Maiden Mother Matriarch with Louise Perry

As the political economist Nicholas Eberstadt once put it, “a shrinking, aging world is something that we're intuitively, almost completely unprepared to encounter, because all of our experience, in ways that we don't even think about, has been framed by a growing world population.”

Nowhere is this more true than in the discipline of economics. The great well of economic theory that we are familiar with was all written during times of population growth. We are about to enter uncharted territory, and my guest today argues that demography is now the most fundamental force shaping our econ...

This interview was actually recorded before Suella Braverman's most recent Question Time appearance, which sparked a public row over the question of English identity and ethnicity. As it happens, that was one of the topics we covered in our conversation, which is themed around Suella's new memoir, an account of her family's experiences of the British Empire, and her vision for modern Britain.

Suella Braverman is a politician, barrister, and former Attorney General and Home Secretary. Earlier this year, she defected from the Conservative Party to Reform UK, and now serves as their spokesperson for education...

In this bonus episode for paid subscribers, Rob Henderson and I discussed the new matchmaking scheme from the Singaporean government, which seems to be intended to boost the country's birth rate.

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In 2019, Rusty Reno – editor of First Things magazine – published ‘Return of the Strong Gods’, a book that argued that the postwar ideological order of tolerance and openness had overreached, and that we were set to see the reemergence of “strong gods” in politics—that is, the powerful loyalties that bind people to their homelands and to one another.

Today, Rusty and I return to this thesis seven years on. Populism is certainly ascendent, and not only in the United States. Should we be worried about the pendulum swinging too far in the other direction? Or should the “strong go...

For this bonus episode Meghan Murphy and I discussed the recent Women’s Convention in Rochester, NY, which we both spoke at. This was a gathering of sex realist feminists, with a lot of mothers and Christian women in attendance. Meghan and I spoke about the historic relationship between Leftism and feminism, and wondered whether we're seeing a decoupling of women's advocacy from the Left-Right binary.

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Just in the last few weeks, the issue of AI safety has suddenly broken into the political mainstream. What was once a fairly niche debate within the worlds of tech and philosophy is now on the front pages. And the question of AI is, predictably enough, quickly turning into a partisan issue, with the President opposing heavy federal guardrails, and the Democrats calling for aggressive regulation.

Today's episode is about the subculture from which the AI safety movement emerged. Rationalism – which is tightly entwined with Effective Altruism – is an intellectual movement popular among millennials working in tech...

In this bonus episode for paid subscribers, I spoke with The Telegraph’s Poppy Coburn about a piece she wrote recently on the rise of chronic illness among young women, and the role of the internet in this worrying phenomenon.

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A life without pain sounds wonderful. It would also be fatal. Pain feels bad because it has a job: measuring damage to your body and motivating you to protect it. Every other feeling has a job too, built by natural selection. Hunger measures your need for calories and motivates you to eat. Envy measures others’ success and motivates you to close the gap. Frustration measures the futility of your current approach and motivates you to try a new one.

In 'All the Feels', evolutionary psychologist Robert Kurzban explains the evolved function of our emotions and sensations, fr...

In this bonus episode for paid subscribers, I spoke with Ed West about the nativist protests in Dover and Portsmouth, and how the British government might respond. Will there be moves to ban face coverings and crack down on protest movements? Or will the government give way to the Right, and put an end to the asylum crisis?

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Aboriginal people have lived in Australia for at least 65,000 years, surviving as hunter gatherers. 250 years ago, the British arrived, bringing with them industrial modernity, as well as disease and – sometimes – violence. During most of this modern period, British settlers and their descendants adopted what has been called "the great Australian silence", paying little attention to the Aboriginal people they had displaced. 

Since the 1960s there has been a transformation in how non-indigenous Australians think about indigenous culture and history. One of the key voices in this transformation has been that of the anthropologist and linguist Peter Sutto...

In this bonus episode for paid subscribers, I spoke with Nina Power about the power of communism as an ideology.

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You may think that you don't care about status. You may tell yourself that since you're not bothered about material displays of wealth, that means that you are above petty disputes over where one stands in the social pecking order. 

The author and journalist Will Storr says you're wrong. Everybody cares about status, he argues, even if we don't realise it. We are evolved to obsess over status, and to immediately recognise it. You don't identify a high status person (solely) through their expensive car or designer clothes. You also notice their more relaxed postures, their b...

In this bonus episode, Mary Harrington and I spoke about the public response to the Lindsay Clancy murder case. Be warned, there are some dark themes discussed.

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There is a certain kind of caricature of women that pops up in cultural commentary right now. Modern women, we are told, are inundated with male attention at all times, and all of it is deeply unwelcome. According to this view, says Phoebe Maltz Bovy, “straight women merely put up with men’s advances because we don’t want them to murder us, or because we rely on them for a roof over our heads, or maybe because they seem nice and this is our way of saying thank you.” 

In a new book 'The Last Straight...

For this bonus episode, I spoke with Johann Kurtz about his viral essay 'Young adults are poor despite every metric which suggests otherwise', which was partly inspired by a previous MMM bonus episode.

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Samuel Johnson was one of his history's great readers. He read constantly: while he walked, while he ate, while he socialised. He insisted that one ought to read for five hours a day, and to read on every subject one could. This was newly possible for eighteenth century people, who suddenly had access to affordable books. 

But Johnson understood that he was unusual. "People in general do not willingly read, if they can have anything else to amuse them," he conceded. "The progress which the understanding makes through a book, has more pain than pleasure in i...

In this bonus episode for paid subscribers, Rob Henderson and I discussed Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's comments on "woke 1" and the shift towards a new kind of progressive politics that's currently underway.

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Something called 'populism' is on the rise across much of the world. It's difficult to pin down exactly what the term means, but most of us have a sense that we know it when we see it. Trump in the United States, Farage in Britain, Hanson in Australia – all of these politicians have adopted a particular kind of posture towards the public and towards the political establishment. 

Richard Hanania thinks that populism is a very bad thing, since he argues that it reliably leads to 'kakistocracy' – that is, government by the worst, least qualified, and most unscr...

In this bonus episode, I spoke to former radical feminist (well, sort of) Meghan Murphy about beauty treatments. How should feminists think about, for instance, botox? How should individual women navigate this issue? And what have we, personally, had done?

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Back in 2013, the Obama administration endorsed an ad campaign that came to be derisively known as the “pajama boy” campaign. “Pajama boy” was actually an adult man who encouraged young adults to make the case for Obamacare over Thanksgiving dinner with their relatives. “Wear pajamas. Drink hot chocolate. Talk about getting health insurance.” was the tag line. Most people thought it was pretty silly and the image survives now as an online meme.

In retrospect, “pajama boy” was actually a little bit sinister because it was symptomatic of a shift in the culture. While families have always fallen out over...

In this bonus episode, I spoke with Nina Power about the English village that is seeking independence from the UK in protest at a local asylum seeker accommodation centre. We discussed the issues with asylum policy, the growing spirit of rebellion in sleepy rural places, and whether the UK government is guilty of institutional misogyny.

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Humans love stories. Long before writing was developed, stories helped people to preserve knowledge, transmit moral ideas, warn against danger, and psychologically prepare for future ordeals. The most enduring stories are those that organise experience into meaningful patterns, communicating through symbolism that often operates on a subconscious level. My guest today argues that these old stories do something important to us, particularly as children.

Today we discussed fairytales and the Bible. We also discussed a lot of modern stories: Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, American Psycho, The Wizard of Oz, Christopher Nolan’s new adaptation of Th...

For this bonus episode I spoke with Helen Roy about the new cult horror movie ‘Obsession.’ Helen can found at Helen Roy Writes.

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Feminists have been arguing about the politics of homemaking for a long time. In her 1963 feminist classic, The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan famously compared the suburban American home to a “comfortable concentration camp”, arguing that homemaking was not just a waste of a woman’s talents, but a form of degradation.

Maternal feminists reject this characterisation. But they also highlight the ways in which stay-at-home parents – mostly, but by no means exclusively, mothers – are made vulnerable, particularly financially. My guest today is focused on how public policy can best reduce this vulnerability.

Ivana Greco is a homemake...

I’ve just moved to Australia. I wrote a column about our move in the Wall Street Journal, which was also published in The Australian, but I haven’t otherwise spoken about our reasoning, and a lot of listeners have been asking. So today’s episode is about Australia: the issues the country is facing right now, why British people are so often attracted to moving here (including yours truly), the cultural differences between Britain and Australia, and the big political challenges that both countries are facing: immigration, economic stagnation, ageing populations, housing crises, and the rise of the populi...

In this bonus episode, Ed West and I discussed the apparent murder of Ann Widdecombe, the role that she played in British public life, and the responses to this atrocity.

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In this bonus episode, Rob Henderson and I discussed a recent viral article in The Cut titled ‘It’s Hard to See My Parents Live So Lavishly While We’re Struggling’ and the broader issue of wealth inequality within families. Is it really true that millennials have it harder than boomers? Are downwardly mobile younger generations right to feel resentful? And how should wealthy parents protect their children from becoming spoilt and entitled?

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The empire that once controlled all or part of forty modern European, Asian, and African countries no longer exists. Rome didn’t fall all at once, and it didn’t fall for any one simple reason. But it did fall. And people down the centuries have been drawn to the story of Rome’s decline and fall with a mixture of fear, curiosity, and an irresistible desire to draw parallels between the fate of the Roman Empire and the present day.

Today I’m joined by Edward J. Watts, professor of history at the University of California, San Diego...

Alec Ryrie argues that the age of Hitler is not the 1930s and 1940s, it is our own lifetimes. As the influence of Christianity receded from the 1960s onwards, the figure of Hitler stepped into the breach – the most potent possible symbol of evil, around whom the Western moral imagination was structured.

But as the Second World War recedes into history, this anti-Nazi moral consensus is unravelling, which means that our whole system of morality is coming under pressure. What happens when the Age of Hitler comes to an end? 

Alec Ryrie is Profe...

In this bonus episode, Nina Power and I discussed recent events in Britain, including the announced ban on social media use for under 16s and last week's rioting in Belfast and elsewhere. 

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The science of sex differences is intensely political. Traditionalists tend to exaggerate the innate differences between men and women, while progressives tend to minimise them, arguing that the behavioural differences we see between the sexes are a product of nurture, rather than nature. 

Steve Stewart-Williams wants to offer a more cautious assessment. There are a lot of average differences between the sexes, some of them very pronounced. There are also a lot of small to moderate differences that are visible at the population level, but not necessarily at the individual level. This is a controversial subject, b...

In this bonus episode, I spoke with Helen Roy about Caro Claire Burke’s bestselling novel ‘Yesteryear’ and we tried to explain why the ‘tradwife’ phenomenon attracts such strength of feeling.

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Western elites tend to be xenophilic. They love the cultural other, and they abhor the dullness and small mindedness they see in their own countrymen. But, as Chris Bayliss points out, this is typically combined with what he describes as a “studiously parochial” attitude towards what the cultural other is actually like.

In his writing for The Critic Magazine, Chris often draws from his experiences of living and working overseas, including as a diplomat. Today we discuss the many areas of British public life that have been radically transformed by mass immigration from parts of the world in w...

In this bonus episode for paid subscribers, I spoke with Mary Harrington about Pope Leo's encyclical on AI, whether it should be regarded as 'normal technology' or as something entirely different, and how the digital revolution might transform politics long term. 

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The institution of marriage has changed a lot over the last few centuries. As Eli Finkel explains in ‘The All of Nothing Marriage’ – truly one of my favourite social science books – Americans of the early nineteenth century would look with confusion on our modern attitudes towards what a spouse ought to be. An economic partner, sure. A co-parent, obviously. But a best friend, even a soul mate?

Today, Eli and I track these changes across American history, and we ask whether our modern attitudes towards marriage have some significant downsides. It seems that the best marriages are now bett...

In this bonus episode, I spoke with Ed West about why the story of the HMS Windrush has become so important in modern Britain, despite its historical inaccuracies. 

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In this bonus episode, I spoke with Rob Henderson about the link between the decline in marriage rates and the decline in fertility rates. 

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Paul Ehrlich was the author of the 1968 book 'The Population Bomb' - a book that made him into a celebrity. His message was a horrifying one. “In the 1970s and 1980s” he announced in the opening lines, “hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.” 

Thankfully, that prediction was not realised. But Ehrlich's influence lives on after his death, not least in the work of my guest today. Les Knight is the founder of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (VHEMT). His goal is that humans should, as the mov...

In this bonus episode, Nina Power and I discussed the local elections in Britain and what the results indicate about political polarisation, especially with regards to age, ethnicity, class, and sex. 

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We've all heard of the manosphere. We've all come across commentators who blame it for the radicalisation of young men. Political leaders express immense concern about manosphere influencers like Andrew Tate, who are blamed for the alienation of their young fans from mainstream society. 

We hear a lot less about the femosphere. In a recent New Statesman cover story, titled 'Meet the Angry Young Women', journalist Emily Lawford and pollster Scarlett Maguire broke fresh ground in outlining just how radicalised young British women are. 

This is partly a story about the internet, specifically the ...