Rob Henderson grew up in poverty, foster care, and was a poor student.  To escape, he joined the Air Force at 17, getting a top score on the military entrance exam, and discovered a love for understanding what makes people tick.  A few years later, he was at Yale, and is now a Gates Cambridge scholar working towards a PhD in psychology. 

More impressive than his secular credentials are the ways he distills insights about human behavior, rooted in his own experiences finding himself in unexpected situations.   His popular twitter feed (@robkhenderson) is one of the highest signal to noise accounts on the platform.  His writings in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Quillette have captured the imagination of those seeking to better understand the trends shaping our world.  And his discovery of "luxury beliefs" reveals that the currency of the elite is no longer materialistic, but rather what you outwardly say you believe.

In this wide-ranging conversation, we discuss:

+How growing up in poverty shaped his perception of the world

+How standardized testing can help talented people in poverty get otherwise unavailable opportunities

+How his upper-class Yale classmates gave him a taste of what drove elite culture

+How he inadvertently grew his twitter following to tens of thousands of followers by tweeting screenshots of the books he voraciously reads