Monogamous Humans, Erectile Dysfunction, Growth Minds
Links and recommendations
You can now catch my conversation with Sean Kim on the Growth Minds podcast. Fwiw, the thumbnail text is off — what I said on the podcast is that on the dating app Hinge, 10% of male users receive 60% of the likes.
Links for Spotify and Apple Podcast.
From the archives:
Troubled: The Movie. I’ve sold the film rights to my memoir
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:
The Making of a Techno-Nationalist Elite by Tanner Greer The Scholar's Stage
The Bondi Beach Massacre Was a Choice by Misha Saul Nachman Oz
Just how monogamous are humans? Scientists break down how we compare with other animals by Jack Guy
What’s Killing Marriage—Unmarriageable Men or Liberal Women? by Maria Baer and Brad Wilcox
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. Across ethnicities, affirmative action programs tend to primarily benefit already financially well-off members of the target groups. Similar patterns hold across gender lines: Affluent white women have perhaps benefited more than any other population. (source: We Have Never Been Woke by Musa al-Gharbi).
2. Erectile dysfunction is alarmingly high, increasing from 2-5% of young men in 1999 to 20-30% in the late 2010s. Heavy users can maintain an erection only by watching extreme pornography, and find sex with a real-life partner bland and uninteresting. (source).
3. Conspiracy theories that U.S. liberals and conservatives are equally likely to believe (source):
Dangers around GMOs are hidden from public
A secret group or organization intentionally spreads cancer and AIDS
The largest banks in the U.S. manipulate the economy for their own financial gain
The official account of the Nazi Holocaust is a lie and the number of Jewish people killed has been exaggerated on purpose
The government adds fluoride to the water supply for sinister reasons
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)
“Rob Henderson’s journey through foster care, the military, and, later, at Yale and Cambridge, is truly extraordinary. In Troubled he uses his own fascinating personal story to explore social class, status, his ‘luxury beliefs’ framework, and the ways educated elites think about complex social issues. Gripping, moving, and intellectually satisfying, Troubled is a superb book.”
—Will Storr, author of The Status Game and The Science of Storytelling
> Fwiw, the thumbnail text is off — what I said on the podcast is that on the dating app Hinge, 10% of male users receive 60% of the likes.
Ah...gotta love when creators make clickbait /sarcasm.
Still looking forward to listening!