Progressive Paradox, Performative Reading, Robot Therapists
Links and recommendations
You can now catch my latest conversation with journalist Meghan Daum and clinical psychologist Andrew Hartz, Ph.D. on the Open Therapy podcast.
Links for Spotify and Apple Podcast.
The Washington Post:
I wrote a piece about why upper-middle-class progressives give their children traditional names.
The latest data on baby names reveals a progressive paradox
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:
Performative reading is good for literary culture by ARX-Han
A Contrarian Call for Divided Government by Roy Baumeister
Where Hannah Arendt Began by Suzanna Murawski
No, We Don’t Need to Ban Caste Discrimination by Lee Jussim, Danit Finkelstein, Colin Wright
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. People are 75 percent more likely to become divorced if a friend is divorced and 33% more likely to divorce if a friend of a friend is divorced. The contagion of divorce can spread through a social network, affecting friends up to two degrees removed. (source).
2. 24% of very liberal Americans say it is “always or usually acceptable” for a person to be happy about the death of a public figure they oppose, compared with just 3% of very conservative Americans. (source).
3. Research consistently shows that men are treated more harshly than women in the criminal justice system: They receive longer sentences for the same crime, even taking into account factors such as criminal history, type of offense, seriousness of offense, marital status, and childcare responsibilities. Interestingly, male judges are more likely than female ones to go easy on female defendants. (source: A Billion Years of Sex Differences by Steve Stewart-Williams).
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)
