2024

Year end roundup

You’ll have to open this post in a separate tab, as Substack tells me this post is too long for email.

Nearly five years have passed since I launched this newsletter in January of 2020. As I mentioned in this Substack Grow interview, back then it was hosted on MailChimp before I moved it over to Substack in April of 2022.

After the first year, it accrued about 7 thousand subscribers. After two years, there were 14 thousand subscribers. By the end of year three, there were 27 thousand. By year four, 46 thousand. Today, there are more than 67 thousand total (free + paid) subscribers. With any luck, this number will continue to grow.

From a post earlier this year:

Writing online started as a side hustle when I was in grad school. The original iteration of my newsletter began as a hobby, and I found myself putting more and more work into it. It has become a primary income stream, which was unplanned. Over the past couple of years, I’ve turned down several offers from prominent outlets and magazines. I’ve discovered that few things give me more pleasure than sharing my writing directly with my readers.

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The biggest piece of professional news this year for me is that my book, Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class finally launched. It outperformed expectations. Despite the fact that it was not listed on the NYT bestseller list even though it outsold other titles on the list. Despite the fact that I was frozen out of the bookstore promo circuit. Troubled was selected as a “best book of the year” by The Economist. It was also optioned for a scripted feature film.

If you enjoy this Substack, then you’ll enjoy my book. The preface and final three chapters contain plenty of citations to studies and survey data and theoretical frameworks. The rest of the book (chapters 1-10), is primarily a firsthand account of my life. So there’s something for everyone. If you like survey data and social science, that’s there. If you want to read a unique personal story, you’ll find that, too. If you’re curious about my experiences and thoughts after the book came out, I was profiled in both The Spectator and The New Statesman.

As far as personal news goes, I now live in New York City. I wrote about this decision here. A more personal essay about my move will be published by City Journal soon.

Please be sure to get your copy of Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family and Social Class. If you already have a copy, please consider getting one as a gift for someone you know:

Amazon (US)

Barnes & Noble

Bookshop

Amazon (UK)

Audible (I narrated the audiobook myself)

Other book vendors

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My top 11 most-read posts of 2024:

1. How To Choose A Romantic Partner

2. The Rise of Western Individualism

3. The Grand Canyon-Sized Chasm Between Elites and Ordinary Americans

4. Being Poor Doesn't Have the Same Effect as Living in Chaos

5. Book Stores Refuse To Host An Event For My Book

6. The Distinctiveness of Human Aggression

7. The Happiness Lottery

8. Friendship and Social Fitness

9. The Hidden Marriage Market

10. The Unspeakable Truth About Children

11. Why Young Women Are Becoming More Liberal Than Young Men: The Gender-Equality Paradox

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Top 11 paid subscriber-only posts of 2024:

1. Andrew Huberman’s 5 Body Problem

2. I Can’t Believe Calling Him Hitler Didn’t Work

3. Smart, But Not Too Smart: IQ as a Double-Edged Sword in Leadership (and Romance)

4. The Hypocrisy of the New Upper Class

5. The Short End of the Stick: Average lives matter

6. I Have Never, Ever, Not Even Once, Used The Term “Liberal Elites”

7. For Some Reason We Have Decided To Supply Young People With Endless Advice About Education and Careers, But Fail To Equip Them With Important Knowledge About Sex And Romance

8. People High On Dark Triad Personality Traits Employ Distinct Defense Mechanisms

9. You Can’t Be Socially Liberal and Fiscally Conservative

10. The Reverse Matilda Effect: Sex ratios and perceptions of prestige

11. Sex and Violence Reveal Their Opposites

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Media appearances and podcasts in 2024:

My video essay in the New York Times:

The Cost of Luxury Beliefs with Glenn Loury:

Elite Lies and Luxury Beliefs with Jordan B. Peterson:

Garry Tan, CEO of Y Combinator:

Vivek Ramaswamy:

The Mikhaila Peterson Podcast:

Gad Saad:

TRIGGERnometry with Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster:

This Jungian Life:

Charlie from Charisma on Command on the Dropping In Podcast:

Ask Dr. Drew:

Andrew Gold on the Heretics podcast:

The Good Fight Podcast with Yascha Mounk:

Real Talk With Zuby: Where Do Culture Wars Take Us? - Rob Henderson:

The Michael Shermer Show. Foster Care, Family, and Social Class:

Walk-Ins Welcome with Bridget Phetasy. Overcoming The Victim Mentality - Rob Henderson:

Infinite Loops with Jim O’Shaughnessy:

Fox Business

BBC Politics Live:

Modern Wisdom With Chris Williamson:

“YOUR WELCOME” with Michael Malice:

GB News with Camilla Tominey:

Coleman Hughes:

• Jesse Singal interviewed me at the Village Underground in NYC for my book launch event

• Jonah Goldberg on The Remnant podcast. Links for Spotify and Apple Podcast

• The Dr. Drew podcast. Links for Spotify and Apple Podcast

• Dan Savage | Sex & Politics: Rob Henderson. Links for Spotify and Apple Podcast

• The Gist with Mike Pesca: Luxuriating in Luxury Beliefs (links for Spotify and Apple Podcast)

• The Danny Miranda Podcast (Links for Spotify and Apple Podcast)

• ManTalks with Connor Beaton: Rob Henderson – Building Resiliency From A Troubled Childhood (YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcast)

• The Same Drugs with Meghan Murphy: Rob Henderson on class, luxury beliefs, the foster care system, and what kids really need (Spotify, Apple Podcast, Substack)

• The Unspeakable with Meghan Daum: Rob Henderson on luxury beliefs, broken communities, and the path forward (Spotify, Apple Podcast, Substack)

• The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk: How to TRANSFORM Your Life – From Foster Care to Ivy League (YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcast)

• Keep Talking with Dan Riley: Episode 95: Rob Henderson - Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class (YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcast)

• Polina Pompliano: Rob Henderson on Why We Hold ‘Luxury Beliefs’ and Develop ‘Status Anxiety’ (YouTube, Spotify)

• Veteran Made with Carey Kight: Troubled w/ Rob Henderson (Spotify, Apple Podcast)

• Public podcast with Beige Luciano-Adams: Rob Henderson: Social Class, Elite Virtue Signaling, and "Luxury Beliefs" (Apple Podcast, Substack)

• The Development by David Podcast: Care Crisis: Parenting and The Dark Side of Foster Care | Rob Henderson (YouTube, Apple Podcast, Spotify)

• The Armen Show: 419: Rob Henderson | Social Class, Family, Luxury Beliefs, And More In "Troubled" (YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcast)

• C-SPAN

• Fox Business

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Best books I read in 2024:

Just a note that these books weren’t all necessarily published this year (though some were).

• Father Time: A Natural History of Men and Babies by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy

• Just as Deadly: The Psychology of Female Serial Killers by Marissa A. Harrison

• Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution by Cat Bohannon

• This Is Your Brain on Birth Control: The Surprising Science of Women, Hormones, and the Law of Unintended Consequences by Sarah Hill

• The Return of the Primitive by Ayn Rand

• How Men Age: What Evolution Reveals about Male Health and Mortality by Richard Bribiescas

• 33 Strategies of War by Robert Greene

• The Person: A New Introduction to Personality Psychology, 6th Edition by Dan P. McAdams and William L. Dunlop

• The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt

• The Hall of Uselessness by Simon Leys

• The Mind of the Artist: Personality and the Drive to Create by William Todd Schultz

• All Art is Propaganda: Critical Essays by George Orwell

• The Social Paradox by William von Hippel

• Private Equity: A Memoir by Carrie Sun

• The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions by Jonathan Rosen

• Hard Lessons From The Hurt Business by Ed Latimore

• Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative by Glenn Loury

• The Expat: A Novel by Hansen Shi

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Reviews of my book

Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class was praised in a variety of different outlets:

• The University of Chicago Law Review, written by Stephanos Bibas, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and a former professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He compares Troubled to the work of George Orwell and Theodore Dalrymple, which is as high a compliment as I could hope to receive for this book

• Commentary, written by Naomi Schaefer Riley. She also interviewed me at the American Enterprise Institute here and for her podcast here

• The New Criterion by Steven McGregor

  • Excerpt: “It would be easy to dismiss this conclusion as the latest version of Marx’s class envy...But Henderson is making a much different claim...He is attempting to defend the family rather than destroy the class system.” Steve gets it. I’m not anti-elite. I’m not a class warrior. I just want our elites to be better. Or at least less stupid.

• The Economist

  • Excerpt: "'Troubled' is more than a fascinating memoir, as it analyses the controversial belief systems that have gripped American universities...Lots of what he writes is simply common sense...Henderson exposes the stupidity of what now passes for orthodoxy"

• The Los Angeles Review of Books, written by Tristan Marshall. I met a LARB editor earlier this year who notified me that the author of the review is a 21-year-old former foster kid. Always means a lot when people appreciate my book, all the more so when it comes from someone who truly understands where I’m coming from.

• Troubled was also (somehow) featured in The Los Angeles Times “10 books to add to your reading list." This genuinely surprised me, as the LA Times veered off into lunacy a while ago. Anyway, nice to get some love from the newspaper of my city of birth.

• National Review by Hannah E. Meyers

• The Critic by Patrick Nash

• The Times, by Marianne Power

  • Excerpt: “Henderson is an extraordinary man, but this is not a heartwarming book. Instead, it is…a blistering analysis of poverty, social class and the importance of family.”

• City Journal by Kay S. Hymowitz

• The New Statesman by Pippa Bailey

  • Excerpt: “Troubled is full of stories about underage drinking, fighting, vandalism, weed, meth and prescription drugs...Henderson recounts all this in matter-of-fact prose, which, far from stripping his tumultuous tale of emotional impact, makes it more shocking.”

• The Washington Examiner by Conn Carroll

  • Excerpt: “Rob Henderson’s Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class is a difficult read. For the first four chapters of the book, you want to reach through the pages, back in time, hug a small abandoned boy, and tell him everything is going to be OK. Then, for the next two chapters, you just want to slap him as he recklessly endangers himself and others.”

• The Washington Free Beacon by Christine Rosen

  • Excerpt: “In Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class, Rob Henderson…makes a crucial contribution not only to the modern art of memoir-writing, but to ongoing debates about class, merit, and success in the United States.”

• Times Literary Supplement by Julia Bueno

• London Evening Standard by Anna van Praagh

  • Excerpt: “I read Rob Henderson’s masterpiece, Troubled, a story of his life growing up poor in foster care in America, which has taken the US by storm...a 'triadic structure' of schooling, language and taste is necessary to be accepted among the upper class.”

• National Review by Kathryn Jean Lopez

• American Thinker by Patrick Bobko

• Aporia by Emil O. W. Kirkegaard

• The Federalist by Beverly Willett

• Tove K (Substack)

• Michael Eades (Substack)

• Polina Pompliano (Substack)

• Tiffany Chu (Substack)

• Ryan Self (Substack)

• Gates Cambridge

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Me and my adoptive sister many Christmases ago:

Thank you all for your support. Merry Christmas!

And please remember to order a copy of Troubled:

Amazon (US)

Barnes & Noble

Bookshop

Amazon (UK)

Audible (I narrated the audiobook myself)

Other book vendors