Hello and welcome to another episode of the City Journal podcast.

My name is Rafael Menguil, and I'm your host, and I'm so happy to be joined by two wonderful colleagues.

We have Tonini, Daniels, aka Theodore Dalrymple, which is the name I think you all probably know him best by, and of course, Rob Henderson.

I want to thank you both for joining me for what I expect is going to be a fantastic discussion about all sorts of things,

including the role of psychology and the insights it has to offer for public policy debates. And I kind of want to start there because it seems to me like one of the biggest hurdles in policy debates, especially here in the United States, but certainly in the UK, Tony, is settling on an explanation of the circumstances in which the least fortunate among us find

themselves. And it's almost like you're sticking your tongue onto the third rail. If you start

to contemplate an explanation for life outcomes like poverty or socioeconomic inequality,

that hinge on the individual-level decisions that people make, that hinge

on the exercise of individual agency. And I think in many ways, this is kind of what demarcates

the line between left and right in policy debates. It's essentially a line between people

who believe that individuals are by and large responsible and authors of, you know,

their own lives and people who believe that society is, is largely to blame. And I think these are

kind of the questions that I want to explore in our talk today. And I want to start the conversation

by asking kind of a broad, high-level question. We'll start with you, Rob,

which is what do you think are kind of the most important insights that psychology has to offer

us in policy debates, especially where we're talking about things like crime and antisocial

behavior? Well, I think most of the suggestions put forth by psychologists and criminologists and

other social scientists are unhelpful at best and actively detrimental at worst. But, you know,

there are useful bits of research and interesting findings from various studies where you can glean some helpful information.

Much of it reflects common sense.

But one that I've pointed out in various essays and in my first book is this distinction between childhood poverty and childhood instability.

And researchers consistently find little to no relationship between childhood poverty and childhood instability. And researchers consistently find little to no relationship

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