Rob Henderson; Luxury Beliefs Only an Orphan could see; human nature & culture | Vance Crowe Podcast

Rob Henderson [00:00:00] This an economic thing. You know, maybe the reason why kids don't have both of their parents or families are not doing so well among, you know, lower income people, among poor people is because they don't have enough money. But if you look at 1960, the Poor families, the structure looked exactly the same as the rich families. Whereas today it is, you know, it's a completely different world.

Vance Crowe [00:00:19] I'm Bruce figure a veterinarian living in Sylvia, Kansas, and you're listening to the Vance Crow podcast. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here today. We talked with a very interesting guy named Rob Henderson, who is getting his PhD at Cambridge and also did an undergrad at Yale. And the reason that I bring those up is not to reinforce that his ideas are better than anybody else's, but to show you the path that he went on from being a foster child to an adopted kid that went through divorce and then made his way up into the upper echelons of society. And what we talk about today is why it is so difficult for children that come from families that don't have two parents. And then we go into a wide ranging discussion about our various West Wing hypothesis about how the media impacts the way people view politics. But we also talk about luxury beliefs and how people that are in the anywhere people category oftentimes can hold beliefs that if the lower classes take it on, it will harm them over the long term. The entire conversation is wild wide ranging, and one you probably won't hear everywhere. And we know that there's a lot of tumult around in the world and things change all the time, people being on some platforms and not others. So if you wanna make sure that no matter what happens, that you're always able to hear the Vance Crow podcast, then why don't you head on over to the Articulate Ventures website that's Articulate Ventures and sign up for the newsletter.

Vance Crowe [00:01:52] Every time we post a new podcast, we'll send you something. And also, anytime I write or somebody from the network writes, you can check that out. Also, if you are interested in these types of conversations, you like pushing the boundaries, you're interested in what other people have to say and you like having your ideas challenged, you may want to consider joining the Articulate Ventures network. This is a place where we do everything from have a club for entrepreneurs who are trying to think through their business ideas, to a speaking gym where people practice and get better at the way they communicate their ideas. And even what we call the Circular Firing Squad, which is where we debate things that have no clear, objective, right answer. And we talk about how these ideas will impact us and society. It is a fantastic network. It is filled with people that are building things. And if you're interested in joining it, I suggest that you go sign up at Network dot Articulate Ventures. Alright, well we're gonna head to the interview. I'm so glad you're here. And now onto my new friend Rob Henderson. Rob Henderson, welcome to the podcast.

Rob Henderson [00:02:59] Thank you Vance. It's great to be here.

Vance Crowe [00:03:01] So you are a guy that I encountered because of an economist from Romania that I had on the podcast. And she started talking about a concept called Luxury Beliefs. And when Alex Kista talks about something, I almost always go look it up 'cause there's some deeper source. And last week I found David Goodheart because of her and making that coin in that term somewhere, people versus anywhere people. But then I stumbled onto your luxury beliefs and started falling down the rabbit hole of this concept. And so I wanted to bring you on and just start talking about this idea that you have. How did you, how did you make this observation about luxury in the modern world?

Rob Henderson [00:03:41] Yeah, yeah. So the Luxury Beliefs idea was my way of trying to sort of compress a bunch of different thoughts that I was having and to just untangle them and understand them, and then, yeah, encapsulate them into a single idea. What happened for me was, you know, I, I had this very sort of unusual and winding path to higher education, you know, although right now I'm a PhD student at Cambridge, and before this I was an undergrad at Yale studying psychology. I still study psychology, but before this, my life was a lot different. I grew up in foster homes in, in la later moved to a small sort of working class town in northern California, joined the military, and then from there went to, went to college on the GI Bill. So I sort of had this experience with multiple different social classes on my way, you know, sort of upwards in this sort of social mobility up, you know, path. And so when I got to Yale, I noticed a bunch of just strange, and to me, novel and unusual opinions that I'd never heard before. The very first Luxury Beliefs article I wrote in the New York Post, I opened with this story, I was talking to this, this female student, a former classmate of mine at Yale who was trying to explain to me that monogamy was outdated. She told me that, you know, this idea of, of marriage is sort of this patriarchal institution that was, you know, originally developed to, I don't know, hold women back or something.

Rob Henderson [00:05:14] And it's sort of this, this, you know, piece, this old piece of culture that we don't need anymore. And I found that interesting. I didn't agree with it, but then I asked her, well, what are you gonna do? You know, are you gonna like, have some open relationship thing, a poly Q Like what's your, what's your plan for your future? And she said, well, you know, personally, I wanna get married. I wanna find a husband. I want to just sort of settle down. And she was basically describing to me a traditional family is what she wanted. But then here she was sort of broadcasting her, you know, alleged belief in the, you know, outdated position of, of monogamy. And I noticed this a lot. That's one example, but I've noticed a lot where members of the highly educated class will say one thing, but then when you look at their actual personal lives, it's completely different. And so to me, a luxury belief, the way I define it is these are ideas and opinions that confer status on the upper class while often inflicting costs on the lower classes. And you know, I, I can get into reasons why this influx costs on the lower classes, but essentially luxury beliefs are disproportionately represented among, you know, highly educated members of society, sort of media class, the cultural elite people who have sort of the most social and material resources, and yet they promote ideas that are, that are in the long term detrimental.

Vance Crowe [00:06:39] You know, the, the group of people that you are describing sound to me to be this concept of anywhere people. Are you familiar with this thing from David Goodheart where he says, anywhere people believe that they, they can move anywhere, they can be very transient, every relationship they have is transactional because you're paying for that. And if you don't like where you're at, you just pick up and move. So you're not integrated into where you are. And so then other values start to emerge because you have, you operate in a different world than somewhere people who are living where they are because of their families, because of the social connections they have, because that's where they like the culture the best. And so you're talking about people that have these beliefs that by being anywhere people, that allows them to think about, well, what world do they idealize and yet live out are two totally different things. And I saw that firsthand when I was in graduate school and then went to work at the World Bank. I would meet women all the time that talked about how marriage was a, a bad institution and you know, women shouldn't have to have children to be considered being successful. But then they married a very wealthy husband, oftentimes quit working and started having children to become a housewife. But they were shunning that when they were just a few years younger coming outta college.

Rob Henderson [00:07:55] Yeah, yeah, I mean that to me is like, that aspect of it in particular is, is just fascinating. I, I like this idea of somewhere versus anywhere people, I, I, I've, it, it rang a bell, but I, I didn't hear it quite describe the way you did. So that was, you know, I think that's useful. Another useful frame to understand, I guess this divergence between the highly educated and then sort of just, you know, everyone else I've seen Chris Arna, he wrote this book called Dignity, and he makes a distinction between the front row and the back row. So I've seen this sort of, this, this, everyone's sort of converging, like all these smart people are converging on this idea of how are we to understand what's going on in the modern world? Why are, you know, somewhere people so different from, from anywhere people, what's going on here? And my way of understanding what's going on here is this luxury beliefs idea. You know, if you look at, you know, I'll just, yeah, I can tell you this story. So a friend of mine, he read my original Luxury Beliefs article, and then he, he, he told me this story, he said, you know, when I, when I get on a dating, I dunno if it was Tinder or Bumble, one of these dating apps, and he goes to like, you know, really sort of fancy university, he said, like, when I put my radius to basically where the university is just, you know, one, one kilometer or something right outside of the university, you know, so many of these, these women, the, the profiles, you know, their students at this university and their profiles are like, you know, polyamorous, you know, just looking for something casual. Oh

Vance Crowe [00:09:27] Wow. Open

Rob Henderson [00:09:28] Relationship, you know, he said that a a a large percentage of these profiles have something along those lines of like, you know, just wanna, just wanna, you know, have some fun. Then he told me when he expands the radius to the outskirts of the university, which is, you know, sort of situated in this lower income town, you know, there's the bubble of the rich university, and then there's the sort of poorer outside area. He expanded it and he was looking at the bios of, you know, women who were not students, just women in the community. And he said about half of the women were single moms. And I think this I, it basically encapsulates the, the costs of the beliefs of the highly educated women. Their beliefs do tend to trickle and or in the longer term effect culture for the less educated lower income social groups. So

Vance Crowe [00:10:19] You made a leap there though. So you, you got it. Like, I mean, just because there's one group of people that's doing one thing and then a another group of people that has a different consequence. Like they're, they're not necessarily causational in that regard,

Rob Henderson [00:10:33] Right? So, so that is, that is just an example. There are there, there's, there's other data that I think more accurately draw this causal link. So for example, if you look at the research of Robert Putnam, he's a Harvard political scientist, or Charles Murray ai, they have documented the sort of, you know, the, the widening gap in, in sort of family, in intact family structures among the social group, social classes. So for example, in 1960, if you look at the, the upper class Americans and sort of white collar college educated Americans, 95% of children in those families are raised by both of their birth parents. So 95%, whereas, so this is in 1960, whereas for working class Americans, sort of blue collar Americans, again, 95% of those children in 1960 were raised by both of their birth parents. Now, if you fast forward to 2005 for the upper class Americans, it dropped slightly to 85%. So it was 95%, and now it's 85%. So slight dip. Whereas for the working class blue collar Americans, it was 95%. And now, or you know, by 2005 it had dropped to 30%. So basically, you know, people can say, you know, is, is this an economic thing? You know, maybe the reason why kids don't have both of their parents or families are not doing so well among, you know, lower income people among poor people is because they don't have enough money. But if you look at 1960, the poor families, the structure look exactly the same as the rich families. Whereas today it is, you know, it's a completely different world.

Rob Henderson [00:12:08] You know, one thing that I've, I've written about is how my, my friends that I've met since I've entered college, every single one of them have, have been raised by both of their parents, including, so I was in the air force, you know, and even my military friends, you know, the guys who served in the military then went to college. Even those guys were raised by both of their birth parents, which is, you know, maybe people might think, oh, military veterans are more blue collar. Maybe they don't have the same kind of, but it, but, but for the ones who go to college, raised by both their birth parents, my high school friends in my sort of poor town, I had five close friends in high school. None of them were raised by both of their parents. It was either single mom raised by grandma, foster parents, you know, sort of stepparents. And so the, the family structure was, you know, the norms were just completely different. And that was something that stunned me.

Vance Crowe [00:13:00] Well, I mean I, I was waiting for the big bomb to happen among my friends where a whole bunch of them would get divorced. And one of my friends pointed out to me, no, when you're looking at the divorce rate, you're looking at the median of the overall population. The people in, like the earning bracket that we're in the education bracket, they get married and some of them will get divorced, but for the most part they are going to persevere because there's some set of values or some structures that they know, hey, if we wanna propagate our our generations into the future, then we've gotta be together. I think that one of the, you brought up Putnam and, and Charles Murray in Charles Murray's book Coming Apart, he has a quiz in there that is, is shocking, you know, like it's, it's asking like when, how often have you been on a factory floor or you know, how many NASCAR drivers can you name or these, these various questions where you think off the top of your head like, well maybe I wouldn't get that one right. But then it's actually like, you see, wait a second, a huge percentage of the population, this would be like asking them children's questions. This would be like asking them something so ridiculous because it's obviously a part of their lives. And that's when you realize the rich and poor in this country or maybe the somewhere in anywhere people, they are so separate as to be living in entirely different worlds.

Rob Henderson [00:14:25] Yeah, yeah, I know that. So that's the, how thick is your bubble quiz? It's funny. So I actually took a summer, a summer program, a summer seminar with Charles Murray, you know, he, every summer something every, you know, he, he invites undergraduates to apply to, to do a, a week long program with him. And he made all of us take, you know, there was like 20 something students, he made all of us take this quiz. And yeah, for me, like I got by far the highest score in terms of like, you know, having the most experiences and sort of like, you know, blue collar working class America because, because of my upbringing. Whereas all of these other college students, I mean like some of them, you know, had like single digit scores, you know, they, they had never been inside. You know, some of those questions are funny. It's like, you know, how frequently have you been to like a Red Robin or an Applebee's or like, you know, how many of these, you know, daytime television shows, like Judge Judy, have you ever watched Judge Judy? I love Judge Judy, but like, you know, a lot of college students don't even know who she is. So I, I I thought that was really interesting. And, and this is again, like this, this sort of cultural divide, you know, that is one thing that I, I try to highlight in my writing and, and in conversations like this is that, you know, of course, you know, material deprivation is, is harmful. But I think for a, for, for probably most developed countries, most western countries, even in the us you know, including the us you know, poor, you know, poor people, it's, it's not the same. You know, you still, no one's starving to death in America.

Rob Henderson [00:15:56] You can be poor but still have like a cheap cell phone. You're not starving. You sort of have a roof over your head. So for the vast majority of people who categorize as poor, I don't think that their detrimental life outcomes, whether it's, you know, incarceration rates or, you know, rates of drug use, you know, trauma and so on. I don't think a lot of that is really related to poverty. Some of it might be, but I think a lot of it is a more sort of emotional or spiritual poverty. It, it's a sort of this, this sort of social disconnectedness that comes from being raised in, in sort of chaotic environments

Vance Crowe [00:16:35] And the chaotic environment. It like, nobody's bad. Like the the single mother that's there trying to do the best that she can for the child. It's not like, oh, she is inherently chaotic. It's, I I just had a baby. So we, we've been in this game for almost six months and that being needs a hundred percent attention. Someone must be paying attention to it at all times, or at least be alert enough to be able to react to a problem otherwise it doesn't survive. And so if, if you have something that needs that much attention, then somebody else has to go out and get the resources to make it possible for you to be able to spend this much attention on, on one little being. And if you don't have that, the, the mother or the father, whoever is trying to raise that child, comes into conflict because you can't be patient, you can't be reading books, you can't be, if you're both caring for the child and getting the resources. I had no concept of this until I had a child and I had, I'm, I'm from, I'm the middle child of seven. So for me, being around a bunch of kids or like family, I thought I understood, but when you are the parent, I don't know how anybody that comes out of a situation with a single parent, like, I don't know how they do any of it. Like, it, it would be so difficult as to make it so you would be bitter at life before you even began.

Rob Henderson [00:17:56] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the, you know, you had mentioned before the, you know, how you were sort of waiting to see who, which of your friends might, might get divorced or whatever. And you know, the research on that, you know, the, the sort of class divisions there, you know, basically people who are college educated, the divorce rate after like, you know, something like five to 10 years, the divorce rate is about 10%, which is basically like, you know, you have a 90% chance of, of staying married if you're a college educated person. Whereas for the, for people without a college degree, you know, it's somewhere upwards of 60%. So, you know, it, it is just a completely different, you know, different world. And like you're saying with single parents, it is, you know, even more difficult to raise children in that environment. And it's not even, it's not even anyone's fault. You know, to just reiterate your point here, I think that all of us of course have some level of responsibility for our life choices, but of course there are sort of broad cultural and social forces at work here that oftentimes we're not even aware of. And this is why I point to these luxury belief ideas because, you know, the, the highly educated class will disproportionate influence on the kind of ideas that we talk about, the kind of behaviors that we're, we're prone to enact. So even things like who, who writes for television shows, who, you know, who makes podcasts, who writes books, who writes newspapers, who determines what people are watching on Netflix and so on.

Rob Henderson [00:19:36] It is the highly educated people and all of those things over time and do tend to affect the ways that we think about what a good life is, how we're, how we should set up our families, whether it's important or not to, to get married before having children. And all of these things tend to affect the lower income people the most. If you're a highly educated person, it almost doesn't even matter. Like you can believe whatever you want, like you can, you don't have to be that connected to reality because you know, in all likelihood, you're going to be materially comfortable no matter what. But for people who are, who are in more dire circumstances, it does matter more what what behaviors and habits and beliefs you, you tend to have,

Vance Crowe [00:20:22] You know, I hadn't really thought about it until you brought this up, but elites in some way sh should feel a responsibility towards having the correct mimetic desires. I mean, that's what luxuries are, the kind of Rene Gerard idea of like, what is the highest aspiration we can reach towards? Let's go towards that. And if the wealthiest highest aspirations are being free and young and sexually active without, you know, gratification, without any responsibility, which like, okay, that you can totally have that. But if you have that and those beliefs then spread out into the wider society, there won't be a society for which you to be an elite. I mean, you'll be standing on top of a crumbling system.

Rob Henderson [00:21:04] That's a great, that that is a, that is a great point. If you are a member of the elite, you, you know, you sort of have the most, in your opinions, hold the most influence in society, but you are the most shielded from them. And so, you know, you can, you can have whatever belief and you know, if, if you want to use drugs and, and promote a sort of se sexual sexual liberation and you know, basically say no one has any obligations to anyone or anything for you, that's totally fine. But for everyone else, it, it will affect them, it will damage them. You know, I I, I wrote this in, in one of my newsletters about, about drug use in particular, just the ways that in college I noticed, you know, people use drugs across all socioeconomic classes. I saw people using cocaine and pills and whatever in undergrad. And if you are a rich kid at Yale or whatever, like you can, you can snort all the coke you want. And like if you have a an affluent family, you're gonna have a college degree, you're gonna be shielded, right? But if you are a kid from where I grew up, you will take that first hit of meth and destroy your life and everyone else around you, you know, if you have kids, if you have a girlfriend or whatever, you will destroy your life. So you can say, you know, people can do whatever they want with their bodies in terms of drug use, but you know, it will, it will impact different people in different communities differently.

Vance Crowe [00:22:40] So as you're thinking about the future and where the elites go or what the response will be to the people that are somewhere, people that are living in a society that cracks around them, do you think, what do you think changes out luxury beliefs? Is this an inevitable path or do we suddenly have people start going to church and giving up their gold chains and, and you know, following Jesus?

Rob Henderson [00:23:04] Yeah, that's a good question, man. Like, well, one of my friends did ask me this. He said something like, you know, if you, you know, if this cycle continues of like luxury beliefs. So the way that I think about it is it's analogous to fashion where every so often you have to update your look, and then once that new fashion sort of trickles down to the masses and everyone's wearing that thing, then if you are sort of a member of the elite, you have to update your appearance to again, distinguish yourself from the masses. And so my friend was asking me, well, you know, at some point, you know, now that, you know, all of these people are whatever, maybe maybe religion for like you're saying, you know, fewer people are becoming religious, well the elites, you know, become religious again and start promoting those, those ideal, I mean, that's something I don't know because the elites in their private lives, again, they do tend to be on average high higher rates of, of religious attendance, lower rates of divorce. Just generally, if you look at how, like their day-to-day life without paying attention to anything they say, just looking at what they do, they do tend to have a pretty healthy lifestyle overall. So yeah, man, I don't know what what, what do you think?

Vance Crowe [00:24:13] Well, so I'm, I've been trying to look this thing up because I agree with you on this. The, the, in order for it to be a luxury, as it becomes more widely available, like you had said in your article, if if making Dior purses becomes way, way easier, then a lot of people get 'em, and they're not luxurious anymore, right? They've spread down the graph into the masses. And I agree that the belief systems, they have to keep up or keep cycling through. So what I was looking for is, I have a good friend that has a hypothesis that the, that the bimbo culture is going to come back or the bimbo. So, you know, you have the trad beliefs of we wanna move back to a religious movement. It's kind of meta we left these beliefs and now we're coming back to them. But the bimbo movement is, I'm beautiful, I'm young, I have a value that I can provide, and I don't care if people judge me for saying I want to get married and I wanna be taken care of. And like, it, it's, it's growing. I, when she first, when my friend first told me about this, I was like, all right, I don't know about that. But there are a lot, there's an entire culture growing on Twitter of people doing this. And you think about, well, where does that come from? Well, if you just watched your oldest sister get done with college, with her anywhere beliefs, talking about how she hates men and doesn't want that, if you wanna be a rebel, you don't go do that. You go do something else. And I think that this may be one of those things and we'll see which one grows in the latest culture.

Rob Henderson [00:25:41] I like that idea. I mean, I hope, I hope that does take off. I can, I can see that I could, I could see that possibly catching on. One thing that I, you know, specifically with regard to marriage and relationships that, that I've been thinking about and, and I, you know, maybe you can help me to understand, you know, where this might be going is that if you look at the rates of, for example, college graduation between men and women, the sort of gender gap, it continues to grow. You know, I just read this, this article yesterday, basically reporting that this is the first generation of American men who are going to be less educated than their fathers. Rates of college graduation for women are, are far higher than they are for men. If you look at income for millennials in particular, I don't know if things tend to change among older people, at least for the, the under thirties women make more than men. Now, the sort of, they used to call it the dad premium, where fathers on average tend to earn more than equally educated men who weren't fathers. But apparently that's gone with some data, even suggesting that fathers earn less than single men. So given all of the, this confluence of, of, of factors here, alongside the sort of propensity for women to prefer men who are, you know, earning, earning, you know, money who are at least as educated as themselves, who are sort of doing well in their lives.

Rob Henderson [00:27:14] If men are doing so well in their lives relative to women, then, you know, could this affect partnerships? Is this going to affect marriage rates? Like gender ratios do seem to matter for, for, you know, relationships and partnerships.

Vance Crowe [00:27:29] I mean, you, like we evolved to have these different status as you come in and how people converge. And maybe some of those ideas were not balanced and you wanna keep updating them, but it's a hundred percent true. If you are a high earning woman, let's say you're a doctor, you've gone through all this education, now you're a specific kind of surgeon. If you wanna find a man that is in your hierarchy bracket, there's not that many of them. And by the time you got to be that level of a surgeon, you're not that young anymore. And so one of the things that people value is younger women. And you know, my biggest complaint about college, when I look back on it, and it's totally my responsibility, it was that I genuinely had anywhere beliefs. I was like, you can wait to get married as long as you want. You can have children, like whenever women should be able to have a career. So I'm not doing it from a place of being bad, I'm just saying we have a new way of understanding it. We've broken free from what the church used to tell us, or that women could only be bearing children and that's the only value. But when my wife and I finally decided that we wanted to have kids and we struggled, we were like, wait a second. Literally no one told me along this path that the longer you wait, the harder it is. And when people find that out, I look back, I can remember the people that were telling, you know, like it's like the, it's like the character in all quiet on the Western front, the teacher that's telling the boys that they should sign up for the military knowing that they're all gonna go get shot at, but he's not.

Vance Crowe [00:29:01] That's what it feels like, the way that the anywhere luxury beliefs have, have come about telling people that they should reject the traditional life and go to this other life.

Rob Henderson [00:29:13] Yeah. Yeah. That's really in interesting, the, there's some, some data, some, you know, psychology research on, on this phenomenon of how, you know, people's, people's sort of beliefs about sexual openness tend to change over time. And you know, I think there's something here about when you're, when you're very young and when you're looking for a partner and you know, you're just, you know, if you're a 20-year-old college student, you're not gonna be the kind of person who's like, well, let's get, let's wait, let's get married. Like let's be responsible here. Like if you're especially a 20-year-old guy, like, I can't speak too much on the female, but from, from a 20-year-old male perspective, it's like, you know, let's just have some fun. Like let's just get drunk and party and hook up. And, you know, you, it's just the, that, that sort of more traditional path is, is it's not so appealing at that age. But then once you do settle down and find someone and start thinking more about both, you know, your future and your child's future, then of course you start to switch over to a more traditional path. I think for a lot of reasons. You know, one reason would be the, the sort of level of, of sexual availability in your environment. So if everyone around you holds very sort of traditional beliefs about sex and relationships, then you don't have to worry too much about your partner. You don't have to worry about yourself either, right? Like even if you happen to, like sometimes have this urge to be unfaithful, if all of the women in your community are, you know, religious or just traditional in their orientation, you, you have no, you, you can't, you can't even act on that desire.

Rob Henderson [00:30:49] And of course, you know, your wife can't either. It's with anyone else. But if you live in a culture that promotes polyamory and open relationships, and every time you turn on the tv, it's, it's, you know, a, an HBO drama about good looking people cheating on each other. I think that over time can create, you know, that, that that can basically get you to worry a little bit more, you know, maybe about your spouse, about yourself, about other people. You know, there's this idea of, of, of me poaching in evolutionary psychology research and you know, something like, you know, 80 to 90% of women have said that another man, like while they were in a relationship, another man has propositioned them and tried to get them to cheat with them to cheat on their partner. And there's, you know, and then, and then from the other perspective men, something like 50 to 60% of men have admitted to attempting to lure a woman away from her partner to cheat with them. So, you know, and, and this, this is just what people are admitting to, right? So you would imagine that the actual numbers are probably a little higher.

Vance Crowe [00:31:58] Yeah. And, and the implications for it are, are, are rather profound. As I think about you talking about these social norms and, and the polyamory I'm struck by, I think there are a lot of people right now in, in a more traditional rural culture that have no concept that this is real. And I really didn't think polyamory was much more real than just like kids that would go to conferences or conventions or plushy things. I thought it was just like only extended to the very fringes of society. But actually a, a guy that was a guest on the podcast at one point, friends with him on Facebook, I saw he switched his relationship from married to polyamorous, and then I started seeing him have photographs with him with a cute, a a, a younger looking woman like that looked a lot like his wife. They seemed to be really into polyamory. And then boom, she was gone. And you realize, like the guy is sitting there saying, I thought we were in, I thought we agreed to this, and the oth and the woman leaves. And you think, of course this is unstable, this is like, we've known this for thousands of years. You aren't gonna be able to break up the system and like build your own new one without causing tremendous amounts of damage.

Rob Henderson [00:33:13] Yeah. I mean, look, marriage and monogamy have been widespread, you know, historically and cross-culturally for a reason. And you know, the thing is like, you know, I'm assuming your friend is probably a, you know, a pretty, pretty well-to-do person, you know, but the thing is like if, so, so those kinds of relationship arrangements, the sort of novel or unusual arrangements, they might work sometimes for people who are, you know, educated, they make money, they're sort of comfortable, they have a certain kind of personality profile, you know, high on self-control and so on, they may be able to, to make those arrangements work. But if that kind of arrangement trickles down to people who don't have all of those assets, it, it will cause far more harm for them. You know, people who are sort of less, less restrained or, or more impulsive, you know, those kinds of situations are just much more volatile. And, you know, if you look at some of the rates for say, child abuse or child neglect, you know, the rates of, of child abuse, for example, for children who live in arrangements other than their birth parents, it's, it's far higher, you know, the likelihood of a child, you know, I've just re read this data, revisited it, showing that children who live with a mother and her boyfriend, they're eight times more likely to be abused than children who are raised by both of their birth parents, right?

Rob Henderson [00:34:55] With their, with their biological father in the home. And it's, it's even worse for children whose mothers have different boyfriends, right? Like, you know, basically a different guy in the house every week, what is the likelihood that all of those guys are gonna be, you know, upstanding citizens, right? I read a study recently actually along these lines because I've been curious about this, you know, based on my own experiences in foster care. You know, why is it that the data for them are so abysmal? So one example of this is that 3% of kids who are in foster care later go on to graduate from college. It's 3% nationwide. It's something like 30% of Americans, whereas for foster kids, it's just 3%, right? I looked into the data just based on socioeconomic status and for kids in the bottom income quintile. So the bottom fifth, the rates of college graduation for them is 11%. So still lower than the average, but still way higher than foster kids. Now one question is, okay, so foster kids fo people, in order to become foster parents have to meet a minimum economic threshold, right? You can't be poor and, and have foster kids. The state won't allow it. So all of these foster kids are not growing up in destitute, impoverished circumstances the way kids in the bottom income quintile might be. And yet kids in the bottom income quintile are still doing better in terms of their education outcomes in terms of likelihood of incarceration. What I found this paper basically showing that kids who live in low socioeconomic conditions are no more likely than kids who are more affluent, more affluent families to, to be involved in criminal activities or delinquency or risky sexual behavior.

Rob Henderson [00:36:44] But for kids who are, who live in unpredictable environments, which is measured by things like how many partners the mother has had in the home, and how frequently the child moves to different residents in different locations that had, there was a massive effect of unpredictability on children's, you know, subsequent likelihood of getting involved in all these harmful behaviors. So it's not, it doesn't seem like there's so much to do with how much money is involved, but the level of instability and unpredictability, and if you introduce, so bringing it back to polyamory, if you introduce, you know, let's have, you know, five people living in a poly and each of them brings their kids and we just, you know, that will have an effect on the kids' life later on.

Vance Crowe [00:37:26] So for people that are only listening to this, can you talk about, like, you, you don't look white to me. I don't, you look like you are from some other descent. Oh,

Rob Henderson [00:37:37] No.

Vance Crowe [00:37:38] And I, so I hope I didn't just like massively offend you, but I would like to know micro Yeah. Microaggression, right? So what, what was your situation? How in the world did you get into the foster care system? Are you, like, what was your life like as a child?

Rob Henderson [00:37:56] Yeah, so my, my mother, my, my birth mother, she was from, she was an immigrant from South Korea, came to us and, you know, shortly thereafter got addicted to drugs, you know, was unable to care for me. I never met my father. I don't know who he is, I have no memory of him. But, you know, so, so basically from there, because my mother was unable to care for me, I bent the next few years living in foster homes in LA and you know, this is one reason why I'm interested in, in, in those kinds of, you know, those kinds of things. So, you know, from there, in foster homes bouncing around, I lived in seven different homes. I was eventually adopted.

Vance Crowe [00:38:41] Why, why so many homes?

Rob Henderson [00:38:44] So there are a lot of, you know, several different reasons for why this is the case. One reason is because there's this concern that children will become attached to the foster parents. And if the child's birth parents come back into the picture or the relatives come back, they don't want there to be any kind of custodial or or emotional issue for the kid, right? So for example, so if, if, you know, the kid is taken from their home, placed into foster care and lives with this foster family for five years, and then the mother or whatever comes back and says, okay, I'm ready to have my kid back. And the kid is like, you know what, my mom, I'm living with this family now, right? Like five years, that's a lot of emotional investment built in. And so what the state does is just move the kid every few months, they never develop an emotional attachment, right?

Vance Crowe [00:39:31] So that seems like a special kind of bureaucratic torture of a, of a child.

Rob Henderson [00:39:36] I, I agree, but I'm, I'm also not sure what the alternative would be, you know, because either, either way, right? Like it's going to be a a so, because the other, on the other hand, the kid could just live with one family and then you run the risk of basically ripping them from their home and putting 'em in another environment. I actually don't know what's better. Well, one thing that would be better is for kid, for adults to just take responsibility and raise their kids and, you know, basically do what, you know, what, what they should do. But, you know, within the context of the foster care system, I'm not sure what's, what's better here. But yeah, it was, it was seven different homes. You know, some of these, these homes had, you know, eight, 10 plus kids living in them. The, in LA in particular, the foster system is just a mess. And, you know, fortunately, I, I was adopted later by this sort of working class lower middle class family, and neither one of my adoptive parents had gone to college or anything, but they, you know, they were okay in terms of their financial situation. A couple years later they got divorced and there was a sort of, you know, dispute about custody here because the adoption had not yet been finalized. And my adoptive father was angry at my mother for leaving him. So he basically just severed ties with me as a way to hurt her, you know, because, you know, he figured, okay, if I talk stop talking to him, then it will basically hurt my ex-wife, you know, his ex-wife.

Rob Henderson [00:41:09] So yeah, that was, that was hard on me too, right? And so, you know, I was basically like, you know what, what I was doing throughout all of this, I was a horrible kid, man. Like, I was getting into so much trouble. I was like, you know, I was like smoking cigarettes when I was eight, like smoking weed by the time I was 10. Like drinking, like, just, just getting into so much trouble, like arson, lighting, fires, like breaking into cars, like just about as

Vance Crowe [00:41:36] Bad as you can get. So for the kid that is doing that experience, you're lighting fires or you're smoking cigarettes, are you doing this because you're looking for a thrill? Or are you doing this because you want people to notice you? Like, what's going on in your brain?

Rob Henderson [00:41:49] So I think there's both, it's hard, it's hard to know for certain, right? Because like if you ask a 10-year-old kid, why are you doing this? They're, they're just gonna tell you to f off or like, they're not really gonna know. Like they don't have the access to their own, you know, inner, inner thoughts that way. But in, in hindsight, plus like trying to figure out what's, you know, what's going on, you know, I would, I would say it's both. I think one is they're looking for attention. Kids who are sort of abandoned or neglected or mistreated, you know, they, they just want any kind of attention they can get from an adult. And, you know, a quick way to get it is to just do something really stupid or, or potentially harmful. I think the other thing is though, is that like, you know, for kids in those situations, they sort of lose contact with their sort of emotional regulatory systems. It just sort of becomes like wi, you know, wired incorrectly. They just don't have access to emotional affect anymore. And one way to seek a, to, to sort of try to reconnect with that or try to feel something is to basically do dangerous things, do stupid things. The other thing is, you know, a third factor here is that they're, they, they hang out with each other. So if you have a bunch of boys, all of their parents are sort of not paying attention to them, neglecting them or whatever, they hang out much more with each other, right? They, they just spend more, less time in home and more time with other boys.

Rob Henderson [00:43:23] And when you have a bunch of boys hanging out, they're gonna, there's going to be this sort of spiraling of like daring each other to do more and more dumb things just to impress each other. Whereas boys who are living in more stable homes, they're probably just, just through the fact of how they're spending their time, it's not even about what they're prone to do. It's just, if you spend more hours at home, your mom and dad aren't gonna dare you to do something dumb. So you're just not gonna get involved in that kind of behavior the way you are with boys. And then finally, I'll just say this, the, the sort of changing of different schools, different environments. So one thing with, with young, young males in particular is that we tend to like to have a, a sort of hierarchy, even if we don't, are not necessarily aware of it. And when boys are, are introduced into a new group, fights are more likely to break out just because they want to know what is this new kid made out of? Like who is he? What is he capable of? And so on.

Vance Crowe [00:44:18] And that's every group of boys that ever gets together, right? Like you, you can't go in and be like, now boys don't do this because eventually somebody pushes somebody else. Like they are going to figure out who the toughest kid there is. There's never gonna gonna be a doubt in a, in a group of boys,

Rob Henderson [00:44:33] Right? If you just leave, you know, five young kids, five young boys in a, in a room and just watch them from afar, there will be a sort of a, a, a sorting out of the, the pecking order, so to speak. And for, for poor kids who tend to change schools more often because of that unstable environment, those fights are just more prone to happen. Whereas for boys who go to the same school with the same group of kids, same friends, maybe early on, there's something that happens, but then it gets established and that's it.

Vance Crowe [00:45:01] I, that's a really profound insight because it's something I lived through but could never have, have pulled out as something that I observed. You know, you were kind of making mention of like the outgrowth of new ways of thinking. And one of the things that I have observed is that, so I spend a lot of time with the engineering kind of high logic minded people. So they are computer programmers, they like statistics or they're doing physics, those kinds of things. And I think that like more traditionally we would've said people that are on the Asperger's syndrome, like, like, or spectrum, like they, they can't read facial cues, but yet they are so logical that they can actually think around some of the emotional blocks that say somebody like me might, might run into, when thinking about an argument, my observation is that this group is growing and it may just be that they're coming together and and finding one another. Do you find this too, and are they at the elite universities or are these the people that are doing the crypto punk, not not going into traditional society?

Rob Henderson [00:46:12] So so you're asking specifically about these sort of engineering types?

Vance Crowe [00:46:17] Yeah, but I'm talking about like the, like the high, like, so the yosha box of the worlds or maybe even the Lex Friedmans, like the, the people that are so logical that like, you know, emotional disagreements, they're just, they're not, they don't, they just don't have them. Do you know which group I'm speaking of? Yeah,

Rob Henderson [00:46:35] I think so. Like this, is this sort of like the rationalist or I

Vance Crowe [00:46:38] Think so, yeah, along that name. That may be the word for them. Like I ala I had a, a woman that was a commercial sex worker named Ayella, that's also a philosophy political writer, and she referred to herself as a rationalist, but I, I guess I don't, okay. Does that encompass that whole group? The rationalists?

Rob Henderson [00:46:52] I'm not sure. I mean like, just sort of the, the descriptions you're giving made me think of them. I don't know if it, you know, if, if that would be, if if they're exactly the same or maybe there's some overlap. You know, I, I don't, I don't know. I think that just with, with the internet and with, you know, everyone becoming more interconnected, we are, we're able to find our sort of communities, our subcultures online. Yeah. But the, the thing is though, that I'm not sure that that, that that style of argumentation or that lack of emotion, that sort of cold logic, I'm not sure that's that in terms of like society wide, if that's catching on. But at least within these sub communities, these online cultures, I've noticed it. If anything, I think like, think people are becoming sort of less, less logical say and, and perhaps more emotionally driven in their arguments and in, you know, how their style of argumentation especially, you know, in terms of like politics and stuff like that. I mean, I think it's just totally getting toxic, but I am grateful for

Vance Crowe [00:48:00] Community. Well, you, you made an interest, you, you did an interesting piece on propaganda and how propaganda isn't exactly what people think that it is. Intuitively, we kind of have this sense that propaganda is, they'll be marching people on the streets and playing patriotic music, but that actually propaganda is, well you go ahead and explain what it was that was, I thought that was a good explanation.

Rob Henderson [00:48:22] Yeah, this was based on a paper from hyphen Huang, who's a political science professor somewhere in California. The name of the university, I don't recall, but he, his claim, and he backs it up with some empirical data as well. But the, the general idea is that we tend to think of propaganda as, as brainwashing, right? So, you know, the, the, you know, the communist regime shows all of these images and sort of reminds you to act in a certain way. If you go to North Korea, everywhere you look, there's just propaganda everywhere. And the idea is that like, oh, the regime is brainwashing its citizens so that they all believe in the same ideology. But what this paper claimed, you know, is the, is called propaganda signaling. And the idea is that actually, although that's one goal of the regime is brainwashing another goal, you know, at least as important as that one is basically to signal power. The idea is that if you're able to show a certain kind of, you know, political propaganda in the public square, everywhere you look, every time you turn on the tv, every time you whatever, open your phone, you sort of see the same ideology everywhere. It's not that you're suddenly thinking like, well maybe this is true. You're, what you're really thinking is this regime is strong, this regime is powerful, I better not try to push back against it. It's sort of a costly signal to demonstration of the regime that they have, the resources and the ability and the sort of, you know, just the capacity to bombard you with their ideology so that you are too timid and too afraid to challenge it.

Rob Henderson [00:50:07] And the way that he backed this up empirically, you know, he basically just collected data from a bunch of Chinese citizens and ask them questions about, you know, about I think Chinese communism or something like that. And then he asked them questions about how strong they believe in the regime. And what he found was that people who who knew more about Chinese communism were not necessarily more prone to believing in all of the claims, but they did, but were more, more prone to believe that the regime was, was was strong. And so I yeah, I just found that idea fascinating. It's, it's a little, maybe a little counterintuitive, but I think it makes a lot of sense.

Vance Crowe [00:50:49] Well, in many ways it reminds me of 1984 how the people that are in the outer party are completely invested in the, in the news of the day and what's going on. And it isn't until you meet the polls, the, like, you know, just working class people. They don't have all the fancy life, but they have no, nobody observing them. They don't have to worry about the surveillance state, which it, it's like in a way, when you make the observation of the, the ads that are going out there, you know, I was at first struck when you were talking about all around in my neighborhood there are giant billboards about wearing a mask. And it's funny 'cause it's like, well nobody knows, nobody doesn't know that right now. So why would you continue to put these things up? And it really is as a, you know, a public public service announcement. And then that got me thinking when I was working in public radio, you had to run a certain number of hours of public service announcements and they were generally for like good causes that everybody could agree to. But one of the things that was a key feature to running a public service announcement that was paid for by the government, the government would pay you to put these things on, is that you would have to leave on that part that said, this part was sponsored by the National Ad Council and you just don't realize that that is like the stamp audio that says this is the government saying what we want to you getting our ideas to you.

Rob Henderson [00:52:12] Hmm. Right. Yeah. That, that is, that's, I mean, yeah, I, when I was reading that paper and, and writing about it, I, yeah, I couldn't help but connect it to, you know, some of, some of the, what what we're seeing here in like the western world, right? I mean, you know, ostensibly we're supposed to be this free country. There's no dictator, right? There's no like Mao or Stalin or whatever. But there is, you know, I think there is a sort of roughly shared belief system among the highly educated class. And so even though there's no like top down, I think there can be a sort of bottom up formation about what beliefs we should all adhere to and to sort of, you know, share the images and belief systems and try to get everyone else to understand that like, this is what you should be believing. And, you know, one way to ensure this is to target the centers. One interesting idea that I had read, you know, this, this idea of cancel culture, which I've, I've written about and discussed, is the way that cancel culture will often target people who, you know, maybe necessarily can't be completely canceled at least. So people like JK Rowling or people like the, the Harvard psychologist, Steven Pinker, like these are people who are already very well established, have so much reputational capital and wealth and so on, that like, you know, you can maybe get them in the news for a couple days, but you're not gonna take them off of their perch. But one thing you can do by doing this is send a signal to everyone else, right? So if Stephen Pinker says X, Y, and Z and everyone says, you know, how dare he say that, you know, it gets in the news for a couple of days, Twitter goes crazy.

Rob Henderson [00:53:48] How dare Steven, you know, whatever, you know, he's gonna be fine, right? Like he's a tenured professor, bestselling author, whatever. But what you're doing is you're sending a message to all of the onlookers that, you know, you're, if you try to say those things, you know your life will be destroyed, right. Because most of us aren't at that level, right? So if, if, if I were to say it or you were to say, or anyone else, then you can really get your life ruined. And so it's not about canceling pinker, it's about reminding everyone else what they're allowed to say.

Vance Crowe [00:54:18] Have you had anybody try and remind you what you're not allowed to say?

Rob Henderson [00:54:24] I, I don't think so. I've been pretty lucky. I, I block a lot of people on Twitter. Like anyone who is snarky or insulting or doesn't add value, I, I just do an Insta block. But yeah, I don't think I've ever had anyone come after me in that way. How about you?

Vance Crowe [00:54:40] Oh yeah, man. I had, when I had brought Jordan Peterson to the American Farm Bureau and people decided that that was the equivalent of like inciting Nazi insurrection hatred among the farmers. That was like, so slate wrote articles and people started writing. And I think the, the experience for me was different then than would it be, than it would be now. Because then I was working for a corporation and I had to be like, my insurance, my paycheck, my way of supporting my family can all come, if you put enough pressure on this corporation that I'm, I've become expensive, you know, to their reputation. And by being outside of that, I'm somewhat insulated from it now, not completely. 'cause you could make somebody radioactive, so you can't talk to them at all. But that's, I I feel like in a lot of ways, people that go into work for corporate America at this point, you are now held hostage on social media. If somebody decides that they want to harm you, they've got a way to do it because they can make your employer uncomfortable. And I don't have that now, but that, I think it's gonna be something to deal with in the future. I wonder if businesses will start saying, you're not allowed to be on social media because it's too big of a risk for us.

Rob Henderson [00:55:53] Yeah, yeah. I know a lot of people, I have, you know, friends and, and, and people I know personally who are, you know, they basically don't do anything on social media, right? Like, they keep their sort of clean LinkedIn profile, but they don't do anything else. They don't have a Twitter or they have anonymous accounts, right? They sort of post from a, you know, a, a fake profile. But that is, you know, that is something that I worry about because so people will say, you know, you know, it's, it's not that bad, right? Cancel culture, people are making these comparisons to communist regimes or, or Nazism or something. And, you know, there they, they basically, it's not, it's not that bad. But, you know, there, there is a lot of research showing that we care deeply about our reputations. You know, there's this, this global survey, it's called the World Value survey that they run every, every so often. And what they, you know, this research basically found that right, right next to your physical security, what people care the most about is their moral reputation. It's almost equal, but physical security still is, is higher. But there's research along similar vein showing that people in some cases actually do care more about the reputation than their own life. For example, you know, people will, if you give people a choice, you know, you'll either be known for the rest of your life as a pedophile or a Nazi or you know, you're gonna lose your arms and legs. Which one of those would you choose?

Rob Henderson [00:57:23] And people prefer to lose their limbs than to be known as, you know, basically the worst thing you can be, you know, other, I can't remember exactly the phrasing, but it was something like, you know, you can live the rest of your life as it is now, as you know, known as a good person, but as soon as you die, you're gonna be known as a pedophile. Or, you know, new, new information is gonna come to light and it's gonna reveal you as a pedophile or Nazi. You know, it's either that or you lose your, your, your arms and limbs and live like a very bad life physically, but your reputation will still be intact. What would you choose? People choose basically to like live a physically uncomfortable heart kind of detrimental life rather than living a comfortable life. And then when you die, then you'll be, you'll, your legacy will be tarnished. So people care deeply and that's what's, what's going on now, right? Like, okay, no, nobody's being what know, lined up and shot or sent off to labor camp. But you can do things like, as soon as I Google your name, the first, you know, the first whatever hits it's gonna be, you know, you know, X is a bad person, whatever, whatever the label of the day happens to be. I know people that this has happened to and it's terrible.

Vance Crowe [00:58:33] You know, this may, this strikes me as an addendum to your concept of luxury beliefs is elite shame, right? Like, if you can choose in a society what is shameful, you have a lot of power. Because if, if it's, if it's such a moderating force, you know, people will lose their arms and legs for that, then whoever holds the ability to shame others, and whoever holds the definition for what that shame should, should be about those two triggers. And it, it seems to me that the anywhere people have tried to grab the, that gun, you know, it's kinda sitting on the table and as long as nobody grabs it, we're all safe. But if somebody picks it up and starts wielding it, it, it can become a real problem because your reputation could have been tarnished when you're in Puritan times and somebody taps something into a tree or on the post in the center of the town square. But it's just different now because it can happen so fast and so wide and seemingly so permanently

Rob Henderson [00:59:29] And there's no getting away from it. So maybe, you know, in that, in that earlier era, you could just maybe pack up and go to another, another medieval town, whereas today, you know, Google is permanent, right? Like, if, if enough out outlets write something about you that will, that will stain you forever. And this is something that, that affects poor people more than more than rich people. So if, if, you know, maybe if you and I are tarnished, we may be able to find a way to be okay. But if you're just like a, like a, a waitress or a, you know, a security guard or something, you know, like, and, and whatever you happen to like the wrong thing on social media, you know, your life is destroyed, right? Like there's no, like, for better, worse. Like those people aren't gonna like, start their own independent business or a podcast or like find a way to make it independently, right? Like, I think like this whole culture is just completely toxic and it's, it's going to end up hurting like the, the least well off among us the most.

Vance Crowe [01:00:25] So because of your elite education, you have an interesting insight on a, I have a hypothesis and I don't think it's complete. And so I'd like to run the hypothesis past you and then see where you would take it. It's essentially that in order for corporations to function, they have to have HR people. And those HR people were told, Hey, if we do an IQ test or some kind of special test and, you know, we discriminate in some way that'll mess everything up. So we can only go off the barest of information like, where did they go to school? Maybe you can ask for a GPA, but not really, and you're not really even able to ask like, highly specialized capability questions when you get to a corporation of, of enough size. I think that the fear that HR companies have about getting sued is what made the value of certain college degrees so much higher. And then that being inflated that we've now overproduced the number of people because that became so valuable, just having the paper as opposed to the education became valuable. Because that's the only criteria with which HR evaluates people. Does that strike you as correct, or, or, and, and what else could you do with that?

Rob Henderson [01:01:45] So just so I understand, so is the idea that HR people, they don't, they don't want to to be blamed for hiring the wrong person. So they, they, they more and more choose to hire someone who everyone can sort of agree is minimally qualified, right? So,

Vance Crowe [01:02:00] No, I'm saying something even more specific. It's, it's written into their rules. Like we like have to look at like if we wanna pay somebody $60,000, they have to have a master's degree. If they have a master's degree from these universities, they can get $65,000. If they get it from these universities, it could be, you know, slightly less than that because there's no other metric through which they can gauge. Are you worthwhile to pay more? And if you don't have a logical reason, then you can get sued because why did that person get paid more than than me or than that other person?

Rob Henderson [01:02:33] Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. That, that actually, that makes a lot of sense. I thought you were going, 'cause I've heard this a similar idea, which is basically that, you know, if you work in hr, you're gonna hire someone with an elite education, even if they're, they may not have the same experience as someone else simply because you're covering yourself, right? You're saying, well, they, they, they went to Harvard, so, you know, like you can't blame me trying to cover themselves in that way. But the way that you're describing it, that, that makes a lot of sense too, because you would expect, you know, there, there's no other way, there's no other widely understandable metric that people can understand. So if you have a bachelor's degree or a master's degree, that's something everyone can immediately grasp. And you know, I I think that, you know, we're seeing this now with, with education and, and the sort of inflation of, of degree programs. So in the 1970s, only 13% of Americans had bachelor's degrees, whereas today it's somewhere between 30 and 35%. And so now you have a situation where you have this, this glut of people with educational credentials. There's too many, and I just read this statistic that nearly 50% of young college graduates are working in jobs that don't actually require a college degree because there's too many, and the competition has become too incense. The other thing that's kind of, you know, you know, sad slash interesting is that it doesn't seem that college is actually doing much in terms of act, you know, in terms of learning, in terms of building up the, you know, the human capital. I just saw this paper not too long ago showing that the verbal IQ of college graduates has actually declined since the 1970s, such that, you know, in the past, if you had a college degree, that was actually a sort of guarantee that this person is minimally competent in literacy and reading and writing vocabulary.

Rob Henderson [01:04:24] Whereas now you don't have that same kind of of guarantee. What's interesting is that overall nationwide verbal IQ has remained the same. So in the 1970s, the verbal IQ was a certain number, and today it hasn't changed at all, but more people have graduated from college suggesting that college isn't actually doing anything, right? In terms of building up your knowledge and your ability and skillset. You know, all it's doing is, you know, you sort of spend a bunch of money and get a piece of paper and you didn't actually turn out to be a different person than when you went in.

Vance Crowe [01:04:55] I, it smacks me like I'm, as I'm talking about this, I also feel that pull of this may be a luxury belief, right? Because while I'm sitting here being like, you know, college way too expensive, enslaving people in debt, you know, I don't have any intention of my daughter going to plumbing school. Now maybe something will change, but like, I doubt it. I doubt the, the, the trades. And David Goodheart was talking about how we will need a reorientation of the trades likely because they will become genuinely more valuable because there's so few of them people doing it and there's so much demand, but I don't think they're prestige within the wider, they're not gonna become the elite

Rob Henderson [01:05:36] Become. So I have, I have almost the opposite belief. I think that this emphasis on education is itself a luxury belief because if you look at the dropout rates, so the dropout rates are about 42% for college. So basically four out of every 10 people who enroll in a bachelor's degree program don't finish. Those people are disproportionately sort of members of lower income groups, you know, people who are basically, you know, not, not as well to do as, as everyone else and people who do graduate. And I think this emphasis on education is basically drawing in people who, you know, either don't have the, either the cognitive or economic capacity to finish that degree and they're wasting months or years of their life and they're, they're taking out loans that they're, that are basically not gonna go anywhere, right? If you're gonna take out large loans for a degree and then you don't finish, you're basically, now you're in debt and you've wasted time. And so I think that, you know, a, a better, a better approach would be to sort of be honest about, you know, people's ability when they're in high school, what their grades look like, what their GPA looks like. And instead of saying everyone should go to college, you should say like, here are your realistic options so that people aren't gonna go into debt and spend, you know, their teens in, I have friends, I have friends from high school who, they're still in community college, they're like 29, 30 years old, like still in community college, like taking one class at a time, smoking weed, like, yeah, then I'm gonna transfer soon. Like, no, they're not like, I tell them this too, like, I used to, you know, I didn't know any better, you know, five, 10 years ago.

Rob Henderson [01:07:11] I would just say like, all right man, like when's this gonna hap? And now I'm just like, you're an idiot. Like, you're never gonna finish. You know, we like me and them, like we were, we were sort of, you know, c minus d plus students. I, you know, I joined the military. Like I sort of got lucky. I was an anomaly in some sense.

Vance Crowe [01:07:29] Was it the military that saved

Rob Henderson [01:07:30] You like that? Yeah, sort of. That's like a really sort of longer story, but that, that was definitely one, one big factor in

Vance Crowe [01:07:39] Getting that. I mean this comes a, a lot of what you're saying comes down to the idea of what was it that took you out of it, right? Because you were like, you and I are both on the same page as far as, hey, two parents are really important and, you know, it's, it's deeply necessary and education is, but you are getting your PhD at Cambridge and you were in the foster system, so it's possible to get out of the place that you were at. Why, why isn't it done more commonly?

Rob Henderson [01:08:07] So it's, it's possible. But again, so 3% of foster, you know, boys in foster care, I think it's less than 3% graduate from college, whereas 60% of boys in foster care are, are arrested later incarcerated. So for every kid like me who gets a degree, there are 20 who are, you know, go to jail essentially. So it's, it's possible, but statistically, you know, if we're gonna be honest about the statistics, it's just not likely. The other thing I want to underline here is that it, that shouldn't even be the the goal, right? Like, it shouldn't be the goal to get every kid into college. Because the thing is man, like even if every single foster kid or kid from a a messed up childhood gets a, gets a degree from Yale, there's still going to be carrying like the wounds or in the best case scenario, the scars of their childhood. And they're still going to like, basically, you know, have those burdens follow them throughout the rest of their life. You know, I, I've written this before that like for for kids who group the way I did, a lot of them a college degree doesn't suddenly like, you know, heal whatever they had gone through it, it takes a toll in a way that a high, you know, a fancy degree doesn't, doesn't fix.

Vance Crowe [01:09:21] Yeah. It's the same thing as people that imagine when they finally run a marathon that they're going to be like suddenly a different person. Like I'm the type of person that runs marathons, but if you didn't like fix your problems along the way while you were training for the marathon, then they're not done when you complete that. And I can see that, that the outside world would definitely be like, oh, you got to the part of the movie where you got into Yale and so therefore you're done and everything's happy happily

Rob Henderson [01:09:50] Ever after. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:09:52] And so Exactly

Rob Henderson [01:09:53] We have this Hollywood image. Yeah, we have the Hollywood image of, of how it's supposed to be. But the thing is though, like, and, and I've seen this repeatedly with people who reach some kind of success, but they're still carrying something with them from, from an earlier part of their life that, you know, you think, like you're saying, you think that once you get the, you know, once you get the, you know, the, the degree or you, you get the Oscar, right? I've heard this from celebrities or, or rock stars or whatever. You think like once you make it, then you're gonna be okay. Then suddenly like, ah, like there it is, I'm finally that person I've always thought I should be. And you hit it and you're still the same person. And oftentimes what you'll find is that is exactly the point when people will self-destruct because you think that you're going to be this different person and you're exactly the same. And then you realize like, oh, this thing I've been working for that was supposed to fix me, didn't fix me. That means nothing can fix me. And that's when the unraveling begins. So, you know, this, all this is to say that like try, you know, getting those external markers of success is it shouldn't be the only goal.

Vance Crowe [01:10:57] When we think about what guides people, you had talked about the various TV shows you watched that showed you what was, you know, wealthy like you watched the Fresh Prince of Bel Air, I remember you mentioning, but you brought up a show that I think actually explains a huge part of our social problem right now, which was the West Wing. And I actually have a West Wing hypothesis. My belief is that the West Wing so entrenched in many of the Anywhere people, 'cause that is a show for anywhere people, it left them with the mind that they are just one vote away from the good guys winning. And if we could just verbally best the the people that were smart and working hard on the right but didn't quite get it, that then all of the good things could happen. And it, it's amazing to me 'cause the show ran for like eight years and they kept solving problem after problem and yet still total dysfunction. It doesn't work and it doesn't dawn on people. That's because it's a, it's a show that makes politics look easy and clean and beautiful and good and noble and politics is nothing about those things.

Rob Henderson [01:12:06] Yeah. That show. So it's funny, when I, when I first started thinking about this piece and writing it, and my editor was like, oh, let's talk more about the, she, she kept pushing me to write more about the West Wing and I was like, look, I only watched that show for two seasons. I didn't even like it. Like, I thought it was kind of corny. Like I, and I think I even wrote in there that like, I didn't like it that much, but I understood that it's this very popular show among elites. So I, I forced myself to sit through two seasons of that and, you know, but but she, my editor understood like she, even, even now, right? Like this was only not even a year ago even then, I, I I still didn't quite grasp the importance of this show, the way you're describing it to me about how important it's among elites. I had some semblance of it, but even now I still haven't fully integrated it into my worldview. But my editor understood, and she put, and then that was the thing that made that article so popular was the, like, everyone asks me like, you're asking me now about the West Wing thing? And it's like that, that show, man, like what I saw of it was exactly what you're describing. It, it it, it was like this sort of nerfed version of reality where, you know, the, the Ivy League liberals when every time super verbally gifted, you know, I, whatever. Like I thought the, the show was kind of like what, you know, they were nice people who were principled and so on. I, you know, I liked that at least, you know, it was a less toxic time politically. So they, they did try to show like nice cross partisan moments where the, you know, president Bartlett hired or appointed a Republican staffer, which would never happen today.

Vance Crowe [01:13:41] But that's only to show that they're magnanimous. There's never a point when they were like, you know what, you have convinced us the, the right to bear arms is of deep importance and we're no longer gonna talk about that on this show. Like every time the the Republic, it's just like Ayn Rand as far as like how bad the straw men were of the other side. I I I think that the West Wing is to anywhere people what what Atlas shrugged is to somewhere people.

Rob Henderson [01:14:07] That's interesting. Yeah. I mean there were, there were so many moments in that show. I mean, I, so I watched this, this interview with Aaron Sorkin, he was being interviewed by David Brooks and Aaron Sorkin himself was like, you know, the, the pilot of this show was not really well liked the first season, you know, but it, but it tested extremely well with a certain audience segment. And these were people who earned more than $75,000 a year, people with college degrees and, you know, I think like households that, that had an internet connection. So this is like 1999, 2000, right? So like those three things were like whatever indicators, oh, and households that subscribe to the New York Times, I dunno if I mentioned that, but basically like the affluent, right? The, the, the elites. Those people loved this show. And if you watch the show itself, there are so many like aspects of that show that are completely not relatable to regular people, right? Like whatever Josh Lineman who brags about going to Harvard and Yale and, you know, just like all of these subtle, subtle discussions about education itself, right? Like it's not just education that's important, it's elite education. CJ Craig asking the president, like, you got into Harvard and Yale, why, why'd you go to Notre Dame? Right? Like, like if you're just regular person, you probably don't even know like exactly what that means. But for the elite, they know exactly like the, the, the mental ranking of, oh, it's Harvard and Yale and then Notre Dame and you know, they know the, the US news and you know, they, they know the ranking.

Rob Henderson [01:15:39] So that whole show was like, you know, you could, yeah, I I think that show should be maybe required viewing, at least for the first two seasons. It,

Vance Crowe [01:15:48] It is so deeply important to the understanding of the anywhere people. So I went to, to graduate school with people that grew up watching the West Wing and then went on to work at the World Bank and was living in DC and the, the net result of this is really earnest people believing with all their heart that if they could just get on the team of the good guys, that they, that they could do it. And I think it's, I I think it's probably equivalent to like the actress that like gets put in the position of encountering Harvey Weinstein. Like, if I just get through this bad thing, then I can, you know, become a famous actress. I feel like that's what the bargain that West Wing taught the people that I went to school with. Like, it's, it's a weird conglomeration of values and definitely like this idea that the elites know what's good for everybody else. If we could just, you know, get them to understand it with our quips.

Rob Henderson [01:16:48] Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's it blows my mind that that show was on network television, you know, today. I think if that show, it would either, you know, sort of run on on maybe like Netflix and have that sort of niche audience, or it would be like a premium premium cable, right? Like HBO or Showtime. It wouldn't, it wouldn't be like a B, C or something or, or Fox. It would be something, something more niche. So.

Vance Crowe [01:17:12] Well, and if you go listen to Aaron,

Rob Henderson [01:17:14] The effect of it,

Vance Crowe [01:17:15] If you go listen to Aaron Sorkin talk about him trying to make News Night where he wanted to make one about a news show, he ends up saying like, it was too close to real life and the reason it was too close to real life is because news is actually scripted like television now. And so he was like, it wasn't really fun for people to watch it, it was like they were watching an uncanny valley version of the news, which was like close to true, but not really, but like, you remember that show? Do you know which one I'm talking about?

Rob Henderson [01:17:43] Is this news? The The newsroom?

Vance Crowe [01:17:47] The newsroom? That's what it was. Yeah. Where, where the opening scene is Jeff Daniels like just ripping apart a little blonde girl about like her Love for America. And he talks about like in the most cynical way possible why it's not great, but that then this got like millions of views because on YouTube as a promo for the show.

Rob Henderson [01:18:07] Hmm. I do remember that show. I didn't like it. I don't know if I finished it or not, but, but yeah, it, it was weird. It was weird to see like fictional characters talking about some, some like real news events. But, but I mean like that, that show was on HBO, right? And so that was, I think those kinds of shows are, are popular. I, you know, today I I do watch more of those kinds of shows that are, that are on HBO or whatever, like another show I wrote about in in that article was The Affair on Showtime. I just finished watching. Oh man, what is this show called? So, so one was Big Little Lies the O of the Undoing on HBO. So these kinds of shows which like depict like good looking rich people treating each other horribly, they at least love these kinds of shows. And so yeah, I, I, I watched these shows and like, I think it's odd man, like I watched this documentary about Elizabeth Holmes, the Theranos Oh

Vance Crowe [01:19:03] Yeah, yeah. CEO of

Rob Henderson [01:19:04] Stanford woman who like, you know, basically like deceived everyone. And you know, one thing I noticed when I, I see people talk about Elizabeth Holmes, you know, elites educated people when they talk about her, there's this like subtle admiration for her even as they criticize her and even as they sort of like say express disapproval for what she did, there's still this like, I don't know, this sort of reluctance to criticize and this sort of underlying subtle admiration. And I think there is this kind of like belief that, okay, so she had to like whatever, like bend the truth a little bit and she did this and she did that. But because she was able to do it so masterfully for so long, they can't help but admire the, the level of deception and who she was able to deceive, right? Like people like Joe Biden and, and and other very prominent people, they, they can't help but like think like, oh, she was so smart and so capable and, and, and yeah, of course we disapprove of what she did. But you know, still, and and I think there is this more and more, especially among maybe younger, younger people, this cynical admiration for the appearance of competence and the appearance of Polish over over like moral character. Her,

Vance Crowe [01:20:26] You know, I you are like a foreigner making observations that are like the, the naivety of a child, but like very, very clear because you're, you're absolutely right. I remember listening to whatever a, b, C had put out a podcast and I would be loathed to download like, you know, a podcast of the norm, like just the mainstream news. But I was like, everybody's talking about this and the entire time they're talking about her not with reverence, that wouldn't be fair, but with like a, a hushed humility that that, you know, she actually was, if only her tests had worked, it would've all been fine. And she kind of earned her way to being there and like, ah, you feel bad for her, but you see why bad, she kept the delusion, right? And you're like, fuck her. Yeah, man. Like she, she lied, she like convinced people of things. She got the world to shift money where it was going for medical research in big ways. Like there's nothing reverent or, or something. You should be humble around admirable. Yeah,

Rob Henderson [01:21:26] Yeah, yeah. It's not admirable. And, and if I recall from the documentary like this did end up affecting like, you know, sort of poor people. Like I remember they installed that, like the, they call it that the Edison or whatever, like they installed that in like some like Walgreens and low income communities and like people believed that this machine was gonna work for them and it didn't. And you know, so, so this did affect like not just, you know, the, the investors and, and people of her same social class, but it affected poor people too. But yeah, I, I think like, you know, that, that to me just stuns me. Like, so I guess like two things that have, I don't know, that have surprised me, you know, sort of on my, on my journey upward is, you know, one is that sort of, I guess just that, that that sort of cynicism, that sort of social climbing, all of all of that stuff. I mean it is, it's, it's, on the one hand it's pervasive, but no one talks about it. One example of this is like at, you know, for, for undergrad at least, you know, I, I noticed people would openly denigrate the career paths of finance and consulting and to a lesser degree tech, but that was also on the list of, you know, like everyone's doing those jobs. It's kind of dumb. Like, you know, you know, those, those are just like capitalist corporations that are hurting, hurting the world. Those same people who say those things, who make those, those denigrating remarks, you will, those will be the first people to go to career fairs sucking up to the Goldman Sachs recruiters trying to get those internships, right?

Rob Henderson [01:22:58] So they're trying to like undermine everyone else around them while simultaneously doing everything they can to obtain those internships and get those positions. Same thing in, you know, from my understanding, same thing for people who are applying to like law school and medical schools, this subtle tr sort of subversion tactics. So that's one thing that has just been alarming. And then,

Vance Crowe [01:23:18] Well, I knew that if people that were doing the law school path where, where they would tell everybody like, oh, if you're going to one of those big fancy firms, like you're selling out your life. Like, I am gonna go be a street lawyer, I'm gonna go do a John Grisham novel and, and you know, Pelican brief this thing and, but then they don't, right? The ones that went to the elite universities go make $300,000 a year and, and, and they, they, but I had never thought about it as like the surreptitious prisoner's dilemma, right? Where the guy's going around being like, no, no, we're, we're seriously, we're on the same team.

Rob Henderson [01:23:51] Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's, that's a great way to put it. That yeah, where, where everyone's trying to get the other person to cooperate while they defect and yeah, I, I've, you know, a lot of those people too, they, they'll sort of like say, oh, well I'm just gonna do this for a couple years and make some money and then I'm gonna go do, you know, do do something more noble. And then, you know, if even you look at the statistics, it doesn't actually occur. So that was like one surprising thing is just like that sort of, I guess lack of moral character. And then the other thing has been the, the sort of like, they're not as smart as I expected, you know, like of course they're, they're, they're bright and they are whatever, like with, with test one and an IQ test, but like, I don't know, it's just not, not what I expected. I I think a lot of it is like maybe they are smarter than they're letting on, but there's just so much social pressure to conform. You might have seen like some of these statistics on like self-censorship, basically self-censorship correlates with education level. So there was a study by U gov and Cato, which asks people, you know, how, like are, are you afraid of losing your job or future job opportunities if your political views were to be known? And for people whose education stopped at high school, high school graduates, it was 25%. And for people with postgraduate degrees it was 44%. And so what this means is that basically half of the most highly educated people in America are afraid to express their opinions and, you know, are are either probably either lying or withholding their, their true beliefs.

Rob Henderson [01:25:30] So sometimes I'll hear really dumb things from people who are ostensibly educated and it's hard sometimes to know like, well, are they, do they really believe that nonsense or is this just, you know, you have to sort of pres falsify preferences to, to get along

Vance Crowe [01:25:43] Well. So I've been in the biotech world for five or six years now and have like, have a quite large community of people that, that span everything from data architecture and, and computer science all the way out to, to actual plant biology. And I would say that by the time you get to the master's PhD level, almost all of those people are, are anywhere people. And the ones that are somewhere, people that have somewhere people beliefs, which probably comprise maybe 20% of all of the scientific people that I know, they write me all the time, all the time. They would, and their coworkers would be stunned to know that they believe these things, but they feel like in their community, if it were known, they wouldn't, they wouldn't even be able to work in the laboratory that they would be ostracized from the other people. And, and I would say like, it, it would be so interesting, I would love to see the face of some of the people that go around with the politically correct views if they actually knew what other people around them thought, but those people are too afraid to say anything, so they probably never will.

Rob Henderson [01:26:46] Yeah, yeah. So that, that has been, it's stunning to me, yeah. That there's so much pressure to conform and such a lack of willingness to express themselves. I mean, like, you know, just personally when I was, when I was in the military, you know, that that is like the, the sort of archetype of the organ, the conform, you know, organization in which people conform, right? As the military, you wear the same uniform

Vance Crowe [01:27:14] Androgynous as possible. Yep.

Rob Henderson [01:27:16] Right. And the thing is though, that, like, in terms of our social and political conversations, I would say like, of course it, it leaned rightward in terms of like the overall political views. It was probably right of center. But in terms of like free discussion, you know, like you would hear opinions from every position on, you know, among, among people of different political orientations, political beliefs. It was a free flowing discussion, you know, and it's just not, it's just not the same on on university campuses or among like, highly educated people. It's much more hush hush if you say certain things. And it's, it's, yeah, it's been crazy to, to experience. I came at the wrong time, I think.

Vance Crowe [01:28:00] What's your take on, I've, I've noticed that the generals are starting to talk about we wanna take on gender and equality and we wanna make sure we're we're doing fairness. What's your take on that as a person that was in the military?

Rob Henderson [01:28:13] I mean, I just think like a lot of this is because there are no, there are no external threats. And so when you have free time, you tend to occupy it with, with other things. And you know, right now that, that's the fashionable belief right now, you know, officers on average, especially like senior ranking officers are probably, like you're saying, like they're probably more likely to be anywhere. People generals tend to have postgraduate degrees, they tend to attend a lot of the same schools as politicians. By the time you reach the general level, you are essentially like a, the equivalent of a politician in terms of your education and worldview. And you know, I think like one thing that has been, you know, over the last 20 years, especially from like nine 11 until very recently, there was this external threat of, you know, radical Islamic terror or whatever, and that was like occupying people's time and energy. And since that threat has subsided over the last, you know, four or five years, I think people are just sort of redirecting that energy towards political projects. I don't know, man, like I was in, during the repeal of don't ask don't tell, it wasn't a big deal. Like we already knew who was gay and who wasn't gay. No one really cared. It wasn't a big deal. And so, you know, that was like whatever, we didn't care. But for this, like the, the gender and the trans stuff, I'm not sure, I'm not sure how it's gonna go over. I'm not even, yeah, I, I, I'm sort of like despondent at a lot of this because like, even, even the, the rates of recruitment are dwindling.

Rob Henderson [01:29:56] You might've seen this stat that 71% of young Americans are not eligible to enlist for various reasons. You know, obesity, drug use, tattoos and piercings, all this kind of stuff. And so, you know, I think about that and I'm like, well, you know, it's, it's, you know, most people can't join the military anyway. Is it really gonna affect anything? I'm not sure. So we'll see. I I would imagine that a lot of people who, who can join the military, you know, I I they tend to come from more middle class backgrounds and they're not probably as exposed to the raging cultural wars that we're experiencing. So I actually, I'm not sure how they would react to this. I'll talk to some of my friends though. I'll ask them.

Vance Crowe [01:30:47] Yeah, I mean, like, I, my sense is I don't, I don't, I'm not in the military, I don't make any of their decisions. Like if whatever you gotta do to make sure that the military is a ready force, but not if the idea is then to, I mean, like that makes it ubiquitous. That's the propaganda arm going into there, and that's what we're gonna talk about. And that's always my, you know, I, I often come up with the mantra that the media doesn't tell us what to think. It tells us what to think about and that's why I don't like it because I don't wanna spend my time thinking about that. But once it hits the, the news radar, that's what the collective culture is.

Rob Henderson [01:31:22] Yeah. Yeah. See, like, I didn't even hear about that, but yeah. Yeah, you're right.

Vance Crowe [01:31:26] Rob, this has been a fantastic conversation. I would love to have you come back on anytime, but if people wanted to read your writing or sign up for your newsletter or watch what you do on Twitter, how would they find you?

Rob Henderson [01:31:38] Yeah, you can go to my website. It's rob k henderson.com or follow me on Twitter at Rob k Henderson.

Vance Crowe [01:31:45] Great, man. Well, we will have you back on. Stay safe out there and we'll talk with you later, man.

Rob Henderson [01:31:51] All right. Thanks so much man.