994: A.J. Jacobs | The Year of Living Constitutionally

994: A.J. Jacobs | The Year of Living Constitutionally

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[00:00:00] Jordan Harbinger: Coming up next on the Jordan Harbinger show,

[00:00:02] A.J. Jacobs: Ben Franklin in the constitutional convention, he got up and he said, the older I am, the less certain I am of my own opinions. He told this little story parable joke. He said, there was a French lady who said to her sister, it's so weird. I am the only person I've ever met who is right on every single issue.

And his point was, we're all that French lady. We all have this cognitive bias that we think we're right.

[00:00:37] Jordan Harbinger: Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger Show. We decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker through long form conversations with a variety of amazing folks, from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers, performers, even the occasional mafia enforcer, rocket scientist, or legendary Hollywood actor.

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Just visit Jordan harbinger.com/start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started. Once again, Google Podcast is closing. It's closed in the United States. It'll be closed internationally. If you don't get another podcast app, you're gonna end up only seeing part of the show. YouTube Music does not have skeptical Sunday or feedback Friday.

You're not going to be able to get those episodes of the show. So get Cast box or Pocket Cast or Castro on Android or iPhone if you wanna continue to get the show. Skeptical Sunday and feedback Friday. Once again, not included in YouTube music, so you gotta switch off of that. Or Google Podcast is just gonna forward you there and you're not gonna be able to get most of the episodes of the show today on the show, AJ Jacobs, who decided to live as they did during the time of the Constitution.

Now this might sound odd, and it is of course, until you hear that he's done the same in the past, living as they did during the time of the Old Testament for a year, which was much worse. We talked about that in a previous episode of the show. We'll explore some of the ideas of the founding fathers probe, the very basic foundations of our democracy, and to keep things light, we're gonna discuss him carrying around a musket in Manhattan, writing a book with a quill and ink, spending a year wearing a supremely dorky tricorn hat, which you can see if you're watching us on YouTube among other stunts.

Uh, here we go with a j Jacobs.

I'm guessing you're one of the only people in New York City that legally has a gun.

[00:02:44] A.J. Jacobs: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. People need to buy more 18th century guns.

[00:02:49] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. '

[00:02:49] A.J. Jacobs: cause they are technically antiques.

[00:02:51] Jordan Harbinger: Technically antiques, yeah. So, well wait a minute. That's kind of an interesting, is it a loophole? It's not really a loophole because if you were really gonna assault somebody, you would not probably choose that thing.

Right. It is

[00:03:01] A.J. Jacobs: very hard to, yes. It takes, you know, a couple of minutes to load and by the time you load it, they would've tackled you.

[00:03:09] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. I remember there was a pro gun control, I don't know what you call it, anti Second Amendment, pro gun control commercial, a long time ago. This guy walks into the office and he is like clearly a disgruntled employee.

And he is like, I'm taking you all with me. And everyone screams and he fires this musket and it like flies the ball like flies into the wall, right? And wildly. And then everyone runs out and they show him and he pulls out the powder skin and he pulls out the ram rod and he puts the ball in the musket and he puts the powder in and he sticks the ramrod in there and he puts the little gauze or whatever in there to cover the powder.

And by then everyone is long gone and they just kind of fade out as he is reloading this musket. And it's like, right pro gun laws were made in a different era. It's time to update our laws. I'm totally ad-libbing this. 'cause this is like an ad I saw twice a decade ago. Right. But I just, it reminds me of that because, is that a good place to start the show?

Maybe because what do you think about that? Because you. A weirdo with a musket in Manhattan. It's true. Clearly this has crossed your mind at some point.

[00:04:13] A.J. Jacobs: Last time you did, you called me a lovable weirdo. I wear that with pride. So, um, you

[00:04:19] Jordan Harbinger: are one of my favorite weirdos and I'm glad to have you back here.

Oh, I am

[00:04:21] A.J. Jacobs: honored. I am honored. I, I hope to keep that. Yeah. So, well, should I explain quickly why I had a musket carrying around in, uh, in New York?

[00:04:30] Jordan Harbinger: I think we like put a pin in that as, as some sort of awkward cliffhanger, like I never really usually do on this show. And then we just back the truck. We, well, we back the horse and carriage all the way back.

'cause you're wearing acorn hat in case you're not watching on YouTube. He is wearing a, a pirate hat for lack of a better term. Right. It's not really a pirate hat, but everybody who sees that probably thinks you're being a pirate. Is that they,

[00:04:52] A.J. Jacobs: do I get a lot of Yes. I, or maybe,

[00:04:55] Jordan Harbinger: yeah.

[00:04:55] A.J. Jacobs: But it is an officially a, a revolutionary war hat.

Acorn hat.

[00:05:01] Clip: Mm-Hmm.

[00:05:01] A.J. Jacobs: So yes, we'll start with the muskets. Well, we

[00:05:03] Jordan Harbinger: don't even have to start with the muskets. Let's start with what did you do to even get to the point where you're buying a musket and acorn hat? Because, all right. What people may not know is that you a guy who experiments and you just go whole hog into the experiment.

There was a previous, a long time ago, we had you on the show, episode 1 74. We had you on again, 5 64. And one of 'em was about coffee and you tracing the origins all the way back to wherever and thanking everyone. But one of them I think was about your year of living biblically, where you didn't wear mixed fabrics and you didn't sit on a chair that your wife had sat on while menstruating.

And I can't believe that's the example that I remember. And then a guy in Central Park asked if you would stone him to death because he was an adulterer. And then he threw like a pebble at him and he got really pissed off. And you ran away. Am I, am I still remembering you are

[00:05:50] A.J. Jacobs: 80% right. Okay. But you got the general gist.

I wanted to understand religion 'cause I knew nothing about it. Grew up very secular. And the way I like to understand things is by walking the walk, talking the talk. Wear in the robe. Grow in the beard, throw in the pebbles.

[00:06:07] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

[00:06:07] A.J. Jacobs: And I love it. And that was one of my favorite books to write, the Year of Living Biblically.

And I had always thought, well, I could do a very similar book about the Constitution,

[00:06:17] Jordan Harbinger: right?

[00:06:18] A.J. Jacobs: Because it is actually, we treat it very similarly. It's this revered document that some people say we have to stick to the exact meaning from 230 years ago. Yeah. Other people say, no, it's gotta evolve. Life has changed.

And I felt this was the most urgent and timely book I could write. Because every day I'd read the another news story about the Constitution. This was having a huge impact on my life, on millions of other lives, how we live. And I knew nothing. I mean, you are a recovering lawyer, so you knew some. Yes. Um, I knew the preamble from Schoolhouse Rock, but I knew nothing.

I had never read it from start to finish. And I said, I'm going to try to. Go back to basics and understand this document by living it, experiencing the original meaning. So I, like we said, I carried a musket around the upper West side of New York where I live. I gave up social media and wrote with a quill pen and handed out pamphlets.

I quartered a soldier. I didn't chop him in fourth. I,

[00:07:25] Jordan Harbinger: oh, that's a relief.

[00:07:27] A.J. Jacobs: I

[00:07:27] Jordan Harbinger: tell the police I boarded him in my house.

[00:07:30] A.J. Jacobs: Um, so yeah, it was a fascinating year. There were two main goals. One was that I wanted a crash course in the Constitution so that when I hear a politician like say, oh, the constitution says you can't play violent video games, then I would be okay.

I'm in a better, more empowered place that I can judge whether that's true. But the other question I wanna get to with you as well, I. Is, are there practices from the founding era that would make our lives better, that would make our country better? And there's much that we don't want. It was racist, sexist, smelly, dangerous, no antibiotics, so we don't wanna go back.

[00:08:15] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

[00:08:15] A.J. Jacobs: But are there aspects such as slowing down your thinking and sacrifice? Self-sacrifice as a way to happiness or, um, the importance of being flexible thinkers? Those are things I discovered throughout the year that maybe we need to revisit.

[00:08:34] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. It's interesting when I was reading the book. I was thinking about all those people that do really crappy things and call themselves patriots.

Not everybody who calls themself a patriot does crappy things. I'm just talking about the people who do crappy things and call themselves patriots. And I'm thinking, you know, next time you hear someone say something like that, you're in a really strong position to be like, well, actually, you don't know what the hell you're talking about.

And real Ben Franklin, who is actually kind of undisputably, a patriotic guy, said the opposite thing that you're saying right now. Mr. Hates everyone who isn't a, you know, ex or what. So I'm curious if you've run into that, you made a list of stuff that you like and stuff that you didn't like at the end of your experiment, or at least during some point of the experiment.

I'm curious if that's a, a good place to begin with this conversation because changes in the constitution. We're kind of a big deal in the beginning. Right. It was like, we, the people think this, I mean, granted, we, the people back then was probably like only white Christian men or something. Exactly. Who are above a certain age.

Right. Right. But at the time, even that was kind of progressive because it wasn't like we, the people, these seven guys in this room who own all of the land Yeah. Or some or whatever it was going on in, in Europe at the time.

[00:09:45] A.J. Jacobs: Yeah. No, it was a big step forward. It was a, the big bang of democracy as one of my Mm-Hmm.

Advisors calls it. But also at the same time it had elements of elitism and oligarchy and, uh, some of them were slave owners. So it's a complicated document and that's what I love. It's not one or the other. It is a complicated, and the key to me is trying to make America live up to the best parts of the Constitution.

Mm-Hmm. So the parts about equality and general welfare. Because the society that they had. Was not living up to what the ideals of the constitution, the founders themselves knew that they could be better.

[00:10:32] Jordan Harbinger: So is the document, this is probably a dumb question now that I think about it, but I'm gonna ask anyway 'cause that's kinda the point of the show.

Is the document aspirational? 'cause it sounds like they were writing, Hey, this is the way we definitely should do things, but then sort of in their private lives it was like, I mean I'm not really doing that exactly. This is probably also really crappy, but I, okay. We wanna write down the thing. We wanna be, not the thing we currently are.

'cause it's kind of all flawed and messy. I

[00:10:56] A.J. Jacobs: love that you say that. I think it is, it was aspirational. I mean, Thomas Jefferson knew he was a hypocrite and he was very, he said, I'm lazy and I'm greedy. I. I know that slavery is wrong.

[00:11:10] Jordan Harbinger: Really?

[00:11:10] A.J. Jacobs: Yeah. Wow. So you can condemn them and we should condemn them for being hypocrites.

Some of them, Ben Franklin was, uh, at the end of his life leading the abolitionist charge. But yeah, this was what Frederick Douglas, the great civil rights leader in the Civil War called It's a promissory note. It's like an I owe you. It says, here is what we should be. Let's make America live up to that.

[00:11:38] Jordan Harbinger: Tell me more about the hypocrisy thing. Did he really note that somewhere like, Hey, I've got slaves and I kind of need him to make money, and I like money because I'm greedy, but man, I'm going to hell for this. I mean, is there some version of that in a diary somewhere?

[00:11:50] A.J. Jacobs: Not those words exactly, but pretty much.

Sure. That is a paraphrase. Yes, they were aware of their hypocrisy and I don't know whether that makes it better or worse, but as you say, they wrote about freedom and equality and yet they were slave owners and they were incredibly sexist. So it was a fascinating time and luckily we have gotten better.

We have got, it's easy to read the news every day and be completely depressed and say, oh, we are just as bad as ever, but we are not as bad as ever. I mean, we have made progress as a country. And by the way, speaking of which, the reading the news 16 hours a day, like the negative bias news. Mm-Hmm. Is terrible for our democracy.

[00:12:42] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

[00:12:43] A.J. Jacobs: Ben Franklin's newspaper came out twice a week, so during this year I tried to read the news only twice a week. So much better. Because you are able to have perspective. You're able to step back and say, alright, let's think about solutions instead of being depressed and stressed every moment of the day.

Yeah. Reading about how horrible it is. So yeah, I recommend you don't have to do twice a week, but just do half an hour a day of reading news and try to cut yourself off the rest of the day. You will be happier. I am a big believer in that.

[00:13:19] Jordan Harbinger: I mean, I think that's almost certainly true. We know that from some of the other episodes we've done on this show that reading things like news triggers a stress response, almost like a fight or flight response.

Doing that to yourself every hour for five minutes is not a good idea. No. Right. That's just not good for your immune system and all kinds of other things. And so I, reading it twice a week almost sounds difficult 'cause you have to get away from it now. It's very difficult to do if you have a television and a phone, you, you really have to almost put those things.

You gotta put the phone down and pick up a musket instead and walk around with it. I'm not sure I recommend that. Uh, so you can't use your phone,

[00:13:51] A.J. Jacobs: but I do agree. Yes. Put down the phone and I will say I wrote a lot of this book with a quill pen. A goose quill. Yeah. That's with aim. I've got

[00:14:00] Jordan Harbinger: questions.

[00:14:01] A.J. Jacobs: Oh, I loved it.

I don't think everyone has to toss their laptop and pick up a quill pen. But just being offline where there are no dings or pings and just being able to have to be able to think. It made me a more nuanced and deeper thinker, I believe, because you are able to focus. I. And I loved it. My hands were literally ink.

I was an ink stained wretch as they so, and oh my gosh, my office looks like, I don't know, a Jackson Pollock because it's got ink all over it. But, uh,

[00:14:36] Jordan Harbinger: your wife must be thrilled by the way, with the whole Quill she thing.

[00:14:40] A.J. Jacobs: Yeah. She didn't love that. She didn't love the candles. Yeah. Which kind of smelled like ass.

There was. Talk about that. Or ars I guess they would say back then. Yeah. And I did board a soldier for a few days. She didn't love that. So yes, no, she is very patient, but hopefully in the end she's okay with it because I think I, I improved our lives in certain ways.

[00:15:03] Jordan Harbinger: She is looking at the book advance and she's like, fine.

Exactly. Okay, so you wrote half the book and how many letters can you write before you have to dip the quill back in the ink?

[00:15:15] A.J. Jacobs: It depends. It depends. But I can write about. Six or seven words usually. Oh, that's not too bad. Yeah, it's not too bad. And it's, and there's something lovely about the ritual of dipping the ink.

[00:15:27] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-Hmm.

[00:15:27] A.J. Jacobs: And the sound. It's the scratch, scratch, scratch. It's funny because there are these A SMR videos on YouTube of people writing with a quilt pen because of it relaxes some people, my wife hated it. She hated the scratch, scratch script. Yeah. But I found it soothing.

[00:15:44] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I probably would agree there.

I can't watch A SMR videos because it makes me. Almost like wanna punch the wall 'cause it's too soft and it, it, it's sort of like the people who like it, they're like, oh, it's like a little massage in your, the back of your skull and your spine. For me it's like somebody tickling something or that I can't reach and in order to scratch it, I have to like explode and rage for just a second.

So those don't work for me. She's probably more like me as opposed to the people who watch didn't punch the wall an ASMR video.

[00:16:11] A.J. Jacobs: But I am not gonna whisper the entire, uh, podcast. I don't want to get, I don't wanna trigger you.

[00:16:16] Jordan Harbinger: No, I appreciate that. It's not even the whispering as much as No, it's the whispering.

It's the whispering and the touching of the microphone. There's a woman who does it and she's always getting demonetized. 'cause it's a little bit like. It's not even her fault. It's a little bit porny, just because she's really attractive and she's smiling, and a lot of the people that watch it are probably totally normal.

But when YouTube was trying to figure out what to do with asmr, in the beginning they were like, we don't like this, and we can't quite figure out why. So we're gonna block it and demonetize it. And she's like, I'm just whispering to people. And then I'm, I don't know, tapping my nails on a. Piece of slate and they're like, we don't get it, so we're gonna demonetize this because it seems fetishy.

And she's like, well it, maybe it is, but that's not my fault. If somebody's doing something weird to this besides going to sleep, is that really on me? And then she's got a point. Excellent. And I feel bad for her. This is how she makes a living, but, okay. So when you were living biblically, how did you write back then?

Were you writing, were you chiseling the draft of the book into stone tablets?

[00:17:15] A.J. Jacobs: I should have. That is a great point. I did, I wrote by pen a lot, but I also used my laptop. I mean, I do use my laptop. I see. When I have to. So I ordered my candles over my laptop. I ordered. That makes sense. The quill pens. You didn't ride a horse

[00:17:32] Jordan Harbinger: to Boston Exactly.

To, to pick it up or anything. I did

[00:17:35] A.J. Jacobs: ride a horse at one point, but that was, but it's very hard to get permission to ride a horse in Manhattan. They really made it difficult.

[00:17:42] Jordan Harbinger: Can't you just go to one of those carriage drivers near Central Park and be like, Hey, I need to ride this horse with you for like half an hour.

[00:17:48] A.J. Jacobs: I thought about that, but I also thought carriages. Those carriages are, they're not old enough. They're not 18th century, so

[00:17:57] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. But you would be riding the horse, not the

[00:17:58] Clip: carriage. Right. You could just

[00:17:59] A.J. Jacobs: say, Hey, take the horse. Oh, I see. Riding the horse. Yeah. Maybe I have a feeling they are not, they don't love that idea.

But you're, I'm gonna try it. You give me a good idea.

[00:18:08] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Your year is, the book is out, so you're a kind of off the hook on doing a lot of this stuff. It's true, it's true. Back to some of the slavery language you mentioned in the book that the language shows that they knew enough to try and cover up what they really meant.

Can you tell us what you mean by that? Like, what's the language in the constitution that gives you the idea that they knew slavery was, was wrong, but they just weren't in the mood to do anything about it? 'cause it was profitable or, or for whatever reason.

[00:18:35] A.J. Jacobs: Yeah. They never used the word slavery.

[00:18:37] Jordan Harbinger: Oh, really?

Okay.

[00:18:38] A.J. Jacobs: Servitude and, and labor and other euphemisms. So some of them, some of them were, were apologists for slavery. But what was interesting was I had, um, a section on race relations, of course, and the Constitution. And what I found fascinating was that there are two ways to approach this. There are the people who said during the Civil War that the Constitution is a pact with the devil because it allows, allowed slavery to exist.

And there was an abolitionist, a white abolitionist, William Lloyd Garrison, and he literally burned the constitution on stage in front of hundreds of people and said, the Constitution is the worst thing ever. Now, Frederick Douglass, who was a great civil rights leader at the time, for a while, he agreed with Garrison and said, this is a pact with the devil.

But sometime in the 1850s, he changed his mind, he changed his tactics, he. He said, you know what? Let's, instead of burning it, try to make it into what you said, an aspirational document. Mm-Hmm. And try to make it live up to its best parts about equality and make it what we were promised. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in the declaration.

So I thought that was fascinating. You can see it as completely evil. It's a lot about framing. How do you frame Mm-Hmm. That document. Do you focus on the worst parts or do you try to make it live up to the best parts?

[00:20:17] Jordan Harbinger: You hint in the book that the founding fathers. Might not really have loved the idea of democracy, which is was surprising to me.

It seems like they kind of were reluctant to praise democracy, like, all right, I guess people can vote and even if they're an uneducated, non land owning mum, but we wanna make sure that we have kind of a check on that just in case. Right. Can you speak to that a little? 'cause that was surprising to me. I, when you're in elementary school, middle school, high school and you're learning about the constitution, you learn about these sort of superhero guys who are like, we want everybody to be equal, and we want everybody's voice to be heard.

And that's like kind of bs. Right?

[00:20:57] A.J. Jacobs: Right. It's interesting 'cause one of the famous toasts of the time was, Mm-Hmm. When you had a drink, you would say freedom from tyrants as well as the mob. They were very afraid of the mob and they thought. That you needed sort of this rash. They don't mean

[00:21:14] Jordan Harbinger: Italian organized crime, they mean the, the mob people.

They might've been

[00:21:17] A.J. Jacobs: afraid of that too, but, but they were afraid of the rabble. They thought that you needed sort of this elite group of educated people who would provide reason and cool the passions. So I will say the Constitution was still the greatest leap forward for democracy at the time. They said, we are getting rid of the king, and this idea of hereditary power, that's huge.

That is a huge leap forward. But at the same time. They didn't go to complete democracy, and, and they still had this elitist attitude that white males were the ones who would vote. And a lot of American history and a lot of the amendments to the Constitution are about trying to make it more democratic, about trying to give black people the vote, women the vote.

Even people, um, under 21, originally the voting age was 21.

[00:22:12] Jordan Harbinger: That's not, doesn't seem like a bad idea. I mean, nowadays back then, 21 was probably like an old guy halfway through his life, right. And, and 18 was exactly a little bit, yeah. Now I say this as somebody who was definitely in that camp at age 18. Now, 18 year olds are largely morons, just as they were when I was 18.

And I inc again, I include myself in that bucket a hundred percent. I had no business voting until I was like 30 if you ask me.

[00:22:36] A.J. Jacobs: Absolutely. And there are interesting proposals about how. You should have a randomly selected group of people who are allowed to vote and they have to learn all about democracy and civics.

[00:22:50] Jordan Harbinger: Yes, that would've been great. And

[00:22:52] A.J. Jacobs: I don't know if that's a good idea. It could be a terrible idea, but

[00:22:55] Jordan Harbinger: that stuff's always used to disenfranchise people though, right? Like it would've been great if everyone had to take a government class and pass, and then you were get a code from your county after you pass an exam.

And they're like, you can vote because we know that you know how to read the candidate stuff and sift through the disinformation and make good choices. But then it's gonna be like in certain areas they're telling you what to vote for and, and then the curriculum's gonna have to be standardized. But if the curriculum's not standardized, then you don't get the card.

But some areas with poor people, surprise, surprise, they don't have the resources just to get the standardized curriculum taught to them. So now they can't vote. Like that stuff is always Oh yeah. It's like the arguments for the second Amendment, right? Like once you start restricting it, it just gets.

Restricted in ways that are unfair a lot of the time. And then it's a slippery slope. And then it's like suddenly, oh, look at the only people who get taught this are elites that are wealthy and go to private schools and live in these towns. It's like, it just ends up that way. Right. A lot of the time. And

[00:23:50] A.J. Jacobs: that was, they had these literacy and character tests in the sixties in the south where they would give people these incredibly hard tests and they usually gave it to the black voters, but let the white voters in.

And these were, I took some of them. They are hard. They are. So like you need a PhD in government studies to pass some of these. It's ridiculous. Oh

[00:24:14] Jordan Harbinger: geez. That's what I'm talking about. So they've already tried this. And it was already used for nefarious purposes.

[00:24:20] A.J. Jacobs: Right, exactly. This would've been slightly different, this idea of a lottery system.

But yeah, that brings up a broader point, which is trying ideas. The founding fathers were very entrepreneurial. They had all of these ideas that in the constitutional convention that we have never heard of, I always thought, this is the way our government is. It's etched in stone. It's how it was created.

This is it. This is our only option. But no, you look at the convention, there are ideas like three presidents or 12 presidents. When one of the delegates said, I think we should have one president. A lot of the delegates said, are you crazy? I. We just fought a bloody war to get rid of a king. Why do we want one president?

Why do we want one person in power? Ben Franklin wanted 12 presidents at one point, so it went to a vote and the one president did win and which is why we have it. But it is interesting to think, can you imagine like Biden and Trump and RFK Jr like sharing a co-working space in the Oval Office? Oh my

[00:25:32] Jordan Harbinger: gosh, yeah.

Wow. Can you imagine the Secret Service budget at that point? Just be ballooning outta Yeah, we're on Air Force 11 right now and we're just, we're trying to get clearance for takeoff. There's 10 other planes in front of us and guess which ones? Yeah, no thanks. It's already pretty expensive having the leaders.

We have, I think we're, we're good on this. Yeah.

[00:25:52] A.J. Jacobs: I don't approve of three pre, but I do just wanna say the idea of restraining the power of the president so you don't have this one person who is all this power is a great idea. And that our president now both Republican and Democrat, is way too powerful.

The founders would be shocked that they have so much war power, so much power over trade. It's called the imperial presidency like we are, that when that guy said that the fetus of monarchy, I think the fetus is like now an adolescent, or at least a tween.

[00:26:27] Jordan Harbinger: So you think the office of the president has too much power accumulated over time?

[00:26:32] A.J. Jacobs: Way too much. Yeah. And I'm not alone. I mean, there are lots of political scientists who agree with me. Sure. Or I agree with them, I should say. Yeah, it's gone out of control and we need to put some restraints on it.

[00:26:46] Jordan Harbinger: A lot of folks complain about our government being, there's too much red tape, right?

There's the check, but the checks and balances seem to be a feature and not a bug. There's a reason that things move. People will usually say like, look, Xi Jinping just says we're doing this, and the whole country is they're subsidizing this, and we're got a full court press on that. And it's like, we need to do more of this.

But people only say that when it's like, we need to subsidize our semiconductor industry and make sure that we're creating things here and we're not dependent on China for manufacturing. It's like, great. Then we want the executive branch to be able to snap their fingers or the the government to be able to snap their fingers and get that done.

But for everything else, right, maybe we don't want that.

[00:27:23] A.J. Jacobs: Well, yeah, I agree that the balance of power can be a feature, not a bug sometimes. But I will give you one example. I remember talking to this woman who was a mother of a kid at my school and she grew up in China. And I said, what was school like?

And she said, well, we would start the day with eye exercises. And I was like, what? And she say, yeah, we would have to spend five minutes, you would look up with your eyeballs, then look to the right and then look down. And it was just because there was some quack doctor who convinced I. The supreme leader of China, that this was good for kids, which is not, there's no science behind it.

Yeah, but can you imagine the millions, billions of human hours that were wasted? Yeah. Because one person decided. So that is the downside of authoritarianism a mile. I think there are

[00:28:20] Jordan Harbinger: worse downsides, but

[00:28:20] Clip: I'm with you. I was about to say that is a very mild example.

[00:28:26] Jordan Harbinger: God, can you, in North Korea, can you believe they're doing eye exercises?

It's horrible. Also, they're starving to death and you get executed for sitting on a newspaper. But the eye exercise thing, my God, yes.

[00:28:37] A.J. Jacobs: Yeah. Well, it's a spectrum, but the, um, yes, so the good part is yes, you cannot have what they call the, uh, tyranny of the majority in America where you get 51% and then you are able to do whatever you want.

The downside is we have too many checks and ballot or too much red tape stopping us from doing what needs to be done. So for instance, in the Senate, you might know they need a super majority to pass anything that's 60 votes. That was not in the Constitution. And James Madison in fact said, this is a terrible idea because the minority can hold the majority hostage.

[00:29:19] Jordan Harbinger: And here we are. Yeah. So we

[00:29:21] A.J. Jacobs: need to get rid of some of these hurdles in the Congress to make it so that it can actually do something.

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I know one reason we have the electoral college colleges originally because the founding fathers, et cetera, et all wanted a final veto on who got elected because like you said before, they were terrified that the people would choose somebody that was bad for them, that maybe that's for the elites at that point.

Who was that for for them?

[00:33:22] A.J. Jacobs: Well, they were just afraid of a demagogue, and so they installed this system. It has several reasons for it, but one of the reasons was that these educated elites who were the electors could, if a stupid people elected a demagogue, meaning someone who was like a tyrant in the making.

Then these elites could say, oh no, we're gonna overrule that and install someone rational. And ironically, it seems to have worked the other way because now you can get a minority of the votes, but still become president. And so, yeah, I am not a fan of the electoral college. It is a problem.

[00:34:06] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. I mean, it's a really good point.

I hadn't thought about the fact that we have the exact problem. It was designed, well, kind of the inverse problem that it was designed to protect against. We can have tyranny of a minority instead of a tyranny of the majority. Which if you learn about it, law school is like bad ideas should have ways to be stopped, whether most people want them or not.

And that's sort of what the electoral college was supposed to do. But it's, it's worked out in, in vastly different ways. Let's lighten it up for a second. Tell me about privateering, because this is kind of a cool relic and you, you made it a valiant attempt to become a pseudo pirate, I guess you could call it.

I don't know. Tell me what this is.

[00:34:44] A.J. Jacobs: Yes. Well, this is right there in the Constitution. What's amazing about the Constitution, it has these parts that are so inspiring and relevant, like the preamble about we the people. Then you get to parts like Article one, section eight, where it says that Congress has the power to grant a letter of mark and reprisal.

So I was like, what the hell is that? So I look it up. Turns out, like you say, it's basically legalized piracy. It is government sanctioned piracy. So this was crucial in the Revolutionary War because we didn't have much of a Navy, so we needed private citizens. If you had a fishing boat, you go to Congress and you say, I want to.

Put some cannons on my fishing boat and go out and capture British ships. And they said, go for it. You get to keep the booty. You get to keep, and whatever it was, sherry booze, it could have been booze. Wow. It could have been supplies or guns. And without that, without these legal pirates, the, the official word is privateers.

They are privateers. And without them we would not have won the Revolutionary War because they captured about 2000 British ships. So this is in the Constitution, that's a Oh my

[00:36:04] Jordan Harbinger: gosh.

[00:36:04] A.J. Jacobs: Yeah, no, for that time.

[00:36:05] Jordan Harbinger: Wow. How long a period of time did it take 'em to capture 2000 ships? That's an enormous amount of boats.

Period. Even of any size?

[00:36:13] A.J. Jacobs: Yeah. No, this was throughout the war for the, whatever it was, the seven years of the war.

[00:36:17] Jordan Harbinger: That's crazy. Remember, these are not rowboats 'cause they're not doing it off the coast of the uk. Off of Britain. They're doing this off the coast of the United States. So these are ships of Right.

Various commercial boats of all sizes. That is a lot of boats,

[00:36:30] A.J. Jacobs: right. Some are wailing ships, some are, but they were going out there, they're sort of unsung heroes 'cause they do have this sort of sleazy reputation of being semi pirates. So we don't have statues to privateers, but really we wouldn't have had it without 'em.

[00:36:46] Jordan Harbinger: Naval mercenaries basically. Yeah, it was Naval

[00:36:48] A.J. Jacobs: mercenaries. Exactly. It was like, what is it? Blackwater Black.

[00:36:52] Jordan Harbinger: Wow. Yeah.

[00:36:52] A.J. Jacobs: But this still in the Constitution. So my goal in the year of living constitutionally was to try to express the original meaning. So I'm like, we have not had a privateer since 1815, but it's still in there.

So I got a meeting with a Congressman Ro Kana from California, and I said I would like to apply to be a privateer and do my patriotic duty. What I loved about him is he was super enthusiastic at the start. He's like, let's do it. Let's make this happen. But he didn't know what, what I was asking. He didn't know what a letter of Mark was.

And then when I told him, he's like, oh, maybe that's not the best idea, so you're gonna go to the Taiwan Straits. And I'm like, I'll do whatever you want. I have, my friend has a fishing boat. I'll go out and do my patriotic dude. So I never did get it. He said he brought it up to his colleagues and he, his assistant, addresses me as captain, which is nice.

But I have not officially become a privateer.

[00:37:52] Jordan Harbinger: You know what the office talk was like, he's got muskets. Should we just sort of slow play this guy until he gets medicated? Because we don't want him coming in here with those muskets. He's, it might only be one shot every three minutes, but it takes a long time to evacuate our building.

Clearly you're the like the crazy guy who wanted to take over a ship, right? I mean that, that's for sure. That's true. Because what ship were you thinking? Hey, I'm gonna go for it. I'm gonna go down Taiwan's a little far. I mean you could have gone to like Cuba or something like that and taken one of those.

Yeah, no,

[00:38:23] A.J. Jacobs: there's a lot of places that we have conflicts. I was willing to experiment. I was willing, and he wasn't the only con I met with another congressman or senator. I met with Senator Ron Wyden from Oregon. Okay. Because I was expressing my rights to petition. So I had a petition in like parchment with quilt pen, hundreds of signatures.

And it was what we mentioned before, which was. I wanted to revisit the idea of three presidents, which I don't really wanna revisit, but I do wanna bring up the idea that the president is too powerful. So Senator Wyden, I came in with my tricorn and the whole deal. He was very nice. He said, you are injecting an an aspect of common sense and logic into which I'm not sure is true, but he did.

He was very supportive.

[00:39:12] Jordan Harbinger: No, it's something you tell crazy people when you know they have guns. I think that's,

[00:39:17] A.J. Jacobs: he was going Security. Security, yeah. What is this guy doing? There was a

[00:39:21] Jordan Harbinger: safe word in that sentence somewhere where this just was like pushing a button under the desk. Like, oh, he said, he said the phrase beep.

And then the guys with the earpieces are like running in from the hallway.

[00:39:33] A.J. Jacobs: That I never thought of, but you're probably right. Yeah, he did though. He does agree that the president is too powerful. We have, yeah, we have a budding monarch.

[00:39:42] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. It's back to some of these original ideas. You mentioned the phrase originalism shows up in the or.

The word originalism shows up in the book a lot. What is this? Because I see this in the news all the time, like this justice is an originalist and this argument is originalist, and my dissent is because this is too originalist in nature. What is this? Why is this showing up so much, and is this a bad idea?

Is it a good idea?

[00:40:06] A.J. Jacobs: Well, there are two main ways of interpreting the constitution to oversimplify. One is called originalism and one is called living constitutionalism. Originalism says that we should focus on the original meaning when it was ratified in 1791, that that is the most important part. Now living Constitutionalists will say no.

The meaning has to evolve because life has evolved so much. So we have to take in into account the original meaning, yes, but also the consequences to society now. mm-Hmm. What was the purpose of the law? What has the Supreme Court ruled in the last 20 years? So those are the two balance. One is very focused on sort of a single criterion, and the others have a bunch of factors.

And I'll give you an example of how these differ because they have created very different rulings, because right now the Supreme Court is made up of six conservative justices, five of whom consider themselves originalists in some way. And one of the most originalists is Clarence Thomas. So he would say for instance, that the 14th Amendment, the 14th Amendment, came after the Civil War and hit guarantees, equal protection to all.

Now, when it was written, it was written after the Civil War, and the people who wrote it and ratified it were talking about protecting black men. Mm-Hmm. Because they were targeted after the Civil War, they were not thinking about women or gay people or gay marriage. That was just not in their mind. So.

According to Clarence Thomas, the 14th Amendment says nothing about gay marriage and that we should have equal protection for gay people in marriage. It is a much narrower thing. So he has indicated he would overturn Obergefell, which is what, when gay marriage was ruled to be a constitutional. Right. Now, the living constitutionalist, most if not all, but most of which are more liberal, would say no.

When it said equal protection. Yeah, it didn't mean that then, but now life has changed. Morals have evolved, so we have to evolve along with it. So now it does have to apply to women. It has to apply to gay people. It can yield very different results.

[00:42:40] Jordan Harbinger: Was free speech for example, the same back then as it is now.

I feel like that's something that's probably changed quite a bit.

[00:42:47] A.J. Jacobs: So much. It is crazy. What I learned talking to these free speech historians is that neither liberals nor conservatives would like the free speech from the 1790s. mm-Hmm. A lot of what we consider free speech came around in the 1940s and fifties.

Thanks weirdly to the Jehovah's Witnesses really who filed dozens of lawsuits to expand free speech. But the original free speech was much narrower. Okay? So they believed you did have free speech up to a point, but you had to balance your rights against the common good and the government could come in and say, well, that's sedition and that is threatening our common good.

What? John Adams had a lot, uh, sedition laws, they consider the federalists, his party considered perfectly constitutional. In fact, one guy I. Was thrown in jail for making an ass joke. An ARS joke. He made an arse joke at the expense of John Adams. Really? Yeah. They were having some ceremony where they shot off cannons and this guy cracked a joke.

He said, well, I wish one of those cannon balls would go up. John Adams ars. Not a bad one. Someone heard a bad, reported him thrown in jail.

[00:44:05] Jordan Harbinger: Zinger.

[00:44:06] A.J. Jacobs: It's not the worst joke ever.

[00:44:08] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, that's I, I feel like that's not a jail worthy. W now we're like, hmm. Was breaking windows into the capitol building and then trying to go and get these speakers and then climb through the, was that sedition?

And it's, meanwhile, this guy's like up yours, man, and they're like, well that's clearly sedition. You're going to prison. Now we have people that are like, Hey, just because I went armed and killed a police officer doesn't mean I really wanted to do sedition.

[00:44:30] A.J. Jacobs: That is such a great point. And can you imagine.

If they did, like all of the late night hosts would be in jail. Like you know, every standup comic. Well,

[00:44:39] Jordan Harbinger: I would also, all of us would be anybody who with a personality of any kind would be in prison by now.

[00:44:44] A.J. Jacobs: That's right. Also cursing. There were state laws against cursing, so you couldn't say, you know, the F word.

The S word, or blaspheme. Wow. I tried that with my kids. 'cause in New York at the time of the Constitution, it was 37 and a half cents fine for every curse. So I said, my kids are teenagers. I'm like, this is good. I'll clean 'em up. They, you know, being teenagers, they found the loophole, so they would curse and I'd say 37 and a half cents.

Oh, I don't have a half cent.

[00:45:17] Jordan Harbinger: Right.

[00:45:18] A.J. Jacobs: Um, why don't we wait until it's 75 cents and then I would be 75. They would purposely curse again.

[00:45:24] Clip: Why didn't you adjust for inflation? Well, that's a good point.

[00:45:27] A.J. Jacobs: Yeah. What I did calculate it, I think it was 20 bucks. It was about 20 bucks. Yeah.

[00:45:32] Jordan Harbinger: That's a real incentive for a teenager.

Unless they've got, I don't know what allowances are these days, but that's a, that's a hefty fine right there. 20 bucks.

[00:45:39] A.J. Jacobs: Yeah, you're right, you're right.

[00:45:41] Jordan Harbinger: Geez.

[00:45:42] A.J. Jacobs: That was a weird part of my project because the founders did not believe in paper money. They were very against paper money. Really. They thought that it, I don't know what they would've thought of Bitcoin, but they certainly were because they thought, yeah, it was, um, it was a way for people who borrowed money to cheat the lenders because of inflation.

The paper money would become less valuable. And they were very concerned about the rich people lending money. Everything had to be tied to gold or silver. So for this, I got rid of all of my paper money and credit cards and tried to buy things with gold and silver. I like bought gold over the internet.

How did that go? I was able to buy my colonial clothing with gold and silver.

[00:46:30] Jordan Harbinger: It's shocking Those guys accept like Bitcoin and pure gold way down on a specific scale and that's it. Exactly.

[00:46:37] A.J. Jacobs: Well it was funny 'cause the guy I called to buy gold from, he's like, oh yeah, you're doing it 'cause you know the banks are closing and uh, the end of the world.

And I'm like, well. I'm actually trying to, no, I'm a different kind of weirdo.

[00:46:54] Jordan Harbinger: I'm a kook, but I'm like a kind of different flavor than, than that. And he's like, oh, okay. I'm, look, this is just a business. I'm LARPing as somebody who thinks society's failing. And you're LARPing is a 1776 guy. Exactly. What happens when you go to a bodega and you're like, do you accept?

And they're like, yeah, all the apps. And you're like, hold on, I, let me finish my sentence. Do you accept pure silver that's 97% pure? And the guy's like, how would you even do that? Just 'cause you're not meaning like you're paying all in quarters, right? You're talking about literal.

[00:47:26] A.J. Jacobs: No, no. I would, I had a scale.

I would bring a scale and I would bring like the little metal shards and I would offer it. I came close at the farmer's market. Some of the people were like, not yet, which I think meant. We're about to have the apocalypse, and as soon as that comes, come on back with your gold.

[00:47:46] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:47:46] A.J. Jacobs: But until then, please pay with a MasterCard.

[00:47:51] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Until then, uh, yeah, just use tap. So what do you think the founding fathers would've thought about social media? I mean, you mentioned Ben Franklin getting his news twice a day, but surely he was having conversations with people a or twice a week? Twice week. Twice a week. Twice a week. Sorry.

[00:48:04] A.J. Jacobs: No, James Madison would have hated social media so much because it is a nightmare to him because what we talked about before, he was afraid of the mob, and he wanted this class of intellectuals, such as newspaper editors to sort of filter the information so that the politicians never had to talk directly to the people.

So having people tweet at him and making ars jokes over Twitter would be Mm-hmm. His nightmare. And yeah, I think, I mean, social media has its pros and cons, but I do think it has contributed to the political crisis we are in right now.

[00:48:46] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

[00:48:46] A.J. Jacobs: It is the whole enraged to engage model. And these guys were very skeptical of anger.

George Washington had a huge temper, but he spent a lot of his life trying to control his temper. Hmm. Because they believed that you needed to govern your passions in order to govern a country. So they were very into sort of the stoic, they read a lot of stoics about keeping their anger at bay. And there is a famous story of George Washington, which I think is true.

It's not like the cherry tree one.

[00:49:20] Jordan Harbinger: Oh, that does, that's not true.

[00:49:22] A.J. Jacobs: I'm sorry. I don't wanna, I don't wanna burst your bubble. I cannot tell

[00:49:26] Jordan Harbinger: a lie, but I can throw a temper tantrum.

[00:49:29] A.J. Jacobs: Exactly. Yeah. I always thought it was ironic that. The point of that story was don't tell lies, but the guy who came up with it was totally lying, so it seemed a little paradoxical.

[00:49:40] Jordan Harbinger: How do I make up a bullshit story about being truthful and not lying?

[00:49:43] A.J. Jacobs: Exactly. Parson Weems, that was the guy who came up with it, a biographer. But yet, so in a very early election, George Washington was up against this other guy, and the other guy lost his temper and hit George Washington with a hickory stick and George Washington just left the scene.

Then he sent Word, he wanted to meet this guy the next day, and the guy's like own George Washington was big, like he was a powerful guy. This guy was like, oh man, he's just gonna kick my ass. Instead, George Washington came extended his hand in friendship. And said, I forgive you, and I'm sorry that I offended you by what I said.

So that, I mean, is Washington, as we've said, had a lot of flaws, but just that idea of controlling your anger and trying to rise above it. I mean that, can you imagine a politician now doing that? They would like, they would go on M-S-N-B-C or Fox News and just rail against the other guy.

[00:50:44] Jordan Harbinger: That's for sure.

But I think the question would be, why did that guy have a hickory stick on him? What is that? He just carries that around.

[00:50:50] A.J. Jacobs: They love their walking sticks.

[00:50:52] Jordan Harbinger: Oh yeah, that's true. I. I think one of the reasons that I'm asking about social media is, and maybe this is a better question, at what point does technology just advance so much that the same, right, doesn't apply in the same way, because I was thinking of social media and free speech, but for example, what some folks think about the Second Amendment, right?

Maybe it made way more sense back then for everyone, quote unquote, to have a musket and know how to use it. Because who knows the we are fighting against the Native Americans and the Brits and maybe the French are gonna cause some ruckus up there in Canada, or maybe the government becomes tyrannical.

It's totally new, it's a new government with new ideas and we're not sure how this whole voting thing's gonna work out. But maybe they didn't want high school kids and gang members in organized crime to have essentially unfettered access to semi-automatic handguns. And to be fair, I don't think anybody wants that.

I don't think anybody wants criminals to have easy access to gun guns. I don't wanna straw man the Pro Second Amendment folks. 'cause that happens a lot in these types of conversations. But. It seems like when they were thinking, Hey, we should make sure everybody has access to a musket. They weren't like, we gotta make sure that criminal groups have easy access to guns, just like normal, sane people who aren't destined for prison.

[00:52:01] A.J. Jacobs: Yeah. Well, I love that question, and let me lay out the two sides, because the gun control advocates would say just that they would say the technology is so outstripped, the words in the Constitution, that it's almost a coincidence that an AR 15 and a musket used the same word. It's almost like if you had a law that said that wheeled vehicles can go down this, this lane and wheeled vehicles at the time were carts or bicycles.

Now you have Mack trucks. Are you gonna allow those Mack trucks to smash into everything on the lane? Mm-Hmm. So that is the side of the gun controlled. The gun rights would say, no, the technology's different, but the principle is the same. It's like, are you gonna say the free speech only applies to wooden blocks and etchings?

So, Mm-Hmm. Those are the two sides. What I find interesting is. I talked to some great Second Amendment scholars and one of them, Saul Cornell, argues both sides would not like the original meaning of the Second Amendment. So you can make arguments about gun control and whether it's good for the world, but don't appeal to the Second Amendment.

Because originally, the Second Amendment, the liberals would not like, or the gun control folks would not like how military life was. It was your duty. It was your civic duty to have a gun. Mm-Hmm. Because you might be called up to be a minuteman and fight for your country. So it was very military. If you were an adult male, you were required to be in the militia and show up every few months to train.

Now on the other side, the gun rights advocates would not like how involved the government was. They did not see regulation. Yeah. As a negative, they would come to your house and inspect your guns to make sure they're working. Can you imagine like that

[00:53:58] Jordan Harbinger: would not fly? No. Right. Because now they're like, we don't even want gun owners to be on a list.

And I remember talking with show fans about this. 'cause I was like. We should have a list. And they were like, here's, I know you don't mean this in the, you know, they, some people were like super angry and other people emailed and they were like, Hey, here's why this is a bad idea. I always prefer those kinds of emails instead of like, ah, you're a fascist, you prick.

It's like, well, okay, clearly we disagree on something, but now they explain anytime you're on a list it's so the government can come and take your guns. And I'm, Hey, look, that totally makes a, a lot of sense if you're thinking about this from a, the anti tyranny perspective. Right. But it sounds like back then it was like not only are you on a list, you better show up on the weekend and take target practice and then Oh yeah.

We gotta show you how to clean the thing and make sure that it's in working order. Yeah. This is not just floating around in your garage. It was

[00:54:44] A.J. Jacobs: a public duty, it was part of the government. Yeah. Now I will say, I love what you said about you prefer people not calling you an asshole. Yeah. But instead trying to, or worse.

And that is one of the other big takeaways from the 18th century is that. I believe that those founding fathers were much more open to changing their mind than we are. They were much more flexible in some ways, and I'll give you two examples. One, James Madison, father of the Constitution, his last words on planet Earth were, he was dying and his made a weird face.

His niece said, are you okay uncle? And he said, oh, it's okay. I just changed my mind. And then he died. So we don't know, did he change his mind about Congress? Did he change his mind about the wallpaper? Like what was, but up until the last moment, he changed his mind. And the second quick story is Ben Franklin in the Constitutional convention, he got up and he said, the older I am, the less certain I am of my own opinions.

[00:55:44] Jordan Harbinger: Hmm.

[00:55:44] A.J. Jacobs: He told this little story, parable joke, he said, there was a French lady who said to her sister, why it's so weird? I am the only person I've ever met who is right on every single issue. And his point was we're all that French lady. We all have this cognitive bias that we think we're right, but like what is the chances that me a j Jacobs am right on every single topic under the sun?

I am the one in 8 billion, like two to one, three to one, somewhere in there. So I don't, somewhere in there I do think that they were much more flexible thinkers and now we are so intransigent and refuse to consider any change despite the evidence. So, uh, that is something I think we need to recapture.

[00:56:34] Jordan Harbinger: I agree that that's partially because now it's a competitive sport.

Back then, if Ben Franklin changed your mind about something or you changed his mind, it would be like, oh, a fair play. That's a really, you made a really good set of points. My mind has changed and you'd probably like shake hands and have a beer. Now, I'll tell you, I changed my mind on a few things on the show.

The show is. Largely about critical thinking. So I change my mind on things when I get new information. And I'll sometimes say that on the show. I'll be like, Hey, you know, I used to think that the COVID-19 lab leak theory was like this weird fringe conspiracy theory, and now there's a lot more evidence to back it up that didn't exist before.

And instead of getting emails like Bravo, that's good. Yeah. I've reconsidered some things. I get people going, ha, you're such a dumbass. I told you that a long time ago. Also, the alien people who inhabit bodies of President Biden and Anderson Cooper Yadi. And I'm like, oh no, you're just a nut. And you think you're right about everything.

I don't, you don't get emails that are like, oh yeah, you've came around. I've come around. You get people who are actually angrier, that you've changed your mind because they were always right about it. And it's like, what? You're mad that I agree with you. That is, this

[00:57:37] A.J. Jacobs: is unhinged. That is fascinating.

[00:57:40] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-Hmm.

[00:57:40] A.J. Jacobs: But I totally get it. I mean, we need to make changing your mind. Virtue great. Again,

[00:57:47] Jordan Harbinger: no. Oh, great. Again,

[00:57:49] A.J. Jacobs: good one.

[00:57:49] Jordan Harbinger: They're thinking like, ah, you're a flip flopper. But it's like, well, yes, we should all aspire to be flip floppers when we get new credible evidence about something. You know? I will say also, the people who are most angry about it, they're also in the broken clock.

That's right. Twice a day camp. Because they weren't right about that because they had evidence that didn't exist before. They were right about that because they believe in kooky fringe theories, which it was actually back then, they didn't have enough evidence, right. To say, and now you know, when you read more about lab leaks at labs all over the place and you look at these different, like now there's more credible evidence for that.

Meanwhile, it was wrong. It really before to think that you had the result. Right. But your decision making process was connecting dots that weren't there. It's not like you can replicate that and be right about other things. Right.

[00:58:37] A.J. Jacobs: I love that and I try to change my mind whenever I can. I mean, I. And in this project, I changed my mind on several things.

One of them was states. I never really got the idea of states, and I'm not alone. Alexander Hamilton in the constitutional convention was like, shouldn't we just get rid of states? I mean, why should every two governments? Why? Yeah. Interesting. Confusing. People won't know who to obey. And so I always thought, because also states sometimes are very retro GA grade and they block civil rights legislation, for instance.

[00:59:10] Jordan Harbinger: Well, yeah, but

[00:59:10] A.J. Jacobs: on the other hand, there are very smart people who point out they're good laboratories. Like you can come up with an idea, test it out on a state level, whether that's, you know, Obamacare started in Massachusetts or gay marriage, and then if it works, then you can expand it. So there are advantages now I see to states, but it's still a very weird system.

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[01:01:39] Jordan Harbinger: Welcome to the Chilling World of the Eerie Cast Podcast Network.

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And if you can't remember the name of a sponsor, you can't find the code, you're not sure. If a sponsor is a sponsor in the first place, email meJordan@jordanharbinger.com. I am more than happy to surface that code for you. Yes, it is that important that you support those who support the show. Now for the rest of my conversation with AJ Jacobs.

Now we're getting down a path that we probably don't wanna go down, which is, which stuff should actually still be states' rights and what stuff shouldn't be. But I'm not qualified for that and I don't wanna piss off half of the listenership by getting it wrong. 'cause I'm doing a knee jerk. This should be states' rights or this shouldn't.

It's like I'm just gonna shoot myself in both feet if I do that. Tell me about the candles that smelled like ours. What's going on here? Your poor wife, by the way, must have been so annoyed by all these shenanigans.

[01:03:16] A.J. Jacobs: Uh, well, the original. The fancy people at that time used sper, CEI candles from whales.

What is that? Which is not sperm. It's actually Okay. It's weirdly that it's called Sper. cei. It's, it's something weird in their brain cavity. Some waxy substance. It sounds

[01:03:32] Jordan Harbinger: like sperm and confetti makes together, which is not. Yeah, nobody wants that.

[01:03:35] A.J. Jacobs: Well, some people, some people might

[01:03:37] Jordan Harbinger: very, yeah, that's true.

Not nobody. Not literally nobody.

[01:03:41] A.J. Jacobs: So those didn't smell at all. But there are problems with getting whale sper CEI candles now. But, so the next level is beef tallow candles, which are available on Etsy. Those were the ones that were sort of the cheapest, the ones you would buy at Costco. But they smell.

They smell like meatloaf. So they made the whole apartment stink. So then I had to upgrade to beeswax candles, which don't smell as bad, but are more expensive. So that is the that that is my tale of candles.

[01:04:11] Jordan Harbinger: But you live in an apartment, your neighbors must have been like, what are you on one of those carnivore diets?

You mind opening a window in January?

[01:04:19] A.J. Jacobs: Exactly. That is right. Yeah, I know. It is hard to live in the 1790s in an apartment. First of all, you realize things to be grateful for that you never were grateful for. Like elastic. My, I will never take elastic for granted again because my socks, I wore these 1790 socks.

That had no elastic, so they would like fall down and puddle around my ankle. Oh, you had to put on every morning I had to put on little sock belts. You know that not even garters garters are too thin sock

[01:04:55] Jordan Harbinger: suspenders.

[01:04:55] A.J. Jacobs: They were little belts, like, they looked like smurf sized belts, and you'd have to strap 'em on top of your socks every day.

And oh God, the kitchen, there was no sink in the kitchen in a, in the 1790s, they'd have to go and schlep the water from the we. I, so I tried to replicate that by schlepping the water from my farthest bathroom, which was not the same. You know, it is not the same. But you realize that life has gotten better in some ways.

That we really, let's be grateful for elastic. Let's be grateful for antibiotics. Let's be grateful that we don't have to have tobacco enemas, which was a very popular wow way to cure all sorts of ailments. They would literally blow smoke up your ass. That is what Wow. A tobacco enema is, and a very popular,

[01:05:47] Jordan Harbinger: is that where that expression comes from?

Because I can only, it has to be, I

[01:05:52] A.J. Jacobs: have spent way too much time trying to research, to research whether that is, and it's still, it is still undetermined to me. I, it might have come from that. It might have come from something, but it is literally blowing smoke up your ass. Wow. They had like a little bellows, like a little squeeze box and a hose, and they would go and then the smoke would go up your butt.

[01:06:13] Jordan Harbinger: I'm not even gonna say the thing that came across my mind. Um, while you're schlepping water back and forth and you're wearing a try, corn hat and your apartment smells like, like ours, did your kids just entirely stop having friends over to the house at that point?

[01:06:30] A.J. Jacobs: Yeah, they are. You know, they put up with a lot, some parts they liked. Yeah. Some parts they liked. One of them when I joined the Revolutionary War reenactors and we actually went out onto the field with my musket and died for my country, by the way. I, I died. Hmm. One of them went and he looked, kinda looked like a cast member of Hamilton.

They gave him a cool hat and so he liked that. But yeah, there were challenges. The other challenge was if you, Antoinette Scalia, who's sort of, uh, one of the founders of originalism. He argued, you know, the phrase cruel and unusual punishments.

[01:07:07] Jordan Harbinger: Sure.

[01:07:07] A.J. Jacobs: That is a famous, you know, you, the Eighth Amendment says, we cannot use cruel and unusual punishment.

But that's a good example of what does that mean? What does that mean? Now what did it mean then? Back then you could do a lot. You could, flogging was not considered cruel. Branding was not considered cruel, and the pilly was very popular. This is the wooden thing. You put your hands and your head in.

Antonin Scalia himself said, if you are a hardcore originalist, then you should accept the fact that a pilly is not cruel and unusual even today because it was not cruel and unusual in 1791. And I thought. I should at least investigate this. So I went on Etsy and you can get Pilly now. They Yeah, I bet you can.

It's more for Yeah, exactly.

[01:08:01] Jordan Harbinger: Uhhuh. Yeah, it comes with a paddle.

[01:08:03] A.J. Jacobs: I don't want a kink shame. Well, weirdly, they also, they said, do you want padding around the neck? And I was like, if I'm getting a pilly like that seems counter to the what? You don't want like a comfortable pilly. But I bought it and I considered, should I punish my kids and say, you can either have a day without wifi or you can do five minutes in the pill.

I could not bring myself to do that. And in fact, the only one I could put in the pill was myself just to see what it was like.

[01:08:33] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

[01:08:33] A.J. Jacobs: But I did not want my kids around 'cause I knew that they would just leave me in there. Well, yeah. And so I did have my wife there to let me out. But she also took advantage and was like, I'll let you out if you promise to fold your sweaters.

That kind of thing.

[01:08:50] Jordan Harbinger: Right.

[01:08:50] A.J. Jacobs: So it was not a, it was not a successful,

[01:08:53] Jordan Harbinger: what you don't want is your kids walking in on you and the pilly and your wife standing there over you, because that's something that they, first of all, they're never gonna believe the reason that you were in there. And they're never gonna unsee that.

And it's just gonna be something that you have to explain. Well, hopefully never, but it is a great point. It's just gonna be an awkward Yeah, awkward forever. Um,

[01:09:14] A.J. Jacobs: and I said, no photos. There are no photos that exist. Yeah, no photos.

[01:09:18] Jordan Harbinger: That's one of those things that happen. Yeah. Well, I'm not even gonna go into that.

There's so many roads we could go down there. Let's change the subject. Voting used to be a party where people would've parades, farmer's markets, they would get liquored up. I think we should bring that back. Because the only way I can stand going to a farmer's market is if I've had a couple shots.

[01:09:38] A.J. Jacobs: Well, I am a hundred percent with you.

That is one of the other big takeaways is when voting started, at least for the privileged few who could vote, they were awestruck by how exciting it was. I mean, no one had ever voted for their own leaders. So it was a party. It was like, yeah, farmer's Market. It was coach. It wasn't quite Coachella. I wouldn't say that It was festive and you had election cakes and you had a rum punch.

These cakes sometimes they were huge. They were 70 pounds and people would bring them to the polls and it would be a big party. Hmm. My contention is we need to recapture that. We need to get back that joy. So I started this movement during my year and I got hundreds of people to bake election cakes and bring them to work, or to the polls, and it was so lovely.

It was one of my favorite parts because people are depressed, including me, about the state of politics. So doing this one small positive thing. Even if it's just baking a cake, it's like a foot in the door. It's like a little glimpse of optimism and people are so psyched. I'm gonna do it again in November.

So I want thousands of people to bake these election cakes to remind us the, the catchphrase. Democracy is sweet, so let's try to keep it and let's bake the cakes. The original recipe is kind of gross. It's got cloves and figs. So I didn't make people do that, but people were creative. Like in Georgia, they had a, a peach cake and uh, you know, oh, that sounds good.

Michigan apparently has cherry, so

[01:11:12] Jordan Harbinger: cherry cake. Yeah, that makes sense.

[01:11:14] A.J. Jacobs: And there are studies that say if you make it more festive. Then people will come out to vote. So it's not a small thing. I mean, it is a small thing, but it is an important thing. It's actually a really good

[01:11:24] Jordan Harbinger: idea.

[01:11:24] A.J. Jacobs: Yeah, let's do it. And into Australia they have the, uh, democracy sausage, it's called, they like barbecue at, so let's do it.

Let's make democracy fun again.

[01:11:34] Jordan Harbinger: You just don't wanna see how that sausage is made. Am I right? And party like it's 1799. Now it's interesting you see like, oh, you can't even give out water in the a hundred degree heat in Arizona or whatever state it was. Maybe it was Georgia for people who are standing in line to vote and back then it's like, no, we're giving out shots of whiskey.

That's what's happening. This is, oh yeah, we're gonna make sure you're, you can barely see the ballot when you go by the time you get in there.

[01:12:00] A.J. Jacobs: Exactly. Like there is a list of the liquor that George Washington bought for voters in a very early Virginia election, and it is a sta they would make like a fraternity be like, whoa, that's a little much.

[01:12:13] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, take it easy, buddy. Yeah. Yeah. My gosh. The book's interesting. You asked a soldier to quarter in your home that was sort of, you know, less of a. It didn't sound nearly as awkward as it probably was. The Supreme Court wasn't as powerful as it is now. Women had very few rights back then. There's all this romantic paternalism and something called the coverture system, and women couldn't own property or run for office or bartend, which was kind of interesting.

I just thought like these things you learned during your experiment here was were quite interesting. But in the time we have left, I, I really wanna hear more about the muskets. So you, you got a couple muskets, you showed 'em off here on, uh. On the video to remind everyone again, you are in Manhattan. So how does one go and buy a musket?

Is this a mail order thing or is there like a gun show for antique guns in New York?

[01:13:01] A.J. Jacobs: Well, a little of both. I went, I got my first one on ye old internet and it was a big gun store in Texas that sells actual guns from the 1790s. So the first one I bought was actually used in the war of 1812. Wow. Which is amazing.

I mean, it is a piece of history.

[01:13:16] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

[01:13:17] A.J. Jacobs: So that was fine for reenactments where you don't actually shoot the little lead balls. But I wanted to go to a firing range with my Reenactor friends and actually shoot little posters of red coats. So I had to get another musket, which my wife was not happy about.

That was a replica. So this one was made like 20 years ago, but it actually has the exact same look and machinery of a one from the 18th century. And that was the one I took out. To the shooting range. The other one, I actually was the one I carried around New York, which was weird because you had all of these mixed reactions.

You had people who would cross the street to avoid you.

[01:14:01] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

[01:14:01] A.J. Jacobs: It did come in handy once, which was, I'm walking along and I, I go to my morning coffee shop with my musket on my shoulder, and this other guy arrived at the same time and he's like. You go first. I'm not gonna fight you on who goes first in line.

Right? Because you are carrying a musket, you are armed. And I was like, oh, all right. Well, I can see how it can come in handy. Mm-Hmm. Yeah. Going to the actual range was fascinating because you had to, like we said earlier, there are 17 steps to actually fire. It's like building an IKEA table, like it is a process.

[01:14:41] Jordan Harbinger: And then you have parts left over and you're like, I hope these weren't that important.

[01:14:46] A.J. Jacobs: And my wife still complains. She's like, it's dangerous to have it in the house. I'm like, there is no way. Even if I had the lead ball that I could remember all the steps and figure out how to shoot it. It is too complicated.

So I think we're safe.

[01:15:00] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, that's a weapon. You don't have to worry about being used against you in those situations. It's like there's all those stats, like guns are more likely to be used against you, and it's like. By the time someone has gotten that and figured out how to use it and then they fire and it's like accurate to within 17 feet at 20 feet or whatever the range is on those things.

It's like, I don't think we have to worry about that. How loud is it though? That's do the hardcore war reenactment, guys. They fire these things. Right? But do they wear air protection when they do it?

[01:15:29] A.J. Jacobs: Yes. Which is not so authentic, but Right. A lot of them do wear ear protection. I will say it can be dangerous.

When I went to go fight in this one battle in New Jersey, one guy, one of my fellow soldiers put too much gunpowder in the barrel and it exploded in his face and he had to go to the hospital and Oh geez. So yeah, you do have to be careful. It is still a gun and it is still loud and it still kicks back.

But it is also, it's very not an accurate gun. No, because the bullet comes out. The ball comes out at weird angles. Because it's not a rifle, a rifle where it spins and this one is more, it's bouncing along like a, like in a bowling alley when you have the gutters up. Mm-Hmm. It just bounces back and forth in the barrel and then it'll shoot out wherever you want.

So I was a terrible shot, but I was able to console myself by saying, well, that, that's authentic. They were terrible shots back then, which is why they lined up. Yeah. That is the craziest way to fight a war. They would line up and all be in a line because they had such bad aim. The downside was when the other guy was shooting, they, they were just a wall of flesh.

Right. It was a horrible way to,

[01:16:49] Jordan Harbinger: uh, and then you get a, a ball lodged in you at low speed.

[01:16:53] A.J. Jacobs: I mean, all war is terrible.

[01:16:54] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. My god. What, so what were some of your main takeaways from your year of living constitutionally? You mentioned slow news. I know in the book you say you talk about embracing virtue.

Yes. What are we talking about with this?

[01:17:07] A.J. Jacobs: Well, that one I love because they were very, nowadays virtue that word, it sort of has a, you know, virtue signaling, oh, you're just being pretentious. You're asking where the honey were. The bees treated nicely when they made this honey for my pancakes. But then virtue was a huge deal.

The word virtue is mentioned more often than the word freedom in the letters of the founding fathers. And the idea of virtue at the time was self-sacrifice. It was thinking of the common good thinking of the community, and whether that was being on the bucket brigade, like everyone was a firefighter, if you would have to go and put out fires.

[01:17:48] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-Hmm.

[01:17:49] A.J. Jacobs: Or it was joining the militia and fighting for your community that way. Everyone thought their individual rights were important, but they also thought of their responsibilities. They were very concerned about what can I do to help others And that I love, I mean, again, the virtue at that time was very constrained 'cause it was only for a part of society.

But I do love the idea of trying to, I wish that the Constitution had a bill of responsibilities in addition to a Bill of Rights. But they just assumed that the responsibilities, everyone knew that you were supposed to think of others. And I don't wanna go back to militias, but I do think what if everyone had to, like in some countries you have to spend a month, you know, doing AmeriCorps or so something.

Mm-hmm. To bind our society together because we don't have a glue right now. And it is abundantly and scarily clear that we are splitting in two and we need some sort of glue. And I think that this idea of virtue is one way to go about it. So that was a big takeaway. Yeah.

[01:19:02] Jordan Harbinger: Are you optimistic about where America is headed?

I mean, you seem like a generally optimistic guy, but I don't know. You also just said it seems like we're splitting in two, so I'm not sure how to reconcile that.

[01:19:12] A.J. Jacobs: I am optimistic with an asterisk, I would say. Mm-Hmm. And actually, can I just tell the quick story of, yeah. In the constitutional convention, George Washington was sat in this big wooden chair and there was a carving on the back of the chair and it was of the sun, but it was only half the sun.

Like you could only see the half above the horizon. So you don't know, is it rising, is the sun rising or is the sun setting? And Ben Franklin said he thought about it throughout the whole convention. At the end when they finally made a constitution against all odds, Ben Franklin said, now I know the sun is rising on America, not setting.

So I loved that as a metaphor. Is the sun still rising on America? 'cause it seems sometimes like it's setting. And my conclusion at the end of this was it's up to us. It's not like a natural force like gravity. We are the ones who are gonna decide whether the sun rises or sets. I mean, I feel that we can make democracy work, but we have to have reforms and we have to get in there.

We have to bake cakes for starters, but that's just the start. We have to work on gerrymandering. We have to work on reforming the Supreme Court, all of these things. We can save it. I mean, they had a much harder road to hoe than we do back then. Like the odds were stacked even more against them. So things are looking somewhat bleak now.

But with hard work, I believe we can save our democracy, but we have to do it. We have to be the ones who lift the sun up.

[01:20:46] Jordan Harbinger: How glad is your wife that you are done with the beef candles and the schlepping of water and it maybe soon the Tricorn hat you, the muskets might be on eBay at some point? I mean, she, she must be somewhat relieved.

[01:21:00] A.J. Jacobs: She is quite relieved. This was not great, but I think the Bible one was worse because as you mentioned, there was the beard. And like you said, that women are who are menstruating, are considered impure. And if they sit in a seat, then the seat becomes impure. She found that offensive, so she sat in every seat in our apartment.

So I had to stand for pretty much most of the year.

[01:21:24] Jordan Harbinger: Wow.

[01:21:25] A.J. Jacobs: So that, I think was even more of a challenge for her.

[01:21:28] Jordan Harbinger: So what's the next zany idea? Can you give us a sneak preview of what you're gonna do next? Or do you not know?

[01:21:33] A.J. Jacobs: I love ideas from readers, so I do have, I'm starting a substack called Experimental Living, so I want people to come in and.

I mean, the ideas that I get, I've done a couple. One that seems popular is that people say I should become the greatest lover and do all the positions in the Kama Sutra. And I did bring that up to my wife, Julie, and she's like, absolutely not. That is just,

[01:21:57] Jordan Harbinger: wow. Yeah. So first of all, we know that you're the one that put that in there entry.

Hey, some random person sent this in, honey. What do you think about that?

[01:22:05] A.J. Jacobs: Honestly, no. All

[01:22:07] Jordan Harbinger: right.

[01:22:09] A.J. Jacobs: I don't think I have the back flexibility to do it. So I, I, I leave it to someone younger, so leave it to the next generation.

[01:22:16] Jordan Harbinger: Wow. Cringe.

[01:22:17] A.J. Jacobs: I know my last book was about puzzles. So my, I have a podcast about puzzles.

Mm-Hmm. Um, so I'm working on that. That's a daily podcast.

[01:22:26] Jordan Harbinger: The puzzle pod. Wow. The puzzler

[01:22:28] A.J. Jacobs: with a j Jacobs.

[01:22:29] Jordan Harbinger: That's a commitment daily. That's tough, man. That's a tough cast. I. Heavy lifting.

[01:22:33] A.J. Jacobs: It's only eight to 10 minutes. So at least it's that still, it's not like yours

[01:22:38] Jordan Harbinger: getting unlike every day. Well, is anything quite like the Jordan Harbinger show?

I don't know

[01:22:42] A.J. Jacobs: exactly.

[01:22:43] Jordan Harbinger: aj, thank you very much, man. Like I said, you're one of my favorite weirdos, so I always enjoy these conversations.

[01:22:50] A.J. Jacobs: Well, I loved it. You are my favorite. You are still weird. You're still somewhat weird. Oh yeah. So I can say that. A quasi weirdo. Well, it was a joy and thank you again for having me on.

[01:23:03] Jordan Harbinger: I've got some thoughts on this episode, but before I get into that, here's what you should check out

[01:23:07] Clip: next on the Jordan Harbinger Show. What I tried to do was thank a thousand

[01:23:13] A.J. Jacobs: people who had even the smallest role in making my cup of coffee possible and

[01:23:18] Clip: like a thousand. You go, oh, that's not a lot. It's a, that's a lot.

Oh my God. It was a lot people. A hundred people would be a tedious No, it, it was, it was way more than I Anticip anticipated 10 times that many.

[01:23:29] A.J. Jacobs: Everything we do requires hundreds, thousands of interconnected people and that we take for granted. And just making this mental switch, just from a selfish point of view is very good because it really does help you appreciate the hundreds of things that go right every day instead of focusing on the three or four that go wrong.

There's a great quote. I wish I'd come up with it myself, but it says, it's easier to act your way into a new way of thinking than to think your way into a new way of acting. So I had to fake it for a long time. You know, I would wake up in a grumpy mood, but I'd be like, I have to spend an hour calling or visiting people and thanking them, and I'm not in the mood to do that right now.

No. So it was like acting. It was like method acting, and I would force myself to do it. But I'll tell you, by the end of that hour, your mind, you know, the cognitive dissonance is too much. Your mind will switch over to gratefulness. There's a great quote that happiness does not lead to gratitude. Gratitude leads to happiness.

Having that

[01:24:35] Clip: mindset really will make you happier. For more with AJ Jacobs and his fascinating

[01:24:40] Jordan Harbinger: journey to thank everyone involved in his cup of morning coffee and an inside look at just how complex the supply chain of our lives really is. Check out episode 1, 7 4 of the Jordan Harbinger Show. So I realized we weren't clear about the candle thing.

I. The reason I was joking with him about the candles is because during the year he was doing this experiment, he didn't use lights. He used candlelight and he wrote half the book, buy candlelight with a quill pen. And the candles, they were beef towel. I think you touched on this a little bit, and they were stinky.

They dripped everywhere. I mean, can you imagine living with this guy during this it, it must have been just patently ridiculous. I can imagine his kids being like, oh God, dad's writing again. 'cause the whole house, he said, smells like beef stroganoff slash I think he said ass, but whatever. Um, it might seem like he's pretty committed to the bit until you hear about some of the Revolutionary War reenactment folks that he was around.

They would count stitches and they would march barefoot and they would not use hearing protection. So a lot of them couldn't hear well 'cause they were firing muskets with no hearing protection. That's a little bit too hardcore for me. Uh, um, no thank you. I found it interesting. That no official religion.

You know, the United States, we have no official religion. That's a federal thing. Only states are allowed to have an official religion. I actually had no idea. I should probably stop talking about this. We don't wanna give people any ideas. The big lesson here is there's nothing natural about democracy. It is fragile.

It must be maintained. There's a rise of authoritarianism around the world that's very sad to see. I don't think we're going quite that way. My optimism still stands, but we really do have to protect our institutions. I thought this was an enlightening episode because he really does get into the history and the nitty gritty about things.

You can see how this document has evolved, how some people want it to evolve more. Others don't want it to evolve at all. It's really kind of an interesting culture war, and I think at the end of the day, we need to remember that we are Americans. We stand for American values, and we need to circle the wagons around what that means, or we might just lose our way, and that would be tragic.

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