George Orwell, Pickup Lines, Uglification
My appearance on the Old School podcast + links and recommendations
You can now catch my recent conversation with Shilo Brooks on the Old School podcast, where we spoke about one of my favorite books.
Links for Spotify and Apple Podcast.
My latest for The Times:
Can this four-word pick-up line fix young men’s dating woes?
The Only Reading App I Use:
I’ve been using Readwise since April of 2021.
If you follow me on Instagram or Twitter/X, you’ll know I regularly share screenshots like this from books or articles I’ve read:
These screenshots come from my Readwise app.
Readwise aggregates your reading highlights from various sources like Kindle, Apple Books, Substack, Twitter, and so on. It stores your highlights in one place, making it easier to stay on top of your reading.
Each morning, it emails me 8 random excerpts from different books I’ve read. Since 2021, that daily message has been a quiet ritual for me: fragments from books I half‑forgot are resurfaced, like my own past self giving me a tap on the shoulder.
Moreover, when I’m thinking about a particular topic, a quick search pulls up not just my notes but every highlighted Kindle passage I’ve ever saved on the topic.
Exclusive Offer for My Readers
Use this link → https://readwise.io/robkhenderson/ to try Readwise free for 60 days (double the length of the standard free trial).
I suspect, like me, you’ll wonder how you ever read without it.
Links and recommendations:
Being poor doesn’t make someone a murderer. by Barry Latzer
Male students show more tolerance for political enemies than females show for their own allies by Chapin Lenthall-Cleary
Whose Cup Are You Filling? by Derek Thompson
The Ongoing Disaster of Grade Inflation by Roy Baumeister
An Essay in Uglification by Anthony Daniels
Why Comparing Yourself to Your Partner Might Be Good for You by Janina Larissa Bühler
Follow me on Instagram here. The platform is less volatile and more chill than Twitter/X, so I post some spicier excerpts from my readings on my IG stories
You can follow me on TikTok here
Three interesting findings:
1. The speed with which the norm of marriage—indeed, of relationships of any sort—is being abandoned is startling. Among Americans aged 25-34, the proportion living without a spouse or partner has doubled in five decades, to 50% for men and 41% for women. (source).
2. Only 15.5% of men and 13.3% of women reported suffering a midlife crisis. In fact, for most people, life gets better starting in middle age. Over the years, people tend to get happier, more creative, less neurotic, more agreeable, and more conscientious. (source).
3. Within heterosexual couples, when the man is less committed than the woman, they are no more likely to break up than when both are equally committed. But when the woman is less committed than the man, they are much more likely to split. (source).
The paperback version of Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class is now available.
If you have gained any value from this newsletter and want to support my work, please buy a copy today. For yourself. For a friend or a loved one. If you can’t afford it, please support your local library.
Order your copy now:
Audible (I narrated the audiobook myself)
I loved the Essay on Uglification. It’s everywhere, most especially coffee shops. I don’t like to take my daughter there because she’ll be surrounded by punk furries and I don’t think it’s appropriate for children…
Appreciate the food for thought. I’m less interested in how many report a midlife crisis, and more interested in how many actually do the silent inner work required when old identities fall apart and new ones are waiting to be claimed. That’s where the real question lives — where is the King within?