You can now watch my recent appearance on the TRIGGERnometry podcast where I spoke with Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster:
Links for Spotify and Apple Podcast.
You can check out my 2022 appearance on the show here.
Book event at Yale on Thursday
You are invited to see me speak at the Buckley Institute at Yale University this Thursday (April 11) at 4:30pm. It’s free and open to the public. Details and info here. I’d love to see as many readers there as possible.
From the archives:
Keep Your Head Up in Some Rooms, and Your Head Down in Others: Thoughts on friendship and association value.
The Spectator profile:
Mary Wakefield recently interviewed me for The Spectator:
Opposite me now in a café in Cambridge is a man who might have answers. Rob Henderson grew up in institutions and foster homes in California – ‘I think it was like 16 different houses in total.’ He escaped the usual fate of kids in care via the air force and university and now, at 33, he has written a book, Troubled, about his life and his thoughts. Troubled does not reflect very well on human nature.
‘Somehow expressing concern for disadvantaged kids became coded as conservative or right-wing’
Henderson says: ‘I think somehow expressing concern for disadvantaged kids became coded as conservative or right-wing. There’s this meme of “Oh won’t someone think of the children” and it became a kind of punchline and it became associated with finger-wagging church ladies. The last thing an educated member of the cultural elite wants to be is thought of as the sort of narrow-minded church lady. It’s just so much more fashionable to talk about climate.’
Henderson is dapper, contained, clear-thinking. He’s half-Korean and, he’s recently discovered, half-Mexican. To look at him, you’d never guess the utter chaos of his early life.
[…]
Henderson pauses, then adds: ‘I know a lot of people right now are focusing on social media and smartphones and devices to explain why kids are unhappy, but I wonder if… I mean we’re now two to three generations into unmarried parenting and divorce being relatively normalised, if that might not have an effect, especially for less educated, lower-income people… Now you’re seeing Zoomers in their twenties who were raised by a single parent who was raised by a single parent. They have no model at all of what a stable family looks like and they’re passing on a lot of that feeling of instability.’
[…]
‘I think the reason is, people are naturally drawn to exhibitions and demonstrations of strength, so when they see people marching and chanting at movements to change climate policy, for instance, they are drawn to that united force,’ he says. So it’s precisely because they have no power and no visibility that middle-class luxury believers don’t fancy championing kids? ‘I’m not confident about this, but I think people are almost repelled by the weakness of children. Kids can’t vote, they don’t unite and rally and agitate in favour of their own interests. They can’t say “Hey, pay attention, we are being harmed.”’
You can read the whole thing here.
Links and recommendations:
You can't be too happy, literally by Adam Mastroianni
Love and Liberty by Scott Alexander
What Happened When Oregon Decriminalized Hard Drugs by Jim Hinch
Problems with Cross-Gender Eavesdropping by Sympathetic Opposition
Academia Will Not Love You Back by John Halbrooks
What the Sports Culture War is About by Ethan Strauss
Two new reviews of Troubled:
‘Troubled’ and ‘Motorhome Prophecies’: Finding Their Own Way Out by Alexandra Hudson (The Wall Street Journal)
Is Rob Henderson ‘Troubled’ or Blessed? By Auguste Meyrat (Chronicles)
I received my PhD in 2022 but the author says I’m “completing my doctorate.” He then suggests I’ll run for public office, in addition to becoming a speaker, a therapist, and a promulgator of positive psychology. Near the end he says it’s obvious I need Jesus. Weird review here.
And here is a new Goodreads giveaway where you can enter to win a free print copy of Troubled
Three interesting findings:
1. Research has found that most men find most women at least somewhat sexually attractive, whereas most women do not find most men sexually attractive at all. (source: Why Women Have Sex by Cindy Meston and David Buss).
2. Researchers asked 681 child participants (mean age: 10 years old) to look at photos of 2 people. The children were then instructed to choose who they preferred to be the captain of a ship. Unbeknownst to the participants, the 2 people were in fact politicians running for office. The children’s preferred person for captain won their political contest 71% of the time. (source). Interestingly, this study was conducted in May of 2008 and the children correctly predicted the outcome of the Obama-McCain election. Want to know who’s going to win in November? Maybe ask your fifth grader.
3. Religiosity of American College Professors (source; note that this study was published in 2009):
Least religious ("I don't believe in God"):
Psychology: 50%
Mech Engineering: 44%
Biology: 28%
Poli Sci: 23%
Econ: 23%
Most religious ("I know God exists"):
Accounting: 63%
Elementary education: 57%
Finance: 49%
Marketing: 47%
Art: 45%