#1204 Rob Henderson On Luxury Beliefs: This Idea Will Change Your Life

Rob Henderson is the author of a brand new book, 'Troubled: A Memoir Of Foster Care, Family, And Social Class.' Rob has pioneered a number of new ideas, such as luxury beliefs, which will make you think much more critically about your life, how society operates, and how you can actually learn from those above, beside, and beneath you in society. We also talk about how these luxury beliefs permeate across all different industries, and different socioeconomic classes. ======================= Pomp writes a daily letter to over 235,000+ investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy-to-understand language while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://pomp.substack.com/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Many of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, which is my effort to find the most interesting people in the world and sit with them for hours while I ask questions in an effort to learn. We have no advertisers on this podcast, so it would mean the world to me if you would subscribe to the show on your favorite audio platform, watch episodes on YouTube, and tell your friends and family about the podcast. My goal is to help millions learn from the world's most interesting people. So let's get into today's episode. Rob Henderson is the author of a brand new book, Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class. Rob has pioneered a number of different new ideas, things like luxury beliefs, which

• 0:44Anthony Pompliano?

  will make you think much more critically about your life, how society operates, and how you actually may be able to learn from those that are above, beside, and beneath you in society. I really enjoy talking to Rob, and I think you'll take a lot away from this conversation. We not only got into our own personal lives, but also about how some of these luxury beliefs permeate across all different industries and different socioeconomic classes. Here is my conversation with Rob Henderson.

• 1:13Speaker 01

  The action's on the court, and as the official beer sponsor of the NBA, Michelob Ultra is getting fans closer to the game with a chance to win courtside seats, merch, and more. Visit michelobultra.com/courtside to enter. Michelob Ultra Courtside, 26 to 27. No purchase necessary. Open to U.S. residents, 21+. Begins on October 1st, 2026, and ends on June 30th, 2027. Multiple entry periods. See official rules at michelobultra.com/courtside for free entry, entry deadlines, prizes, and details.

• 1:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only. All right, guys. Bang, bang. I've got Rob here with me. Rob, I thought a great place to start this conversation is this idea of luxury beliefs. You're the first person that I've heard ever bring this up, and it's one of those ideas that, once you see it, you can't unsee it. You start to kind of take this framework and start to map it to all these different things in society. But describe first, like, what is a luxury belief?

• 2:24Speaker 02

  Right. Luxury beliefs I define as ideas and opinions that confer status on the upper class while often inflicting costs on the lower classes. And there are multiple components to this concept, this framework.

• 2:38Speaker 02

  We can, I'll sort of give a summary of the idea and the pieces, and then, you know, we jump into questions. And so essentially, you know, historically, the upper strata of society have always found ways to stand out, to distinguish themselves. My claim is that historically, it's been done through luxury goods, through material goods, through the clothing people would wear, the sort of accoutrements they would display, the possessions that they owned. But over time, material goods have become a noisier signal of one's social position. So 100 years ago, you could look at someone and immediately tell whether they were rich or poor, just by their appearance and what they were wearing, and where they lived and so forth. Whereas today, it's less true. I'm not saying like material goods are no longer a reliable indicator of status, just noisier.

• 3:23Speaker 02

  However, the upper class today, the cultural elites, the elites of society, still want to display their prominence. And so the new way that they do this is through their luxury beliefs, through fashionable ideas, through trends, through holding peculiar and, you know, interesting and sometimes bizarre ideas that are at odds with conventional opinion. And this is sort of an expression of what the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu described as cultural capital. So luxury beliefs are a sort of expression of cultural capital. You can only obtain these ideas if you attend an expensive university, you read the right periodicals, you hang out with the right social circle, the right crowd, read the right books.

• 4:03Speaker 02

  And all of the luxury beliefs, these opinions that you express, are indicators of where you stand in society. And we can get into specific examples.

• 4:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, what's an example of like a luxury belief that most people would recognize?

• 4:15Speaker 02

  Well, the most probably recent luxury belief that I think a lot of people will remember is the defund the police movement. So this gained a lot of popularity in 2020. At one point, it was abolish the police, then it sort of shifted to defund the police. And so we've sort of seen some of the consequences of this. So defund the police became fashionable among cultural elites in 2020. And so this shifted attitudes around law enforcement and policing. Some of it was implemented in actual policy in certain states and certain regions. And various forms of crime have increased since then as a result. But there was a popular, there was a YouGov survey in 2020, which asked a representative

• 4:57Speaker 02

  sample of Americans, you know, do you want to defund the police essentially? And the group that was the most supportive of defunding the police, if you break down by income, the highest income category, they were the most supportive by far of defunding the police relative to the middle and lower income categories. I mean, also relatedly, in, I think this was actually in Minneapolis, white residents of Minneapolis were more supportive of defunding the police than black residents. And so this is an example, defund the police, it sounds interesting, it makes you sound like you sort of have, like you're on the vanguard of cultural trends and, you know, saying like rethink, reimagine law enforcement, suddenly you sound like sophisticated and

• 5:39Speaker 02

  interesting, but those ideas have downstream effects on less fortunate people who don't wield the same level of influence in society. They're the ones who get to pay the cost of those luxury beliefs that garner you status among your peers.

• 5:52Anthony Pompliano?

  So when people watch like, I'll call it like an old school movie or a movie that, you know, kind of about some point in history, I think a lot about like the aristocracy, right? And like these people who were above something that everyone else did, right?

• 6:07Anthony Pompliano?

  And what I think I've learned from you, which is really interesting, is like some of these ideas can morph. They can actually be widely accepted in one portion of, you know, kind of income distribution. And then those people can actually turn on the idea. And I think Hamilton is something that you use as an example. Maybe you can kind of describe like a luxury belief is not just something that is like a static thing. It can actually morph and evolve over time. And the wealthiest people can actually turn on themselves in some weird way.

• 6:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, it's well, it's it's sort of dynamic. I draw an analogy to fashion where once, you know, like a fur coat may become very popular for that season. But once enough people wear it, it sort of loses loses its status, its legitimacy as a sort of a marker of status. So an example given is actually with a Kennedy goose jackets. So when I was an undergrad at Yale, a few years ago, the Kennedy goose jacket was very popular in say like the mid 2010s. And then, once you were able to get them at discount prices and at outlet stores and so on, suddenly, you know, you don't really see that many Kennedy goose jackets on elite college campuses anymore.

• 7:18Speaker 02

  And so the idea is dynamic, the Hamilton idea. I wrote about this in an op ed in the Wall Street Journal a couple of years ago, which was that. So when Hamilton first came out in 2015, tickets were inordinately expensive. Only a select few could could even get tickets to get access to be able to see this show. And the the cultural elites loved it, you know, it was sort of everywhere, everyone was talking about it. And if you had seen Hamilton, this was like a big deal, like, wow, you saw Hamilton, wow. And and I remember this is 2015, I looked up tickets and they were way outside of my my budget as a, you know, a veteran on in college on the GI Bill, just, you know, I wasn't going to be able to get a ticket for that. But then in 2020.

• 8:05Speaker 02

  Suddenly Disney Plus announced that they were going to start airing this or start to stream Hamilton on their platform. And shortly thereafter, suddenly people started to turn on Hamilton and it became unfashionable. The creator started to sort of broadcast the criticisms of his own show and people sort of turned on this. And the reason is because it became too popular, it became too fashionable. Suddenly everyone had access to Hamilton. It couldn't be cool anymore. It could only be cool if it's exclusive and only a certain number of people have access to it. And the same is kind of true with luxury beliefs. Once a belief becomes too popular or too widely held, then it becomes passe and people must move on to the next luxury belief.

• 8:44Anthony Pompliano?

  So when you think about kind of that dynamic nature of it, how much of the change is driven by the rich people versus the non-rich people? Like, is it actually the only people who can change the kind of position of an idea is the, if you will, like tastemaker? Like, you have to be in the luxury belief category to actually be able to say, no, that idea is no longer luxury? Or does it come from the other side of the spectrum?

• 9:10Speaker 02

  Well, I think the luxury beliefs, they have to... So where they originate can vary. Some people have asked me, you know, can luxury beliefs go in the reverse direction where maybe they start with the lower classes and then perhaps like cause harms and how it sort of goes the other way and causes harm to the upper classes? I don't think this is the case because the people who wield the most influence in society are the upper classes. So even if an idea originates among sort of more marginalized groups in society, it's the upper class, the people who wield social influence who get to pick that idea up from them and then amplify it and broadcast it to everyone else. And so, yeah, it can originate with certain groups more than others or it can originate

• 9:55Speaker 02

  anywhere, really. But the people who are responsible for broadcasting and amplifying it are members of the upper class, the affluent.

• 10:01Anthony Pompliano?

  So the affluent and upper class, one of the things I've really wanted to kind of talk through with you is can it also vary from community to community? And what I mean by this is if I go to Greenwich, Connecticut, I'll pick on them, right? And I say to you, hey, who's the affluent people in Greenwich, Connecticut? Everyone has a generalization in their mind, right? It's like a hedge fund manager, right? Who like, you know, probably has too much money for doing too little and they set the culture of that area and their peer groups, et cetera. But if I then take you to, you know, I don't know, maybe the 1980s or 1990s, and I ask you, who is setting the culture for hip hop as it's becoming popular? Those two people don't look alike. They don't make nearly the same amount of money or anything,

• 10:45Anthony Pompliano?

  but in some weird way, you know, what now has become multi-billionaires and very wealthy people from a kind of hip hop community, there was almost this like street culture. And I wonder, is their luxury beliefs, even though it's street culture, even though it's not, you know, the hedge fund community and the super wealthy, can there still be luxury beliefs within kind of these smaller, you know, or kind of maybe not yet affluent communities that are not mirrored by hedge fund manager, et cetera?

• 11:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, yeah, so, so the, there can be the sort of factional elites, different groups, different communities that broadcast the beliefs and hold different kinds of beliefs. That's, yeah, that's an interesting example. I can, I can imagine that, that like if you, within a community, if you hold status within that community, however the status is conferred, maybe it's conferred differently among like, like business moguls or musicians or something versus hedge fund managers. And so within that group, but I think like there's, there's been this sort of convergence among a lot of the elites where, you know, if you work in a creative industry or you're a hedge fund manager, there's been this, this sort of integration among cultural and economic elites where, you know, generally, there's a lot of overlap now.

• 11:54Speaker 02

  But I, I think that, yeah, even among the elites in, say, yeah, hip hop or, or rock or something like that, if you sort of earn your money through promoting values that could hurt those below you within that community, an example is like a glorification of drug use, right? Like if you're a musician and you're talking about how great it is to do drugs and party and so on, if you're, you know, a multimillionaire musician, you know, you can afford whatever potential consequence would result from that. You can afford doctors and rehab and therapy and so on to deal with spiraling drug addiction. But the people within your community who love your music, if they get into the same

• 12:36Speaker 02

  sort of habits and lifestyles as you, they don't have the same sort of safety net. And so I think this is something that like all of us could think about when we start to broadcast ideas, when we have platforms and positions of prominence.

• 12:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Another area where if you take kind of luxury beliefs and you apply it to, you know, quote, "the real world," right, is can it manifest in weird ways? And the example I always jump to is like the opioid crisis. In some way, the opioid crisis is affecting blue collar America, kind of, you know, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, et cetera. On the other hand, it's like white women sitting at home, taking pills in the morning, right, who basically don't have a lot of other things to do. Now, those are two overly generalized kind of groups. They're taking the same exact pill. They're both addicted to it. One starts taking it because they have pain, or they're miserable, or whatever with their

• 13:31Anthony Pompliano?

  day-to-day life, and usually it's money-related, et cetera. The other, though, like, they do share some commonalities. Maybe they actually have some sort of mental pain. Maybe they actually do have some sort of boredom, or whatever. It may not be money-driven, but they're taking that same pill. And like, is there some sort of stratification, or like luxury belief, that's manifesting itself in something like the opioid crisis?

• 13:54Speaker 02

  Potentially, I think the opioid crisis, there are probably multiple moving parts to that, and how luxury beliefs center in. So essentially, I mean, there's been this sort of shift in the culture away from promoting certain kinds of values. And I think part of this is because we're reluctant to talk about values now. A lot of our discussion, when it comes to disparities in social outcomes, or why some people are addicted to opioids and so on, is because of purely sort of financial concerns. And I don't think this is completely true. I mean, I know there's been sort of shifts around the economy and the Rust Belt and so on, which contribute to this. But also, you know, there are other sources of meaning and value in life beyond your job

• 14:39Speaker 02

  or beyond how much money you earn. And we're also seeing among sort of the lower middle and working classes and the people who are lower on the socioeconomic strata, less marriage, more divorce, family formation, a lot of sort of social dysfunction. I mean, I see it all, a lot of this in my own adoptive family as well. I mean, these are sort of working class white people who live in Californian Oregon. And I'm seeing this sort of changes over time where my grandparents, my adoptive grandparents, I mean, they were married for 60 years, you know, never really had any sort of serious domestic issues despite being poorer than my generation or my parents' generation. My grandparents were poor and yet they had very few of these issues.

• 15:24Speaker 02

  And then their children, my uncles and aunts and cousins and so on, like a lot of them actually have issues with opioids, with unemployment, with divorce, with addiction and all these problems despite not having, but despite not being as poor as my grandparents. And a lot of this is just sort of changes in the culture, access to drug use, a lot of these things, right? Like people are earning money from these drugs. People are garnering status for sort of questioning or challenging or undermining values around family formation as well. So all of these things, I think, are contributing to this sort of stratification where if you're an upper class person, you're educated, you've lived in a stable environment your entire life, you sort of learn that, oh, if I, you know, if I get married and sort

• 16:07Speaker 02

  of follow these steps, if I work hard and so on, even if you say otherwise, right? This is the luxury belief idea is that you personally in your private life work very hard, but then privately or publicly, your public opinion is, you know, hard work doesn't matter, it's all luck anyway or whatever, right? You sort of downplay it. So personally, you actually know what you have to do. But if you come from a less educated, more marginalized background, and no one is there to guide you, to tell you to take certain steps to, hey, if you have children, it's probably better to get married first, these kinds of things. Even if you know it, to have it reinforced repeatedly by the people around you, the way that you might in an upper middle-class neighborhood, that can have long-term detrimental consequences. And so this is why I think we see a lot of sort of single parenthood,

• 16:50Speaker 02

  a lot of addiction, and a lot of other social ills in these communities.

• 16:55Anthony Pompliano?

  I've said before that a lot of society's problems, not all, but a lot of them would be drastically improved and/or solved if we just had better parents. Right? And you kind of look around, and there's people in the news every single day that do stuff, and you're kind of just like, where are their parents? Right? And it's much easier to kind of come to that conclusion when it's a young person, right, than, let's say, a 30- or 40-year-old person. But there is this element of values. And so Clayton Christensen is very well-known for The Innovator's Dilemma, but he also wrote this book, How Will You Measure Your Life?

• 17:26Speaker 02

  Great book.

• 17:26Anthony Pompliano?

  And in it, he talks about, you know, there's an entire generation of people who are basically outsourcing the raising of their children. So, again, probably a luxury belief or related, if you have access to money, and you want to put other things in front of spending time with your child. People are like, oh, I would never do that. Well, you may put them in school for certain reasons. You may use in the example of like, you keep them in sports because it keeps them constantly doing things, and it frees up your time to go do something else. You are outsourcing, to some degree, even if a small degree, the raising of your children. And he says, be careful, doesn't say don't do it, but be careful because you are outsourcing the instilment of the values of your child. And so what's fascinating to me is like, this idea of values,

• 18:09Anthony Pompliano?

  I think a lot of people would just say like, oh, there's been a degradation of religion in America. And so if religion goes down, that's really tied to values and kind of those being reinforced. But I don't know if that's necessarily true, one. And then I guess also, are there societies around the world that we could learn from where, whether they have high degree of religion adoption or not, values have stayed, you know, kind of a core part of the culture, even in the modern world with the internet and kind of all the things that Americans have access to. But values still persist and they don't seem to have the same problems that we have here? Or is it an international kind of issue?

• 18:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a good point. To the earlier thing you said about raising kids and outsourcing it, I think like even the like, the values issue is important, but then also, we, I think like it's still a question in terms of how outsourcing kids and having someone else raise them will have not just consequences for what values they hold, but then also sort of their development and self-concept and these kinds of things. A friend of mine, the author, Mary Harrington, had pointed out to me the other day, she and I were talking, and she suggested that a lot of the kind of concerns around safety in our culture is due to this sort of hiring of nannies and other people and so on. And her reasoning is basically that if you, if you're a parent and you're, and I know

• 19:27Speaker 02

  you have a young child, you know, and you're walking with your child and they're playing on the monkey bars, they're doing something a little bit dangerous or reckless, you're there to monitor them and you'll maybe allow them to take a little bit of risk. But if you're a babysitter or a nanny or maid, you're not going to let the kid ever do anything dangerous because you're liable for it, right? You're going to be making sure they never do anything dangerous ever. And if the kid goes up that way, you know, anytime they might do something a bit reckless and the nanny immediately interferes, then suddenly concerns about safety take on greater import, right? And so this is, I think, something that, at least for me, I found that to be intriguing.

• 19:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Is basically there's a coddling of the individual, not necessarily just a society thing, it's because the direct like manager of the child essentially is covering their ass.

• 20:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. Which is, it's rational and reasonable from the nanny's perspective to not let the kid do anything dangerous. But long-term, if a kid grows up that way, this may have unforeseen consequences and maybe we're seeing some of those consequences now among sort of upper-middle-class young people. And so the question of values, yeah, it's, I mean, it's, I think those two things kind of, they correlate, but I think they can be separate. I mean, they're like the secularization of Western societies. I think we can see that maybe there was there was a morality tied to religion in some way. But then there are other cultures in in Asia, for example, like in Singapore, they they seem to have pretty strong values despite not being especially religious.

• 20:48Speaker 02

  Japan as well, I think some of the Asian cultures, there may be maybe a sort of a counterpoint that you don't necessarily have to have strong religion in order to have good social values. But those are very different cultures than than the West, right? I mean, it's it's it's possible that some cultures actually need religion more than others in order to to flourish. And for people who are less fortunate to have those cultural guardrails around them. So so, yeah, I don't I don't necessarily think religion is is required, but if it's if we're not going to have it, it would be, I think, important. One one message I, you know, I I would have with these luxury beliefs is that if you

• 21:22Speaker 02

  wield any kind of influence in society to to really consider like what what consequences those your your broadcasting of certain beliefs and opinions and ideas will have. And to consider like, you know, maybe maybe beyond.

• 21:39Speaker 02

  A lot of a lot of elites, they want to have conversations around money and the way that they think is best to help marginalized and poor and so on, the dispossessed. Is to just give them more money to redistribute money. I'm not opposed to economic or financial assistance. I think that and it's by and large, it's actually a good thing, but there are other ways to lead a flourishing life. In addition to promoting sort of economic assistance to also sort of share values that you know can reliably lead to a flourishing life as well. Mentioned some of them earlier, things like like hard work, things like marriage, things like, you know, putting others' needs before your own. A lot of the values that a lot of upper and upper middle class people practice in their everyday lives, they they're just very reluctant to say publicly.

• 22:25Speaker 02

  And often, and sometimes I don't believe that, I mean, you and I talked earlier that if you if sometimes if you say these things publicly, people will criticize you for them. I I think we should all maybe develop, you know, a thick enough skin to just say, you know, I get I get attacked on social media for some things. But I think it's important that these are things that need to be understood and sort of reinforced repeatedly in the culture. How do we do that?

• 22:46Speaker 02

  Well, I think, yeah, firstly, a recognition of it, right? That it is important for us to broadcast values and habits that we know can can help. Not always, not in every case. I'm, you know, I'm not saying like, you know, if everybody works hard, then everyone's gonna be a millionaire. That's not how this, you know, but on average, right? Like, any given person. And you can see this with how people communicate with their own children, with their own families, right? I, um, uh, there's, there's a story that I've written about before, about a friend of mine from high school. He, uh, he was failing one of his classes. So he, he was on track to be recruited to play football for a state school in California. And he was failing a class. He had to attend a makeup class for two weeks and get a B.

• 23:31Speaker 02

  That's all he needed, just attend this class, get a B, and you could be on your, on your, on your way to college. He attended for three days and then bailed and then, you know, went and screwed around with me and all of our other friends and just decided not to go. He had, like, the rest of me and my friends growing very little supervision at home. I told this story to one of my classmates at Cambridge, and, uh, and her response was interesting to me. She, she, she said like, "Well, if that's like what your friend wanted to do and that's who he was, like, maybe it's okay. Like, maybe he shouldn't have, you know, maybe he wasn't, like, destined to go to college. Maybe that's not, college wasn't for him." And I said, "Okay, if that was your son, what would you have done?" And she said, "Oh, I would make sure that he goes to class and I would threaten to kill him if he didn't."

• 24:13Speaker 02

  And, uh, and I said, "Okay, so it's okay for my friends and I to ruin our futures, but for your kids, it's definitely not, right? Like, there's this sort of inconsistent standards in terms of what people are willing to promote when it comes to their own loved ones. They want them to do the things that will lead to success. But when it comes to others, they adopt this sort of nonjudgmental, impartial, "Oh, it's okay, you know, if that's who you are, I don't wanna, you know, I don't wanna..." But you inevitably, like, that, that in itself is a value judgment. Nonjudgmentalism is like, "I'm gonna step back and not help, um, or not promote certain values." That in itself is a judgment. So we don't get to decide not to have any kind of influence on society. Either way, there's going to be an effect on, on the rest of society. So...

• 24:55Speaker 02

  Having this recognition and being willing to accept some of the slings and arrows for promoting these views, I think that would be step one.

• 25:04Anthony Pompliano?

  When you see that happening, right? So I've got a young daughter, too young for me to have to really worry about some of those types of things, but also it's fascinating to me of, hey, let somebody kind of figure their way out versus there is a very direct path, right? And if you want to do X, this is you do A, B, and C. In some professions, it's very clear. You want to be a doctor, got to go to college, right? Like, there's not really a path unless you go to college. But then there's other things, you know, if you want to be, go to the other end of the stream, a painter, there's a whole bunch of different ways that you could do, including like, let's go get some paint. You just do whatever you want in your basement, right? And then you can figure it out from there. And so when you kind of look at society in general, I do wonder how much of, hey, let

• 25:48Anthony Pompliano?

  people kind of figure it out versus like the prescription of, okay, we need more doctors. So we need to go and almost look at it as a math problem. We need, you know, 2,000 doctors to graduate this year. That means that we need 10,000 people to start medical school, or you know, whatever the numbers are. And that means that we need, you know, 50,000 of them to be interested as freshmen in high school and like, almost look at it as like these pipelines. And I know companies think of it in some cases like this, especially big companies that are worried about talent, you know, Amazons and people like that. But I do wonder how much of society would benefit from like, the schools, right? And I always think about the classic example of the like, career development person or

• 26:29Anthony Pompliano?

  like the college counselor type person, where I have friends who are like, oh, I went in and they were like, yeah, you should go to community college. And it's like, they're basically taking a student and they're just slotting them into like, you're definitely going to community college. And someone along the way was like, hey, man, you can go to a four-year university or like, you can do this or this, and like, showed them possibility rather than just like, kind of the deterministic path of a college counselor.

• 26:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 26:55Anthony Pompliano?

  And so like, man, how important is that person's role, right? But also like what they're saying to these kids and how much it can really kind of influence what they end up becoming in their life.

• 27:06Speaker 01

  The action's on the court and as the official beer sponsor of the NBA, Michelob Ultra is getting fans closer to the game with a chance to win courtside seats, merch and more. Visit michelobultra.com/courtside to enter. Michelob Ultra Courtside 26 to 27. No purchase necessary. Open to US residents 21+ Begins on October 1st, 2026 and ends on June 30th, 2027. Multiple entry periods. See official rules at michelobultra.com/courtside for free entry, entry deadlines, prizes and details.

• 27:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, no, I, I think that having, having mentors, having people who can sort of spot potential and, and to promote it and cultivate it and, and, and also just like sometimes kids aren't even aware that they have it. I mean, when I was in school, a lot of teachers would, would sort of point it out to me. And I think in the moment, I, I resisted it and wouldn't take it seriously, but it would remain in my mind. Like it did sort of change my self-concept and my image of myself after a while. But I think like those two things, like having, having mentors, having, you know, guidance counselors, teachers, other, other adults along the way pointed out that's important. But then also like the family issue is important too, because at least for me and a lot of my friends, um, like it was like we, we sort

• 28:16Speaker 02

  of, because we were having the, the, the teachers and people around us recognize this, um, because our home lives were so chaotic, it was just not a priority for us to do well in life. So for, okay, give an example. So I, I did really well in middle school. Um, and I got placed into some, some higher level courses in high school and I was placed into chemistry and things were suddenly like, there was a reversal and things were going very badly in my life and my family. And my grades plummeted and chemistry was actually like a pretty challenging course where I would actually have to pay attention if I wanted to pass it. And upon discovering this, I was like, I am not staying in this class anymore. I go to my counselor and I say, hey, I want to transfer out into nutritional

• 28:59Speaker 02

  science, which was like the, this is like the dumb kid class. Like, how do I get into that class?

• 29:03Anthony Pompliano?

  I bet in that one.

• 29:06Speaker 02

  And, uh, and I was like, ah, this chemistry thing is just too difficult. He's like, and, and this was, so the guidance counselor was like, hey, like you're on track to go to college. Like you should stay in chemistry and just like put in the effort like don't do this. And I was like, hey, man, I'm taking nutritional science. I don't want to stay in this class. This is hard. And he's like, okay, take this form, you know, your parents have to sign it and come back and we'll get you transferred to the other class. I go home, I forged my mom's signature, go back and say like, get me into nutritional science like. And that was a case of me sort of thwarting my own potential that I knew was was there on some level, but because of that family piece, I just wasn't ready to to pursue that path and and and sort of take myself seriously enough to do it.

• 29:47Speaker 02

  And so there's a lot here going on. And again, this isn't to say that that mentorship and guidance isn't important and and having teachers and and people recognize it isn't important. That was important for me. It just took a while for it to finally click. You know what I mean? So yeah, just just a lot going on with how to how to shape a young person's trajectory.

• 30:03Anthony Pompliano?

  It's funny you say this because there's one, there's a couple of moments, but one specific one I can think of in my life where I still to this day don't know if it was good mentorship or bad mentorship, which is like a very interesting thing, right? So when I was a freshman in college,

• 30:18Anthony Pompliano?

  you get there, I'm playing football, there's all these older guys, right? And they kind of, they don't want to like be too overbearing, but they also are kind of trying to guide you. Hey, man, like that class is hard. This one's not, you know, whatever. And so they all were like, like across the board, intro to Bible, gotta take it, right? Okay, why? They're like, trust me. And then you're like, well, explain why. And they're like, well, you see the teacher? She's the advisor to the football team. Oh, got it. Okay. Nicest lady in the world, right? Been teaching this class for a long time. So I go for the first day and she would have everyone stand. The classroom's only thirty five people, forty people, right? And so she would have everyone stand up, say your name, say, you know, what you did on campus or something and like say something interesting about yourself, whatever like the the prompt was.

• 31:02Anthony Pompliano?

  And so I kid you not, let's say the room was thirty five, forty people, half, fifty percent. She starts in the front left corner of the classroom. First guy stands up, I'm so and so, whatever, I play football. Second person, I'm so and so, I play football. Go around the room, up and down the aisles, half of the people are on the football team. And I remember being like, this is awesome. All my teammates are in here, we're having a blast, like all this stuff. Now, it turns out that actually the class was super interesting. She was a fantastic teacher. It was basically guaranteed A, right? So like, what they were really kind of giving the mentorship around was like, hey, this is an easy A. Go take this class. She'll be very sympathetic to football players, all this stuff. That was true, but also it ended up being something that was like so outside of like what you would expect to get in a college classroom, that it was like intellectually stimulating.

• 31:47Anthony Pompliano?

  And actually what I noticed was like me and a bunch of other people who probably didn't pay attention in a lot of other classes, we were paying attention, right? So like, that was like a weird win. And I always go back and I'm like, did that person give me good mentorship because they guided me to kind of an easy grade, like all stuff? Or did they actually like screw me because what they should have told me was like, go take this really hard class where you're actually going to learn something that's applied to like your professional career later on? And it kind of depends on like which way you look at it, right? And so I tend to think that sometimes advice seems really good at one point in your life. You look back like, hey, that was bad advice because I'm trying to optimize for something else now. And vice versa, you think something's really bad advice at the time. You know, for example, you're like, this guy wants me to stay in this class, you know, whatever, but no, I really want to get into nutrition science. And now you might look back and you're like, I thought that was bad advice then, like, maybe

• 32:32Anthony Pompliano?

  that was like the best advice he could have given me at the time, right?

• 32:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think it's hard because when people give advice, often they're giving advice that they would give to themselves, or they're giving advice that, that on average is the right advice because, you know, a guidance counselor can't like take the time to like get to know every single person and figure out like what, what they're good at and what their trajectories are. But like in that moment, like if I was in that guidance counselor's position, I would have done the same thing. I'd have been like, hey, like this is a smart kid trying to like take a class beneath his ability. What are you doing? But yeah, and for me, it kind of worked out, right? Like everything did end up, you know, being okay in the end. But yeah, it's, it's the whole advice giving game. It's, it's tricky, right? Like how to know which advice to give which person. And then like when you're in a position where you're sort of giving advice to lots of people.

• 33:16Speaker 02

  And you don't necessarily know like how would how each person would implement it in their individual circumstances. So yeah, yeah, you don't always know. You don't always know.

• 33:24Anthony Pompliano?

  I also think in school specifically, there's something interesting when you look at, let's say, high schools as an example. Some high schools will brag about how many of their students got into college. And other schools will brag about how good their school is. And it's like a very weird thing, right? Because like in some way, if you want to brag about on like your homepage, 96% of our kids get into college. That a lot of that school is going to be focused on getting kids into college, right? If instead you're almost like patting yourself on the back and like, we're really good at teaching kids, but there's no like measurement of it. How much of the school is focused on getting them into college versus some other thing that they're optimizing for?

• 34:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a is that is that good good heart's law about like anything you optimize for ceases to become a good metric? Or something along those lines, right? I think, yeah, there's there's there's some some truth to that. And yeah, like on the one hand, you want you want objective metrics, right? Like, yeah, like you said, like, oh, we're good at teaching kids. Well, how do I know? Like, prove it. And then they give you a number, they give you a figure. And then suddenly that becomes the thing that they're they're optimizing for rather than teaching kids well. So yeah, I think that that can be tricky, too, like how to how to balance those two things. That's sort of that holistic approach of like ensuring they're learning, but they're not optimizing for the wrong thing. Or or getting people to to sort of hack those those numbers, which a lot of these a lot of these elite universities do this.

• 34:43Speaker 02

  Like, I remember when I when I applied for college and I saw on the homepage, it was something like 98% of our students graduate. Right? 98% graduation rate. And I was like, this is unreal, like, you know, because I'd gone to night classes at a community college before. Like, I was, you know, just I just knew that there's a lot of dropouts and a lot of like, you know, a lot of other colleges. And so when I saw 90%, I go, this is why. And then I get there, you know, get to Yale for undergrad. And I learned that like, the reason why it's 98% is because no one is allowed to fail, basically. Like, if you if you actually don't like pass it, if you don't do any of the assignments, like, the professors will find a way to like get you to make it up because it's it's a huge hassle for them to fail a student. I'm like, wait a minute.

• 35:25Speaker 02

  So like you get a degree from here, but it's kind of like you like they, they, they rig the system so that you can graduate. And that's like, that's not a good, like that number on the website obscures a lot of information.

• 35:36Anthony Pompliano?

  How much of an elite university is the selection process ends up determining the elite, you know, element of the school versus the actual, um, you know, kind of experience or, or the curriculum. Cause I, I didn't go to an Ivy League school, but I went to a school, most people I think would consider is pretty good. Bucknell University and same exact experience. Like I think you can get an economics degree, it'd take like six economics classes. Right. And you're like, hey man, we're here for like four years. You know, like, like I don't want to say it was easy because I didn't do well to begin with, right? Uh, and kind of learned how to do college later in, in, uh, my time there. But it was very much this weird thing of like, it's so hard to get into these schools. And then once you're kind of there, it's unclear. Is it like the system is set up that way? Is it just like you become part of the herd because everyone else is doing it.

• 36:21Anthony Pompliano?

  So you start to like mimic their behaviors and like that helps you get through. I, I don't know. What do you think?

• 36:25Speaker 02

  I think there's a, like, all of those things are probably true. I mean, they're really, um, I remember the, like, one of the first professors I ever met, uh, when I, when I transferred in, they, they, you know, he told me, um, yeah, it's really hard to get in and then it's really easy to graduate. And, uh, like, huh. And so, and I've heard other people basically suggest that it's not the degree that matters. It's the admissions letter. Like that's actually what, what is important for, for sort of indicating someone's, uh, uh, underlying talent or ability. And so then the process of, of education, yeah, I think like networking, sort of learning, um, you know, a, a, a lot of the, the sort of the decorum and the behavior and like how to, how to sort of be around these kinds of people going to job fairs and sort of learning what, what, what possibilities are before you.

• 37:10Speaker 02

  I think all of that stuff is important, but in terms of like actual, like academic learning, I don't think there's a lot of that going on. And a lot of that sort of washes out too. I mean, there's been some interesting studies on, on education where, you know, you take, you take freshmen and then you test, you know, you test them on some material when they're freshmen, test them on the same material when they're seniors. And oftentimes there's not, there's not a lot of, not a lot of learning going on. So I think a lot of those soft skills may, may be involved, but. But those are sort of inadvertent, right? Like, that's not ostensibly what colleges force, not to teach you those soft skills, but those are arguably the only real benefits you you obtain in social connections.

• 37:45Anthony Pompliano?

  You were in the military first and then went to college.

• 37:48Speaker 02

  Right.

• 37:48Anthony Pompliano?

  So just by that alone, you had to be older than most of the people that you were going to class with as an undergraduate. What was that experience like? And was that a thing that helped you? Or was that maybe something that you felt like was a setback?

• 38:00Speaker 02

  It's a good question. I probably, well, it probably helped me in that when I was seventeen or eighteen, I wasn't, I wasn't ready or disciplined enough to have been a good student on my own. Military taught me, basically, like, how to be self-disciplined, how to stick to good habits, how to, I mean, how to be punctual. I mean, I was such a mess when I was a teenager, man. And so, you know, having that structure around me and sort of inculcated within me, by the time I got to college when I was twenty-five, and I was, I was, you know, technically, I was seven years older officially, but I felt like I was ten-plus years older because, like, the military ages you. And it is a different kind of life where you're actually like a full-fledged adult, right?

• 38:43Speaker 02

  And now you're with eighteen-year-olds who are kind of like, like, a residential campus is basically like, like, like, high school for another four years. And so they really seemed so young to me, like, the ways they thought about the world. And plus, there were all these sort of cultural and class differences as well between me and them. So initially, I did my best to sort of fit in and to try to, I don't know if "fit in" is the right word, but like, try to try to, like, bridge divides and try to, like, take an interest and make friends and so on. And it worked initially, but then, yeah, the, a lot of the sort of the, the, the class and cultural divides became so apparent, especially like, you know, once I learned about, like, how much sort of activism and how much, you know, at that point, cancel culture didn't yet exist, but it was starting.

• 39:26Speaker 02

  And I was seeing students trying to get professors fired, trying to ostracize students, trying to pressure the president and the administration to bend to this and that demand. And seeing students claim that, you know, they, they were in danger or that words were violence or harmful, when I had Spent, you know, my early life, living in like, poor and working-class communities. I lived in foster homes, I was in the military, and now I'm in one of the like, most, probably the safest and cleanest and nicest places I'd ever been. And now I'm seeing the children of millionaires say they felt unsafe at this, you know, fancy rich college, and I'm like, what is happening here?

• 40:06Speaker 02

  And so that like, that kind of, um, you know, that, that was, it was exasperating to see all of that, and that was like, my introduction to what that was like, and that's why I've, you know, this sort of, all of these experiences informed this luxury beliefs idea of like, this is where it all came from.

• 40:24Anthony Pompliano?

  This is fascinating to me, because, um, take, random student says that they feel unsafe. Do you believe that they actually thought they were unsafe? And, and the reason why I ask that is like, how much of it is, if you've never been exposed to any of those other situations, like, this actually may be the most unsafe thing that you've ever done, but going back to the idea of like, the nanny is constantly coddling you, right? Like, living on your own is unsafe, right? Like, you've never had to experience anything in the world, now all of a sudden, somebody says something mean to you, like, it's literally, they might as well shoot you, like, it's the worst thing that ever happened to you. Or do you think it's just complete bullshit?

• 41:01Speaker 02

  I think it's, it's, it's both. I think that there are, I think there are true believers who like legitimately feel some kind of anxiety or panic when they're challenged on their views, or when they hear something that they disagree with. It really feels like an existential crisis to them that someone could challenge that. Um, and then I think there are a lot of others who are sort of cynical, they're duplicitous, like, they understand that-

• 41:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Play in the game.

• 41:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, they know that if they use certain buzzwords, that their, their odds of gaining some kind of advantage increase. And I would say like, those, that's probably like, the numerical minority, maybe 20, 30% of people think that way. I would think that the vast majority, like, when they say they feel unsafe, they like, they literally feel like, oh, like, I feel physically uncomfortable, and they equate that with a sense of danger. Maybe because they've never experienced any kind of hardship before. I mean, I think even things like, like, like, um, physical soreness or injury. I mean, interestingly, a lot of the people that I got along with were like, well, other, other veterans or like athletes or people who had summer jobs. You know, these like students who had those kinds of experiences were like, they were physical in some way before they spent,

• 42:08Speaker 02

  you know, now, now they're on a campus and they're spending a lot of time in a classroom. Someone who like understands like that physical part of life that like actually pain and suffering and danger like, you know, it's, it's an actual like physical and body thing. There's a difference between that and, you know, hearing someone insult you or say something rude or, or impolite or inconsiderate or, or, or even offensive, right? Like, there's a difference between, between those things. And a lot of these students, a lot of these, a lot of graduates of these places, like, they never really learn, even, even small things like, like driving. I realize like, like, there's, there's like recent studies showing that like a lot of young people don't want to drive anymore. And I think like, there's this, there's this kind of like, this fear of like being unsafe, being in a, in a, in a position where they could potentially be in danger.

• 42:53Speaker 02

  Not just like physically, like, oh, another car could hit you, but like the feeling of driving is like, it feels, you know, like, like, uh, you could potentially be at risk. And so I saw this with like a lot of these students, right? Like you go, you, you know, they get their license, maybe when they're 17 years old or something. They go to college, then they take Ubers and they've never actually, they've never even had to drive, which was like, this is like a weird thing, but like, this is something that I noticed, like I picked up on because like in the military, like I was driving, you get it, you have to to get to work, to commute and so on. And then I get to college, like, these kids don't know how to, like, they have a license, but they don't know how to drive. They're scared of driving, you know, like I rented some car, I rented a car with some friends and like, like, can you drive, Rob? Cause like, I don't know, like, why don't you drive? Like, I was, it was amusing for me to like, watch them drive because I'm like, you're an adult and you don't know how to drive a car. Like, what's wrong with you?

• 43:39Speaker 02

  So, yeah, this is, um, yeah, the, the, the standards are just, you know, different depending on, on like how fast you grow up, you know?

• 43:46Anthony Pompliano?

  What is, uh, what's fascinating about what you're describing is, uh, I was in college, then I deployed and I came back to college. And I might as well have been two different people, right? Because of a lot of these experiences. And, um, if I had to point to one thing, it was like, The people in college who have never had some of these other experiences, like college is the bubble, it is the world, right? Of like, everything that exists in my life is like on this campus or like within, you know, two miles of it. What parties, the people, like all this stuff. Maybe I heard about something on the internet that happened somewhere else, but like, that's like basically might as well be in a, you know, a different continent, right? Everything about their life is like insular in that college campus.

• 44:29Anthony Pompliano?

  The second that anyone has like real life experience and they go to college campus, like these people are fucking insane. Like you're looking, you feel like almost like you're like staring into a snow globe, right?

• 44:39Speaker 02

  That's great.

• 44:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Like you kind of like got outside, right? And now you're like looking in and you're like, by the way, like I get how it works inside the snow globe.

• 44:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:47Anthony Pompliano?

  And like, yeah, I can get in there and like, I can pretend to walk down the street, you know, I can pretend to sit in the classroom. Sure, I'll play along.

• 44:53Speaker 02

  Right.

• 44:53Anthony Pompliano?

  But you realize like there is something outside of the snow globe.

• 44:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:56Anthony Pompliano?

  And I've always thought that like,

• 45:00Speaker 01

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• 45:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Man, how impactful would it be just, well, there was two months before people went to a college or whatever. You don't have to send them around the world.

• 45:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:38Anthony Pompliano?

  But like just some other experience outside of just like classroom from K through 12 that you could give them. So they realize like you are in a snow globe.

• 45:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? And like, how much would that change the college experience? Cause it actually probably, they would learn more. They'd probably take it more seriously. Like there's all these things that they would get from it. And you don't have to do anything other than just like, put them in a different environment for some short period of time. Let them see something else and then put them right back. And like, could you, I don't know, if I told you that increased test scores by, you know, 10% or they got, you know, better jobs at the end or whatever, people would rush to do it. We just don't think of it that way.

• 46:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. I think, yeah, well, well, having those experiences, yeah, if it's, especially if there's a bit of suffering and a bit of struggle and a bit of sort of problem solving involved, I think that can go, yeah, that can go a long way. Instead of, you know, like a lot of, a lot of, you know, they'll, they'll take like a gap year, but then they'll travel to Paris or something, you know, like, that's not like a travel to, you know,

• 46:33Anthony Pompliano?

  To a different snow globe.

• 46:34Speaker 02

  Right. They feel like they're well traveled because they've gone to other, you know, rich countries in, in expensive cities, you know, now they feel like they're sort of worldly or sophisticated, but, you know, instead, it might be worth going to like a developing country, somewhere more impoverished, or even within your own country to find, find a place and just, you know, get a summer job, working minimum wage and like renting your own apartment and just living that life for a little while, just to see what it's like before you go on to, you know, go on to, to the bubble. So, yeah, I think that could, that could go a long way. You know, a lot of people talk about national service. I don't, I don't necessarily think that's feasible, you know, whether, whether it's military or like Peace Corps or something else like, I think it would be nice in an ideal world. I think practically it would be very difficult to implement, but, you know, in, in,

• 47:17Speaker 02

  what, what, what young people could do, you know, when they're 18 is to just sort of on their own decide, like, before I go off to college, I'll take a gap year and do something.

• 47:25Anthony Pompliano?

  I have a friend who thinks that we should send every high school senior for a week to pick up trash in their local town.

• 47:32Speaker 02

  That would be great. Yeah.

• 47:33Anthony Pompliano?

  And I'm asking why? He was like, forget like all the hardship and all stuff. He's like, how many high school seniors have walked around their own town?

• 47:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? Like in today's day and age, like they sit in a room somewhere and they press a button and shit shows up, right? Packages, food, cars, like, like literally, he's like, how many of them could even tell you the names of the streets from memory of their own town? And I'm like, man, that's great.

• 47:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:56Anthony Pompliano?

  And then, you know, he's like, and then pick up trash. Cause like, well, if you're gonna walk the streets, you might as well like do something. And so it's fascinating to me. Like, that's such like a stupid idea.

• 48:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:05Anthony Pompliano?

  But like, yeah, actually, I bet you most high school seniors probably have not walked around.

• 48:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Miles of their local town and could name the streets.

• 48:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think, yeah, that's, that's, yeah, that's interesting that this, this is kind of a new phenomenon that like now they don't know the names of the streets or, or even traveled much further than, than, you know, a few blocks within their neighborhood. I think also having that sort of, having those difficult experiences, struggling a little bit and sort of building up those inner reserves of stamina can be important too. I watched this TikTok video a few weeks ago of this kid or this, you know, this young army recruit going around his bunk and, and he was asking these, these other guys, "Hey, you know, hey, Jones, if you could talk to your recruiter right now, what would you tell him?" And all these, you know, these are like 18, 19 year olds and they're like, you know, I'd say fuck you or like, I hate you or why did you do this to me and so on.

• 48:58Speaker 02

  And I'm watching this and I'm like, man, like other, other young people are going to watch this and they're going to think like, oh, the military sucks, blah, blah, blah, I'm not going to join. Or if they were going to join, maybe this is going to change their mind. But the thing is like, in the moment, it does suck. Like I, as I watched this, I have these memories of like, yeah, like I know how they feel. Like that's awful. Like, cause you, your recruiter tells you one thing and then things kind of go differently. They do pushups in the sand. Yeah, exactly. And, but like for the rest of my life, at least, like as I think back and I talked to other guys about this, maybe you've had this experience too, where like you can look back on that, like I went through that and I feel stronger now and I know that like I can handle other challenges now as a result of those experiences. Or like however much life sucks now, at least like, you know, I didn't pull like two all nighters and now they're making me run 10 miles or something like that, right?

• 49:42Speaker 02

  Now I can, now you know what you're capable of, you sort of know where the edges of your, your, your strengths are. But in the moment, right? Like, yes, it sucks. And, and I think we're, we sort of, you know, culture is sort of going in this direction. We're like, no one should ever feel any discomfort. No one should suffer any more than they have to, like no one should do anything they don't have to do and so on. And there's some truth to that, but when you're young, I think it's important to sort of test yourself a little bit. And it's important to, to struggle a bit as well. I mean, you know, thinking about like all the, the difficult things that I did as a kid and like now, like, I'll give you, so, so I had a, I had a teacher in high school and, and I always remember this. Even when I was young, there was something that clicked for me. I had a teacher in high school who worked at a lumber mill before he became a teacher.

• 50:25Speaker 02

  And so I remember one day in class, I was like, I don't know, maybe 15, 16 years old. One of the students asked him, "Is it hard being a teacher?" And he responded like, "No, like, yes, is it hard work being a teacher?" And then the teacher's like, "That's not hard work being a teacher." He's like, "I'm sitting here sipping coffee, reading books with you guys and I never can do it." Building is like, I used to work at a lumber mill is like backbreaking work, you know, 10 hours a day, sunburned, like, you know, sweating, like you couldn't sit down. You couldn't even, he was like telling us, we couldn't even talk like sometimes I talked to, I have the other, the manager would be like, hey, no talking, you know, back to work like that kind of job. Right. And now you're a teacher and no one controls you. He's like, and so like he understood, right? Like how, how fortunate his life is now.

• 51:09Speaker 02

  And so now like, when you, when you, when you go from like that kind of physical labor to like working a more sort of white collar. Sedentary job, you understand like how lucky you are, right?

• 51:20Anthony Pompliano?

  How many of your college friends or like your high school friends or were they very different?

• 51:25Speaker 02

  They're, they're so, so different, man. Um, I just had, just had lunch with a friend of mine from college. So I was, I was just on the west coast, you know, visiting and. Friend of mine, one of my oldest friends, I lived with him my senior year of high school and he caught me up on what was going on with our high school friends and.

• 51:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, it's a talk.

• 51:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. One of those like, hey, what's going on with people? You know, what's going on with so and so? What happened to him? And, uh, and like, and so I had five close friends in high school. There were six of us. None of the six of us, and this is like, this is common where I grew up in California. None of the six of us were raised by both of our birth parents. So it was me raising foster homes. My friend that I met, uh, you know, just recently, he was raised by a single dad who had been married and divorced five times. Uh, another friend raised by a single mom, another friend raised by his grandma because his dad went to prison and his mom was addicted to drugs. Like this is like, you know, this, these were the stories of where I came from. And so my friend is telling me about, uh, you know, all these guys we went to high school with and like, you know, one of them recently went back to prison.

• 52:28Speaker 02

  The other one recently reconnected with his dad. So he'd grown up his whole life, never knowing his dad. Right?

• 52:34Speaker 02

  His dad contacts him out of the blue on Facebook and was like, hey, son, I want to meet with you. They go to meet at a restaurant. And my friend, my old, you know, we haven't talked in a few years, but he's talking to this. He's like, like, where, like, what, I never, you've, you've been gone my whole life. Now you want to like re-enter and be my dad. This is ridiculous. And they talked for a little while and it seemed like it wasn't going in a good direction and then suddenly they're doing cocaine in the bathroom together. Right? Like the dad thought that like the way to get his son back, my friend back into his life was to bust out the drugs because he knew my friend. Like they'd both been, you know, involved with drugs before. And so like those are the, you know, that's, you know what I mean? Like he's like, he's got a crazy story.

• 53:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Like a father, son ripping a line.

• 53:15Speaker 02

  Right. Exactly. They'll be like, literally they're at a diner ripping a line, you know, doing cocaine together. And like, that was the kind of guy this he was, which is kind of unsurprising because he'd not been in my friend's life. And so that's who he was. And yeah, other friends, you know, just sort of menial jobs, you know, like the, this friend that I met had like, like sort of the best life out of the six of us because he joined the air force like I did. And now he's sort of in this holding pattern, you know, taking one class at a time at community college, working part-time at a restaurant. Like his life is like, okay. But um, yeah, that's like, those are, that's sort of, and then my college friends, right? Like completely different. Guys working at hedge funds, guys working in consultancies, tech, like just wildly different.

• 53:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Also ripping lines in the bathroom.

• 53:57Speaker 02

  Right. But that's Adderall, not, not cocaine. And, and so it's just, I get this sense of whiplash and I'm, I'm like, it's still like a, this sort of a conflict for me of like, how to do this about like, how to, how to go back and, and still remain, you know, to keep those ties going with my old friends because I don't want to lose that. But then to have these new, you know, these new friends, this new set of friends who I like too. And, and we get along for different reasons. But yeah, to sort of walk that tightrope.

• 54:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Who are you more comfortable talking with?

• 54:28Speaker 02

  That's a tough question. Um, I'm comfortable talking with each group, more comfortable about different things. So with my high school friends, I'm more comfortable talking about like, Like past mistakes and failures and you know, the stupid things that we did as kids and, and my concerns about some of the things I'm doing now and relationship stuff, family stuff, like personal, personal issues. I'm more comfortable talking with my high school because we go back, right? Like they've known each other since we were kids, right? Well, then they have context too. And with my college friends, I'm more comfortable talking with

• 55:11Speaker 02

  them about like successes and professional stuff and you know, what, what my expectations are for the future, right? Like I, I tiptoe around those things with, with my high school friends because I know there's like, our lives have gone in such completely different directions that it just feels weird to talk about like how well things have gone for me now. But I don't want to bring it up and it doesn't feel right to like, you know, I just, I'd rather not bring that up with them.

• 55:38Anthony Pompliano?

  This is very common, by the way.

• 55:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:40Anthony Pompliano?

  I talk to tons and tons of my friends about, you know, hey, how many of your friends at other points in your life, doesn't have to just be, you know, middle school or high school, could be your college friends, could be maybe at a first job or whatever, but just like, how many of them do you still talk to just about anything? Usually what I find is the more successful that people are, the lower the number ends up being. And I used to think like, man, like that'd be horrible to like lose connection with these people. Like, did you get too good for them? Right? But then what you find if you really start to unpack and ask them is they're like, hey, the things that I talk about with my current friends, I can't talk about with my old friends. They won't understand, they don't get it. They, you know, all these different things. And so I have a friend who, he's

• 56:25Anthony Pompliano?

  still very close with what I'll call his childhood friends. There's a group, I don't know, eight, 10 of them, whatever it is. And he's a very successful tech founder.

• 56:35Anthony Pompliano?

  He cannot talk about anything that he does on a day to day basis because they either one think of that he's like bragging, right? Or two, they're like, oh, the rich guy, right? Like, like, they're giving him shit, but like, there's an undertone of like, hey, you're different than us. And now this guy comes from a different country. So like, all of his friends are still back in his home country. And so like, there's even that, whatever. But I remember like, really kind of unpacking it with him and he's like, dude, he, you know, he went and he met somebody who's like a well-known investor. And he's like, if I tell my friends that I did that, they will literally mock me either relentlessly, or they will stop talking to me because they're going to think I'm an asshole. And he's like, so I have to like, have a new set of friends for this new point of my

• 57:18Anthony Pompliano?

  life that I can have these conversations with where like, they also went and met that person, right? Like, like, it's not, they won't even think twice that I bring it up. And instead, we can strategize about like, maybe what to say in the meeting or what the takeaways were. Completely different, you know, kind of receptivity to the same exact event, just based on where those people are in their life and when you knew that. It's very interesting.

• 57:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, that, that, that fear of, you know, your friends, like, thinking you're too good for them or something. I think that's, I think a lot of people think that what happens in these kind of situations is, you know, a friend becomes very successful, a person becomes very successful and they, they think they're too good for the friends and that's why they lose friends along the way. That's why, you know, as, as you climb up, where you have fewer and fewer of those, those friends from the old neighborhood. Often what happens is actually it's the people from the old neighborhood who sever ties with you because they feel jealous or they feel, you know, self-conscious and adequate something like, because we all came from the same place, but now one of us is doing better and like, it's, it, it, it stings a little bit and you don't necessarily want to remain in contact with that person because it reminds you of that.

• 58:21Speaker 02

  And I understand that, but yeah, I've, I've lost friends, like, I've, I've gone out of my way to try to retain ties and some of these guys just don't want to, you know, they don't, they don't talk. And it's, I don't think it's anything that I, I did to them. It's just they, you know, for, for whatever reason, they've decided to sever ties and I think it's related to that reason of like, being reminded and so.

• 58:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Do you think they knew when you guys were all in high school? Like, could you have picked who would be the like breakout? Versus not.

• 58:45Speaker 02

  So, so the friend that I had just recently met with that I mentioned before, so I asked him, I was like, hey, what was your GPA when you graduated high school? He said it was 1.6 and I said, mine was 2.2. And so like 1.6 to 2. And I was like, did I have the highest GPA out of all those with 2.2? That's a C minus average. And my friend had like a D, D or a D plus. And I'm like, sorry. And I was like, I don't, you know, some of these other friends I don't talk about, like, what was their GPA? But like, probably not, right? Cause like if the, if the variance is 1.6 to 2.2, like, I don't think you're gonna be, oh, 2.2, he's on his way to, you know, he's on his way to great things. I don't think so. You know, I looked at my old report card recently and I, there were somehow my high school offered a psychology class.

• 59:29Speaker 02

  I don't even remember taking it. I don't remember going, but I got a C minus in it. And I'm like, okay, so C minus in high school psychology that I don't remember going to. And now I have a PhD in psychology. And so I don't think that anyone would have, you know, connected those dots. Maybe some of the more observant teachers or like my guidance counselor who kind of saw something in me. Maybe they would have, but I think it, yeah, it would have, you would have had to like spend a lot of time with us to really see it. Because we were all doing the exact same stupid things all the time.

• 1:00:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Why do you think you didn't do well in school?

• 1:00:03Speaker 02

  I mean, there were a lot of reasons. You know, I was living with so many different families, all the foster homes, like lack of supervision in, you know, among, among the adult figures in my life. You know, maybe the kind of, the kinds of friends I made, the kinds of friends I was drawn to, my lack of belief in myself. I didn't really think that I, I was a smart person or I, or it was some, some, some conflict of like, I didn't want to believe I was smart. But then if I was smart, I didn't want to accept that because then I would have had to raise my sights for myself and I didn't want to do that. It was just easier for me to believe that I wasn't capable of it.

• 1:00:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, there was just a lot of like inner turmoil and conflict going on just from all of the, you know, all of the sort of chaos and, and the trials of, of that period of, of my. My early life. And then it wasn't until I was in a stable place in the military where like I had predictability, I had structure, I had mentors that I could count on and rely on. And I had like a, you know, I made friends in the military too, solid group of friends. Who'd had, I mean, that was the military was like the first time that I met people who who like, you know, regularly referenced their mom and dad in the same sentence because they were married and like, hey, I'm gonna visit my mom and dad for Christmas. And I'm like, your, your mom and your dad in the same house like to go like, oh, that's nice. Like I'd meet them. I'd go to meet their families. And I'm like, this,

• 1:01:26Speaker 02

  it started to help me to recognize like, I could have a life like this if I wanted, like, you know, I could, you know, form a family that way.

• 1:01:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, one of the things that I've always realized is I would go to people's houses. Military wise or just through the years in school and stuff. And I would be like, this seems like too perfect. Like, I don't know. It was like this very weird thing where there's one person in particular, I want to say who they are, but I was in middle school and I remember I went and I slept over at his house. And we woke up in the morning and his mom was making crepes. And I had never heard of a fucking crepe in my life. And I remember being like, does your mom do this like every morning? And he was like, well, yeah, like on the weekends. And I remember being like, you guys don't eat like Pop Tarts?

• 1:02:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Like she literally was there like pouring it and like doing all. And I just remember thinking to myself like, this is wild.

• 1:02:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:22Anthony Pompliano?

  And I don't know, like for you, you've had such like this, like tumultuous childhood to then go into that environment. Did it seem almost like too good to be true or like fake or what?

• 1:02:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, now, yeah. I try not to dwell on it, actually.

• 1:02:39Speaker 02

  Now, like in the military, it did seem like, wow, my life is so different now. But I was kind of, I was still relatively young and unsophisticated, you know, 18, 19, 20. I didn't have like a lot of deep thoughts about it, but I did start to think like, yeah, maybe I could build a better life for myself. Maybe I could, yeah, I was sort of this aspiration on this feeling of like, yeah, these like my, you know, I, I had a roommate in the military. We got a house together off base. Once we'd reached a certain, you know, rank and met his family, his parents helped us move furniture into this house that we were renting and like just to see their interactions together. And I remember like feeling this, like it was like this feeling in my chest of like, this is so nice. Like I want this someday for like my family of like helping my son move into his first house or something. And

• 1:03:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, but now, now it's like I say, you know, I sort of like look at how my life is going and and think about where I came from. And it's just, it's, it's almost too overwhelming. And this is one of the reasons why I write is like, that helps me to sort of process it. And sort of to like untangle this like ball of yarn and to like really sort of unpack what I really think about this. And it helps me just sort of like mentally process it all. But yeah, it's, it's, it's difficult.

• 1:03:48Anthony Pompliano?

  So you have a book coming out in February.

• 1:03:50Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:03:50Anthony Pompliano?

  A memoir of foster care family and social class. The book's called Troubled.

• 1:03:57Anthony Pompliano?

  When you sit down to write something like this, how much of it is therapy and like therapeutic, kind of like what you're talking about now versus you have to work to remember things? Like, do you just sit down and you're just like, well, I remember, you know, day one, here we go? Or is it something where like you really have to kind of work to kind of put together a memoir like this?

• 1:04:18Speaker 02

  It is a lot of work, more than I expected. If I, if I had known in advance how hard it was going to be, I probably wouldn't have done it.

• 1:04:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Interesting.

• 1:04:30Speaker 02

  And so I'm glad, I'm actually glad I didn't know because then it forced me to sit down and actually do the thing. And, and I'm happy with how it turned out. But yeah, it was, you know, it's so, so up until the point that I wrote that, most of my writing was like sort of intellectual academic, you know, writing research papers, writing, you know, PhD stuff, you know, this more sort of, from like a pop science, pop psychology perspective, a lot of my popular writing is that way. But then to, to write from an emotional perspective of my early life, like it used like different areas of, I mean, it literally uses different areas of the brain. It like draws on a different source of energy and memory and all of those things. And so it was way harder, actually, like writing my PhD thesis was way easier, actually, than write like the,

• 1:05:15Speaker 02

  I wrote the book first, then I wrote the PhD thesis. The PhD, I mean, it wasn't, it wasn't easy, but it was like, I know what to do. I can sit down. Here's, you know, here's the structure. Here's how it goes. Boom, boom, boom. But with this book, it's like, here's a whole like bunch of things that happened to me. How do I like shape it into something that makes coherent sense? And to sort of like highlight certain things that I think are important, certain themes, like what lessons did I learn from all of this? Did anything important? Can I, can I draw anything important out of this to like help the reader to understand what occurred? Um, and then, yeah, like sort of living in that, that world, you know, talking to my sister, talking to my old friends and trying to like rekindle all of those memories. And I was so immersed in this was during the lockdown when I wrote it 2020, 2021 that um, yeah, I was so immersed in it that, you know, like I would, um, I would like buy

• 1:06:00Speaker 02

  food that I would eat as a kid and try to smell it to like, you know, cause memory and smell are actually, that's the, that's the sense that's most tightly linked to memory is, is smell. And so I would smell the food. I would try to like, I would listen to music from that era. And so I'd be like asleep sometimes so immersed in it, I would, I would be bolt awake at 3am, a memory would occur to me in a dream or just like somehow while I was in that unconscious state and I'd like run to my computer and like type it out before I forgot. Like, man, I haven't thought about that in years. Um, and yeah, it was just, uh, it was a very like difficult and draining experience. And, uh, and I was actually like very, it's funny. So, so during the lockdown, I would like take naps in the middle of the day. And I thought it was because of like, you know, COVID lockdowns, the world shut down. I'm like, you know, it was like depressing, right?

• 1:06:44Speaker 02

  Like, I think everyone got like a little bit, you know, a lot of people got a little bit depressed during that period, how fast things had changed. And so I was taking these naps and I was like, yeah, it's just, you know, lockdown depression, I guess. And then it wasn't until later that I realized like, oh, I wasn't depressed a lot. I was depressed, I was writing this book and thinking about all these things. Like that was so emotionally draining that I was taking naps, which I don't usually do, uh, to sort of deal with it. And so, yeah, a lot of these, um, a lot of these things sort of express themselves physically in unexpected ways.

• 1:07:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, that's fascinating. What do you want people to take away from the book? Like when you write a memoir and you put everything you've put into this book, right? In terms of some of these things are difficult for you to think about, you were depressed writing the book, like, like this is not a book where you're writing about like, look how amazing I am and how, uh, you know, my epic run to winning an Olympic gold medal, right? I knew from day one I was going to do that. What do you hope people can learn from it?

• 1:07:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, what, yeah, from, from the process, I mean, yeah, I think you can, you can sort of remember periods of your life where you demonstrated like unexpected strength and

• 1:07:49Speaker 02

  To recognize like the small acts of kindness that people did for you along the way. I think like gratitude is not really like popular or promoted in our culture. And when it is, it's people think it's like trite or cliche. Oh, like be thankful. And people just dismiss it as like this kind of like, oh, okay, fortune cookie wisdom or something. It's like, actually, like there were, despite the instability of my life, like there were people along the way who expressed like unexpected kindnesses, did nice things for me that they didn't have to do, went out of their way to like see that I could use help. And like in the moment, I didn't really understand just how, yeah, just how, how, how much, how

• 1:08:32Speaker 02

  like how, how powerful that act would be for me later, or how much it actually helped me. Just because I wasn't, I wasn't that reflective back then. And now to like, oh, wow, a lot of people did nice, these nice things and to add to think about it and then try to pay it forward as well. You know, like for me, a lot of these people, like I lost contact with them. There's not a lot I can sort of like, I just feel this desire to reciprocate, like to find these people, say like, hey, remember that time you told me, just like, like a small comment that, that meant a lot to me in the moment. I'll never be able to find that person again, but then to just, you know, remember to say nice things to other people or highlight, you know, when someone does something meaningful or important, or goes out of their way to do their best to, to bring it up to them

• 1:09:14Speaker 02

  and, and tell them that it's, you appreciate it. I think that can go a long way.

• 1:09:19Anthony Pompliano?

  I asked Paulina what question she wanted me to ask you, and she said, just ask him this one thing, because I think it encapsulates so much of his life. Do you still feel like an outsider? Or do you now feel like you've kind of broken through and have somehow become an insider?

• 1:09:35Speaker 02

  Oh, no, I think like weirdly, now I feel like an outsider, even when I, in the places where I used to be an insider, meaning where I grew up.

• 1:09:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Interesting.

• 1:09:46Speaker 02

  Now, because I'm in this environment now with like, you know, a bunch of people who graduated from college and work these kinds of jobs and, and, and live comfortable lives, now when I go back home. Talk to my old friends, or talk to, talk to my, members of my adopted family. I feel like an outsider there too now. I talk to military friends, you know, all of it. I mean, it's, I feel like an insider and an outsider at the same time. I still feel mostly like, uh, an outsider, yeah, mostly like an outsider.

• 1:10:22Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't know if that ever changes.

• 1:10:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? But, um, for those who are interested, the book Troubled, Rob Henderson, a memoir of foster care family and social class. It comes out in February, so I believe you can now go Amazon, everywhere else, and preorder it. Um, and then maybe we'll do this again before, uh, before the book actually comes out and kind of go through in detail, uh, some of the stories that you have in here, because I think it could benefit a lot of people. So I appreciate you taking the time to write the book, but also coming on here and talking. And, uh, where can we send people to find you on the internet?

• 1:10:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, you can follow me on Twitter at Rob K Henderson. You can follow my Substack, robkhenerson.substack.com. And, uh, yeah, I mean, if you sign up for my, my Substack email list, I'll announce, uh, you know, all the details about the book. I'll probably share some, uh, early chapters and excerpts and things like that. If you're, if people are curious before they decide to preorder.

• 1:11:14Anthony Pompliano?

  To robkhenerson.substack.com.

• 1:11:16Speaker 02

  That's right, yeah.

• 1:11:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Thank you so much for doing this. We'll do it again.

• 1:11:19Speaker 02

  Thanks, Anthony.