A Journey Through Adversity and Resilience

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This chapter delves into the author's personal story, recounting a difficult childhood marked by poverty, homelessness, and instability, showcasing the challenges faced and the impact on their life and writing journey. It reflects on experiences in foster care, highlighting challenges of multiple foster siblings, emotional toll, and discovery of Mexican heritage. The narrative extends to growing up in a blue-collar town post-adoption, touching on community challenges like family instability, domestic abuse, and the opioid crisis, contrasting personal positive trajectory with common struggles.

Friend-of-the-show Rob Henderson returns to discuss his powerful, moving and important debut book, Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class (published TODAY). We discuss Rob’s experience of the American foster care and adoption system, the life-changing impact of the military, the rise of Luxury Beliefs, the benefits of standardized testing, and MUCH more.

Important Links:

Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class (Amazon)
The SAT is a pathway to more college diversity, not less; by Rob Henderson (The Boston Globe)
Rob Henderson: Lessons I Learned the Hard Way; by Rob Henderson (The Free Press)
Rob’s Substack
Rob’s Twitter

Show Notes:

Foster Care, Adoption & Social Mobility
Structural Origins of the Foster System
Why Early-Life Stability is Underrated
How Ideas Can Change Outcomes
The Life-Changing Impact of the Military
Young Male Syndrome
The Role of Intelligence in Governing Outcomes
The Benefits of Standardized Testing
Yale, Luxury Beliefs & the Rise of Identity Politics
Are Luxury Beliefs a Political or Class Phenomenon?
Trickle-Down Meritocracy
Technology, Assortive Mating & Social Mobility
Is the Overton Window Shifting on Campus?
Rob as Emperor of the World

Books and Articles Mentioned:

Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class; by Rob Henderson
The SAT is a pathway to more college diversity, not less; by Rob Henderson (The Boston Globe)
Rob Henderson: Lessons I Learned the Hard Way; by Rob Henderson (The Free Press)
Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society; by Nicholas A. Christakis
Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010; by Charles Murray
Talent: How to Identify Energizers, Creatives, and Winners Around the World, by Tyler Cowen and Daniel Gross
A Suitable Boy; by Vikram Seth
The Son Also Rises; by Gregory Clark