Maiden Mother Matriarch with Louise Perry

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.

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. My guest today is the writer and tech worker Jacob Falkovich, who describes himself as a post-rationalist. As you'll hear, it's pretty hard to find someone who actually calls themselves a 'rationalist' (that's the nature of the subculture), but Jacob is willing to make an earnest defence of rationalism, and of Effective Altruism, and of the AI safety movement. These are interesting and – I think – very influential subcultures. If we want to understand the AI safety movement, then we need to understand rationalism.MMM is sponsored by 321 - a new online introduction to Christianity, presented by former MMM guest Glen Scrivener. Check it out for free at 321course.com/MMM. Just enter your email, choose a password and you’re in — there’s no spam and no fees.

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.

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, from anger to the urge to yawn. In today's episode we speak in particular about negative and unpleasant emotions, particularly anxiety and depression. Are they doing something useful for us? Or is evolutionary mismatch causing us to feel worse than we need to? Rob Kurzban is an evolutionary psychologist who was a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania for over a decade. His new book is titled 'All the Feels: The Evolved Function of Every Human Emotion and Sensation.'

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?

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 Sutton, who has a particular expertise in Aboriginal languages and has lived and worked with Aboriginal people all over Australia for more than half a century. In 2011, Peter published a book titled 'The Politics of Suffering', in which he argued that decades of liberal policy in outback communities had worsened the suffering of Aboriginal people. Today we discuss what Australians get wrong about indigenous affairs.

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

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 better health, the fact that other people interrupt them less often, the fact that they have more friends. Everyone wants to be high status, whether or not they'll admit it.  These status games aren't something we can avoid, but by better understanding them we can play them more judiciously. That's what Will Storr's book, The Status Game, is all about. 

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.