Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci - From Foster Care to Yale: Rob Henderson’s Story

Episode Date: April 16, 2025

This week, Anthony talks with Rob Henderson, author of the memoir 'Troubled,' which explores his experiences in foster care, family dynamics, and the impact of social class. Rob shares his journey from a challenging upbringing to achieving success through education and self-discipline, while also discussing the concept of luxury beliefs and their implications for society. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Visit BetMGM Casino and check out the newest exclusive. The Price is Right Fortune Pick. BetMDM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly. 19 plus to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact connects Ontario at 1-866-531-2,600 to speak to an advisor.

Free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Hello, I'm Anthony Scaramucci. and this is open book where I talk to some of the brightest minds about everything surrounding the written word. That's everything. That's from authors and historians to figures in entertainment, political activists, and of course, Wall Street.

Before we dive in, make sure to follow or subscribe wherever you get your podcast. And don't forget to leave a review. Good or bad, I want to hear from you. I want to hear whether you're enjoying it or where we can improve. And I can take the hits. So let me know. If you don't like something, say it straight. Now let's get into it.

Today I'm talking with Rob Henderson, who wrote a powerful memoir about his journey from the foster care system to the Ivy League. It's a story about overcoming adversity, the importance of family stability, and how self-discipline can change a life. It's a raw, eye-opening look at class, struggle, and transformation. So let's get into it. Well, welcome to Open Book. your host, Anthony Scaramucci. Joining us today is an incredible author. His name is Rob Henderson.

And the title of the book is Troubled. It is a memoir of foster care, family, and social class. And what a great book. I mean, it was a pleasure to read. It was great to learn. I learned a lot. A lot of socioeconomic things are wrapped into that book, including your personal story.

But I also know Drew Pinsky very well. Dr. Drew and I were on the Special Forces show together a few years back. And so I've been on his radio show a few times. But let's start with you. Why write the book? And then let's talk about your name. My name is Robert Kim Henderson. All three of those names are important to your life story.

So let's start with you. Why write the book and tell us who Robert Kim Henderson is? Yeah. Well, thanks, Anthony. Really great to be here. And yeah, I'm glad to hear that we have a mutual friend and Dr. Drew there. Well, I wrote this book, in part to communicate to people, segments of society that maybe not understand what's going on in foster care,

in working class, blue-collar communities across the country. And, yeah, my book can more or less be understood through the origins of my name. Robert Kim Henderson. So my first name Robert comes from my father, who I never met. The only information I have about him is his name from some documents from the social workers who were responsible for my case when I was in the foster care system in Los Angeles. And I was born in L.A. My middle name comes from my birth mother, Kim.

It was her name. She came to the U.S. as a young woman, started studying. which is the reason why she moved to California, but then very quickly started to do drugs and make a lot of poor choices. And we were homeless for a time. We lived in a car. Eventually we settled in this slum apartment in Westlake,

which was kind of a rundown neighborhood at that point in the early 1990s. Eventually, some neighbors called the police. I was placed into the foster care system when I was three years old. And the police officers who, who came along with the social workers to take me into the system. They asked my mother, you know, where's this boy's father?

Because you're not in a position to care for him. And she said she didn't know who my father was. Although a couple of years ago, I did this 23Mee genetic ancestry test just to learn about that side of my family. So I knew my mom. She's Korean. I wondered, okay, well, I went my whole life just, you know, kind of mixed race, Asian American, something like that. But I wanted to know, okay, well, what was that side of my family, my father's side? And the results of this 23 in me showed that I was, I'm half Hispanic, so my father was Mexican.

And, you know, I read those results and I thought, well, it would have been nice to know that when I was applying for college. But, you know, it ended up working out anyway. And so I spent five years in the foster system in Los Angeles, California, living in seven different homes. I describe what those experiences were like in the early chapters of the book. Very difficult. being torn from my mother and then moving to a different home every few months, different schools, different teachers, different foster siblings. One of the things that was hard, I mean, it wasn't just that I wouldn't know where I would go

from or where I would be living from week to week, month to month, but then sometimes I'd enter a foster home and befriend some of my foster siblings. And then I'd see them taken either to another home or returned to their family of origin. And so it was just, you know, a lot of loss in my early life. And then eventually I was adopted by this couple, married couple, was a man or woman and their young daughter who became my adoptive sister. She was their biological daughter. This was the Henderson family, and that's where my last name comes from.

And so this was the late 90s. My adoptive family and I, we settled in this kind of dusty working class town in Northern California called Red Bluff, which is a part of California that most people are not familiar with. It's about three hours north of San Francisco, kind of close to the Oregon border. It's very rural, very red. I mean, I checked the statistics for the last presidential election, and it was something like 72% for Donald Trump in my county. It's one of the poorest counties in California, very rundown, very few adults have college degrees. So my adoptive father was a truck driver, my adoptive mother was an assistant social worker. And so for a temporary period of time,

I had this intact family, but then like so many other families in Red Bluff and so many other parts of the country, my family, my parents divorced. There were custody disputes and financial catastrophes and a lot of drama. You know, so they separated my adoptive father stopped speaking with me. and so I was raised temporarily by my adoptive mother as a single mom. And at this point, I was nine years old. So I did what a lot of nine-year-old boys do when they're kind of unsupervised and, you know, raised by a single mom who's working over time to make ends meet. And I made friends with a lot of other kind of troublemaking nine and 10-year-old boys in my town.

And, you know, we would drink beer and tequila and moved on to generic Vicodin and weed. and go to the local gas station, see how many cold medicine pills we could take before we started to feel funny. And you kind of went on from there. And, you know, there's a lot more to this, which we can get into if you like. But I'll just fast forward here and say, you know, eventually I enlisted in the U.S. Air Force when I was 17, right out of high school where I barely graduated. And with some hiccups and some missteps along the way, ended up going to Yale on the GI Bill. and then off to the University of Cambridge and then on from there. But, you know, the book is really, you know,

there are personal stories there about what I witnessed firsthand where I was growing up in the foster system and then in this working class town. But there's, like you mentioned before, there's some research and some statistics and survey data on what's happening with kids who grew up in these communities, what their lives look like, what families look like in these communities too. And I think that family piece was one thing that Dr. Drew, that caught his interest, you know, because he's been an advocate for families and youth for a long time. And he, you know, saw a lot of this in his sort of personal practice and in his show.

So that's the very short version of this story. But I'm happy to sort of delve into any part of that you like. Well, listen, I appreciate you share. You share it beautifully in the book. But I have that. There are three big questions. I want to ask you all three before I am. and our show. The big, the big three are, how do you do it, Rob? Because J.D. Vance looks like he did it.

He ended up going to Yale. He grew up in a, it looked like squalor. I don't know, people, I mean, he gets hit hard now. I'm not saying it's fair to him, whether the story's accurate or not. I believe that the story's funny. The story was accurate until he was running for president or vice president. Now the story is not accurate. But I'll take you at his word that the story is accurate. Your story is a beautiful story, but it's a painful story. There's tragedy in your story. And I guess where I want to go with the question is, how do you do it? How do you pull yourself?

Look, I grew up in a blue-collar neighbor, and I had two parents living in the house. We've, you know, they were dysfunctional. I was dysfunctional, but made it out of the neighborhood and rose and went to Ivy League schools and stuff. But you were further behind the eight ball than I ever could be. So how do you do it? Yeah, yeah, it's a good question. And, yeah, J.D., he was very kind. He read my book.

His wife, Usha also read it, and he provided a very nice blurb for troubled. And, you know, I have a great deal of respect and admiration for him. I read Hillbilly L.G. shortly after that. I do, too. I mean, I'm not a Trump fan, as you know, but I respect J.D. I think he's a very, very smart man, brilliant writer. And I think he's capturing something about America that people need to hear. You are as well.

But I'm just saying that you, Your story, his story, these are very tough stories. What's the X factor? Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's interesting point there that you brought up about poverty and squalor because, you know, I grew up about as, or I was born into a situation in which I was as poor as you could be in a first world developed country.

But then if you spend time in actually poor countries, you know, then you realize that things are just so much different. You know, I've spent time in, you know, like Malaysia, for example, like parts of Southeast Asia where, you know, people literally live in wooden huts. and their floors are made out of concrete. And I'm thinking to myself, well, I grew up poor, but nothing like this. You know, there's, to me, this is why I mentioned early in the book that, yes, material factors are important, but there's something else going on here.

There's a kind of a cultural and spiritual problem in addition to material poverty. And so, you know, what's the X factor? There's always that question, Anthony, of like, like nature versus nurture and, you know, genes and environment, you know, is it how you're brought up? Is it role models? Is it environmental factors? or is there something within you intrinsically? I think it was a little bit of both.

One thing that I point out in the book is that I was always kind of a bright and curious kid, but I was so weighed down by those early experiences that, you know, you can have a kid who has, you know, a lot of potential who would be academically inclined and is smart, but if they don't have the right kind of stimulation and, models and people around them who were sort of cultivating that latent ability, then the kids never really going to manifest it. And, you know, I talk in the book about how when I was in second grade, so it was seven years old. I was living in my final foster home. And I was doing so badly in school that the teachers and the social workers thought I might have had a learning disability.

And so they sent this psychologist to the home to administer an IQ test for me. And I scored below average overall and I scored way below average on the verbal section. And it wasn't because I was dumb. It was because no one taught me how to read and because I was changing schools every six months. And there was no stability around me that would allow me to actually sit down and walk through the alphabet and how to spell out words and how to comprehend a story. And so, you know, gradually over time, once I had, when I had periods of stability when I was a kid, you know, shortly after the adoption, when I was raised by these two married parents for a time, and I was, my grades improved. I got third place in my school spelling bee. And then after the divorce,

my grades plummeted again. And so, you know, this isn't to say that every single kid, there's a hidden genius in them waiting to burst free. If we just have the right sort of material conditions and family situations and everything, all I'm saying is that if you have a kid who is smart, you still need to have those factors in place for that to shine through. Are you your own Asian tiger mom? No, I feel like you are. I feel like you beat the hell out of yourself almost to get yourself to where you are.

Okay, when I sell my business, I want the best tax and investment advice. I want to help my kids, and I want to give back to the community. Ooh, then it's the vacation of a lifetime. I wonder if my out of office has a forever setting. An IG Private Wealth Advisor creates the clarity you need with plans that harmonize your business,

your family, and your dreams. Get financial advice that puts you at the center. Find your advisor at IGPrivatewealth.com. It's never too early to plan your summer story in Europe with WestJet, from rolling countryside to cobblestone streets. Begin your next chapter. Book your seat at westjet.com or call your travel agent. WestJet, where your story takes off.

In communities across Canada, hourly Amazon employees earn an average of over $24.50. an hour. Employees also have the opportunity to grow their skills and their paycheck by enrolling in free skills training programs for in-demand fields like software development and information technology. Learn more at aboutamazon.ca. Well, not during my childhood in my teen years. No, but you write about it. It feels like a light went off in your teen years and you were like, okay, I'm getting out of this. I'm going to launder myself out of this situation. I feel like a light switch switched off. I mean, switched on.

Was there an epiphany? What was the moment where you said, hey, I'm moving? Yeah. Well, you know, that was the other thing. You know, the X factor is this is another sort of environmental component here is if I had stayed in Red Bluff when I graduated from high school, the way that my friends did, you know, where I grew up, the only way you get out of that town is you either go off to college or you join the military. I barely graduated.

I was not in a position to go to college. but I went to the military, and that immediately transformed my environment. I wasn't around the same kinds of influences and the same kinds of peers and temptations. The military was such a suffocating structure where, you know, here are the expectations, and if you fail to meet them, here are the consequences. Very cut and dried. You do X, this is what's going to happen. Why happens?

Consequences and penalties were swift at immediate. And so were the rewards. You know, you do X, Y, Z, and you get promoted. You do, you know, X, Y, and you're going to get court. It's as simple as that. And so that was really helpful for me as a kind of aimless, undisciplined young kid. And I think at the time I resented this, you know, when I was 17, 18 years old, shipping out for basic training in the early days, I actually didn't, I thought I had made a mistake initially.

Like, man, this really sucks. Like all these rules, all these, you know, all these people telling me what to do. I had a little bit of this rebelliousness kind of lingering from high school. Of course. But then over time, I really really, you know, my life started to improve, you know, physically I felt better, mentally I felt better. I felt proud of myself. I saw the look in my adoptive mom's eyes when she would see me and she could notice that there was a change in me. My sister, you know, people around me respected me more and I carried myself

in a different way. And once, you know, it was not an immediate, oh, light bulb went off. My life is better now. It was more so gradually, I started to pick up on these things such that, you know, by the time I was in my early 20s, I started to realize, like, oh, maybe I do have some potential. Maybe I can turn my life around and move forward and, you know, improve myself, not just with the military, with the assistance of the military, but also kind of internally. And that's one of the things I point out is that I think a lot of people believe that if you want to be successful, you need to have motivation, or if you don't have motivation, you're not going to be successful. You know, I'm a need to that motivation. But what the military taught me is that what's more important is

is self-discipline, you know, that I'm going to do this regardless of how I feel. I don't feel motivated. I'm going to do it anyway. And initially that discipline was imposed from the top down from this organization, this military structure that I was in, where I had to do something regardless of how I felt. But then gradually I learned to do that on my own, cultivating this internal discipline within myself of, oh, I have all these things I want to, I have to do and I don't want to. Knock them out, do them anyway. And you string enough days like that together and eventually your life starts to change. And so that was a big lesson for me during those years.

Talk about luxury of beliefs. You coined this phrase. What are luxury beliefs? What does that mean? Well, luxury beliefs are ideas and opinions that confer status on the elite while often and inflicting costs on the lower classes. And a core feature of a luxury belief is that the believer is sheltered from the consequences of his or her belief. And I came up with this idea, the idea started to take shape in my mind

when I arrived at Yale. So I left for the Air Force when I was 17, did two enlistments. By the time I was 25, I had gotten myself to a position where I could study at a place like Yale and the GI Bill. And I started to hear strange opinions from elite college students and graduates and professors that I'd never heard in my life. You know, not where I grew up, not in the military. And suddenly I'm hearing that, you know, we need to abolish prisons and legalize all hard drugs.

And, you know, later I became kind of defund the police. Family and marriage are unimportant. And we need to evolve beyond, you know, these patriarchal notions of what monogamy is. all these kind of newfangled ideas. And so at that same time, I was having those interactions and experiences. I was reading a lot about class and status and the history of social class in America and in other countries as well. And for me, this idea, it starts really, you can trace it back to 1890,

where this sociologist and economist Thorstein-Vaveland wrote this book, the theory of the leisure class. And Vablund pointed out in his day, the elites would exhibit their status with material possessions, with luxury goods, you know, expensive tuxedos and top hats and evening gowns and pocket watch monocles. And they would, you know, show off these, what they were wearing as badges of their social status.

And then if you fast forward to the mid-20th century, you know, sociologists, Pierre Bordeaux and others, they pointed out that a lot of elites would convert their economic capital, their money, into cultural capital or sort of expressions of their status. They would perform their status through the kinds of opinions that they had, the tastes that they had acquired. And at that point in the mid-20th century, it was like arcane and intricate knowledge about like wine and art and exotic locales, information that you would only have access to if you were educated at the right school, schools and had access to kind of, you know, I hate this word, but like privileged sources of

information that only people with money and status could, could acquire. And so my claim is that luxury beliefs are the latest manifestation of cultural capital. Luxury goods or status, or luxury beliefs are status symbols. And so in the book, I go through different beliefs and point out that a lot of these beliefs, like, for example, defund the police, there were surveys conducted in 2020 and 2021, which consistently found that the highest income Americans were the most in support of defunding the police and the lowest income Americans were the least in support of it. If you break it down by political orientation, white progressives were always the most in support of defunding the police and black and Hispanic Americans were always the least in support of it.

And yet that became a popular, fashionable view for a time among our elite and our cultural taste makers. and who suffers, you know, was poor and marginalized people, the very people that these elites claim to be wanting to help them and wanting to champion these people and mitigate their plight. And instead, they're often making things worse. And, you know, we could go through different luxury beliefs if you like.

But that's kind of the core of the idea is that luxury beliefs, they inflict, they make you look good while, while hurting people who are lower down the social hierarchy. I think it's a brilliant concept, and I'm going to add it to my personal lexicon. We took five words out of your book, and I'm going to read you the word, and when I say the word,

I want you to come back to me with something of thought. Okay, so if I say the word family to Rob Kim Henderson, what do you say? Something you think about. Well, I think, stability. Stability. Yeah. I mean, what am I say?

Go ahead. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Well, I was just going to say, you know, if we're, you know, a lot of people across the political spectrum, they cling to care a lot about inequality and social mobility, particularly on the left, you hear a lot about inequality. But one of the things that Melissa Carney points out in her book, The Two-Parent Privilege, is that the number one predictor of a child going on to graduate from college is being raised by two married parents. And so that is what comes to mind when I think of family. All right.

How about I say the word class? Hmm. It's complicated. It's not the same thing as money. You know, there's a great book on class by Paul Fussell where he points out, you know, class really comprises three different components. You know, money, but money is not not enough to kind of rise in social class. If you win the lottery, you don't suddenly join the upper class. You know, there's money.

Then there's education. You know, were you sort of educated in the right places? And do you move in the right circles? And then finally, there's cultural capital. Do you have the right opinions? Do you know how to get by in these different communities? I well said. What if I say the word luxury?

Luxury beliefs. You know, it's expressions of status. Okay. How about the word troubled? Yeah. I think of children and families. You know, a lot of kids, a lot of families are in difficult circumstances. Yeah, I think of the word pain.

After reading your book, if I hear the word troubled, I think of the word, there's pain and the word troubled. Yeah. Yeah, it was, initially it was so painful that I almost wanted to give the book a different title. But I thought that that was the most honest one. So I went That's a great title. It's a great book. Okay, last word, and I'm going to give you the last word.

And it's two words. Rob Henderson. Wow. You know, what comes to mind is transformation. You know, I went through a lot of different shifts and periods. And, you know, there were a lot of reversals in my life. And I had to change myself, not because I wanted to, but because I had to. And I think a lot of people, surprisingly, a lot of readers write to me saying that they related to the book, which I, which it shocks me because I thought this story was, you know, it's kind of peculiar. Most people don't know about the foster system. Most people don't, you know, they don't go to these highly selective schools and they don't have contact with this part of, these different parts of our society. But people still felt, you know, everyone on some level has to change and adapt and move forward.

in their lives at some point or another. Well, you're a brilliant guy. You've written a phenomenal book. The title of the book is Troubled. It's a memoir of foster care, family, and social classes. So much content in here. I just want to thank you for writing the book. And I'm very grateful to have you on our show today.

Thank you, Anthony. It's been an honor. Wow, what a journey Rob has been on in our society here in America. I know more than one person that's been on that journey. And let me tell you something. There's a lot of self-doubt. There's a lot of self-consciousness, but there's several tons of persistence. And so I applaud Rob for being where he is today. But equally important, I applaud the book's vulnerability, the authenticity in the book. And I think it's a beautiful story. And it's one of the things that really makes me proud to live in America that he was able to achieve

like this in this country. I had a guy who grew up in several of first. foster homes. His name was Rob Henderson. And he grew up incredibly poor. Right. And he made it to Yale University. And he's now he's super successful. Do we know a lot of stories like that? Yes. Okay. Yes. I can't say who, but I know someone that has worked around the clock who did not have much because the mother was not an even-keel person. And because she wasn't even-keeled,

She used to spend money on 37 pocketbooks. And that made him very aggressive and he works very, very hard and long hours to make it. But that can happen in America, right? Isn't that the beauty of America, ma? Of course. That's American, for sure. Right. You can start with little to no money and make a lot of money if you're willing to hustle and have some integrity, right?

But if they have a little bit of help from someone that's very kind without some. saying names that gives them the start and the ambition to do that. But you have to have the brain to want to do it though, too. I mean, you know, God bless. You have to have the brain to want to do it. This kid definitely had the brain. I really admire what he did. Of course.

You're a pretty good example. You came from a middle class family and you ended up in Harvard and you have millions. All right, my mom, you don't want to give up my net worth here on the show, do you? No, but I wouldn't mind having a little bit of it. Oh, yeah. But you like your Marsar. though, right? I love my mazorati.

Maybe I got the nickname mooch because of you. You want to mooch off some of my money? I am mooching off your money because that guy didn't leave me any money. All right. I am mooching off your money. Okay, Ma. All right, ma. Let's not expose all the family's dysfunction to all these wonderful listeners, okay?

Let's keep the word fun and the word dysfunctional. I had a very sad. One was the saint. One was edgy. And my brother that was sad, they used to say to me, you have to keep some. some of it to yourself because the ones that tell you their life is perfect, that means their life is not perfect because they wouldn't have to tell you about it. Yeah, right, of course.

I mean, yeah, that's why I try to take it. Yeah. Somebody I had exposed smarter than me and they hold it back. 100%. Totally agree with you. All right. All right. I love you, Ma.

Thank you for joining. I love you too. All right. Thank you for having me. Thank you, ma. All right. Thank you. I am Anthony Scarabucci and that was open book.

Thank you so much. for listening. If you like what you hear, tell your friends and make sure you hit follow or subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast. While you're there, please leave us a rating or review. If you want to connect with me or chat more about the discussions, it's at Scaramucci on X or Instagram. I'd love to hear from you. I'll see you back here next week. When a country's productivity cycle is broken, people feel it in their paychecks, their communities, their futures. What does this mean for individuals, communities, and businesses across the country? Join business leaders, policymakers, and influencers for CGs' national series on the Canadian

Standard of Living, Productivity, and Innovation. Learn what's driving Canada's productivity decline and discover actionable solutions to reverse it.