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From Chaos to Cambridge · Reasonably Happy with Paul Ollinger

0:00
SPEAKER_01: When I was seven, it was the final foster home I lived in.
0:02
That was the strangest home for me in a lot of ways because I
0:05
was the only child living there.
0:07
SPEAKER_01: And even though I didn't enjoy the sort of chaos and the uncertainty and
0:13
SPEAKER_01: instability of all of these kids living in the same home as me,
0:17
SPEAKER_01: where one of the difficulties was not only would I not know
0:23
whether I would stay in this home for very long or when my next
0:26
placement would arrive,
0:27
SPEAKER_01: when my social worker would come and take me to another home.
0:29
But I'd move into a home and I'd make friends with the other
0:32
foster kids,
0:33
with my siblings.
0:34
And then one day I'd wake up and they would be gone because
0:36
they would go to
0:37
another home or they would be placed with their family of
0:40
origin or returned or something.
0:42
SPEAKER_01: And so...
0:43
that was really difficult for me but then this final home
0:46
suddenly i felt extremely
0:47
lonely i got used to just all the kids around me all of that
0:50
sort of social energy
0:52
then i'm in this home by myself and this foster mother who you
0:56
know she there was
0:58
no direct abuse but she you know essentially took young boys in
1:02
one at a time as
1:04
SPEAKER_01: kind of a uh
1:05
SPEAKER_01: you know, servants or something.
1:08
SPEAKER_01: You know,
1:09
I would spend most of my time when I wasn't in school just sort
1:12
of cleaning and
1:12
SPEAKER_01: raking leaves and cleaning gutters.
1:14
And that was kind of how she handled things,
1:18
you know,
1:19
when she would take boys in.
1:20
SPEAKER_01: And that was, you know, not a pleasant experience either.
1:24
SPEAKER_02: You're never going to be perfectly happy all the time.
1:27
SPEAKER_02: The best you can hope for is to be reasonably happy.
1:31
SPEAKER_02: Reasonably.
1:38
SPEAKER_02: Welcome back to Reasonably Happy.
1:39
SPEAKER_02: My guest this week is Rob Henderson.
1:42
SPEAKER_02: He's the author of a great 2024 book called Troubled,
1:45
SPEAKER_02: a memoir of foster care,
1:47
SPEAKER_02: family,
1:47
SPEAKER_02: and social class.
1:48
SPEAKER_02: When he was a small child,
1:49
SPEAKER_02: Rob was abandoned by his father and given up by his drug-addicted mother.
1:54
SPEAKER_02: He spent time in 10 foster care homes before he was done,
1:58
SPEAKER_02: and he was drinking and using drugs before he was a teenager.
2:01
SPEAKER_02: However, as you might have guessed, the story has a very...
2:05
positive outcome rob through the work he did in the military
2:09
eventually attended
2:09
yale and earned a phd at the university of cambridge where
2:13
they're not just giving
2:14
out phds rob i'm guessing rob welcome to reasonably happy hey
2:19
thanks paul it's
2:19
great to be here if i had met you when you were 12 years old
2:24
what kind of a kid
2:25
SPEAKER_02: would i have run into
2:27
SPEAKER_01: Let's see, 12 years old.
2:28
SPEAKER_01: Well,
2:29
SPEAKER_01: you know,
2:29
I describe my early life and the kind of ups and downs all
2:34
throughout my childhood.
2:36
SPEAKER_01: At 12, I think I would have been...
2:39
SPEAKER_01: You know,
2:39
SPEAKER_01: I was still a troublemaker,
2:40
SPEAKER_01: but it didn't I wasn't quite as bad as,
2:43
SPEAKER_01: say,
2:43
SPEAKER_01: 17 year old Rob.
2:46
SPEAKER_01: That was a period of relative stability, actually.
2:48
SPEAKER_01: You know, I go through the whole sort of gamut.
2:52
SPEAKER_01: You know,
2:52
SPEAKER_01: you mentioned the foster homes in Los Angeles,
2:55
SPEAKER_01: torn from my mother when I was three years old,
2:57
SPEAKER_01: living in all these different placements,
3:00
SPEAKER_01: you know,
3:00
SPEAKER_01: as they call them in the foster system.
3:02
SPEAKER_01: I was later adopted.
3:03
SPEAKER_01: There was a divorce, all these different living situations.
3:08
SPEAKER_01: But by 12, there was a period of relative stability.
3:11
SPEAKER_01: I was in, I don't know, was it seventh grade, eighth grade?
3:14
SPEAKER_01: I was doing okay.
3:15
It wasn't really until I got to high school that things really
3:17
started to spin out of control.
3:19
SPEAKER_01: Still,
3:19
SPEAKER_01: I think if you had met me when I was 12,
3:21
SPEAKER_01: you wouldn't have guessed,
3:22
SPEAKER_01: oh,
3:22
SPEAKER_01: this is going to,
3:23
SPEAKER_01: you know,
3:23
SPEAKER_01: he's going to go on to go to Yale or going to go off to get a PhD.
3:27
SPEAKER_02: How many homes had you lived in by the time you were 12?
3:30
SPEAKER_01: I'd lived in 10 in total.
3:31
SPEAKER_01: So, you know, initially when I was born, I was born into poverty.
3:36
My mother,
3:38
she came to the US from Seoul,
3:40
from South Korea as a young woman.
3:41
And after I was born,
3:44
she started to get into drugs and her life very quickly unraveled.
3:50
SPEAKER_01: Never knew my father.
3:52
SPEAKER_01: It wasn't until later as an adult,
3:53
I took a 23andMe genetic ancestry test that I learned that my
3:56
father was Hispanic.
3:57
SPEAKER_01: So I'm half
3:59
SPEAKER_01: Mexican on my father's side.
4:00
And the joke I always tell is,
4:01
I wish I had known that when I was applying for college.
4:04
SPEAKER_02: You could have gone to a good school instead of Yale.
4:07
SPEAKER_01: Well, the thing is, beforehand, I didn't know.
4:09
I would have had a little more confidence that maybe I'd get it
4:12
had I had that
4:13
SPEAKER_01: extra little push.
4:15
SPEAKER_01: And then, you know, seven different homes in Los Angeles.
4:18
SPEAKER_01: I was adopted by this working class family.
4:22
SPEAKER_01: We settled in this town in Red Bluff,
4:24
SPEAKER_01: which is kind of a dusty blue collar town in Northern California.
4:26
SPEAKER_01: And then there was a divorce.
4:30
SPEAKER_01: I lost contact with my adoptive father.
4:33
SPEAKER_01: My mother raised me as a single mom for a time.
4:37
SPEAKER_01: And there's a lot more drama and chaos throughout this story.
4:45
homes in total that i ended up living in by the time i was 17
4:48
and enlisted in the
4:49
military to get out of there describe one or two of the homes
4:53
that you were a part
4:54
of well you know some of the homes in la you know they had
4:59
upwards of eight or ten
5:01
SPEAKER_01: kids living in them you know the foster care system in general is pretty
5:08
overburdened there's a lot of kids who need homes and not that
5:11
many families who
5:12
SPEAKER_01: can take them in or are willing to take them in
5:15
SPEAKER_01: And so,
5:16
SPEAKER_01: you know,
5:17
SPEAKER_01: some of these homes,
5:17
SPEAKER_01: it would be like bunk beds,
5:19
SPEAKER_01: two bunk beds in a room where you'd have two kids on the bottom bunk,
5:21
SPEAKER_01: two kids on the top bunk.
5:23
SPEAKER_01: And because there's such a scarcity of homes and placements,
5:27
the kind of general agreement seems to be that as long as these
5:30
kids aren't being
5:31
SPEAKER_01: sort of overly outwardly mistreated,
5:34
SPEAKER_01: it's better than them sleeping on the street or staying with,
5:36
SPEAKER_01: you know,
5:36
SPEAKER_01: abusive or neglectful parents.
5:39
SPEAKER_01: So that was pretty common.
5:40
SPEAKER_01: A lot of kids, a lot of chaos, a lot of squalor.
5:45
SPEAKER_01: One of the other homes I lived in,
5:48
SPEAKER_01: When I was seven, it was the final foster home I lived in.
5:51
That was the strangest home for me in a lot of ways because I
5:53
was the only child living there.
5:56
SPEAKER_01: And even though I didn't enjoy the sort of chaos and the uncertainty and
6:01
SPEAKER_01: instability of all of these kids living in the same home as me where,
6:07
SPEAKER_01: you know,
6:08
SPEAKER_01: one of the difficulties was not only would I not know
6:11
Whether I would stay in this home for very long or when my next
6:14
placement would arrive,
6:15
SPEAKER_01: when my social worker would come and take me to another home.
6:18
But I'd move into a home and I'd make friends with the other
6:20
foster kids,
6:21
with my siblings.
6:22
And then one day I'd wake up and they would be gone because
6:25
they would go to
6:25
another home or they would be placed with their family of
6:28
origin or returned or something.
6:30
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
6:31
that was really difficult for me but then this final home
6:34
suddenly i felt extremely
6:36
lonely i got used to just all the kids around me all of that
6:38
sort of social energy
6:39
then i'm in this home by myself and this foster mother who you
6:44
know she there was
6:46
no direct abuse but she you know essentially took young boys in
6:50
one at a time as
6:52
SPEAKER_01: kind of a uh
6:54
SPEAKER_01: you know, servants or something.
6:56
SPEAKER_01: You know,
6:57
I would spend most of my time when I wasn't in school just sort
7:00
of cleaning and
7:01
SPEAKER_01: raking leaves and cleaning gutters.
7:02
And that was kind of how she handled things,
7:07
you know,
7:07
when she would take boys in.
7:08
SPEAKER_01: And that was, you know, not a pleasant experience either.
7:13
So there's a lot of instability,
7:14
not a lot of long-term relationships that you were building.
7:18
You quote in the book,
7:19
you said,
7:19
by age four or five,
7:21
my emotions had gone underground.
7:24
SPEAKER_02: How did that happen?
7:26
SPEAKER_01: Well,
7:26
SPEAKER_01: you know,
7:27
SPEAKER_01: I mentioned,
7:27
SPEAKER_01: so when I was three,
7:29
SPEAKER_01: I was with my biological mom and,
7:33
SPEAKER_01: you know,
7:34
SPEAKER_01: these police officers arrived and they took me and,
7:39
SPEAKER_01: well,
7:39
SPEAKER_01: first,
7:40
SPEAKER_01: you know,
7:40
they and some social workers and a forensic psychologist and
7:43
all these people asked
7:43
SPEAKER_01: my mother,
7:44
SPEAKER_01: where's this boy's father?
7:45
SPEAKER_01: because you're not in a position to care for him.
7:47
SPEAKER_01: And she said she didn't know who my father was.
7:50
And so then I was taken from her and placed into my first home
7:54
and the second home.
7:55
SPEAKER_01: And,
7:55
SPEAKER_01: you know,
7:56
SPEAKER_01: by the third home,
7:57
it's such a stressful experience for a child to go through that
8:02
of not knowing
8:02
SPEAKER_01: where you're going to live and who your primary caregiver is,
8:07
SPEAKER_01: that the body adapts.
8:08
It's a sort of a coping response that you eventually just shut
8:11
down and become numb because it's
8:14
It's not sustainable to experience that extreme and intense
8:18
level of anxiety and
8:19
SPEAKER_01: stress all the time.
8:20
SPEAKER_01: And so eventually I just kind of shut down.
8:23
SPEAKER_01: Oh, I'm moving to another home.
8:24
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
8:24
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to another placement.
8:26
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
8:26
SPEAKER_01: You know, oh, one of my foster siblings who I liked is not here anymore.
8:30
SPEAKER_01: And over time you just learn to shut down.
8:33
And it took a while for me to recognize that that was what was
8:36
happening to me.
8:39
And it took a lot of self-work later as an adult to really sort
8:43
of learn how to
8:44
SPEAKER_01: access emotion and affect and all those kinds of things again.
8:47
SPEAKER_02: You were writing this,
8:48
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
8:49
SPEAKER_02: you wrote that sentence when you're writing your memoirs,
8:51
SPEAKER_02: and you're what,
8:52
SPEAKER_02: 25,
8:52
SPEAKER_02: 26 years,
8:53
SPEAKER_02: 27 years old?
8:54
SPEAKER_01: I was like 29, I was a little, yeah.
8:56
SPEAKER_02: Okay,
8:56
SPEAKER_02: but were you aware of what you were doing even when you were that young,
9:00
SPEAKER_02: that you were sort of like protecting yourself through repression?
9:05
SPEAKER_01: I mean, as a five-year-old kid, no way.
9:07
SPEAKER_01: You know, even as a 17-year-old kid, I didn't know.
9:09
SPEAKER_01: You didn't have words for that.
9:11
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
9:13
SPEAKER_01: I don't know that I – if you had prompted me as a teenager,
9:15
SPEAKER_01: maybe I could have articulated it.
9:16
SPEAKER_01: But as a little kid, there's no way.
9:18
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
9:18
SPEAKER_01: I just had no – yeah,
9:20
I didn't have the vocabulary or the kind of sophistication to
9:24
be able to say this
9:25
SPEAKER_01: is what I'm feeling and this is why and so on.
9:27
SPEAKER_01: It was just completely, you know, instinctive.
9:31
SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
9:31
SPEAKER_02: You're a millennial, man.
9:32
SPEAKER_02: Millennials are much more in touch with their feelings than Gen X was.
9:34
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
9:36
SPEAKER_02: Fair enough.
9:36
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
9:37
SPEAKER_02: Hey, everybody.
9:38
SPEAKER_02: We'll be right back with Rob in just a second.
9:39
SPEAKER_02: I want to say thank you for listening to this program.
9:41
SPEAKER_02: If you like what we're doing here at Reasonably Happy,
9:44
SPEAKER_02: please be sure to follow and like and share this program.
9:49
SPEAKER_02: It's running on several different platforms.
9:50
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9:55
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9:57
follow and or subscribe so you get the best of Reasonably Happy
10:01
in your phone every week.
10:04
SPEAKER_02: Thanks for listening.
10:05
SPEAKER_02: Have a great day.
10:06
SPEAKER_02: Some of these families, it seemed, were in financial need.
10:11
And so they took in foster kids as a way to provide income for themselves.
10:16
SPEAKER_02: But that money and those resources didn't make it back to the kids.
10:19
You write that you were literally hungry and there wasn't
10:22
enough food to go around.
10:23
SPEAKER_02: And I think it's hard for me,
10:26
SPEAKER_02: coming from a stable middle-class background even,
10:29
SPEAKER_02: and most of the people listening to this,
10:31
SPEAKER_02: to really relate to the sense of hunger for a child in that manner.
10:36
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
10:37
SPEAKER_01: And it's interesting.
10:38
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
10:39
part of it was because the state provides stipends and
10:44
subsidies and so on for
10:45
SPEAKER_01: foster parents to care for kids.
10:48
And so if you're a foster family and you have 10 kids living
10:50
with you and you get a
10:51
SPEAKER_01: check for each one of those kids.
10:53
SPEAKER_01: But there was just not a lot of...
10:56
SPEAKER_01: I don't know,
10:56
SPEAKER_01: responsible rationing,
10:57
SPEAKER_01: say,
10:58
where they just set some food out and then the kids would go in
11:00
and the bigger kids
11:01
SPEAKER_01: would get there first.
11:02
SPEAKER_01: So it was just this strange competition.
11:05
SPEAKER_01: And of course,
11:07
most of these kids are strangers to one another or we haven't
11:09
known each other for
11:09
SPEAKER_01: very long.
11:10
It's not like siblings in the same household that have been
11:13
raised together from birth.
11:14
And so the amount of,
11:16
say,
11:16
care or empathy or compassion was limited,
11:21
say.
11:21
SPEAKER_01: And then...
11:23
SPEAKER_01: You know,
11:24
SPEAKER_01: later on,
11:25
SPEAKER_01: one of the homes I qualified for the free lunch program,
11:30
SPEAKER_01: as I think just about every foster kid does.
11:33
But then my mother was confused about how it worked and just
11:37
didn't complete the forms properly.
11:39
SPEAKER_01: So I'd go to school and just wouldn't get lunches.
11:42
SPEAKER_01: And that kind of,
11:43
SPEAKER_01: you know,
11:44
SPEAKER_01: it was hard for me in terms of just the direct hunger,
11:47
SPEAKER_01: but also had an effect on,
11:48
SPEAKER_01: you know,
11:48
SPEAKER_01: obviously how focused I was in class and those kinds of things,
11:51
SPEAKER_01: too.
11:51
SPEAKER_02: What kind of a student were you back then?
11:53
SPEAKER_01: I mean, at that point, elementary school, not a good one.
11:58
SPEAKER_01: One of the things I point out in the book was that my grades in academic
12:02
performance was kind of directly linked to how stable my home
12:08
life was and how
12:09
much the adults around me were looking after me and providing
12:12
oversight and checking in on me.
12:14
SPEAKER_01: Are you doing your assignments?
12:15
SPEAKER_01: Are you doing your homework?
12:16
SPEAKER_01: What's going on with your teachers?
12:17
SPEAKER_00: And I just,
12:18
SPEAKER_01: you know,
12:18
SPEAKER_01: at that time moving through different homes,
12:21
SPEAKER_01: changing schools all the time,
12:22
SPEAKER_01: changing teachers,
12:23
SPEAKER_01: just a terrible student.
12:25
SPEAKER_01: You know, I didn't learn to read until second grade.
12:28
SPEAKER_01: And even then I was like reading barely at a kindergarten level.
12:31
SPEAKER_01: I was teaching myself to read.
12:33
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, one of the things I point out in the book is that
12:37
Poverty is important as a factor in terms of why some kids
12:41
succeed and some kids don't.
12:43
SPEAKER_01: But also instability is perhaps an even bigger factor.
12:48
And one statistic I used to illustrate this is that if you look
12:52
at the number of
12:53
SPEAKER_01: Americans overall who graduate from college,
12:56
SPEAKER_01: it's about 35 percent of American adults go on to graduate from college.
13:01
And if you look at children who are born into families in the
13:04
bottom income quintile,
13:06
SPEAKER_01: bottom 20%, these are essentially kids born and raised in poor families.
13:10
The graduation rate for college for those kids is 11%,
13:13
which is much lower than 35% overall.
13:16
But then when you look at the college graduation rates for
13:19
foster kids,
13:19
it's 3%.
13:20
SPEAKER_01: So it's even lower than it is for kids in poverty.
13:25
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
13:26
SPEAKER_01: in other words,
13:26
SPEAKER_01: if you take a child who is raised in a poor family and a foster child,
13:30
the child raised in poverty is four times more likely to
13:32
graduate from college than
13:33
SPEAKER_01: a child in foster care.
13:35
SPEAKER_02: Yeah,
13:35
SPEAKER_02: one of the reasons,
13:35
one of the things that's fascinating about you is how you've
13:37
connected your
13:38
SPEAKER_02: personal story to some societal things that are going on.
13:42
SPEAKER_02: I want to talk about those,
13:43
but I want to get a little deeper into your story before we
13:46
dive into that.
13:47
SPEAKER_02: Who was the first person that told you you were smart?
13:50
SPEAKER_01: The first person?
13:51
SPEAKER_01: Huh.
13:54
SPEAKER_01: It's hard.
13:55
SPEAKER_01: One of the things I point out in Troubled is that
13:58
SPEAKER_01: It was sort of a consistent theme in my early life where teachers,
14:07
SPEAKER_01: coaches,
14:08
SPEAKER_01: people would kind of recognize you're a smart kid.
14:10
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if I could pinpoint the very first time,
14:13
SPEAKER_01: but it was probably fourth grade,
14:16
SPEAKER_01: something like that,
14:17
SPEAKER_01: third or fourth grade,
14:19
where a teacher noticed that I was smart and I think I got – I
14:24
qualified for the
14:24
SPEAKER_01: school spelling bee and I got third place.
14:27
SPEAKER_01: And I think that surprised a lot of people because up until that point,
14:30
SPEAKER_01: this was after I was adopted.
14:31
SPEAKER_01: And I remember after the adoption, my adoptive parents were
14:36
SPEAKER_01: They were a little nervous.
14:37
SPEAKER_01: My adoptive mom later explained this to me that,
14:39
SPEAKER_01: you know,
14:39
we took you from these homes and we had this very thick file
14:42
from all these
14:43
SPEAKER_01: teachers and foster care,
14:46
SPEAKER_01: social workers and foster parents and so on.
14:47
And,
14:48
you know,
14:48
one thing that we saw repeatedly was Rob's having trouble in school.
14:51
He's having difficulty paying attention in class and teachers
14:54
saying Rob's getting into trouble.
14:55
SPEAKER_01: I stole it.
14:56
I stole one of the teacher's purses with some other boys and
14:59
doing things like that.
15:01
SPEAKER_01: But then once I was adopted and had this semblance of stability,
15:04
SPEAKER_01: I was doing well,
15:05
SPEAKER_01: I was reading a lot,
15:06
SPEAKER_01: I was doing my assignments.
15:08
SPEAKER_01: And so,
15:09
SPEAKER_01: you know,
15:09
SPEAKER_01: teachers would notice this and people around me would say,
15:13
SPEAKER_01: hey,
15:13
SPEAKER_01: you're a pretty smart kid.
15:15
SPEAKER_01: But by the time I got to high school,
15:17
SPEAKER_01: I was so unfocused and,
15:20
SPEAKER_01: you know,
15:21
SPEAKER_01: I didn't have the confidence in myself that adults around me did.
15:25
SPEAKER_01: You know, one point I make in the book is that
15:29
SPEAKER_01: If a child is let down enough by the adults in his or her life,
15:33
SPEAKER_01: eventually they'll learn to let themselves down.
15:35
SPEAKER_01: And that's kind of what happened with me.
15:36
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you're right.
15:37
SPEAKER_02: You make many observations like that.
15:39
SPEAKER_02: You say after years of maltreatment,
15:41
SPEAKER_02: kids often have little desire to improve their lives,
15:44
SPEAKER_02: that the world was unstable from your point of view.
15:46
And there was no point in thinking about the future because you
15:49
didn't see that you
15:50
SPEAKER_02: had a place in the future.
15:51
When did a glimmer of light kind of present itself somewhere
15:56
down the road for you?
15:58
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
15:58
SPEAKER_01: Well,
15:59
SPEAKER_01: there were kind of moments where,
16:01
SPEAKER_01: you know,
16:01
SPEAKER_01: especially by high school,
16:03
SPEAKER_01: I,
16:05
SPEAKER_01: you know,
16:05
I was I think I was longing for this of just some some sources
16:09
of optimism.
16:10
SPEAKER_01: And I was pretty good at picking up on good advice around me,
16:15
SPEAKER_01: even if I wasn't always good at following it.
16:18
And so,
16:19
you know,
16:19
I got my first job when I was 15 years old washing dishes at
16:23
this restaurant.
16:25
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I liked that.
16:27
SPEAKER_01: I didn't like the job itself.
16:29
SPEAKER_01: Like the mechanical process of washing dishes is not exciting.
16:32
SPEAKER_01: But I liked having it's hot.
16:34
SPEAKER_01: You burn yourself.
16:35
SPEAKER_01: You know, like, you know, I've done it.
16:38
SPEAKER_01: I've done it.
16:40
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
16:40
SPEAKER_02: So, you know, yeah, it's the worst job in the restaurant.
16:42
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
16:43
SPEAKER_01: And you're wearing this apron that gets soaked and you smell bad.
16:48
SPEAKER_01: But I liked having a place to be.
16:49
SPEAKER_01: Because my home life was so chaotic.
16:53
SPEAKER_01: I liked having a place to be,
16:54
SPEAKER_01: being around other co-workers,
16:56
having a place where people knew my name or I felt like I
17:00
belonged and I was making
17:01
SPEAKER_01: my own money by this point.
17:03
SPEAKER_01: Because until I was 15, I'd get
17:06
SPEAKER_01: you know,
17:07
SPEAKER_01: five,
17:07
SPEAKER_01: 10 bucks raking leaves,
17:09
SPEAKER_01: or,
17:09
SPEAKER_01: you know,
17:09
SPEAKER_01: maybe for my birthday,
17:11
SPEAKER_01: I'd get a card with five bucks in it or something.
17:13
SPEAKER_01: But then I have this job and,
17:14
SPEAKER_01: you know,
17:14
SPEAKER_01: every Friday comes around and I'm getting checks for 75,
17:18
SPEAKER_01: $80.
17:18
SPEAKER_01: That's like a lot of money to me as a 15 year old kid.
17:21
SPEAKER_01: And so I started to see there was this kind of link,
17:24
SPEAKER_01: this connection between,
17:25
SPEAKER_01: oh,
17:25
SPEAKER_01: if I work hard,
17:26
SPEAKER_01: I get more money.
17:27
SPEAKER_01: And the more hours I work, the more money I get.
17:29
And,
17:29
you know,
17:30
I started to think about applying that to other areas of my
17:32
life too.
17:34
SPEAKER_01: Um,
17:35
SPEAKER_01: And then by the time I was 17,
17:37
thinking about the military as a sort of an option to exit out
17:41
of that place that I
17:42
SPEAKER_01: was in.
17:43
SPEAKER_02: And how did you come to that decision?
17:46
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was not a well-thought-through decision.
17:50
SPEAKER_02: Nor did you study for your placement exam for the military.
17:53
SPEAKER_01: No, no, no.
17:54
SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
17:54
SPEAKER_01: so in the military,
17:56
SPEAKER_01: at least on the enlisted side,
17:58
SPEAKER_01: you take what's called the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery,
18:02
SPEAKER_01: commonly known as the ASVAB.
18:04
SPEAKER_01: And this is a test that's essentially analogous to the SAT.
18:07
They test sort of basic reading and writing and arithmetic and
18:10
logic and those kinds of things.
18:12
And,
18:12
you know,
18:13
I the reason why I thought I,
18:15
you know,
18:15
this this might be a good option for me.
18:17
SPEAKER_01: I had my senior year of high school,
18:20
SPEAKER_01: I had a high school history teacher who,
18:22
SPEAKER_01: you know,
18:23
SPEAKER_01: he pulled me aside after class one day and.
18:26
SPEAKER_01: And he was one of these guys who was like, you're a smart kid.
18:29
SPEAKER_01: I don't know what's going on at home, why you're not doing your homework.
18:31
SPEAKER_01: What's the matter with you?
18:33
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and he could tell.
18:34
SPEAKER_01: I would read the textbook for fun.
18:36
I would practice the math exercises in my math class,
18:40
but I just wouldn't do the assignments.
18:42
SPEAKER_01: And so my teacher,
18:43
he says – he showed me on his computer this picture of himself
18:48
in this Air Force
18:49
SPEAKER_01: uniform and says,
18:50
SPEAKER_01: hey,
18:50
SPEAKER_01: this is what I was doing before I became a teacher.
18:52
SPEAKER_01: Maybe you could consider this.
18:56
SPEAKER_01: And for reasons I explain in the book,
18:57
I was living with my best friend and his father in my senior
19:02
year of high school,
19:03
SPEAKER_01: and his dad had also been in the Air Force.
19:08
and he also suggested it as an option to me and so you know i
19:12
signed up to take
19:13
this test to see if i qualified to enlist and the night before
19:17
i just stayed up
19:19
drinking four loco with my friends playing xbox and because i
19:23
knew i think the test
19:24
was on like a wednesday yeah and the night before i'm like okay
19:27
so the test is on a
19:28
SPEAKER_01: wednesday it's at 10 30 so i don't have to wake up until you know 9 45
19:34
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I knew I had an excuse to not go to school.
19:36
SPEAKER_01: So I'm like,
19:36
SPEAKER_01: if I have to be 945,
19:37
so I ended up staying up all night playing games and got a
19:41
couple hours of sleep
19:43
SPEAKER_01: and showed up to this test hungover and,
19:46
SPEAKER_01: you know,
19:47
SPEAKER_01: just not in a good sort of mental place to take this test.
19:51
And that was kind of how seriously I was taking myself in my
19:53
life at this point was
19:55
I was taking this test that would determine how my life would
19:57
unfold for the next
19:58
SPEAKER_01: few years.
19:59
SPEAKER_01: And I made no preparation, didn't study anything.
20:01
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
20:02
SPEAKER_02: And so, but it worked out.
20:06
SPEAKER_01: It ended up working out fine, yeah.
20:08
SPEAKER_02: It's interesting what you,
20:09
you talk about the military and part of what we'll get into is
20:13
this sort of,
20:13
this divide we have in America between the elites and I would
20:18
belong to that group
20:19
SPEAKER_02: even though I'm not politically progressive,
20:20
but there's an elite core of America who sort of looks down or
20:25
doesn't even think
20:26
SPEAKER_02: about
20:26
poor america and the military isn't seen as as a desirable
20:31
destination for most for
20:33
many of us i know there's people that went to west point who
20:35
are listening to this
20:36
podcast but but for most of us people would never enlist their
20:39
kids in the military
20:41
right but you write a lot you write some very interesting
20:43
things about the inst
20:44
about the military you quote psychologist joyce benenson who
20:47
says when a young man
20:48
has been overlooked by his parents he will gravitate to the
20:51
most ubiquitous male
20:52
SPEAKER_02: peer militaristic world
20:54
SPEAKER_02: He will join as a child soldier,
20:56
SPEAKER_02: a gang member,
20:56
SPEAKER_02: a member of a militia,
20:57
SPEAKER_02: or if lucky,
20:58
SPEAKER_02: a well-sourced military unit.
21:01
SPEAKER_02: So this was sort of a natural place for a homeless,
21:05
SPEAKER_02: I use that in quote,
21:06
SPEAKER_02: a homeless guy,
21:07
SPEAKER_02: a kid who had,
21:08
SPEAKER_02: who had bounced around to find a group where he could belong.
21:13
SPEAKER_02: Is that, did the military play that role for you?
21:15
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
21:16
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
21:16
SPEAKER_01: You know, it was it was I had no idea what to expect.
21:21
SPEAKER_01: You know,
21:21
I graduated from high school in June and then seven or eight
21:25
weeks later in August,
21:28
SPEAKER_01: I head off to.
21:30
SPEAKER_01: Lackland Air Force Base.
21:31
SPEAKER_01: And,
21:32
SPEAKER_01: you know,
21:32
SPEAKER_01: this is in the summertime,
21:33
SPEAKER_01: August in Texas,
21:34
SPEAKER_01: which I don't recommend going to basic training.
21:36
SPEAKER_01: August in Texas, you know, the 110, 120 degree weather.
21:41
SPEAKER_01: And I really didn't know what to expect.
21:45
SPEAKER_01: It was harder than I thought it was going to be for a lot of reasons.
21:47
SPEAKER_01: I mean, at that point, this was 2000, 2007.
21:51
So the height of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and the whole
21:55
training program had
21:56
SPEAKER_01: been revamped.
21:58
So the whole sort of rigidity of that structure was very
22:04
different from the kind of
22:06
SPEAKER_01: freewheeling –
22:08
SPEAKER_01: You know,
22:08
SPEAKER_01: neglectful,
22:09
SPEAKER_01: you know,
22:09
when I was a kid and a teenager and there was just such little
22:12
oversight where I
22:13
SPEAKER_01: essentially could do whatever I wanted,
22:14
SPEAKER_01: you know,
22:15
SPEAKER_01: within within certain bounds.
22:17
SPEAKER_01: But up until that point, I had almost unfettered freedom.
22:22
Then I get to the military and every aspect of my life was
22:25
tightly controlled from
22:27
SPEAKER_01: how you make your bed to how you wear your uniform,
22:29
SPEAKER_01: how your shoes are arranged in your sort of living quarters,
22:32
SPEAKER_01: all these kinds of things.
22:34
And it was almost suffocating for I think almost any young man
22:39
would not like that,
22:40
but especially someone who was used to the level of freedom
22:44
that I had had up until
22:44
SPEAKER_01: that point.
22:46
SPEAKER_01: But then in hindsight,
22:47
SPEAKER_01: I realized that was what I needed was the structure,
22:50
SPEAKER_01: the discipline,
22:51
SPEAKER_01: the mentorship that it provided for me.
22:55
SPEAKER_01: And it allowed me to sort of contain my impulses.
22:58
One thing the military does well is it makes very clear what
23:02
the expectations for you are.
23:04
SPEAKER_01: You know, here are the standards.
23:05
SPEAKER_01: Here's how to meet them.
23:06
SPEAKER_01: And here's what happens if you fail to meet them.
23:08
SPEAKER_01: And so even simple things like if you fail a drug test,
23:11
SPEAKER_01: you can be court-martialed and sent to a military prison.
23:14
SPEAKER_01: You know,
23:14
SPEAKER_01: if you fail to show up to work repeatedly,
23:16
SPEAKER_01: you will be court-martialed and sent to military prison.
23:19
SPEAKER_01: And in civilian life, I saw this with my friends, like –
23:23
SPEAKER_01: who I went to high school with,
23:25
SPEAKER_01: that's when our lives started to really diverge,
23:26
is when I went off to the military base state in the town that
23:29
we grew up in.
23:30
SPEAKER_01: And in civilian life,
23:33
you can do a lot of drugs before the consequences start to
23:36
catch up with you.
23:37
You can get drunk and hop on your motorcycle several times
23:41
before something
23:42
SPEAKER_01: catastrophic happens.
23:43
SPEAKER_01: You can have a lot of casual,
23:45
promiscuous relationships before the consequences of unplanned
23:49
pregnancy might come
23:50
SPEAKER_01: back to...
23:53
SPEAKER_01: affect your life.
23:54
SPEAKER_01: And,
23:55
SPEAKER_01: you know,
23:55
SPEAKER_01: in the military,
23:56
SPEAKER_01: all of those sort of consequences shrink,
23:58
SPEAKER_01: you know,
23:58
SPEAKER_01: the sort of actions and outcomes,
24:00
SPEAKER_01: the consequences are clear to you.
24:02
And that was really,
24:04
I think,
24:04
helpful for me and a lot of the other guys who had enlisted.
24:08
SPEAKER_01: And I think even if you,
24:12
SPEAKER_01: you know,
24:12
SPEAKER_01: one point I make is even if you don't learn anything during those years,
24:16
SPEAKER_01: you know,
24:16
SPEAKER_01: let's say you enlist when you're 18,
24:17
SPEAKER_01: you get out when you're 22 or 23 years old,
24:21
it still gives you this time to develop and to mature and to
24:26
kind of grow.
24:27
SPEAKER_01: Whereas if you spend those years – well,
24:32
SPEAKER_01: really,
24:32
SPEAKER_01: if you take any male at age 18 and compare them to age 23,
24:35
SPEAKER_01: at 23 they're a little bit wiser,
24:38
SPEAKER_01: a little bit more mature,
24:39
SPEAKER_01: a little bit less impulsive.
24:42
SPEAKER_01: And so if nothing else,
24:43
SPEAKER_01: you just spend those years sort of being contained,
24:47
SPEAKER_01: which allows you to mature and develop.
24:48
SPEAKER_01: Right.
24:48
SPEAKER_02: Well, that's what a lot of us use college for, for our kids.
24:53
SPEAKER_02: And so when you finally end up at Yale a few years later,
24:55
SPEAKER_02: you go to Yale on the GI Bill,
24:57
SPEAKER_02: there's this contrast between 25-year-old Rob,
25:01
SPEAKER_02: who spent time in the military in an unglamorous rules-based environment,
25:09
and these 18 to 22-year-old kids who came right from mommy and
25:13
daddy's house,
25:14
SPEAKER_02: prep school,
25:15
SPEAKER_02: coddled kids.
25:16
SPEAKER_02: suburban life or even better.
25:19
SPEAKER_02: And so this contrast, these worlds really collided for you at Yale.
25:22
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
25:23
SPEAKER_01: Well,
25:23
SPEAKER_01: you know,
25:23
SPEAKER_01: I do try to give them credit where it's due,
25:27
SPEAKER_01: you know,
25:27
SPEAKER_01: these students at these elite universities.
25:29
One thing that stood out to me right away is how diligent and
25:33
responsible they were
25:35
SPEAKER_01: for the most part.
25:35
SPEAKER_01: Because,
25:35
SPEAKER_01: you know,
25:38
one reason why they were like this is because they spent their
25:42
formative years
25:43
SPEAKER_01: around responsible and hardworking adults for the most part.
25:46
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
25:46
SPEAKER_01: You know,
25:46
SPEAKER_01: if you go to a place like Yale,
25:47
SPEAKER_01: odds are you had two hardworking,
25:49
diligent parents who valued education and responsibility and accomplishment.
25:54
SPEAKER_02: Who mostly kept their noses clean.
25:56
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
25:57
Or at the very least,
25:58
you know,
25:58
didn't expose their children to,
25:59
you know,
26:00
chaos and conflict.
26:03
SPEAKER_01: And so,
26:04
SPEAKER_01: you know,
26:04
those were the role models that these students had around them
26:06
when they were kids.
26:08
SPEAKER_01: And that's...
26:09
SPEAKER_01: The behavior that they were mirroring.
26:11
SPEAKER_02: But they also learned the language,
26:13
SPEAKER_02: the signifiers of elitism,
26:15
SPEAKER_02: the signifiers of sophistication in our culture,
26:19
SPEAKER_02: right?
26:19
SPEAKER_02: That it's not necessarily about the Rolex that you wear.
26:23
SPEAKER_02: It's the philosophy that you embrace and preach and spread.
26:28
SPEAKER_02: And that's where there was a culture clash.
26:30
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
26:31
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
26:31
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
26:31
SPEAKER_01: That's well.
26:31
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
26:32
SPEAKER_01: And and,
26:32
SPEAKER_01: you know,
26:33
SPEAKER_01: that was that was something I was unprepared for is,
26:38
SPEAKER_01: you know,
26:38
SPEAKER_01: when I when I arrived there,
26:42
SPEAKER_01: I understood that,
26:43
SPEAKER_01: you know,
26:43
SPEAKER_01: I got I got to Yale after eight years in the military.
26:46
SPEAKER_01: I was 17 when I enlisted.
26:47
SPEAKER_01: I was 25 when I got out.
26:50
SPEAKER_01: And I knew, you know, Yale's a pretty famous campus.
26:53
I knew that these students would come from families that were
26:55
very different from
26:56
SPEAKER_01: mine economically.
26:58
But I was unprepared for the kind of social class differences
27:02
in terms of the beliefs,
27:04
SPEAKER_01: the fashionable attitudes,
27:05
SPEAKER_01: the outlook,
27:08
SPEAKER_01: which was very much at odds with how they personally lived their lives.
27:12
SPEAKER_01: The attitudes around family formation,
27:15
SPEAKER_01: for example,
27:16
where if you – what I personally saw and then when you look at
27:19
the statistics –
27:20
Students who go to those kinds of schools overwhelmingly come
27:23
from married two-parent families.
27:25
But then when you ask them personally about their attitudes
27:27
around family formation,
27:28
SPEAKER_01: they take either this very non-judgmental,
27:31
SPEAKER_01: permissive attitude of,
27:33
SPEAKER_01: it doesn't really matter,
27:34
SPEAKER_01: you know,
27:34
SPEAKER_01: all families are the same,
27:35
children are just as likely to succeed regardless of how
27:38
they're raised in this
27:39
SPEAKER_01: type of family versus that.
27:40
SPEAKER_01: And you're like, bullshit.
27:43
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
27:43
SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah.
27:44
SPEAKER_01: Well,
27:44
SPEAKER_01: you know,
27:45
SPEAKER_01: I would think to myself,
27:45
SPEAKER_01: well,
27:46
SPEAKER_01: where I grew up,
27:46
SPEAKER_01: none of us were raised in stable,
27:48
SPEAKER_01: intact families.
27:49
SPEAKER_01: And it's not a coincidence that
27:51
Neither me nor any of my friends who I grew up with went off to
27:53
college right after
27:54
SPEAKER_01: high school.
27:55
SPEAKER_01: And I'm the only one who graduated.
27:56
And that was only after several years of military and sort of
28:02
recollecting myself
28:03
SPEAKER_01: and organizing my life in a way that was productive.
28:07
SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
28:08
You'd gone through a lot of adult stuff before you got to
28:11
campus where most people are still –
28:14
kids yeah yeah yeah and and that was something too like the the
28:18
kind of attitude
28:19
and the language around you know who gets to count like like
28:24
who's an adult and
28:25
who's a kid and i i have this line in the book where you know
28:28
when i was in the
28:28
military or or even you know i thought about my friends who i
28:31
grew up with
28:32
SPEAKER_01: If you were 20 years old and you go straight into the workforce,
28:34
SPEAKER_01: you're an adult,
28:35
SPEAKER_01: you're paying taxes,
28:35
SPEAKER_01: you're an adult.
28:36
SPEAKER_01: But if you're 20 and you're at an elite college, you're still a kid.
28:38
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
28:39
SPEAKER_01: You know,
28:39
SPEAKER_01: I remember seeing there was this tweet,
28:41
SPEAKER_01: you know,
28:42
SPEAKER_01: it was something about,
28:43
SPEAKER_01: you know,
28:43
SPEAKER_01: the ongoing demonstrations at these elite college campuses.
28:47
SPEAKER_01: And.
28:48
SPEAKER_01: You know,
28:48
SPEAKER_01: the tweet was from some well-known politician and it was something like,
28:51
SPEAKER_01: oh,
28:51
SPEAKER_01: you know,
28:52
SPEAKER_01: these these kids at Harvard Law School,
28:54
SPEAKER_01: blah,
28:54
SPEAKER_01: blah,
28:54
SPEAKER_01: blah.
28:54
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like,
28:56
SPEAKER_01: kids at Harvard,
28:56
SPEAKER_01: if you're in law school,
28:57
SPEAKER_01: you know,
28:58
SPEAKER_01: you get to be a kid until your 27th birthday.
29:00
SPEAKER_01: Like, when do you actually become an adult?
29:02
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
29:04
SPEAKER_01: And so,
29:05
SPEAKER_01: you know,
29:05
when after five years at Facebook or Google where they where
29:08
they have to put
29:09
SPEAKER_02: apology signs out in the little kitchenettes if the fruit isn't organic,
29:13
SPEAKER_02: like literally,
29:14
SPEAKER_02: literally.
29:15
SPEAKER_02: But but and I'm very grateful for the time I spent in Silicon Valley.
29:19
I don't mean to demean it,
29:20
but I do think there's a sense of coddling that continues.
29:24
SPEAKER_02: out past college into the corporate world today,
29:27
where people are still sort of seen as precious little
29:30
commodities that are very fragile.
29:35
SPEAKER_02: It's funny, Richard Kallenberg is going to be here next week.
29:39
SPEAKER_02: He's got a book called Class Matters,
29:40
SPEAKER_02: and it's all about how American colleges are promoting racial diversity,
29:46
SPEAKER_02: but not financial diversity.
29:48
SPEAKER_02: And the numbers are scary.
29:50
Like there's more people from the 1% at Yale and Princeton and
29:53
Harvard and a lot of
29:54
SPEAKER_02: other colleges than there are from the bottom 60% of the economic ladder.
29:58
And you think about that and go like,
30:00
well,
30:00
holy shit,
30:01
what does diversity mean?
30:02
SPEAKER_02: What are we really trying to accomplish here?
30:07
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, it's there.
30:08
SPEAKER_01: I think elite colleges,
30:10
SPEAKER_01: the level of cognitive dissonance and the duplicity there,
30:15
SPEAKER_01: it fascinated me really from day one where I get to Yale and,
30:19
SPEAKER_01: you know,
30:19
SPEAKER_01: the president of the university and these professors and administrators,
30:23
SPEAKER_01: they prattle endlessly about how,
30:25
SPEAKER_01: oh,
30:25
SPEAKER_01: you're all the future leaders.
30:26
SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the ruling class.
30:28
Like they don't say so many words,
30:29
but like that's basically what they're saying.
30:31
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
30:31
SPEAKER_01: But then – Here's your little red book.
30:33
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
30:33
But then as soon as these students start to get agitated or
30:38
start to form their
30:38
SPEAKER_01: demonstrations or protests or petitions or what have you,
30:41
SPEAKER_01: then these administrators and authority figures will say,
30:44
SPEAKER_01: oh,
30:45
SPEAKER_01: we're so sorry.
30:45
SPEAKER_01: You're being oppressed.
30:46
SPEAKER_01: You're being marginalized.
30:47
SPEAKER_01: You're being demeaned.
30:48
SPEAKER_01: You're being mistreated.
30:49
SPEAKER_01: And it's like, OK, on the one hand, you're all –
30:51
SPEAKER_01: the elite of the elite but on the other hand you're all being you know so
30:54
mistreated and you're so thin-skinned and yeah it almost
30:56
reminded me of like you
30:57
know the the old school sort of aristocrats where being
31:00
thin-skinned itself was a
31:02
status symbol of how dare you talk to me that way you know let
31:04
me lay down on my
31:05
fainting couch or something your soft palms and your
31:09
unblemished hands yeah and and
31:11
so you know i i spent a lot of time sort of thinking about this
31:15
this kind of
31:17
SPEAKER_01: And I looked at the history of the Ivy League,
31:19
and it's really interesting where they themselves have sort of
31:23
created this
31:24
SPEAKER_01: condition where it's very difficult for them to have...
31:27
sort of social class diversity if you look back to the 80s and
31:31
the early 90s there
31:32
was this period where these ivy league schools did attempt to
31:35
recruit promising
31:36
young students from the inner city from you know a lot of
31:39
hispanic and black
31:40
neighborhoods and they would bring these kids onto campus but
31:43
because these kids
31:44
many of them who had been raised like i had been raised they
31:47
had difficulty
31:48
SPEAKER_01: integrating into this kind of elite campus they didn't speak the language
31:52
They didn't speak the language,
31:53
but then they also had difficulty adjusting to authority.
31:57
SPEAKER_01: And,
31:57
SPEAKER_01: you know,
31:57
SPEAKER_01: a lot of they get into fights or sell drugs or,
32:00
SPEAKER_01: you know,
32:00
get into conflicts with the professors because they were not
32:03
sort of groomed to go
32:04
SPEAKER_01: to a place like that.
32:05
SPEAKER_01: And I think,
32:06
SPEAKER_01: you know,
32:06
SPEAKER_01: if you had set me at Yale at 17 or 18,
32:08
SPEAKER_01: I would I don't know how it would have gone for me.
32:11
I required those eight years of like learning how to be an
32:13
adult and learning how
32:15
to interact with authority figures before I could go to a place
32:19
like that.
32:20
But part of the reason why it's so hard to recruit students
32:23
from these places and
32:25
SPEAKER_01: why they have grown up the way that they have,
32:27
SPEAKER_01: I think,
32:28
SPEAKER_01: which is,
32:28
SPEAKER_01: you know,
32:28
SPEAKER_01: ties into this luxury beliefs idea is that a lot of.
32:33
SPEAKER_01: whatever you want to call them,
32:34
the kind of people who will disproportionate cultural and
32:38
economic and political power,
32:41
they've created these conditions where if you're going to take
32:44
this nonjudgmental
32:44
attitude about how kids are raised or how families should form
32:51
character for their
32:52
SPEAKER_01: children and so on,
32:53
SPEAKER_01: or even – not even nonjudgmental,
32:56
but actually going at odds with conventional opinion about how
33:00
kids should be
33:01
SPEAKER_01: raised –
33:02
and saying you know having complete freedom and and all
33:05
families are the same and
33:06
so on that's going to create kids who are raised the way that i
33:09
am and then or i
33:11
SPEAKER_01: was and then those kids are going to have difficulty adjusting to these
33:14
universities you just blew past what would be the rob henderson
33:18
hashtag which is
33:19
SPEAKER_02: luxury beliefs
33:20
SPEAKER_01: Right.
33:21
SPEAKER_02: That's that's probably what you're best known for.
33:23
SPEAKER_02: Like, right.
33:24
SPEAKER_02: This concept of there are beliefs that people that signify virtue,
33:29
SPEAKER_02: they embrace these beliefs as as a,
33:34
SPEAKER_02: again,
33:34
SPEAKER_02: signifier of their of their.
33:37
Inside knowledge of being able to portray the way sensitive
33:41
people should think.
33:42
And yet those beliefs do harm to the people below them on the
33:45
social strata,
33:46
SPEAKER_02: including monogamy doesn't matter.
33:49
SPEAKER_02: Drugs should be legalized and things like that,
33:52
where they're actually doing harm to the people they purport to
33:56
want to protect.
33:57
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's exactly right.
33:58
SPEAKER_01: This is an idea that I've become known for.
34:01
SPEAKER_01: I've written about it.
34:02
SPEAKER_01: It's a lot in my book and in various essays.
34:06
And the luxury beliefs idea I define as ideas and opinions that
34:11
confer status on
34:12
the affluent while often inflicting costs on the less fortunate
34:15
members of society.
34:17
And a core feature of a luxury belief is that the believer is
34:20
sheltered from the
34:21
SPEAKER_01: consequences of his or her belief.
34:23
SPEAKER_02: There's no cost to them to believe it.
34:26
There's a cost in terms of how to acquire them because you have
34:29
to be sort of
34:30
SPEAKER_01: raised and immersed in an environment,
34:33
SPEAKER_01: access to exclusive educational institutions and elite social circles.
34:36
Like David Brooks talked about,
34:38
like the Bobos with the New Yorker canvas tote bag,
34:41
right?
34:42
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
34:43
Where you have to come from a fortunate family background in
34:47
order to acquire these
34:48
SPEAKER_01: fashionable beliefs.
34:49
But then when you express them and these beliefs get
34:52
implemented into policy or
34:54
SPEAKER_01: into culture,
34:56
you can be shielded from the fallout once these beliefs sort of
35:01
take hold.
35:03
SPEAKER_01: And a lot of these beliefs are born in elite universities where...
35:08
SPEAKER_01: Or certainly propagated there.
35:10
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
35:10
SPEAKER_01: Well, I think a little of both.
35:12
SPEAKER_01: But yes, exactly.
35:14
Born and propagated in these places and then they get carried
35:17
forward into the rest
35:18
SPEAKER_01: of the culture and gradually the beliefs affect the rest of society.
35:25
SPEAKER_02: And the two-parent,
35:26
SPEAKER_02: Melissa Carney has been on the podcast before,
35:28
SPEAKER_02: author of Two-Parent Privilege,
35:30
SPEAKER_02: which,
35:30
SPEAKER_02: you know,
35:30
SPEAKER_02: she's an economics professor at the University of Maryland,
35:34
for those of you who don't remember that excellent episode from
35:37
a couple years ago.
35:38
SPEAKER_02: But she was excoriated by her fellow academics for pointing out what...
35:43
is really keeping a lot of racial and economic disadvantaged
35:50
people from achieving
35:53
SPEAKER_02: equitable outcomes that they seem to care so much about.
35:56
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
35:57
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's a fascinating book.
35:58
SPEAKER_01: I have nothing but respect for Melissa Carney's work.
36:03
And she points out in that book that the number one predictor
36:06
of a child graduating
36:07
SPEAKER_01: from college is being raised by two married parents.
36:10
And she even points out that even when you control for level of
36:13
education of the mother,
36:14
SPEAKER_01: being married matters,
36:16
where if a college educated mother is unmarried and has kids
36:21
versus when a college
36:21
SPEAKER_01: educated mother is married with kids,
36:23
the married college educated mother's children are something
36:26
like three to four
36:27
times more likely to graduate from college than the unmarried
36:30
college educated mother.
36:31
SPEAKER_01: And so,
36:32
SPEAKER_01: you know,
36:32
SPEAKER_01: marriage obviously plays plays a role here in terms of,
36:35
SPEAKER_01: you know,
36:36
SPEAKER_01: how not just in terms of material resources,
36:39
but also in terms of sort of emotional safety and security and
36:43
having the ability
36:44
to get sort of advice from different adults and different
36:47
inputs and all those things.
36:50
SPEAKER_01: And not to disparage single parents in any way.
36:53
SPEAKER_01: No, not at all.
36:53
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I, you know, for a time I was raised by a single mom.
36:55
SPEAKER_01: A lot of my friends were raised by single moms and.
36:58
life is messy and complicated and so on people die but you can
37:02
yeah but just
37:03
because you know there's this ideal that not all of us can live
37:07
up to for various
37:08
reasons because people die because people get divorced or
37:11
separated or make
37:12
decisions that they later maybe aren't proud of that doesn't
37:15
mean you discard the
37:16
ideal yeah right i mean we we all sort of fail to live up to
37:19
our ideals from time
37:20
SPEAKER_01: to time but that doesn't mean we just completely
37:22
scrap them and you know i find that interesting just the whole
37:26
you know oh are you
37:27
going to say that we're denigrating we're going to denigrate
37:30
single parents and
37:31
just to raise the issue is seen as a threat yes yeah which
37:35
isn't the case for um
37:37
education which i find interesting where generally upper and
37:41
upper middle class
37:41
SPEAKER_01: people uh
37:43
there's general consensus that going to college is better than
37:46
not going to college
37:48
but if you say that no one says well why are you denigrating
37:50
people who went to uh
37:52
uh trades went into the trades or or went into um work right
37:56
after high school or
37:56
didn't get a college degree you know the the immediate response
38:00
isn't this feeling
38:00
SPEAKER_01: of oh well why are we shaming the people who didn't go to college um
38:04
And yet when you apply that logic to the family of look on
38:07
average to you know
38:08
Two-parent families better than one parent family immediately
38:10
the the knee-jerk responses,
38:11
SPEAKER_01: but but what about those single parents?
38:13
SPEAKER_01: Why are you trying to you know,
38:14
that's I just find that It's a mismatch there totally in this
38:19
these these are
38:19
result these results are on average They're not for every
38:22
single family course and
38:23
SPEAKER_02: you know and single parents are out there Yeah,
38:26
SPEAKER_02: doing as best they can.
38:28
SPEAKER_02: It's not like there should be a stigma for that but
38:32
SPEAKER_02: It's just easier if you have a partner in this kind of stuff.
38:35
SPEAKER_01: I think people feel judgmental.
38:37
SPEAKER_01: They feel this discomfort talking about family.
38:40
SPEAKER_01: So they retreat to discussions of economics.
38:42
Once you start talking about marriage and family and better
38:46
versus worse ways to
38:48
SPEAKER_01: raise a kid,
38:48
SPEAKER_01: people start to feel like,
38:50
SPEAKER_01: oh,
38:50
SPEAKER_01: we're being judgmental.
38:51
SPEAKER_01: So let's just talk about money and economics.
38:53
But even then,
38:55
there was a study from Brad Wilcox and others a few years ago,
38:58
which found that
39:00
If you wanted to completely equalize outcomes for children
39:03
raised in two-parent
39:05
SPEAKER_01: families versus single-parent homes,
39:07
this would require an income transfer of $59,000 a year to
39:12
single-parent homes.
39:13
If you wanted those kids to achieve the same educational and
39:15
occupational outcomes
39:16
SPEAKER_01: as children in two-parent families –
39:19
And this is a very sort of mathematical,
39:21
very cold logical way to look at this.
39:23
But there's another way to look at this where if you were to
39:26
take any child who had
39:28
SPEAKER_01: two married parents to say,
39:30
SPEAKER_01: well,
39:30
SPEAKER_01: we're going to take your mom away,
39:31
SPEAKER_01: but we're going to give you $59,000 a year.
39:34
SPEAKER_01: How many kids would take that deal?
39:35
SPEAKER_01: Right.
39:35
Because there's something above and beyond money alone that
39:38
kids like about their
39:40
SPEAKER_01: parents and about having that family structure.
39:42
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
39:42
SPEAKER_02: Well,
39:43
that's one of the points that you make here is that we
39:45
overemphasize education and
39:46
SPEAKER_02: we don't emphasize enough the importance of loving stable homes,
39:50
SPEAKER_02: especially for young children.
39:51
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
39:52
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
39:52
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
39:52
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
39:52
SPEAKER_01: That's right.
39:53
SPEAKER_01: Where, you know, there's sort of endless array of data on this about how
39:58
SPEAKER_01: You know,
39:58
kids respond well when they have two parents who prioritize
40:02
their needs and their
40:02
SPEAKER_01: security and emotional well-being and so on.
40:05
SPEAKER_01: Even to the point where,
40:06
SPEAKER_01: you know,
40:07
SPEAKER_01: I think we focus a lot on these measurable outcomes of,
40:10
SPEAKER_01: well,
40:11
SPEAKER_01: you know,
40:11
SPEAKER_01: when social scientists can say,
40:12
SPEAKER_01: well,
40:13
what was your level of education and how much money are you
40:15
earning and what's your
40:16
SPEAKER_01: level of,
40:16
SPEAKER_01: you know,
40:17
SPEAKER_01: educational,
40:17
SPEAKER_01: occupational attainment,
40:18
SPEAKER_01: all these things that we can easily capture.
40:20
SPEAKER_01: But...
40:21
I think that even if a child doesn't go on to achieve great
40:25
educational success or
40:28
SPEAKER_01: professional accomplishments or anything,
40:30
SPEAKER_01: being raised in a loving and stable home is a good in and of itself.
40:34
So even if you have this kid who you know for a fact is going
40:37
to live a life that
40:40
SPEAKER_01: they're not going to go on to college,
40:41
they're not going to do all these things that maybe achieve
40:45
upward mobility –
40:46
Does it matter that this kid is safe and comfortable and
40:49
well-nourished and feels
40:51
SPEAKER_01: like the adults around him or her care?
40:54
SPEAKER_01: And I think if the answer is yes,
40:55
then we should be talking about family and we should be talking
40:57
about the way that
41:01
SPEAKER_01: kids are raised.
41:02
SPEAKER_02: Because kids who feel safe are less likely to commit crime.
41:05
SPEAKER_02: They're more likely to keep a job.
41:08
SPEAKER_01: I think even all those things are important.
41:10
SPEAKER_01: But I think even if I show you an infant and I say,
41:14
SPEAKER_01: this infant,
41:15
SPEAKER_01: we know for a fact,
41:16
SPEAKER_01: we have the crystal ball,
41:17
SPEAKER_01: we have all of the social science data,
41:20
SPEAKER_01: he's going to be a criminal.
41:21
SPEAKER_01: Does it still matter that this kid right now is warned and loved?
41:24
SPEAKER_01: Is his name Adolf?
41:25
SPEAKER_01: It's the classic dilemma, right?
41:28
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, sure.
41:29
But let's just say he's going to be sort of a petty thief or a
41:32
criminal or someone
41:33
SPEAKER_01: who maybe you wouldn't be proud of if it was your kid,
41:35
SPEAKER_01: whatever.
41:36
SPEAKER_01: But even if you know that, I still think it matters.
41:39
SPEAKER_01: The kid is still treated well regardless.
41:43
Where we've become so obsessed with these badges of
41:46
accomplishment and not looking
41:48
SPEAKER_01: enough at what happens before the age of 18.
41:50
Rob,
41:50
I was raised in a loving stable home,
41:52
but I didn't get into Princeton.
41:54
SPEAKER_02: So I'm still in recovery.
41:56
SPEAKER_02: So you've been labeled conservative, et cetera.
42:00
SPEAKER_01: Do you think you're a conservative?
42:02
SPEAKER_01: Do I think I'm a conservative?
42:04
SPEAKER_01: My boring answer is,
42:07
I think if you were to compare me to a typical graduate of one
42:10
of these kinds of institutions,
42:13
SPEAKER_01: I'm more conservative than that.
42:16
SPEAKER_01: But I think if you compare me to like the typical American voter,
42:18
SPEAKER_01: I might even be on the left of them.
42:21
SPEAKER_01: But because,
42:23
the products of elite educational institutions veer generally
42:26
so far to the
42:27
progressive left that it's actually not that hard to be a
42:29
conservative compared to them,
42:31
SPEAKER_01: right?
42:32
SPEAKER_01: You deviate from the orthodoxy.
42:34
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
42:35
Then you get labeled a conservative even if you're a moderate Democrat,
42:39
to be honest.
42:40
So I embrace the label conservative because that's how people
42:44
are going to code and
42:45
SPEAKER_01: categorize me anyway in these kind of educational and media circles.
42:48
SPEAKER_01: So it's fine.
42:50
SPEAKER_02: Okay, let's play a round of yes or no.
42:52
SPEAKER_02: This is a new segment, ladies and gentlemen.
42:54
SPEAKER_02: We just invented it for Rob Henderson.
42:56
SPEAKER_02: It's called Yes or No.
42:56
I'm going to ask you a series of questions to which the answer
42:59
has to be yes or no.
43:01
SPEAKER_02: And we can discuss the nuance later.
43:03
SPEAKER_02: Are you ready?
43:03
SPEAKER_02: All right.
43:05
SPEAKER_02: Statement number one, the American dream is still alive.
43:09
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
43:10
SPEAKER_02: Number two, hunger is a great motivator.
43:13
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
43:15
SPEAKER_02: Three, if a person is born into wealth, they tend to take it for granted.
43:18
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
43:19
SPEAKER_02: Four, my kids are growing up rich, so they are doomed.
43:24
SPEAKER_02: No.
43:25
SPEAKER_02: Oh, thank God I was wrong with that one.
43:27
SPEAKER_02: Next, Donald Trump cares about America.
43:31
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
43:33
SPEAKER_02: Oh, that's going to be fun to unwrap.
43:37
SPEAKER_02: Last one,
43:37
the New York Times bestseller list ignored your memoir because
43:43
it represents views
43:45
SPEAKER_02: they find abhorrent.
43:50
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
43:52
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
43:53
SPEAKER_02: So I'm most concerned about my own kids.
43:56
Do you feel like that on one level you had an advantage because
44:03
your deprivation
44:06
growing up gave you a sense of ambition and hunger that is
44:09
impossible for affluent
44:11
SPEAKER_02: kids to have?
44:12
SPEAKER_01: No, I don't think so.
44:14
And I cite all the statistics and everything else that if you
44:19
look at who is accomplished,
44:21
SPEAKER_01: however you define it,
44:23
SPEAKER_01: the majority of those people grew up more like you than like me.
44:27
SPEAKER_01: So I don't think it's necessary to have extreme levels of deprivation and
44:32
SPEAKER_01: dysfunction in your early life to succeed.
44:34
SPEAKER_01: And in fact –
44:37
SPEAKER_01: One point I hope I make clear in the book is that all of the conventional
44:43
SPEAKER_01: accomplishments in my life,
44:46
SPEAKER_01: I achieved those not because of how I grew up,
44:48
SPEAKER_01: but in spite of it.
44:50
SPEAKER_01: And I wouldn't want my kids to grow up that way.
44:54
SPEAKER_01: You know,
44:55
there's probably like a minimal level of hunger or ambition or
45:01
the sort of itch,
45:02
this longing to succeed that maybe is harder to experience if
45:06
you grew up with
45:07
SPEAKER_01: every need and desire fulfilled from birth.
45:11
But I think there's probably an optimal level of friction where
45:14
if it goes too far
45:15
SPEAKER_01: one way or the other,
45:16
SPEAKER_01: where there's completely frictionless existence or too much friction,
45:19
SPEAKER_01: that can be debilitating.
45:21
SPEAKER_01: But a certain moderate amount is probably ideal.
45:23
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
45:25
What's the most important therapeutic work that you've done as
45:29
an adult to
45:30
SPEAKER_02: reconcile how you grew up?
45:32
yeah when i was um 20 how old was i 23 or 24 i um checked into
45:40
rehab uh when i was
45:41
in the military you know i had repeated um you know issues and
45:48
incidents with
45:49
alcohol and you know the book i describe how you know i had you
45:55
know all of these
45:56
SPEAKER_01: unresolved inner conflicts from how i grew up um
46:01
SPEAKER_01: I was drinking a lot.
46:01
SPEAKER_01: I'd always drank a lot.
46:02
SPEAKER_01: In the book,
46:03
SPEAKER_01: I talk about how one of the foster homes,
46:05
I started drinking beer when I was five and was kind of on and
46:08
off drinking and
46:10
SPEAKER_01: experimenting with drugs even before I was a teenager,
46:15
SPEAKER_01: like you mentioned.
46:15
SPEAKER_01: And then when I got to the military, I had money.
46:21
SPEAKER_01: I had a steady paycheck and easy access to alcohol.
46:24
SPEAKER_01: So I would drink.
46:25
SPEAKER_01: Anytime I wasn't working, I was drinking.
46:27
SPEAKER_01: And at a certain point, this caught up to me.
46:30
SPEAKER_01: And so,
46:32
SPEAKER_01: you know,
46:32
I had this bout of alcohol poisoning and woke up in the
46:38
hospital in the ICU and had
46:40
SPEAKER_01: this conversation with the doctor.
46:42
We got a psychiatrist and eventually they recommended I check
46:45
into this inpatient
46:46
SPEAKER_01: treatment facility.
46:48
SPEAKER_01: And it's a very long story short.
46:50
You know,
46:52
I had a counselor there,
46:53
group therapy sessions,
46:55
and it was a six-week program.
46:57
SPEAKER_01: And they talk a lot about why are you drinking?
47:02
SPEAKER_01: What happened?
47:03
SPEAKER_01: How old were you the first time you had a drink?
47:06
SPEAKER_01: I remember during this group therapy session,
47:08
SPEAKER_01: this actually didn't make it into the final edit of the book,
47:10
SPEAKER_01: but I'll tell you this story.
47:13
SPEAKER_01: I remember I was in this,
47:16
most of the people in this treatment center were either in the
47:19
military or they
47:20
SPEAKER_01: were veterans or family members of veterans.
47:22
SPEAKER_01: There was one woman there,
47:23
SPEAKER_01: she was a spouse of a guy who was in the military,
47:25
SPEAKER_01: but she had issues with addiction.
47:28
SPEAKER_01: And there was this old guy there.
47:30
SPEAKER_01: And we were all kind of telling our backstories.
47:34
SPEAKER_01: And I told mine.
47:36
SPEAKER_01: And this old guy there and he was like in shock because he hurt a lot.
47:42
SPEAKER_02: The people in group go, whoa, dude.
47:44
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
47:44
SPEAKER_01: Well, I went into detail about everything.
47:47
SPEAKER_01: And this old guy was like, that's three tours in Vietnam.
47:50
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
47:50
In terms of like trauma and stress because,
47:52
you know,
47:53
a young child going through all of that.
47:55
SPEAKER_01: And and he was like, he was like, no wonder.
47:58
SPEAKER_01: And I thought,
48:00
SPEAKER_01: yeah,
48:00
SPEAKER_01: you know,
48:00
SPEAKER_01: because a lot of my other friends,
48:02
SPEAKER_01: they had issues with with substance abuse,
48:04
SPEAKER_01: too.
48:05
SPEAKER_01: And so it took a lot of self-work, back and forth, discussion.
48:13
SPEAKER_01: In some ways,
48:13
I think the group therapy sessions were more helpful to
48:16
recognize that other people
48:17
SPEAKER_01: were experiencing it too,
48:18
SPEAKER_01: that I wasn't alone.
48:20
And that there is a way to climb out of that and to find a way
48:31
to move on.
48:33
As somebody who was born into scarcity,
48:35
what's your relationship with money like today?
48:38
SPEAKER_01: It's all right.
48:40
SPEAKER_01: There was a period when I was very irresponsible with money.
48:46
SPEAKER_01: I remember I had this conversation.
48:48
SPEAKER_01: I was maybe 18 or 19 years old.
48:50
SPEAKER_01: And I had just moved off base.
48:53
SPEAKER_01: So I got this house off base with my friends, my military buddies.
48:58
SPEAKER_01: We got this house.
48:59
SPEAKER_01: And
49:00
You know,
49:00
you have to pay,
49:00
what is it,
49:01
first month's rent,
49:02
last month's rent,
49:03
security deposit.
49:04
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I had to pay to get the brakes fixed on my beater car.
49:08
SPEAKER_01: I had like $12 in the bank.
49:10
SPEAKER_01: I couldn't even afford a belt.
49:14
SPEAKER_01: And I was talking to my mom,
49:16
SPEAKER_01: my adoptive mom,
49:17
SPEAKER_01: and she was like,
49:18
SPEAKER_01: honey,
49:18
SPEAKER_01: you should always have $500 or $1,000 in the bank.
49:21
SPEAKER_01: You never know.
49:22
SPEAKER_01: Rainy day.
49:23
SPEAKER_01: And even though I was broke and being irresponsible with money,
49:26
SPEAKER_01: my response to her,
49:27
SPEAKER_01: this is where my head was at as a teenager,
49:29
SPEAKER_01: I was like,
49:30
Mom,
49:31
someday I'm going to make a lot of money and $1,000 is going to
49:34
be nothing to me.
49:35
SPEAKER_01: And so if I hurt myself and stress and try to save all this money,
49:42
SPEAKER_01: burden myself,
49:43
SPEAKER_01: trying to save every nickel and dime,
49:45
SPEAKER_01: I'm always going to regret it later.
49:47
SPEAKER_01: And my mom was like, that's ridiculous.
49:50
SPEAKER_01: Like, what are you talking about?
49:51
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, no, what I'm saying.
49:53
SPEAKER_01: And I tried to explain to her that,
49:54
SPEAKER_01: like,
49:54
SPEAKER_01: if $1,000 in the future is nothing,
49:55
SPEAKER_01: I shouldn't try to save it today.
49:57
SPEAKER_01: And that's kind of how I was very frivolous.
49:59
SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of people that think like that.
50:01
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
50:01
SPEAKER_02: Probably more people think like that than don't think like that.
50:04
SPEAKER_01: Although I did have this conversation with an economist who was like,
50:06
SPEAKER_01: well,
50:06
SPEAKER_01: that's kind of an example of consumption smoothing.
50:08
SPEAKER_01: Maybe that's not the best way to do it.
50:10
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, right.
50:11
SPEAKER_02: Consumption smoothing.
50:12
and so so you know that's lifetime income theory yeah yeah well
50:17
and so then it took
50:18
me a while to like learn how to manage money and talk to i mean
50:21
one one benefit of
50:22
being in the military and then later at yale was just being
50:24
around people who
50:25
didn't grow up the way that i did and i saw how they handled
50:28
money and how you know
50:30
there are ways to be financially wise and responsible and now
50:35
today it's it's fine
50:36
SPEAKER_02: i'm all right yeah do you feel worthy of love today
50:41
SPEAKER_01: You know, I once heard this quote.
50:44
SPEAKER_01: It was something like, love is given, not received.
50:47
And,
50:48
you know,
50:49
I connected with that because I'd always had difficulty with
50:52
receiving it.
50:52
SPEAKER_01: But through acting it out and through caring about other people,
50:57
SPEAKER_01: I found that it has been actually easier to receive it as well.
51:00
SPEAKER_01: So, you know, I don't know, worthy of love, that's hard.
51:05
SPEAKER_01: I'm better at it now,
51:06
SPEAKER_01: I think,
51:06
SPEAKER_01: than I was before,
51:08
but I don't know if I'll ever sort of fully feel love in the
51:14
way that maybe someone
51:16
SPEAKER_01: who didn't grow up like me feels it.
51:19
SPEAKER_02: Where and when are you happiest?
51:22
SPEAKER_01: Huh, where and when am I happiest?
51:29
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
51:29
probably when I'm around people who I like being around and who
51:33
like me and where
51:35
SPEAKER_01: there's no expectations.
51:39
So I feel like that with my sister,
51:41
my adoptive sister,
51:42
or with good friends.
51:45
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
51:48
SPEAKER_02: Does having a bit of celebrity make you feel uncomfortable?
51:55
SPEAKER_01: No, I don't think I'm famous enough to make it.
51:57
SPEAKER_02: Well, people know who you are.
51:59
SPEAKER_02: I mean, you've made a dent in the culture.
52:03
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
52:03
SPEAKER_02: Maybe a small one.
52:04
SPEAKER_02: You're not Game of Thrones huge.
52:06
SPEAKER_02: Not yet.
52:07
SPEAKER_02: Maybe you write the sequel and you'll be the guy.
52:10
SPEAKER_02: But like people know who you are.
52:11
SPEAKER_02: You've been on all kinds of media and print.
52:14
SPEAKER_02: George Will wrote about your book.
52:16
SPEAKER_02: I mean, like people know who you are.
52:17
SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
52:18
SPEAKER_01: but it's – in terms of like how much that has changed my everyday life,
52:22
SPEAKER_01: it's not been that different.
52:24
SPEAKER_01: You know,
52:24
SPEAKER_01: once in a while I'll walk down the street and someone will say,
52:26
SPEAKER_01: hey,
52:26
SPEAKER_01: you're the Luxury Beliefs guy or,
52:28
SPEAKER_01: hey,
52:28
SPEAKER_01: I think I saw you on Twitter or something.
52:30
SPEAKER_02: Maybe it's the Luxury Beliefs T-shirt that you're wearing.
52:32
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
52:33
SPEAKER_01: Hashtag.
52:34
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, maybe it's the sign that I'm carrying.
52:36
SPEAKER_01: Buy my book.
52:37
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
52:38
SPEAKER_01: No.
52:38
SPEAKER_01: So, you know, in terms of day-to-day existence, it's not that different.
52:43
SPEAKER_01: You know,
52:43
SPEAKER_01: it's nice,
52:44
SPEAKER_01: you know,
52:44
where I guess like one part of it that's nice about being a
52:47
little bit more
52:48
well-known is people who I respect and admire sometimes will
52:51
actually know who I am.
52:52
SPEAKER_01: And that feels both intimidating but also rewarding in a way.
52:56
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
52:59
SPEAKER_02: Lastly, why do you live in New York City?
53:02
SPEAKER_01: You know, I've...
53:04
SPEAKER_01: There are a lot of different reasons.
53:06
So one,
53:07
you know,
53:08
I liked the city kind of from the moment I first visited.
53:11
You know,
53:14
I came here,
53:15
went to Yale,
53:16
which isn't,
53:16
you know,
53:17
New Haven's not far from here.
53:18
SPEAKER_01: I would visit the city on a pretty regular basis.
53:21
SPEAKER_01: And I just liked, maybe there's something about the...
53:24
SPEAKER_01: the anonymity of it and the feeling of distance from where I grew up.
53:29
SPEAKER_01: It's so dramatically different.
53:31
SPEAKER_01: You know,
53:31
I grew up in these foster homes in Los Angeles and then this
53:34
kind of rural town in
53:35
SPEAKER_01: Northern California.
53:37
SPEAKER_01: And New York is very different from from those places.
53:40
SPEAKER_01: A lot of my friends from college moved here.
53:43
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, when I walk around here, I have no
53:46
memories of my early life it's so different and so maybe
53:51
stimulating there's so
53:52
much to do and see here that i never really um if i want to i
53:56
can think back to my
53:58
early life but i i don't have to be reminded of it when i'm
54:00
here well uh tell us
54:03
about your Substack uh yeah i launched a Substack a few years ago
54:07
where i write about
54:08
issues on social class psychology human nature i'll do sort of
54:12
book and movie
54:13
SPEAKER_01: reviews and
54:15
SPEAKER_01: anything of interest to me.
54:16
I did my PhD in psychology and I still try to keep up with all
54:19
the books and
54:20
SPEAKER_01: research and everything in this academic discipline.
54:24
And yeah,
54:25
it's been,
54:26
and I share recommendations and all those kinds of things too.
54:29
SPEAKER_01: So yeah,
54:29
the Substack has been really helpful for me because originally
54:33
why I got a PhD was I
54:34
SPEAKER_01: wanted to be a professor,
54:36
SPEAKER_01: but I saw,
54:37
SPEAKER_01: you know,
54:37
SPEAKER_01: kind of the direction of higher ed and that kind of
54:40
SPEAKER_01: made me rethink that decision,
54:42
and writing full-time online has been kind of a financially
54:46
sustainable way to make
54:48
SPEAKER_01: a living.
54:48
SPEAKER_02: We'll put a link in the show notes.
54:50
SPEAKER_02: What's the name of the subset?
54:51
SPEAKER_01: It's the most creative name in the world.
54:53
SPEAKER_01: It's called Rob Henderson's Newsletter.
54:56
SPEAKER_02: I was going to use that for mine, but it was already taken.
54:58
SPEAKER_02: Rob, thank you for your service in the military.
55:01
SPEAKER_02: Thank you for writing a book and being brave enough to share your story.
55:04
SPEAKER_02: It's highly inspiring.
55:06
The book is called Troubled,
55:08
a memoir of foster care,
55:09
family,
55:10
and social class.
55:11
We should have had the book right here,
55:13
but I forgot to tell Rob to bring a copy that's on me.
55:16
SPEAKER_02: So buy this one.
55:17
So,
55:17
well,
55:17
yeah,
55:17
if you've already read Rob's book twice,
55:19
you can buy my book.
55:20
SPEAKER_02: It's called Reasonably Happy.
55:21
SPEAKER_02: Rob, thanks so much.
55:22
SPEAKER_02: Thank you.