You can now watch my recent interview of Ed Latimore, author of “Hard Lessons From The Hurt Business” (read my review here).
Attend My New Lecture Series at Peterson Academy:
You are invited to be a student at my new lecture series at Peterson Academy. Phoenix, Arizona. November 5-7. The plan is for me to deliver 2 lectures per day over the course of 3 days.
If you want to attend my course and be a part of the live in-studio audience, you can apply here.
Los Angeles Event:
You are invited to attend my live event with author Abigail Shrier in Los Angeles. October 16 at 6pm.
Details and registration here.
From the archives:
J.D. Vance Knows About The Grandmother Hypothesis
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:
Putting Kids Last by Neeraja Deshpande
Why Is Everyone Getting a Prenup? by Kara Kennedy
Indigenous London by Louise Perry
Radically chic political violence by Ed West
REVIEW: Believe, by Ross Douthat by John Psmith
Women Still Marry Up—But the Spousal Income Gap is Narrowing by Ken Burchfiel
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. Prison inmates compared their prosocial characteristics– such as kindness, morality, law abidingness – with non-prisoners. Prisoners evaluated themselves more favorably on every trait except law abidingness, for which they viewed themselves as average. (source). Relatedly, in his 2014 book Inside the Criminal Mind, the psychologist Stanton Samenow writes, “The feature of the criminal mind I found most surprising was that every offender believes he is, at heart, a good person. ‘If I thought of myself as evil, I couldn’t live,’ one offender told me.”
2. The word “nickelodeon” comes from combining “nickel,” a five-cent admission fee, and “odeon,” a Greek-derived term meaning “theater.” “Nickelodeon” originally referred to small, inexpensive movie theaters popular in the early 1900s that charged a nickel for entry. (source).
3. Scientists are all too eager to police common knowledge. In 2022 the editors of a major journal announced they would reject or retract any article they thought would cast some human group in an unflattering light, even if it was scientifically sound. (source: When Everyone Knows that Everyone Knows… by Steven Pinker).
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 came across a scientific substack debating if studies should be done on public health or IQ or other things that could "hurt" groups and read the comments. I was really surprised that a lot of people who presented as scientists honestly, among their own kind thought they had a moral obligation to hide results and only do certain types of research.
There is another substack I regularly read by STEM scientists who do honest research and might be a bit aspergerish/rationalist movement. They are very upset with cuts to scientific funding and have no idea why it's happening except well, RFK and Trump must be evil. There's no other explanation.
I used to love reading scientific magazines but I’ve long since given them up because of stupidity like this. There’s no point in reading science when it’s not science. It has all become politics and social opinion.