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Podcast: The Unspeakeasy With Meghan Daum
Episode: When Taking Control of Your Death Takes Over Your Life: Lionel Shriver on Getting Out Just In Time
Description: Novelist Lionel Shriver is known for placing social topics (sometimes radioactive ones) inside the frame of fiction. Her 2003 novel, We Need To Talk About Kevin, which won the Orange Prize for Fiction and was made into a 2011 film starring Tilda Swinton, was told from the perspective of a mother whose son commits a school shooting akin to the Columbine massacre. Lionel's thirteen other novels take on such subjects as obesity, the US healthcare system, the national debt, global overpopulation, and homegrown terrorism. Her new novel, Should We Stay Or Should We Go, is about suicide, specifically the pros and cons...