why would you? You wouldn't. You would just go, this person doesn't deserve to be defended. And our culture is the same.

1:08:03Lionel Shriver:Yes, and this incursion, this mass incursion on Western territory is evidence of a lack of cultural self-confidence. Because why would you want to protect your culture from incursion by others? if you don't care about it, you're not going to try to protect it. And we're raising people to not care about it. You don't even have to go so far as to hate your own country. But you can passively not give a shit about it.

1:08:52Francis Foster:That'll do it.

1:08:53Lionel Shriver:Yeah.

1:08:53Francis Foster:That'll do it. Lionel, fantastic to have you back on. Congratulations on A Better Life. I hope it does very well, which I'm sure it will do. Thanks for coming back on. We're going to ask you a bunch of questions from our supporters on Substack in a second. But before we do, what is the one thing that we're still not talking about that we should be?

1:09:20Lionel Shriver:Water. We don't talk enough about water. Tell me more. Well, this is especially in the U.S. right now. The U.S. always asks if we can increase our population. It's related to immigration because it's demography. We think that we can absorb an infinite number of people and keep growing the population indefinitely. There was even a book published not that long ago about one billion Americans, and that was supposed to be a positive vision. The biggest limitation on whole sections of the United States is groundwater, is freshwater, and we're sucking out the aquifers. And nobody talks about it. Lionel?

1:10:18Lionel Shriver:So?

1:10:18Francis Foster:Well, I look forward to reading your next book, which no doubt will be about water. Nope. thanks for coming on head on over to triggerpod.co.uk where Lionel's going to answer your questions if you were a young person currently seeing what you're seeing and you had the opportunity to move and settle down in some other country what would be your top picks of same countries in the world We'll be right back.