Maiden Mother Matriarch with Louise Perry

Latest Episodes:

Depopulation is coming. What happens next? | Maiden Mother Matriarch 183 Feb 08, 2026

Show notes

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On the cover of their new book, authors Dean Spears and Michael Geruso have a graph of the global population over time. The population is small and roughly stable for pretty much all of human history. It rises after the advent of agriculture, some ten thousand years ago, but that bump looks rather minor now.

It's only after the industrial revolution that we see this enormous spike, taking us from a world containing 1 billion people in 1800 to over 8 billion today. So far, so familiar.

But what Spears and Geruso are interested in is what happens next. Their book is titled 'After the Spike' because they foresee an imminent addition to the familiar population graph: a descent just as steep as the ascent. An exponential decline that might even take us back to a global population smaller than that of 1800.

I speak to Dean Spears today about what demographic research indicates is imminently in store for us as a species, and what might be on the horizon 'after the spike.'

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Weimar America? Feb 06, 2026

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In this bonus episode, I spoke with Rod Dreher about what he describes as the 'Weimarisation of the West' – an increasingly atomised and economically precarious society that valorises transgression for its own sake. We also discussed whether World War II still has a central place in the cultural imagination, why the Online Right puts so much emphasis on humour, and the ongoing civil unrest in Minnesota.

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The anguish of girls | Maiden Mother Matriarch 183 Feb 01, 2026

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Teenage anxiety isn’t a new thing. Our mothers and grandmothers also worried about beauty, and friendships, and boys.

What is new, however, is the role of technology in teenage anxiety. We see an inflection point in the early 2010s: a sudden drop in mental wellbeing among teenagers, particularly girls. The beginning of that drop coincided with the arrival of image-based social media like Instagram.

My guest today argues that this was not a coincidence. Freya India is the author of the Substack GIRLS, where she writes about the challenges girls and young women face in the modern world. She’s also a staff writer for Jonathan Haidt’s newsletter, After Babel.

Her new book is about the ways in which communication technology has given us a world in which teenage girls end up commodifying themselves – selling their lives on social media, advertising themselves on dating apps, and packaging themselves into personal brands. All at the cost of their own sanity.

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Victorian attitudes towards death Jan 28, 2026

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In this bonus episode, I spoke with Stone Age Herbalist about an essay he recently published on Victorian attitudes towards death.

We discussed the cultural impact of Jack the Ripper, the terror of body snatching, the practice of postmortem photography, and the Spiritualist movement's preoccupation with electricity.

Discussed in the episode:

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The Case for Nepotism | Maiden Mother Matriarch 182 Jan 25, 2026

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The word 'meritocracy' was originally intended as a pejorative. It was coined in a 1958 novel written by the British social scientist Michael Young. In the dystopia that Young imagined, the old order has been overthrown and replaced with a tyrannical system obsessed with merit.

Today's guest not only joins Young in his critique of meritocracy, he also takes a further bold step in endorsing some extremely old fashioned ideas about wealth, family, and legacy.

In an age when celebrities routinely boast about their plans to disinherit their children and leave them to fend for themselves financially, Johann Kurtz makes a counter-cultural argument for nepotism. Do not give your money to charity, he says. Do not encourage your children to launch themselves into the meritocratic rat race. Learn, instead, from the ancient practices of aristocrats who had very different ideas about how to cultivate virtue in their descendants.

Kurtz is the author of the 'Becoming Noble' Substack. His new book is titled 'Leaving a Legacy: Inheritance, Charity, & Thousand-Year Families.'

Discussed in the show:

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Mr. Bean Authoritarianism Jan 21, 2026

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In this bonus episode, Ed West and I spoke about the mode of British governance that is simultaneously sinister and farcical, from the recent 'Prevent video game' to the police horses sent to re-education because they wouldn't walk over rainbow pedestrian crossings.

Discussed in this episode:

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Taking the culture war seriously | Maiden Mother Matriarch 181 Jan 18, 2026

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My guest today is George Owers, historian and author of a new book, 'The Rage of Party: How Whig Versus Tory Made Modern Britain.'

Owers traces our contemporary culture war back to the end of the seventeenth century, when the conflict between Whigs and Tories was the central drama of English politics. One side was isolationist, opposed to immigration, and preferred a small state. The other was open to the rest of the world, and had ambitious plans for tax rises and state expansion. The two sides differed on the role of religion in public life, and on which ideas and symbols ought to be considered sacred. Does any of this sound familiar?

Owers argues that we are still seeing this drama play out, not just in England but across the Anglosphere. Our political conflicts are still theological conflicts, and they are surpassingly important.

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The nature of women's activism Jan 17, 2026

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In this bonus episode, RobHenderson and I discussed the shooting of Renee Good and the role of women in political activism.

Discussed in the episode:

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Work fit for a goddess | Maiden Mother Matriarch Episode 180 Jan 11, 2026

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"So powerful, in fact, is simple string in taming the world to human will and ingenuity that I suspect it to be the unseen weapon that allowed the human race to conquer the earth."

That's a quote from 'Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years', Elizabeth Wayland Barber's landmark contribution to archeology, recently re-published in the form of a 30th anniversary edition.

Wayland-Barber argues that the creation of string, and later of weaving, was one of the most crucial innovations in human history. And it was the work of women.

Up until really very recently in human history, the creation of textiles was an extraordinarily time consuming and important aspect of women's daily lives. If we had not undergone the 'string revolution', we would not have been able to keep ourselves warm in cold weather, to use textiles for hunting, and to develop various complex tools essential for human survival. It's no wonder that spinning and weaving have such a central role in mythology. Today we examine the ancient connection between spinning thread and creating life.

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The wisdom of looksmaxxing Jan 09, 2026

Show notes

In this bonus episode, Meghan Murphy and I discussed the online community of young men making every effort to improve their appearances.

Discussed in the episode:

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