From Foster Care to the Ivy League: Rob Henderson on luxury beliefs, broken communities, and the path forward

The Unspeakable Podcast

Meghan Daum

Society & Culture

4.8 • 784 Ratings

🗓️ 19 February 2024

⏱️ 60 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Paid subscribers get full access to my interview with Rob Henderson.

The first half of this episode is available to all listeners. To hear the entire conversation, become a paying subscriber here.

If you listen to this podcast and others like it, you may have heard of the concept of luxury beliefs. It was coined by this week’s guest Rob Henderson. Rob holds a PhD in psychology, has written for lots of media outlets, and writes a popular Sustack newsletter about social issues and how they relate to class dynamics, economic forces, and personal psychology. He also has a brand new book, Troubled: A Memoir of Family, Foster Care, and Social Class.

Born to a drug addicted mother, Rob spent his early life in the foster care system in California, living in seven different homes before finding a permanent placement. However, his adoptive family was chaotic, and Rob navigated a labyrinth of dysfunction before joining the military and eventually finding his way to the Ivy League. It was there that he noticed that many of his classmates seemed to hold certain ideas about the world at large, often in the name of tolerance, even though they held themselves to a much higher standard. From that emerged the concept of luxury beliefs which he discusses in depth in his memoir.

GUEST BIO

Rob Henderson is a Yale and Cambridge University graduate who writes extensively on human nature, psychology, social class, TV shows, movies, political and social divisions, and more on Substack. The term "luxury beliefs" was coined by him, inspired by his experiences at Yale. His book, "Troubled: A Memoir of Family, Foster Care, and Social Class," will be published in February 2024 through Simon & Schuster.

Follow him on Substack.

Follow his Twitter/X.

Get his book, “Troubled” here.

Want to hear the whole conversation? Upgrade your subscription here.

HOUSEKEEPING

📖 🌵Come see me in Austin, TX on February 29 at Moontower Verses, talking about my book, The Unspeakable, and other literary matters.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The people who are the most likely to say that it's unimportant for a child to be raised by two-parent family,
0:09.4	they tend to be disproportionately college-educated and affluent.
0:12.4	They're the most likely to hold this kind of belief that marriage is passe.
0:17.4	But then if you look at who's the most likely to actually get married and have kids and
0:20.8	raise them in that situation, it's college-educated affluent people.
0:24.6	Something like 90% of college-educated mothers are married, whereas for women whose highest level of education is a high school diploma, it's something like 60% of the births are out of weblock.
0:36.6	And so just a completely different, Like, that's a massive divide.
0:43.3	Welcome to the unspeakable podcast. I'm your host, Megan Dom.
0:47.1	Before I introduce my guest, Rob Henderson, a quick reminder that next week I will be in
0:53.2	Austin, Texas, talking about writing and reading
0:57.3	and anything you want to talk about with Moon Tower Verses.
1:01.6	And you can go to moontowerminion.org to find out about that.
1:07.4	That is February 29th at 6.30 p.m.
1:10.6	We're also doing an unspeak easy retreat that weekend,
1:14.1	March 2nd and 3rd in Austin, with guest speakers Sarah Hepila, who's a writer who's been on this
1:19.4	podcast many times, and the comedian Ariel Isaac Norman. To find out if there's any availability,
1:26.8	my guess is there's probably not, but you never know.
1:29.7	Go to the unspeak easy.com.
1:31.8	And that's where you can also find out about our many other retreats this year, including Seattle, May 18th and 19th,
1:40.5	with guest speaker Katie Herzog of the Blockton Reported podcast. We'll also be in Louisville,
1:47.5	in April, with guest speakers Corinna Cohn and Nina Paley of the Heterodorks podcast.
1:53.9	We'll be in many other cities too, so check it out. Okay, if you listen to this podcast and others like it, you may have heard of the
	...

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