Foster Care, Family, and Social Class
Rob Henderson was born to a drug-addicted mother and a father he never met, ultimately shuttling between ten different foster homes in California. When he was adopted into a loving family, he hoped that life would finally be stable and safe. Divorce, tragedy, poverty, and violence marked his adolescent and teen years, propelling Henderson to join the military upon completing high school. His greatest achievements — a military career, an undergraduate education from Yale, a PhD from Cambridge — feel like hollow measures of success. He argues that stability at home is more important than external accomplishments, and he illustrates the ways the most privileged among us benefit from a set of social standards that actively harm the most vulnerable. Shermer and Henderson discuss: hindsight bias • genes, environment, luck, contingency • foster care • incarceration rates • marriage, divorce, childhood outcomes • poverty, welfare programs, and social safety nets • the young male syndrome • alcohol, drugs, depression • luxury beliefs of educated elites • wealthy but unstable homes vs. low-income but stable homes • inequality • Henderon's experience in the military, at Yale and Cambridge • the Warrior-Scholar Project. Rob Henderson grew up in foster homes in Los Angeles and the rural town of Red Bluff, California. He joined the US Air Force at the age of seventeen. Once described as "self-made" by the New York Times, Rob subsequently received a BS from Yale University and a PhD in psychology from St. Catharine's College, Cambridge. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and more. His weekly newsletter is sent to more than forty thousand subscribers. Learn more at RobKHenderson.com. His new book is Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class.
17 Feb 20242h 7min
How U.S. Public Health Has Strayed From Its Liberal Roots
The Covid-19 response was a crucible of politics and public health—a volatile combination that produced predictably bad results. As scientific expertise became entangled with political motivations, the public-health establishment found itself mired in political encampment. It was, as Sandro Galea argues, a crisis of liberalism: a retreat from the principles of free speech, open debate, and the pursuit of knowledge through reasoned inquiry that should inform the work of public health. Across fifty essays, Within Reason chronicles how public health became enmeshed in the insidious social trends that accelerated under Covid-19. Galea challenges this intellectual drift towards intolerance and absolutism while showing how similar regressions from reason undermined social progress during earlier eras. Within Reason builds an incisive case for a return to critical, open inquiry as a guiding principle for the future public health we want—and a future we must work to protect. Dr. Sandro Galea is a physician, epidemiologist, author and the Robert A. Knox Professor at Boston University School of Public Health. He previously held academic and leadership positions at Columbia University, the University of Michigan, and the New York Academy of Medicine. He has published more than 1000 scientific journal articles, 75 chapters, and 24 books, and his research has been featured extensively in current periodicals and newspapers. Galea holds a medical degree from the University of Toronto and graduate degrees from Harvard University and Columbia University. Dr. Galea was named one of Time magazine's epidemiology innovators and has been listed as one of the "World's Most Influential Scientific Minds." He is past chair of the board of the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health and past president of the Society for Epidemiologic Research and of the Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Science. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and the American Epidemiological Society. He is the author of The Contagion Next Time and Well: What We Need to Talk About When We Talk About Health. His new book is Within Reason: A Liberal Public Health for an Illiberal Time.
13 Feb 20241h 25min
Against the New Politics of Identity
In Against the New Politics of Identity, philosopher Ronald A. Lindsay offers a sustained criticism of the far-reaching cultural transformation occurring across much of the West by which individuals are defined primarily by their group identity, such as race, ethnicity, gender identity, and sexual orientation. Driven largely by the political Left, this transformation has led to the wholesale grouping of individuals into oppressed and oppressor classes in both theory and practice. He warns that the push for identity politics on the Left predictably elicits a parallel reaction from the Right, including the Right's own version of identity politics in the form of Christian nationalism. As Lindsay makes clear, the symbiotic relationship that has formed between these two political poles risks producing even deeper threats to Enlightenment values and Western democracy. If we are to preserve a liberal democracy in which the rights of individuals are respected, he concludes, the dogmas of identity politics must be challenged and refuted. Against the New Politics of Identity offers a principled path for doing so. Shermer and Lindsay discuss: identity politics: identity or politics? • woke ideology • overt racism vs. systemic racism • liberalism vs. illiberalism • woke progressive leftists motivations? • Critical Race Theory (CRT) • Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) • What is progressive? What is woke? • standpoint epistemology • equality vs. equity • race • class • cancel culture • Christian nationalism. Dr. Ronald Lindsay, a philosopher (PhD, Georgetown University) and lawyer (JD, University of Virginia) is the author of The Necessity of Secularism and Future Bioethics. Although his non-fiction works focus on different topics, two threads unite them: Lindsay's gift for thinking critically about accepted narratives and his strong commitment to individual rights, whether it's the right to assisted dying, the right to religious freedom, or the right of individuals to be judged on their own merit, as opposed to their group identity. In addition to his books, Lindsay has also written numerous philosophical and legal essays, including the entry on Euthanasia in the International Encyclopedia of Ethics. In his spare time, Lindsay plays baseball—baseball, not softball. The good news is he maintains a batting average near .300; the bad news is his fielding average is not much higher. A native of Boston, Ron Lindsay currently lives in Loudoun County, Virginia with his wife, Debra, where their presence is usually tolerated by their cat. His new book is: Against the New Politics of Identity: How the Left's Dogmas on Race and Equity Harm Liberal Democracy and Invigorate Christian Nationalism.
10 Feb 20241h 28min
What Determines Who Succeeds in the NBA?
Former Google data scientist and bestselling author of Everybody Lies Seth Stephens-Davidowitz turns his analytic skills to the NBA. Shermer and Stephens-Davidowitz discuss: why some countries produce so many more NBA players than others • the greatest NBA players adjusted for height • why tall NBA players are worse athletes than short NBA players • How much do NBA coaches matter and what do they do? • In a population of 8 billion today compared to centuries past, where are all the Mozarts, Beethovens, Da Vincis, Newtons, Darwins, etc.? Seth Stephens-Davidowitz is a contributing op-ed writer for the New York Times, a lecturer at The Wharton School, and a former Google data scientist. He received a BA from Stanford and a PhD from Harvard. He is the author of Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are and Don't Trust Your Gut: Using Data to Get What You Really Want in Life.
6 Feb 20241h 23min
Transforming Mental Health: Little Treatments, Big Effects
If you've ever wanted mental health support but haven't been able to get it, you are not alone. In fact, you're part of the more than 50% of adults and more than 75% of young people worldwide with unmet psychological needs. Maybe you've faced months-long waiting lists, or you're not sure if your problems are 'bad enough' to merit treatment? Maybe you tried therapy but stopped due to costs or time constraints? Perhaps you just don't know where to start looking? The fact is, there are infinite reasons why mental health treatment is hard to get. There's an urgent need for new ideas and pathways to help people heal. Little Treatments, Big Effects integrates cutting-edge psychological science, lived experience narratives and practical self-help activities to introduce a new type of therapeutic experience to audiences worldwide: single-session interventions. Its chapters unpack why systemic change in mental healthcare is necessary; the science behind how single-session interventions make it possible; how others have created 'meaningful moments' in their recovery journeys (and how you can, too); and how single-session interventions could transform the mental healthcare system into one that's accessible to all. Shermer and Schleider discuss: her own experience with mental illness and eating disorder • 80% of people meet criteria for a mental illness at some point in their life • the goal of therapy • navigating therapy modalities, access, payments, insurance • What prevents people from getting the mental health help they need? • outcome measures to test different therapies • traditional therapy vs. single-session interventions • growth mindset • Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) • difference between goals and values • how action brings change. Jessica L. Schleider, Ph.D. is an American psychologist, author, and an associate professor of Medical Social Sciences at Northwestern University. She is the lab director of the Lab for Scalable Mental Health. She completed her PhD in Clinical Psychology at Harvard University and her Doctoral Internship in Clinical and Community Psychology at Yale School of Medicine. She has received numerous scientific awards for her work in this area and her work is frequently featured in major media outlets (Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Washington Post). In 2020, she was selected as one of Forbes Magazine's '30 Under 30' in Healthcare. She has developed six evidence-based, single-session mental health programmes, which have served more than 40,000 people to date. She is the author of The Growth Mindset Workbook for Teens and co-editor of the Oxford Guide to Brief and Low Intensity Interventions for Children and Young People. Her new book is Little Treatments, Big Effects: How to Build Meaningful Moments That Can Transform Your Mental Health.
3 Feb 20241h 7min
Overcoming Self-Censorship in the Age of Outrage
As a society we are self-censoring at record rates. Say the wrong thing at the wrong moment to the wrong person and the consequences can be dire. Think that everyone should be treated equally regardless of race? You're a racist. Argue that people should be able to speak freely within the bounds of the law? You're a fascist. When the truth is no defense and nuance is seen as an attack, self-censorship is a rational choice. Yet, when we are too fearful to speak openly and honestly, we deprive ourselves of the ability to build genuine relationships, we yield all cultural and political power to those with opposing views, and we lose our ability to challenge ideas or change minds, even our own. Katherine Brodsky argues that it's time for principled individuals to hit the unmute button and resist the authoritarians among us who name, shame, and punish. Shermer and Brodsky discuss: growing up Jewish in the Soviet Union and Israel • why liberals (or progressives) no longer defend free speech • cancel culture: data and anecdotes and whether it is an imagined moral panic • free speech law vs. free speech norms • solutions to cancel culture • identity politics • witch crazes and virtue signaling • hate speech and slippery slopes • how to stand up to cancel culture. Katherine Brodsky is a journalist and author. She has contributed to publications such as Variety, the Washington Post, WIRED, The Guardian, and many others. Over the years she has interviewed a diverse range of intriguing personalities, including the Dalai Lama.
30 Jan 20242h 11min
One Couple's Vacation Caused 100,000 People to Die
If you could rewind your life to the very beginning and then press play, would everything turn out the same? Or could making an accidental phone call or missing an exit off the highway change not just your life, but history itself? How did one couple's vacation cause 100,000 people to die? Brian Klaas explores how our world really works, driven by strange interactions and apparently random events. Drawing on social science, chaos theory, history, evolutionary biology, and philosophy, he provides a fresh look at why things happen. Brian Klaas is a professor of global politics at University College London. He is a regular contributor for The Washington Post and The Atlantic, host of the award-winning Power Corrupts podcast. His new book is Fluke: Chance, Chaos and Why Everything We Do Matters. You can find him at BrianPKlaas.com and on Twitter @brianklaas.
27 Jan 20241h 54min
Head of TED Talks Shares a New Vision of Generosity
As head of TED, Chris Anderson has had a ringside view of the world's boldest thinkers sharing their most uplifting ideas. Inspired by them, he believes that it's within our grasp to turn outrage back into optimism. It all comes down to reimagining one of the most fundamental human virtues: generosity. What if generosity could become infectious generosity? Chris offers a playbook for how to embark on our own generous acts—whether gifts of money, time, talent, connection, or kindness—and to prime them, thanks to the Internet, to have self-replicating, even world-changing, impact. Shermer and Anderson discuss: what makes TED successful • power laws and giving • charging vs. giving away • altruism • being good without God • billionaires • how the average person can participate • public vs. private solutions to social problems • donor fatigue. Chris Anderson has been the curator of TED since 2001. He holds a degree in philosophy, politics and economics from Oxford University. His new book is Infectious Generosity: The Ultimate Idea Worth Spreading.
23 Jan 20241h 18min
