How do manias die? My sense is they die very quietly. It's people not talking. The way they don't die is people in positions of power,

reversing their positions in public. That's not ever what happens.

They're never going to disavow it. They're never going to say, excuse me, this was wrong,

and let's not let it happen again. No, no, no, no, no. We went immediately from COVID

to climate change. And now that's all we want to talk about.

Maybe we went a little nuts,

but we're never going to acknowledge it.

We're just going to get nuts about something else.

Hello, welcome back to the Brendan O'Neill show with me Brendan O'Neill and my special

guest this week, Lionel Shriver.

Lionel, welcome to the show.

Thank you, it's great to talk to you again. It's always great to have you on.

I feel like there is always stuff for us to talk about,

crazy things usually.

Speaking of crazy things, I want to ask you about your new novel,

which is called

Mania. And it's a brilliant setup, story-wise. This is about a world in which

everyone is now seen as being equally intelligent, and there is this thing called cognitive

discrimination where you're not allowed to discriminate against people on the

basis of their intelligence and it's about the last great civil rights movement, which is the uprising for treating everyone as if they were cognitively equal, intelligently equal.

Great setup for this novel called Mania.

Could you tell us a little bit more about it?

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