Transcripts For CSPAN3 Rob 20240703

Im a senior fellow here at aei. And i have a feeling that many of you are already fans of. Rob henderson and and i know the trajectory of his life. But if you going to go through the broad outlines and then he and my colleague Naomi Schaefer riley whos a Child Welfare expert here aei will fill in fill in the wisdom of that outline, although wisdom that you extracted a very, very challenging upbringing. Sohrab, his mother struggle with addiction and he was and she was deported back to south korea when he was three years old and he never saw her again. He spent the next four years in ten different foster homes in angeles. And at age seven, he was adopted and settled into a lower, lower class home in red bluff, california, which seems stable. And he had a for the first time but that stability was shattered two years later when those parents divorced and after that a series of poor performance in school a lot of vandalization with friends who were unfortunately often in the same position he was coming from unstable families, a lot of weed, a lot of fights, a lot of alcohol. But rob was a reader and he was curious. And during his senior year in high school, a history teacher who had been in the air force himself encouraged to enlist that saw a potential that, according to rob he had, quote yet discovered or maybe didnt even want to. So he was in the air force for eight years. He enrolled at age through the gi bill. He went to yale to study psychiatry. Psychology. Im a psychiatrist. He studied psychology and they astute social there. And it inspired his i guess your which is luxury beliefs and can talk more about that with naomi but basically i particularly recommend chapters ten and 11, which are his really trenchant of of life in an ivy league university. And everyone if there not enough books just come up and me know afterwards and we can we can order more anyway he graduated in 2018 and at 28 and then went to cambridge in england to study psychology, where he just received his ph. D. Now hes 33, and looking back, writes in his book until was 17 years old, nearly everything my life was propelling me to a life as one of americas lost boys, the young man who failed to mature, who do poorly in school, live the economic margins and become absentee fathers, or fail to form stable families of their own. How he diverge from that path and are the indispensable insights that he gleaned from his combination of intellect and temperament well, thats what were here to hear more about. And again, thank you so much for coming. Looking forward to it. Thank you. Welcome, everyone. So sally is giving everyone the timeline. And i guess i just want to start back, you know, ill put you on the couch and, ask you about your earliest memories, but particularly about your time in care. What do you think was going wrong in those families, the early families that were in and and how did that, you know, sort of looking back, what do you what do you make those that that dysfunction. Well, so my, you know, my my birth mother and i, you know, she was just not in a position to care for me due to her addiction. And i never met my father you know, i write in the book. You know, i receive this very thick document. You know, full, full of information from social and forensic psychologist and people who were involved. In my case when i was in the in los angeles and, you know, in these reports they indicate that some Police Officers and others, you know, they asked my mother, you know, where is this boys . Because youre not in a position to care for him. And she didnt even know who he was and she claimed that his name was robert, which is where i got my my first name. And it wasnt until year. So last year i took a 23 me genetic ancestry test and i went my whole life not knowing this about myself. But im half hispanic on my fathers side and thats basically all i know about that part of my family family. And then later in the foster system, you know, there was a lot of i mean, its overburdened. Its overstressed l. A. I just recently read that l. A. Might be the worst sort of foster system in the country, simply because theres this surplus of children who need homes and very few families are able to or willing to take them in. And so i and this was in the nineties. So you know if anything things have probably gotten worse. I just read this report in npr that the number of foster children or children in foster care since thousand has doubled. A lot of this is due to the Opioid Crisis and drugs and the effects of that. So in the nineties at least, you know, i still remember some of these homes having 8 to 10 kids living in them. Some of these homes i remember there would be two bunk beds in a bedroom. And so thered be four kids each room rooms or two kids on the top and two kids in the bottom. And you know, when you have that many kids around and the constant sort of turnover where kids would constantly, constantly be and going, you know, foster parents just they dont supply adequate care even in the best of circumstances when you have ten kids, you cant necessarily, you know supply as much care as each kid needs. But then in that sort of continue instability and and turnover rate, its its basically impossible. And so yeah, i just remember a lot of squalor, a lot of uncertainty a lot of just like grime and dirt and yeah, it was really, really unpleasant and tacit agreement seems to be that, you know, as long as as as the kids arent being actively abused or harmed or mistreated, that you know, the people and the social workers and the people involved will kind of look the other way because its better for a kid to be living in those circumstances than to be sleeping on the street, which is probably true. But these, you know, the system is just severely broken and i documents some of those experiences, the book. So a lot of people who go this kind of foster care experience, you know, tend think things might have been better had they stayed with their biological family. You make a point of saying never went to i mean, obviously your mother was deported and you werent really sure who your father was, but you never made a point of sort of trying to go seek out relatives in any way. Why was that and and you also make a point about the the other kids who you were in foster homes with who were sort of constantly going back and forth between biological families and their foster families. So why dont feel like you had that desire to go seek this seek out their biological family. I, i note in the book that, you know, once they became old enough for that to be a question that i could seriously contemplate, i very quickly arrived the conclusion that, you know, my birth parents clearly didnt want me their life. And so why would i want to seek them out and form a connection with those people and, you know, i write about my adoptive family after i was after i left the foster system. And a lot of the difficulties and imperfections and mistakes and catastrophes by. They chose me. And i feel and i still feel connected to them in that way as a result of that. And so, you know, i feel like that thats my family for all of the blunders, everything that i write about in the book, i feel connected to them. And i even if i were to meet my birth parents, i dont think i would feel connected in that same way. And then just to go back to that point about dysfunction of the foster system, so there was never possibility of me being reunited with my family of origin because my mother was, you know, she left the country. No one knew my father was there was no Family Member in the u. S. , at least to the knowledge of the social involved. In my case. And yet i still spent just shy of five years in the system living. So in la it was seven different foster homes in los angeles and essentially, you know, the reason i ended up in adoption system in the first place was because at some point i was required to see a. And this doctor looked through my report and recognized that oh, this kid isnt going to be reunited with his family of origin. And he recommended that i be put up for adoption as soon as possible. But someone should have recognized this earlier. Someone should have recognized this when i was three years old and immediately put me into the adoption system. But instead there was just this. I was in this sort of Holding Pattern of going to different homes all the time until someone finally took the time and actually carefully read my report. And this is just know i basically got lost in this vast bureaucratic system and this is happening to a lot of kids. So after you were adopted was the first time that you had this real father figure in your life. Can you describe sort of what was different about that . I mean, throughout the book, you make a lot of, you know, sort of the fact that when you got to yale, you know, the kids there come from two parents, families. And so for a few years of your life, you had this stable two parent family talk talk a little bit about the family, and particularly about the relationship that you had with your father then. So right after i was i was adopted. Just before my eighth birthday, i remember being very just full of joy having a family at one point. So when i was still in the final foster home, lived in my foster parents, came to or my adoptive parents came to visit me. And the Henderson Family and i called my who became the person who became my adoptive mother, henderson. And she said, oh, you know, if youre if youre with it, you can just call me mom. And i remember like, oh, you know, this is that thats how i sort of recognize that something was different about, this family and that i really was going be in a, you know, a permanent placement and. And so for a little a year, i did have this Stable Family as as working class family in this kind of dusty, blue collar town in Northern California called red bluff. My adoptive was a truck driver. My adoptive mother was an assistant social worker. She had other jobs, too. But thats the job she settled on when when i was adopted. And they paid the bills they made ends meet. We had a family, we had family dinners. It just like a the kind of family i would see on tv or in the movies of like a mom and a dad. And i had an adoptive sister who was their birth daughter, and then they. About a year later, after the adoption and my adoptive father was, you know, he was angry at my adoptive mother for leaving him. And he retaliated by cutting off contact me. And this was really, you know. It was really hard for me, you know, never knowing my birth father and then all of the foster homes and then and then losing my adoptive father and, you know, i was i was nine years old by this point. My and so my got full custody of me. We settled in this kind of gloomy duplex in town, and she was working full time and she was doing her best to pay the bills and make ends meet. But her attention was taken up by those tasks. And i kind of this latchkey kid and id get into a lot of trouble and get into mischief with my friends. You know, a lot of other kids in this neighbor mean this is this is interesting. You know, the other scholars sense that ive learned, you know, the research and the kind of changing deterioration of the family in these. So i was adopted in the late nineties and i kind of got this front row seat into whats happening in sort of working lower middle class areas of the country where. You know, i had other friends growing up in this town and they were raised by single moms. I had one friend raised by a single dad. I had one friend raised by his grandmother because his mom was on drugs and his dad was in prison. And as a very common picture now of what these look like. And so these were the friends i had. And they also had parents were distracted or busy or neglectful, and we would do all of the things sally had mentioned and vandalism and drug use. And i mean, i drink beer the first time when i was five and one of the foster homes and i started to drink tequila when i was nine and smoking weed and cigarets then on to harder drugs later. And thats not an uncommon path for a young boy. And in those circumstances. So throughout this period, youre youre in school and there assumed to be sort of good years and bad years and there years where you know your love of reading and you know your desire to succeed at this sort seems to kind of push you along. Then there are years where you kind of give up and that this is, you know, that theres no way you can win at this can you describe kind of role that schooling played in your in this period . I mean you were kind of leading these two parallel lives. You know whatever going on at home and whatever was going on at school. But in the book, you of make the point that a lot of people focus on education as the thing thats going to save you particularly. You know, struggling kids from lower classes and say that you dont think that thats necessary going to happen but it sort of seems to have worked out in some ways you so you know just what what role do you think education play in helping kids like you you know, im thankful for the direction my life and the academic that ive had, but i dont think its the end all and be all. Im you know, when i think back to the friends that i had growing up, i was the only one of my friends who did go off to college. You know, after eight years in the military and sort of figuring out how to redirect my life trajectory. But i had five friends who never went and. You know, when i think back to, you know, those years and the kinds of students, we were i dont i dont know if even if you placed them in the best environment possible that they were necessarily academically but but i but i did have two friends who went to prison. I had one friend who was shot to death. And i think that if they had been raised in different environments, different families values, different norms, that they wouldnt have been incarcerate and maybe they wouldnt have gone to college, but they probably would been incarcerated. And i think theres maybe so much we can do to sort of raise the ceiling as far as potential. But i do think a lot we can do r as how far down these kids drop and know my experiences. I mean, you can read about in the book all of the reversals where any time there was stability home, my grades would improve and i would academically and you know, when i was in the foster homes, i was doing very poorly. I was changing schools every 3 to 6 months. And at one point they thought that i had a learning disability because my grades were so poor. And, you know, hindsight, its kind of ridiculous to think that, you know, you have this boy whos being relocated and changing homes and schools every months and hes not doing well. And the idea, you know, the next step is to attach a label to him learning disability, his problem and not really look too deeply into the underlying condition a and then yeah, once i was adopted and had that family that i had mentioned for the first year or so, you know, my academic performance increased a lot. And then the divorce, my academic performance dropped. And so i was very responsive to how much oversight, stability and containment i had at home. But by the time i graduated school, i had a 2. 2 gpa and i was in the bottom third of my class. I was just not in a position to apply for college by that point, but this question of can education everyone you know, i one of the strongest predictors of academic achievement is coming from a two parent family. And so thats something we could focus on if we want more kids to excel and do well in school, we could look at whats going on at home. Theres a lot of focus on the schooling system and we could do to improve it. And you know, theres probably improvements that could be made. But the schools i went to werent horrible they were you know, they were public schools. They werent but they werent bad. The teachers were okay. But what was going what was the issue me was what was going on in the family and the home. And it was the same for my friends and i for them too. And so i just saw this study some i think it was an economist at harvard who found that there are roughly 25,000 kids in the country from lower to middle homes who could qualify for admission into an ivy or an ivy plus college. And, you know, i read that study and i thought thats probably. Right, a lot of these kids would be able to go, but theyre being overlooked for various reasons and are obstacles in their path. But thats only 25,000 kids. There are millions of kids in this country who, again, they wouldnt necessarily qualify for admission to, some very expensive, prestigious university. But they could still we could find ways to improve their early life circumstances and ensure that they have a safe secure, warm, loving childhood. Even if we got every single one of those kids to get fancy degrees from an elite school that necessarily make up for those are difficult early Life Experiences and. I think for a lot of people and ive spoken with other people whove had similar experiences to me and have had achieved some form of upward that you know, it doesnt make up for it. Its not a not worth the trade. That its essentially that that having a a more conventional upbringing is is more valuable than than the kinds of success and achievement that we tend to focus much on in society. And i think part of the reason why we focus much on those things is because thats what those are so people who said educational policy tend to be college who are really good at school and they dont think so much about the fortunate family that they had. I have this line in the book that ive met rich people who have to you know to to envision what it would be like to be poor to not have money. But ive never met anyone whos tried to imagine what it would be like to grow up without their family. Its so much a part of your life. Its the water you swim in, you dont even think about it. But when you dont have that. College, its just not a priority for those kids. You know, if you tell a kid whos in mired in dysfunction and deprivation and so on, you say, well, someday youre going to go to harvard. I dont think theyre going to be excited about that. I think theyre going to say, well, i wish i knew where my dad was or. I wish, you know, that, you know, my mom wasnt on drugs or i wish that i felt safer home and that someone there was an adult somewhere out there who cared about me. I wanted to. Im really interested in this point. Youre making about raising the floor instead of the ceiling and. I wonder if you could sort of talk maybe a little bit more about the the leaders, you know, and maybe this is sort of point you make a lot about kind of the elite bubble that a lot of people are living in that they assume know College Education is the best thing for everyone and that its something thats going to fix all the kids problems. Can you sort of talk more about that, that idea, this idea of raising the floor like what would that look like . Maybe its its just about stability. But are there other things that you think we could be doing, you know, to improve the floor for a lot of kids . Well, instead of focusing on the 25,000 kids who could be getting into know Ivy League Schools but or not. Yeah theres i mean im sure there are sort Economic Solutions to this are ways to you know twist the dials of certain economic policies to make sure that families can Stay Together and provide and take care of their kids. I theres also, i think, a cultural here too. You know, the kind of messaging that we receive from media, pop culture and all these kinds of things. I think those could play a role in cultivating and promoting Family Structures and shifting i mean, theres theres just so much like like right now, its really at least among the sort of the elite and the chattering class. This preoccupation with polyamory and open marriages and i think those things can be fun. Pastime for you if youre, you know, if youre wellresourced and upper middle class and you know youre a kind of cognitively atypical person. But for most people with children to family is the way to go. If you want to maximize the statistic odds of that kid succeeding, at least not catastrophically failing. And so i think, yeah, a lot of a lot of cultural messaging plays a role as well here here. You if if youre if youre a person in upper middle class neighborhood and your parents are married and all of your neighbors are married and your friends their parents are married. Thats the kind of water that youre swimming in. But any turn on the tv or you open a magazine or to some music or, you know, the pop culture, you know, theyre showing you images of novel relationship arrangements and infidelity and all these kinds of things like, you know, you still have the models in front of you for what, a healthy relationship like, even if youre getting all this other stuff from from outside sources. But if youre a kid in a poor working class community, you are raised by an unmarried parent you dont know mother or your father. All of your friends are in similar circumstances. Everywhere you turn in your personal life, youve never actually seen what a functional marriage looks like and. Then you turn on tv or open a magazine or listen to music and pop culture, and its polyamory, open marriage and this, that and the other. Like youre not getting good information anywhere about how have a committed normal monogamous relationship. And so its no surprise that, you know, for those communities lack the guardrails things continue to spiral of control. So lets talk about i mean obviously you had situation the reason why you want to the foster care system in the first place you talked about you the early years when you started drinking and using drugs and then you know after were in the military for a while you finally sort of confronted these problems. Can you sort of talk a little bit about your but also kind of where you see our culture in and you what what your concerns are also you know whether in terms of our both laws but also sort of cultural attitudes and maybe we can get into the luxury belief question to so yeah yeah well just recently you know its everywhere you turn in a major city its like the marijuana just everywhere. Now. And i remember the line when i was like a teenager, it was like, oh, its natural. Its not as bad as alcohol, oil. And i think it i mean, now its you people are creating these strains and its much stronger than it used to be. I mean, even even 15 or 20 years ago, my understanding, like weed has gotten very potent. And then theres like dabs, theres like all these different ways to. Take drugs now and weed and i think yeah, it can again. It can be fun for you if if most of your life is stable and predictable and secure. And so but when you have access to drugs and you dont have stability in place and you dont have good role models around you, your life can quickly spiral out of control. And so, you know, when i was a kid, it was like, what do we do . And we were nine. Yeah, it was pretty easy to get cigarets and later wed get Cold Medicine and then later, california introduced a law that you could only buy a certain amount of dextromethorphan and certain kinds of medication over the counter because people were abusing it. But it was still like it was hard, was like friction. Any time we wanted to get something it was like you had to go these obstacles to get good drugs. But if all drugs were legal all the time you know, i could imagine my friends and i at 15 or 16 years old, just very quickly, you know, like a fentanyl was or probably is around now in red bluff. But you in the mid twenties if it was around and freely available, you know, probably not all of us would made it today so yeah think drug like legalizing hard drugs is you know i would i would classify it as a luxury. I just read this article in the atlantic about oregon. You know they legalized all hard drugs and now theyre having severe issues with, people injecting drugs and overdoses and people dying in the streets now. And i it sounds good on paper, but i mean even you know, it doesnt pass the commonsense test that if you legalize hard drugs things will things will necessarily improve improve. So yeah, i think its a real mistake even even even weed. You know, i ive thought about this that. You know, young people tell me now that there are basically high 24 seven and i wonder if in the aggregate it will be more harmful than alcohol, you know, if you have, you know, like a is a thought experiment. If you have a hundred people on a highway, one of them is drunk. You know, thats very dangerous. But if you have a hundred people on a highway and i dont know, 30 of them are stoned, like that might be equally dangerous to having one very drunk person. And thats kind of where were at now, where a lot of people are basically stoned, 24 seven on weed and at the individual level, they dont pose the same threat as someone whos drunk. But in aggregate, when you have 30 people versus that one, i think it could be, you know, posing equal legal dangers. So for those in the audience. Were not familiar. Tell us what a luxury belief is. And maybe talk a little bit about sort what happened when you got to yale. Well so i arrived at yale at a weird time. In 2015 after eight years in the military. So i was you know, i was discharged in august, started class september. And then in october, i saw you the Halloween Costume controversy as came to be known. And i was just mystified by it. This idea. So, you know, i dont if i want to go into the entire specifics, but essentially, you know, that was the sort of the birth of cancel culture. And it wasnt quite the birth of wokeness, but i think that was the birth of when what people now call wokeness kind of started to spill out of the universities where this got Like National Media Attention of students trying to get these professors fired for essentially defending freedom of expression and so that a strange experience for me and then i would know interact with the students and learn about them and their views and opinions about family or about. About class or about sex, work and almost all of their views were at odds with what i would hear from people i knew back home, from people i knew when i was enlisted and. Not not every single one of these students, but a disproportion number of them held these kind of strange. And so i started to develop this idea of luxury beliefs which are ideas and opinions that confer status the affluent while inflicting costs on the lower classes. And these ideas make you know, they can give the appearance of selfesteem nation and signal ones expensive education and job, social and cultural capital. But once those beliefs are implemented into policy or throughout the culture, gradually they can have downstream effects for everyone else. I mean. I coined the term luxury beliefs in 2019 and i never would have guessed. Like within a year people would be calling to abolish the police and then they walked it back and then it became defund the police. Then they played with what that actually meant. And you know, these these rhetorical maneuvers. But that was implemented into policy and and then into the culture at large. This sort of attitude of suspicion toward law enforcement. And as a consequence, a lot of people were killed. As a result, you know, the homicide rate increased, Violent Crime increased between 2020 and 2022. And those get folded into these like aggregate statistics, you know, in late 2022, id open an article in the wall street journal or something, and i would say, like year over year homicides have increased x percent since early 2020. And these were sort of snapshot stats. And then how over the last year or so, the attitude around enforcement has spilled out and then there was there was a tech executive who was killed in San Francisco and he was identified by in the media and got an article written about him there were a couple of journalists a few months ago who were killed, i think one in philadelphia and one in new york city, and also by name and had articles written about them. And im reading this and im thinking, okay, so if youre you know, if youre the way that i interpreted how these cases were treated was if are just a peasant and you die youre just a statistic. But if youre a member of the aristocracy, get identified by name and you get a piece about you. And so even if the if you even if luxury believes catch up to you, youre still honored and treated in a sort of special way with this high regard of you. Oh, a member of this upper segment of society was killed and they get they get treated very differently. And so a core feature of a luxury belief is that the believer sheltered from the consequence because of his or her belief sometimes it does catch up, but again youre treated differently. It does. You know, there was on the review of your book in the Washington Post and i thought it sort of contained maybe a misunderstood standing of what a luxury belief was. I wonder if you could respond to it. It says he argues the ostensible radicalism of his peers was actually hypocrisy, born from selfinterest that privileged undergraduates want the fortunate to be opioid obese Single Parents so that they can get ahead and become even wealthier by comparison. Is that that what you meant . No, i didnt say that anywhere. Are you i mean, wouldnt you know, im not that cynical. You know, i wouldnt say everyone, but, you know, i it wouldnt surprise me. If 1 to 5 of these students, graduates of these elite universities, maybe they wouldnt think quite in those terms. They would think, you know, its good to gain every advantage possible. And if there are losers in society, that would be okay. And so, yeah, i dont its not that i think a lot of the luxury beliefs are supported because you know people, want to feel like their heart is in the right place. They want to feel moral, they want to feel good. They want and people are good at sort of justifying to themselves why that these views are appropriate and people are good at finding ways to do the intellectual acrobatics, to make support ideas that make them feel good. And so but theres a duplicity there that i want people to to focus on, which is, you know, there was a study i in the book, a stat that. Only 10 of children born, College Educated parents are raised out of wedlock. But then when you ask people with college degrees, is it important for children to be raised by two parents, 75 of them say no. And so theres this mismatch between, what educated people say versus what they do. And its the same with with defund the police. You can see that that there was a survey and you in 2020 that found that the highest income americans were the most in support of defund the police. But then you look at where they live very safe zip codes during the unrest in 2020, a lot of them were hiring private security or off duty Police Officers, you know, for their own personal safety. They like having, you know, people who are armed and who can protect them. But for else who rely on police, you know, they have a different attitude. So yeah, i would just say, yeah, im not im not quite that cynical but i but with the caveat that the way that she worded that maybe she herself, you know, has an insight into her. We sort of skipped over. And i really want to get back to your time in the military because it was obviously very formative for you. You kind initially, maybe even it a little bit of short shrift by saying, you know, as long as you occupy men from, say, the ages of 18 to 25, theyll inevitably better off than if you sort of let them, you know, sort of do whatever wanted. And ill take that point. I wonder if you could sort of talk about those years and what they did, you know, to form person you are today. Yeah well, i think as you stand by that, i think like if you i mean, essentially if you just up all young men during their late teens and early like Something Like 85 of the crime especially Violent Crime which is vanish. And then if you look at like recidivism rates across time, like, you know, by the late twenties, most, you know, most people dont you know, they dont continue to commit the same, at least to the same extent. So yeah, i mean, i learned a lot during those years sometimes when people, you know, if they read those chapters, my book, my teenage years or i just the stories about me and my friends during that time, theyll think that its just that youre just so than what reading here or what youve told me. And people anyway. I mean. Right, im 30, im in my thirties now. Like everyones different between 17 and you know, but i was in for eight years and those were yeah, are the most formative years of anyones life or for most people, right . Like 17 to 25. So i enlisted, i was under age still when i enlisted. I had to have my adoptive mom basically saying was that like amounted to a permission slip because i was still legally a child and i left as soon as i could, i was 17 when i graduated and fled and got out when i was 25. And that was like a long eight years. I enlisted for four and then i was 21 and then i, you know the reason why i reenlisted was because, you know, they offered station me in germany and that sounded like a fun adventure but i also on sl 21 knew like im still not mature to like find my way in the World Without the structure in place like i still needed it and i needed all eight of those years to like finally learn how to a selfsufficient and adult because i didnt i wasnt equipped with those attributes during my upbringing and so yeah i learned discipline camaraderie how to you know how organizations function and teamwork how to be a good supervisor later on when i was you know achieved promotions but then you know what one did one distinction i make in the book is between motivation versus discipline and a lot of people say that, you know, if they want to accomplish something, they have to feel motivated or they dont want to do something because they lack the motivation and. One thing i learned when i was enlisted, that motivation is not that important. Whats important is selfdiscipline selfdiscipline. Very few people are motivated to do very difficult things. It doesnt naturally to most people, but often what separates successful from unsuccessful people is doing a thing. You dont feel motivated to do, but doing it anyway, you know, sort thing about this with like gym routines that maybe you dont want to go to the gym, youre not motivated to go, but selfdiscipline is you do it anyway and then you string enough of those days together and large tasks and projects can become accomplished and. You become a different person as a result that and so that was something that i learned too because when military its like you have to do all these things that you hate all the time waking up early especially like making your bed, like every aspect of your life is tightly controlled and its just tedious and monotonous. And you know, i glossed over a lot of that in book. Like, i think i gave a description of kind of what like, but if i told you like day to day, week to week, you would just be bored to tears. So just kind of, you know, heres kind of what a looks like and lets move on because youre going to you know lose interest. So and that was important for me all of like every step of that and and learning and i carry that with me later into college of oh you know in high school i never wanted to study so i just didnt because i didnt have the motivation. And then in college i also didnt really want to study. But by that point i had cultivated enough self discipline do the thing even though i didnt want to. So going to have one more question for you, then were going to open it up to the audience. So start thinking about your questions so there are two at least two other memoirs that i think your book has been compared to. And i one of them is j. D. Vances hillbilly elegy, and one of them is tara westover, book educated. And i dont whether youve read either one of those, but they seem to have sort of some thematic similarity. And i wonder kind of what you make of this because those books and i hope yours will be too were hugely popular. And so i think, you know, there definitely seems to be this hunger for people to understand, you know, what is going on in the lives of you know, kids who are growing up in somewhat dysfunctional families and you lower classes and, you know, kind of what are the things that theyre observing now about the world around them that could help them succeed. So i just wanted to see if you had thoughts on, you know, these other authors and you know what . You think were kind of looking for in these in these books. Well go a little better. Yeah, yeah. Ive read, you know, good that ive read both of them and how people expect me to have Read Everything now too. You know, some people call me up every night Something Like you read a lot and then ask you have read this and i say no. And theyre like, you write that. I think you really i read both of them. I enjoyed both of them. I thought they were both really good and they both yeah, they offer a glimpse into a kind of segment of society that a lot of people dont have much familiarity with. A lot of especially a lot of highly educated people from more sort of affluent or upper middle class backgrounds and. Yeah, i think a lot of people who are interested in policy or improving society or finding ways to. Lift people up, you know, its, you know, hard to do that when everyone around you and everyone you interact with and all of your friends in your tiger social circle, they all seem to be doing very well and poverty or deprivation or squalor, all these things are kind of abstract to you. And so when you read books and it gives you this sort of deep, immersive feeling of what life is like every day for people in these other communities. And were looking for, i think, yeah, how what can we do . Because its one thing to sort of say, oh, heres policy, but then how will that actually be implemented in peoples lives. You know, that was something that i thought a lot about with my book is that i didnt want it to just be this kind of convention all like bootstraps of oh i started in this very situation and ended up achieving some kind of success. But i also wanted to focus whats the sort of modal outcome for . A young person, a young guy, particular who is born and raised and these circumstances. And so i tell the stories of my friends, too, and where their lives ended and how thats going to be expected outcome for someone like this. And that you cant necessarily replicate what i did for every Single Person thats not going to work. But there ways we can think about how to that you know young people young guys who arent going off college and maybe theyre not interested or academically inclined that how can we improve their early circumstances so that you know even if even if they do end up as adults making mistakes and, you know, engaging in selfdefeating behaviors that at the very least they could have had a better upbringing. Towards the end of the book, i write Something Like, you know, even if even if childhood had zero effect on a persons outcomes the likelihood of incarceration, graduation rates, future and so on, it, you know, cultivating, ensuring that a kid is raising safe and stable circumstances is still worth trying to promote because its a good in itself. You know, if i show you infant and say, hey, someday this kid is going to up to be a violent criminal, does it matter how the kid is raised right now and if the answer is yes, then i think we should be thinking more about about the other. What happens age 18 rather than than what happens after. Oh, thank you. All right. I lied. Were actually going to give sally a little a couple of questions. She wants them and then were going to go out to the audience. We have a lot of time for questions. So, rob, obviously, you the odds i cant imagine what those were. You know, one in x, i dont know. But it was steep but its also a really poignant reminder of how many kids dont make it out and. I know you just got your ph. D. And youre figuring out what the next steps are, but when you you know, as youve been contemplating what might be in the future, when do you think you could do a as an individual, what might you be able to do . I assume feel some sense i shouldnt put in your mouth and its not a policy book, but i assume you have some kind of affinity for trying to help the younger, you know, the new generations of robs, you yeah. I mean, its i think as as its tough because we want to transform entire system and we get bogged down in statistics and sort of snapshot aggregate survey data. But at the individual level, i mean, yeah, i, theres a lot we can do to make a difference. Peoples lives, i mean, when i, you know, as soon as i got out of the air force, went to yale, i started volunteering at new haven, reads, tutoring kids from the local community in new haven is a very sort of rundown blue collar town with kids from, you know, a difficult and so i would tutor kids in their literacy. I would volunteer to, help help veterans get into college. Like things you can do the individual level of volunteer work. And so and yeah, now im doing talks at foster Care Organizations and boys and girls clubs and, you know, trying to communicate this story and to light to let the academically inclined kids that you know this is a possibility them. I think these these stories can help like crystallize for kids you know there is a path you know upward but also to remind people that you know for the kids who who maybe that path the best one for them that we could also think about just in the immediate moments you know how to think about more resources for foster care or trying to support families so that kids arent taken from them and that as well. So you could also be a drug counselor, honestly, as part of your repertoire, because you were saying about how you kind of emerged from your im going, will you use the word dysthymia, you know, a low grade depression, your estrangement from your emotional states, your impulsivity is really what you do in recovery. You know. Okay, so ready for ready for questions. Questions. My therapist. Oh, wait for the microphone, please. Wendy Wendy Goldman wrote the destroyed life in the wake of the russian civil war and. The difficult effort to establish social services and to ensure that killed then werent feral and running around murdering and stealing the aftermath of that was the fierce social conservatism of comrade stalin. So im wondering if past political movements were in part the authoritarianism was a reaction to the destroyed family lives of the prior generation. Im inclined to say, you know. Yes, or maybe, you know, im thinking of it. There was this really interesting. Theres a psychology just hes a researcher, michael, being. He was an author on this paper on. And one of the conclusions draws you know he he collected data the us and i think some European Countries as well looking at support for populism and found that you know there is this kind of inverse correlation with populism and socioeconomic status. You know, he also included other measures like interest in, dominance and need for status and those kinds of things thats actually inversely correlated with populism i mean, one of his conclusions that he draws this team of researchers draws that people are interested populist solutions of having sort of strongman leader. They feel that their own values arent reflected in the culture and that they basically just want to elect someone to implement their preferences into society. But they themselves not that interested in seeking those positions, whereas the people are very to populism. Our interested in attaining power and status dominance and they dont like the idea of a strongman occupying that seat because they themselves would like to be in a leadership role. But i reading that paper and i thought, yeah, i think a lot of people feel that maybe they have certain and they dont hold luxury beliefs. They have a kind of conventional moderate of the road views or, you know, of common sense perspective. But then they look around their communities and see that its not at all reflected back at them. They see, you know, deteriorating families, drug use and people making very poor decisions. And people who a disproportionate number of are committing crimes. So the vast majority of poor people dont commit crimes, but you know, people who who are criminals are disproportionately poor. And i think people forget that that most poor people dont criminals. They dont want crime, but theyre the ones are suffering the most from it. I cite some data in the book that people in the bottom income category in the us are far more likely to be victims of. Basically every single kind of crime. And so if thats your community, then, you know, some strong man appears and says going to clean things up for you and impose your values and implement your preferences. I can see how that would be very to people who themselves arent that interested in getting involved in politics or seeking positions. And they can just sort of outsource that to this figurehead to do it for them. And that could be, you know, its it sounds similar to what youve been describing with with with all over here. Thank you. Your interesting insights. I was wondering if you could speak to the what obviously think is important, which is the lack of for men who are not welleducated, which in my view adversely impact ability to fulfill the father role that we think about. I mean, i myself grew up in a neighborhood that. Sounds like red bluff. And but when i think the jobs that the fathers around have, they mostly dont exist anymore. They dont more factory jobs lower, lower clerical, etc. So im wondering what views on that . You know, i, i used to hold that view. My confidence in it has dropped somewhat. I read this book recently, the two parent privilege. Melissa carney good book just came out a few months ago and reports some research in parts of the country where there was where there were fracking, where suddenly men with low education were able to obtain high paying jobs and the researcher sort of monitored whether, marriage rates increased and whether these men became sort of appealing partners and the answer was no, like marriage rates didnt and that they didnt become more appealing partners, at least, you if you use marriage as as a proxy for that. And so i think that one of what of melissa carneys points the book is that this is you know, there may be an economic piece here but and maybe. You know, jobs are necessary but not sufficient that there also needs to a cultural piece to that. Yes maybe these men do need jobs that make them appealing. But there also has to be a culture that champions marriage and promotes it and valorize is the two parent family for kids and more and more were sort of drifting from that so that now even if you do give people high paying jobs and money and so forth, but the community has just sort of wrecked and marriage has not been a part of the culture for so long that, you know, that money alone isnt going mitigate the issue not only that im sorry thats coming thank you everyone you should read this book. Absolutely riveting. Youll read it quickly because you wont be able to put down rob. So you have a ph. D. In psychology from cambridge you know, one would expect you would maybe become a practicing psychol just or seek an academic career but when you project five or ten years in the future what do you want to be doing . Hmm. Well so for lot of people, you know, they hear a psychologist and they think of, you know, you mentioned like putting me on the couch. That thats thats the image people have is psychologist of someone who does clinical work but the vast majority of people with psychology phds have no expertise whatsoever. They study things like social psychology or personality or evolutionary psychology or child development, but they dont do much in the way of you know treating mental health. Thats clinical psychologists and psychiatrists. But for me, i, i mean, it was sort of an amalgam i mean, i spent a lot of time just reading in grad school. So what sort of social, evolutionary, personal, witty. And i yeah, i settled about my from my first year in grad school. I knew that i wasnt going to be academic because i had seen too much. You know, just the direction. Academia was really alarming. I describe in what happened at yale. And then i arrived at cambridge. One of the reasons why i wanted to go abroad was because i thought that maybe, you know, oh, maybe was an american thing, you know, maybe like u. S. Universities or universities here the ivy league, like theyre plagued with this new wave of political correctness, but maybe ill get out of here. And i dont know. I had this image of like these stodgy old oxbridge johns who just didnt have time for this nonsense. And they have plenty of for it. Turns out they like it too. I mean, its not quite its probably like five years behind, maybe maybe ten years behind the us in terms of how bad it is. But its still, you know, its still pervasive so i saw people, you know, i saw postdocs get fired. Early career researchers have their careers jettisoned at cambridge and a lot of it happened behind the scenes. You know what i tell people now is that for every public academic cancellation you see there are at least five others that you dont hear about because most most people who want to be researchers, scholars like theyre not seeking the limelight, they dont want Media Attention. They just want to keep their head down, hope that thing blows over, and maybe they can sort of find another little position somewhere. And thats the most common case. But there are a lot of people being fired and a lot of people who have lost their jobs as the last ten years or so. And so i was dead set against academic career. But then, you know, university of austin, this new fledgling university in texas, they approached me. So i have an affiliation there. You know, my i got this i was approached by substack to move my my writing my newsletter to their platform and thats been paying the bills and you know so well see i but as far as an academic job goes im still unimpressed with the legacy institutions of im back right here. You have the scribe the concept of luxury beliefs as impose costs upon the lower classes in exchange for societal social to the upper classes. But it increasingly seems like with some things like transgenderism, for instance, the upper classes are, you know, very to have that done to their kids as well, that these things are not just things where, you know, theyre expressing support for them, but not actually practicing them. How do you think that how does that alter your view of luxury beliefs . Well, so the transgender kids. Well, so so generally good luxury beliefs they can inflict costs on the upper classes but the the price is lower. They are in a better position to withstand the and the costs that would be inflicted. Yeah, im trying to im trying to think about the transgender case in particular. I mean, even something medically, if they were to undergo something that they would have the resources to reverse it. If they decided later on that it was an error, whereas for some, someone who doesnt have much the way of resources, they decide to undergo some kind of medical operation and or some kind of treatment. And then later they decide that maybe this wasnt the right choice for them. They may not in a position to afford to reverse that choice, i think more broadly, too. I mean, even things like like like drug as another example. If youre a welloff person and you decide to do a lot of hard drugs, you know, if youre like like a rock star who promotes and glorifies drug use and then and you yourself live that lifestyle, you are a millionaire and you can afford doctors and rehab and therapists and all the other things available to you as a result, your own choices. But then a lot of the kids listening to you, they do the same thing and they model the behavior that youre promoting. Theyre not they dont have the same access, treatment and care and so forth. So, um, in back over there. I really appreciate or talk and the work youve done, ive been following you on twitter for a while. Im also from a blue collar background who is now in academia at the Mercatus Center and question to you is how do you bridge the gap between blue collar and knowledge work right. Like its very foreign to me. My parents run a small business. I see them buy low, high in blue collar work. Theres a product. Right. But as someone from that background in academia, i struggle still to wrap my head around the idea of the of knowledge work so to the academically inclined children that you have tutored in the past what advice do you give about the nature of productivity in higher education. Thank you. Hmm. Nature of product. Yeah, its its its a different kind of because, i mean, a lot of it is sort selfmotivated and academia i recognized early on during my ph. D. And you really have to be selfdriven. I mean, i enrolled in my ph. D. Program, i think it was 2028. And yeah, if i had enrolled at 21 or 22 or the usual age when people started, oh, not the usual age, but you right after college, the typical age that people finish college college. Yeah. I dont know if it would have worked out well. But yeah i think its worth, worth, you know thing that, that just generally benefited me was was seeking out advice from people who have succeeded in those areas. So, you know, i spoke to a lot of grad students who were slightly ahead of me in the program, spoke to professors. I would just like gathering lots of advice, just generally across my life, like whether was in the military or later in college or now that im doing this sort of independent writing thing on substack of just like asking people around you what are their tips, what are their tricks, what are the things that they they had known those kinds of things. You know, at least for me, like thing i wish i known when i started my ph. D. Was that the first year, like regardless of how prepared you think you are, the first year is just going to be youre going to be full of selfdoubt. Youre going to be, you know, no matter how youre spending your time, youre going to feel like its wrong somehow that you is this really what i should be doing . Am i supposed to be progressing toward what i supposed to have the first paper written . Theres just a lot uncertainty that first year. But if someone had me down and told me that, then i would have felt much better. And eventually someone did. So yeah, i think just spending a lot of time getting advice from different sources from people who are slightly ahead of, you and whatever youre interested. So here. Thanks. So my question has to do with attachment. You lost your mom at three, didnt have a dad and were in foster care till seven. So it sounds like it would have had a primary caregiver in that period and. According to attachment theory, john. But john bobbys work, that would have been a really difficult thing to overcome. And im wondering if you, you know, have thought about this and how you did overcome that. Yeah. Yeah. Read john bobbys work. Harry harlow, too. Im reading a good book right now called love at gun park about. Harry harlow and his work with rhesus macaque monkeys and and then later with with human and attachment theory. Its really good. Yeah. Mean i write in the book about the difficulty of of even leaving my mom in the first place that you a lot of it theres a lot of research and attention paid you know the kind of maternal impulse to care a child and that sort of attachment and fathers to have the way that the parent feels toward a newborn toward a small child. But theres less think Less Research on on the other side that of just how much how attached child feels to their parents and how deeply that connection is felt. And happens after its severed and. So that was really for me to leave my mom. And then and then the first foster homes, i think the first two homes i lived in, it was really upsetting that i had to leave them and know like the body adapts and i about this sort of coping response of just kind of being blunted and and and later just sort of from all emotions and feelings. It was, you know, this wasnt like a conscious, deliberate thing. Its just a sort of the body reacts in this almost instinctive way where, you know, shut down to not feel negative emotions. But as a consequence that i also shut down from feeling positive. And it took a lot of to overcome. And, you know, i could feel it, you know, i could feel it sometimes. It was like it was sort of submerged and i had to sort of work really hard to access those feelings later. But yeah, its. It takes a lot of work and adulthood to overcome, i even more so and theres a lot of focus paid to economic deprivation but not as much on on childhood instability and. Its actually instability that predicts detrimental outcomes in adulthood than deprivation. And so. Yeah yeah, i think that that the instability piece needs to be more salient for over here. Hey rob thanks so much for coming out. Im jared i do outreach here too. Ive been a fan of yours for a good number of years. Have you put any into how deviancy and these notions of families and norms have such cultural power because luxury beliefs kind of rests on idea that the elite have a strong on how the rest of society orients itself. And you know, i think weve lost and c so im just curious how you think that plays in and people are attracted to those sorts of things. Why why the, the elites are attracted deviancy or why the elites then everyone else too, right. Because otherwise if, if it is true then these poor ideas do hold sway over even those who are not in the upper class. I mean, its fun, i guess. Yeah. Like, like living in a, in environment of complete freedom, of no rules, no norms. No. Especially when youre young and especially when it comes to things like drugs and sex and relationships and and yeah. Having like a feeling that there are no boundaries and no limits be very or transgressing them that even if the boundaries are there. But stepping over them can very thrilling. And so i think this is, you know this is one reason why once you know once once it becomes introduced, it becomes very difficult to walk it back, even if people want to simply they become so accustomed to having that level of freedom and that level of of excitement or ability to indulge. It did seem like, at least for the kind of upper and upper middle class, they did bounce. I mean, the divorce rates even for College Educated people in the 1970s, once no fault divorce was implemented and. The laws liberalized that divorce actually increased a lot for College People and marriage rates dropped. But then by the 1980s, they recovered and essentially to where they were in the early 1960s. And so it does seem like at, least for people who are well resourced and educated and so on, that they almost recognize like, oh, this was fine, but maybe we shouldnt continue doing this. And thats theres actually sort of there are better and worse ways to live and raise families. Whereas for the lower classes and people who lack resources and like education and you know, just have a different kind of cognitive personality profile that. They indulge in. Yeah, they and they indulge in and and enjoy the lack of restraint. And even if they recognize that these decisions are bad, its enough. I mean, this is a point that i make in the book, too, is that knowledge alone isnt enough to make good choices. You know everyone knows that vegetables are good for you. But you know, most people will still order the fries instead of the side salad. Most everyone knows that smokings bad for you. And yet you you go to the doctor and you say that you smoke. Because i used to smoke and, you know, every single time the doctor would give me this little mini lecture and im like, bro, i know smokings bad. Just like, youre not gonna tell me, like, every time i buy a pack. Its like, its right there that its bad for you. Do i care . No, but its still useful to have it reinforced repeatedly that having the doctor give you that lecture and time you buy a pack. Theres that warning label, like in the aggregate. It does actually, over time, having the norm in the stigma and the shame around smoking it did have an effect on peoples behavior time. So now the number of americans who smoke has dropped by half since the 1980s. And so yeah, so introducing stigma and shaming norms and limitations that can change behavior over time. But right here. So kink is conscientiousness, innate or cannot be taught because when i think of a stable marriage, i think two people who can make keep commitments. I think its both. I think conscientiousness. So unlike intelligence conscientiousness can respond to incentives. You know, if i if i introduce penalties and rewards and try to make you smarter thats not going to work very well. But if i introduce penalties and rewards to get you to, you know be punctual and respectful cool and committed and those kinds of things like people regardless of their sort of innate level of conscientiousness, will behave in certain ways as a result of those incentives and environments and structure place. So i think now in this complete its not complete, but you know, its much more sort of the the attitudes around marriage and relationships are much more liberalized and free than they used to be that if youre very high, conscientious, this person that you can make it work. You can still make a marriage in a relationship work. But for people arent as conscientious and arent as sort of what thoughtful and considerate notes and inclined toward commitment and those kinds things. Its much harder, but if youre in an environment where thats the expected behavior and that were praised for engaging in it and, you know, to some extent maybe penalized little bit for deviating from it, that you can actually behave in a different way. Over here. You talked a bunch about one thing that you can do to reduce crime rates is just lock up all the 17 to 25 year olds of having been 17 to 25. I agree, but how do you feel about having a more institutionalized system like bringing back the draft or National Service service. So the countries that have National Service, at least the ones that im familiar with, theyre there in countries that are actually. A under sort of ongoing threat. So like israel, for example, they have National Service. Its necessary for a national security. South korea as well. They border a country with an insane dictator. And so they have National Service. I dont know if you could sort of recreate the support and conditions and interest in a like the us where were not border. I mean maybe if canada went crazy decided to, you know, then we could but but i think, you know, as of now, i dont know if it could work in same way, maybe maybe something other than sort military service if it was some other kind of National Service, peace corps or something along those lines. I think it could be helpful, especially for, you know, like one thing that the military does very well is you get introduced to people like a crosssection of society from different parts of the country geographically across class lines, across race and ethnicity, all those kinds of things like you just learn about people from very backgrounds than yourself. And so, you know, im not i guess like in principle not opposed to Something Like a National Service, but i just dont know. Like in terms of like in practicality, in terms of, you know, political support, how much there would be. So i think were going to take that last question. Sort of washington. Washington, is this working sort of Washington Post article . Who says that, like, you know, this isnt really a policy book, which i mean, its kind of true. Its a memoir, but do you have like any like really policy recommendations . Its like, you know, what should the government actually do or . Should watch out or some other institution do to fix its like, you know, fatherlessness or having two parents or anything like that. Mm hmm. Yeah. So i brought up smoking earlier and that was and that was a Success Story of changing behavior on a mass scale. And i remember, you know, when i was a kid i dont know if these still exist. Probably not as much, but like every time, every third commercial, it was like an anti smoking. There were billboards everywhere turned the the culture and society at large. You were reminding you that this was a very thing to do. And then know you signs would say, you know, x, x number of people die each year from lung cancer, secondhand smoke, all this stuff. And i wonder if there could be some kind of like Public Awareness campaign families of, you know, it doesnt necessarily have to be something. It doesnt have to focus on like the negative of, oh, like if a kid is raised by a single parent home, theyre x percent more likely to go to prison. I could imagine that would that would upset a lot of people. But you could even have, though, the reverse of that if if a kid is raised by a two you know two parents theyre theyre this percent more likely to go graduate from high school and college and to enter the middle class know like a lot of people here probably familiar with the success sequence if that you know i just saw this survey which found that like the vast majority of both democrats and republicans support teachers instructing students on the success sequence, Something Like 70 of both democrats and republicans. So this is not a partizan thing that people, the political aisle think that its important teach kids that there were grants, that if you do these three things, you can avoid poverty graduate high school, obtain full time job and get married before. You have kids and Something Like 98 of people who follow those three steps do not live in poverty. And a bipartisan theres theres bipartisan agreement this for voters i think for the elites, a mismatch. I think republican elites would support Something Like that in democratic elites are more skeptical of it. But for ordinary people i think like this is something that republican could actually sort of dwell on and focus on that actually agrees on this. So you can find to to promote that. Well, we really encourage you all to read robs book. It is it is great and you will definitely not want to put it down so please thank me join me in thanking rob for coming today and book