2025

Year end roundup

Nearly six 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 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. Year five, 67 thousand. Today, there are more than 77 thousand subscribers to this newsletter. With any luck, this number will continue to grow.

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As far as personal news goes, I now live in New York City. I wrote about this decision here.

My book, Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class is now available in paperback. It was selected as a “best book of the year” by The Economist. It has also been optioned for a major motion picture. If you’re curious about my experiences and thoughts post-book launch, I was profiled by both The Spectator and The New Statesman.

I recently sent my agent the proposal for my second book. A deep dive into luxury beliefs and the American status system. The “luxury beliefs” framework will, if all goes according to plan, get its own book.

In other professional news, I was honored to write the foreword for the 25th anniversary edition of Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass by Theodore Dalrymple, one of my favorite authors. Due out in March. I recently spoke with Theodore Dalrymple about his book in this print interview for The Spectator.

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My top 11 most-read posts of 2025:

1. Rage of the Falling Elite

2. What Charlie Kirk’s Murder Reveals About Historical Amnesia

3. Sex Differences Don’t Go Away Just Because You Want Them To

4. Better an Absence of Men Than Imperfect Men

5. Being a Writer in the Age of the Influencer

6. Improving Character Is Easier Than Improving IQ

7. A Prize To Be Won By Fierce Struggle

8. What I Told RFK’s Team at the Department of Health and Human Services

9. Older Generations Continue to Surrender Moral Authority to the Most Naive, Narcissistic, Impulsive, and Dishonest Age Group

10. Experts and Elites Play Fundamentally Different Games

11. Killing A Bad Strategy Before It Kills you

Bonus: I’ve Learned That Olive Garden Is Not Impressive To A Lot of People

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Top 11 paid subscriber-only posts of 2025:

1. What Women See When They Look at a Man’s Body

2. How To Stay Poor and Join the Underclass

3. The Ideology of the Dangerous Female

4. Low Status. Medium Status. High Status.

5. Girlboss Gatekeeping

6. You Don’t Need a Better Pickup Line. You Need a Better Life.

7. Social Media Is Turning You Into an Informant

8. What Kind of Essay Gets You Into the Ivy League?

9. The Groyper Trap

10. Yes, Arguments Stand Or Fall Based On Their Merits But The Messenger Still Matters And If You Allow Resentful People Into Your Head, You’ll Be Fooled Into Carrying Their Rage As Your Own

11. The Weird Reactions To The Sydney Sweeney Ad Are a Smokescreen For Widespread Romantic Desperation

Bonus: Orwell in the Gutter

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Conversations I had in 2025:

• I was Charlie Kirk’s final long-form interview guest: Links for Spotify and Apple Podcast. I have more to say about this; the essay will be out soon.

• Speaking with Abigail Shrier about her book Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up:

• On C-SPAN speaking about political violence:

• Chris Williamson on Modern Wisdom:

• Congressman Dan Crenshaw on We Hold These Truths:

• Winston Marshall on The Winston Marshall Show:

• I interviewed Ed Latimore about his superb memoir Hard Lessons From The Hurt Business:

• With Charlie Houpert (Charisma on Command) speaking about the Sydney Sweeney controversy:

• With comedians Ryan Long and Danny Polishchuk at their studio in NYC for The Boyscast. One of the funnest podcasts I’ve been on. Probably the longest one too—we spoke for nearly 2.5 hours:

• The Ben Shapiro Show. Starts at 54:38:

• With John Papola on the Dad Saves America podcast:

• Elliot Bewick on The Next Generation Podcast:

• Anthony Scaramucci on the Open Book Podcast:

• Modern Wisdom with Chris Williamson (I was on twice this year):

• Dr. Drew interviewed me for the paperback launch of Troubled:

• World of DaaS with Auren Hoffman:

• The Ayaan Hirsi Ali Podcast:

• The Unspeakeasy with Meghan Daum:

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Best books I read in 2025:

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

• A Story is a Deal: How to use the science of story to motivate and persuade by Will Storr

• Bringing Up Baby: An Evolutionary View of Pediatrics by Paul Turke

• Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up by Abigail Shrier

• Outraged: Why We Fight About Morality and Politics and How to Find Common Ground by Kurt Gray

• Misogyny: The Male Malady by David D. Gilmore

• Morning After the Revolution: Dispatches from the Wrong Side of History by Nellie Bowles

• Rise Above by Scott Barry Kaufman

• Morbidly Curious by Coltan Scrivner

• The Essays by Michel de Montaigne (note: I am still slowly working my way through this 1300~ page volume)

• We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite by Musa al-Gharbi

• Zanzibar to Timbuktu: A Journey Across Africa by Theodore Dalrymple

• So Little Done: The Testament of a Serial Killer by Theodore Dalrymple

• The Saad Truth About Happiness: 8 Secrets for Leading the Good Life by Gad Saad

• The Good Life: Lessons from the World’s Longest Scientific Study of Happiness by Robert Waldinger and Marc Schulz

• The Origin of Politics: How Evolution and Ideology Shape the Fate of Nations by Nicholas Wade

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I remember as a teenager working as a dish washer at a local restaurant and as a bagger at a grocery store. My coworkers and I made around made around 7 bucks an hour, 8 bucks an hour. There was a lot of discussion about how to get to 10 dollars an hour. Or how “if I could just get to 12 bucks an hour” what a huge difference that would make and how happy we’d be. At some point, when I was 17, I sat in my rusted out 1992 Ford Escort in the parking lot before work. Less than enthused about clocking into my shift. I looked at all the nicer vehicles nearby and thought “even if I get to 50 dollars an hour” (which was so out of reach it might as well have been 5 thousand) and managed to buy a better car, I still had to be at a specific location, work would still be tied directly to clocking in and spending a specific amount of time there. It just seemed like a bad plan to be selling off parts of my life on an hourly basis. I started to think about maybe, eventually, someday, getting some kind of job where it paid for my ideas, or creativity, or projects, or something other than how much time I logged at a set place. Then a few months later I sold off my entire life by enlisting in the Air Force for what then amounted to about $1300/month. That thought about time and money, though, lingered somewhere in my mind. My readers have given me the ability to escape the bonds of time to read and write and surface interesting ideas while developing and sharing my own. I am extremely thankful.

I’ll post a recent conversation I had with Louise Perry soon. Then taking some time off for a few days. Back to regular posting in the new year. Merry Christmas.