Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard - Jared Cohen Returns

Episode Date: February 29, 2024

Jared Cohen (Life After Power, Accidental Presidents) is an author and businessman. Jared returns to the Armchair Expert to discuss what other oddities he collects from former US Presidents, the burden of legacy, and the history of third parties in the presidential elections. Jared and Dax talk about why authority in institutions matters, how much being a politician has changed, and the impact of geopolitics on business. Jared explains the relationship between ambition and happiness, how social media algorithms accelerate the radicalization process, and how he convinced Adam Grant to become his unofficial therapist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, Experts on Expert. I'm Dan Rather, and I'm joined by Monica Monsoon. Hi there. I got to make an introduction to someone on an email with you, and I took so much pleasure in listing you as all your many acronyms. Yeah. Not acronyms, your pseudonyms. Pseudonyms.

Pseudies. You called me Monica Monsoon, Touches of Duluth. Touches of Duluth, Miniature Mouse. Yeah. Yeah. monica monsoon miniature mouse yeah actually what i did is i combined a couple things because i did monica monsoon padman i made a new thing basically which is like the monsoon was in the middle with quotes like you were a boxer sure like iron mike tyson right yeah monica monsoon padman when i in college senior year we had senior shirts and you would put a fun name on the shirt, on the back of the shirt. Oh, okay. And mine was Monster.

Oh, really? Mm-hmm. Tell me more about that. Because Mon. Yeah, of course. I see the phonetic connection. Monster. That's fun.

Were you a little monster? Well, I am a little monster. Oh, okay. In a good way. Right. Okay. I'm going to work on that. Maybe I'm going to bring a monster.

Okay. So you're going to add it to your pseudonyms. Okay. Today we have a returning guest who's a friend of ours, Jared Cohen. You'll probably remember the last time he was here, we talked greatly about his collection of presidential hairs. That's right. So fascinating.

He's obsessed with presidents, and I love it because he keeps writing books about them, but under different lenses to talk about different issues, but always through this look at the presidents. The book that he's here to talk about is really interesting about legacy. Yeah, Life After Power is the name of the book. Two previous books are The New Digital Age

and Accidental Presidents. Jared is a businessman serving as the president of global affairs and co-head of the Office of Applied Innovation at Goldman Sachs. He's held a bunch of different titles. He used to work with Eric Schmidt, who we've also interviewed at Google. He can do it all. He really can. And he's such a nice guy. He is. You're going to love him. Please enjoy Jared Cohen. Trip Planner by Expedia. You were made to have strong opinions about sand.

We were made to help you and your friends find a place on a beach with a pool and a marina and a waterfall and a soaking tub. Expedia. Made to travel. He's an object expert. He's an up-chair expert He's an up-chair expert He's an up-chair expert Is the air on?

Are you okay? I feel great. How do you feel in your sweater? I'm surprised. Thank God! Okay, now we're getting somewhere. I never say it, but it's the truth. Okay, I'm surprised. Thank God. Okay, now we're getting somewhere. I never say it, but it's the truth. Okay, good.

Dax, I feel like you look more ripped than when I saw you last time. I didn't go back and look. I often do, but how many years has it been? So I last saw you in Montana. That was three years ago. Your jawline's good. Oh, well, thank you. You know what that might be a result of?

When I was there, I was in my big boy phase. What does that mean, by the way? I started nodding as if I knew what it was. I had been a medium boy my whole life, medium build. And then I decided I wanted to be a big boy. So I went up to about 215, 220. So when I was there at that time, I was like 215, 220. And probably my jawline disappeared a bit. First of all, thank you. You have a very dominant chin. You think so? Yes, I'm pretty jealous of it. I thought about wearing chin putty to look kind of extra sexy for you guys. That would be preposterous because you already have, you look like you could definitely be the coach of an NFL team. But I want one of those 19th century chins. It's like a little bit

of Habsburg descent, but not too much Habsburg descent. Right, where it's like a good 40% of the total vertical space on your face. Yeah. Like maybe he comes from totally defunct monarchy that squandered power a couple hundred years ago. Yes. I have to ask right off the bat. President hairs? Yeah.

Has it grown? Has your hair collection grown since we saw you? Monica, I'm so glad you asked. The answer is yes. And I've added additional oddities to the mix. By the way, I last saw you all when I came on in 2019. Since then, there's an opportunity to collect two additional presidential locks. You know, Trump, which is the holy grail, although I've declared I don't collect hair from the living. But let's be honest, if I could get it, I would. Yeah. And Biden, right, it's too soon. You can't collect the hair of the incumbent. Feels like Jinxy or something. So since I saw you last, I got Eisenhower's hair, which you might say is ironic because he was bald.

Oh, with an extra. Very small pieces of hair. I've got a whole blob of John Tyler, obviously. It's great. I've got these weird— Jared, I'm embarrassed. I don't think I've ever heard John Tyler. That was a president? So John Tyler was That was a president?

So John Tyler was the 10th president. You want to hear a wild fact? He was born during the term of George Washington, and he has a grandson who's still alive. Whoa. Oh, doesn't that compress time in a way that's weirdly scary? I've spoken to him on the phone. He's super old.

So basically, he fathered 15 children, the eldest of which he fathered in his late 70s. And then that kid fathered, I think, like another somewhere between 12 and 15 children, the lasted in his late 70s. And then that kid fathered, I think, like another somewhere between 12 and 15 children, the last one in his late 70s. And then that kid is like 102 or something. Wow. Okay, so for either of those men to have fathered children in their late 70s, clearly they had either mistresses or had remarried,

which seems a little unusual in the 1800s. John Tyler was a widower president. He famously, as president... Killed his wife. He did not kill his wife. He famously got remarried while he was president. He was the first president to get married. A White House wedding? The wedding itself was held in New York. If you've ever been to the restaurant Indochine,

that's where the after party was. Wow! Yeah. Surprised you didn't know that. It's so funny that this isn't Jared's occupation. I know. None of this isn't Jared's occupation. I know. None of this pertains to his job. Anything he does. Other than maybe some guiding principles when you are in vastly different situations.

But back to the 15 kids and then the 15 kids. The son of him, how do we explain how he was having kids in his 70s? Are these legitimate children? They're legitimate. Look, he was very fertile. Well, clearly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A virile man.

Yeah, very virile. But that means he had a wife in her 30s, presumably. Yeah, younger. There was a Delta. Okay. The free size Delta. I mean, 30s is being very generous. I'm sure she was like 18.

Sometimes when I say this, I had mentioned that one of our guests who was born in the 70s, I said their mother was older. Oh, Billy Joe Armstrong, lead singer of Green Day. And I said, well, your mother was pretty old when she had you. And people got really mad about that. What is old? And I was like, by 70s standards, it was abnormal for a woman at 39 to have a kid. Now that's normal. It is a late pregnancy.

So I was really placating those people when I said she was in her 30s. If I had to bet my life, he probably was with a 24-year-old when he was 70. Again, the Delta. Yeah. Okay, so you've written yet another book that involves presidents. This is book number five? This is book number five. And how many of them have dealt with presidents?

This is my second one about presidents. I actually have a children's book about presidents coming out in September. Don't worry, I'm not going to hassle you to have me back on the show that soon afterwards. Okay. But we'll talk about it now. Yeah. Okay, so that'll make three of six about presidents. And people who had heard your 2019 interview would know that this is a total hobby for you.

I mean, you have a BA in what? History and political science. A childhood passion in presidents, an adult passion for collecting weird presidential oddities and artifacts. Oh, did you add the new item you're collecting? So I have the vial of poison on a very high shelf because I have young kids that Charles Gatteau, the assassin of James Garfield, that his sister sent to him in prison so that he could take his own life and avoid facing prosecution. And I recently acquired the so that he could take his own life and avoid facing prosecution.

Okay. And I recently acquired the pencil that he used during his trial. Oh, wow. And then a piece of the leather from the limo that JFK was riding in. No. On November 22nd, 1963,

when he was assassinated. Which was a 64 Lincoln Continental? I will confess, Dax, I have not committed the brand of the presidential limo to memory, but I can tell you that the leather seat was blue. Okay, it was blue. That's huge.

That must be one of the biggest ones you have. It goes with a lock of JFK's hair, which is pretty rare, that I've also acquired. I don't want to be too morbid, but if you had gotten a lock of hair from that scene, I feel like that would be the most valuable. So I have a lock of hair from Lincoln.

It's drawn from the most famous lock of Lincoln's hair with great provenance from the night of his assassination. It was taken by his physician. And I know the guy who has the lock, when I was younger, I got my first Lincoln autograph. And this was my kickback for overpaying for the autograph was I watched him pull six strands of hair from the most famous lock of Lincoln's hair. And I now have it kind of tied in a ribbon on my wall. Oh, my goodness. And I know we talked about this last time,

but clearly an option for you in the future is to clone all these humans when we have that capability. And you could be the father of all the founding fathers. That's my hope. That's got to be the ultimate. That's where this is going. Because you're not going to open an oddities museum. Am I not going to open an oddities museum?

We've all thought about it. We've all fetishized it. But I probably won't do it. OK, and then to add just a bit more accolades to you. So then also you were a Rhodes Scholar and you got a master's in philosophy. International relations from Oxford. International relations. Why does it say M. Phil?

They don't have masters from Oxford. It's called a master's in philosophy. It's just the British system. Same way with PhDs. It's a doctor in philosophy there. Oh, that kind of answers a question I never thought to ask. Sometimes you say a PhD and sometimes you say a doctorate or doctoral. At Oxford, it's a DPhil. In the US, it's a PhD. They're both snobby about each other's systems. And so then in 2019, you had a different job. You at that time were the CEO of Jigsaw. Thank you, Monica. But you

were also still working very hand in hand with Eric Schmidt, who ultimately we had on. And I think I text you, I put him in a category of like five other guests, where when it was over, I was like, I think that person sees the entire picture on planet Earth, which is a very rare thing to witness. Eric has the widest angle lens of any human being that I've ever met. And you mix that with his own tremendous curiosity and his intellectual generosity. And you don't just get the benefit of his knowledge. You get the benefit of learning from him. I've been a beneficiary of that my whole life. If I think back to kind of the original reason why I got the idea to write Life After Power, I was working for Eric when he was CEO of Google, and he transitioned to executive chairman of the company and working hand in hand with him and partnering with him

as he thought through what does it mean to go from being CEO of Google to executive chairman? What do I want next in my professional career? It was so humbling as somebody early in my career to be along for the ride for somebody who'd had the success that he had. And it always got me interested in this question of what's next. And I'd been interested in presidential history my whole life. But after going through that experience, I started reading the end of the biography. You know, you have these sort of thousand page Ron Chernow biographies, and you kind of close them for the last 50 pages after they're done with the presidency. And most of the time, it's not an interesting story. Or even heartbreaking. Or even heartbreaking.

A lot of them ended up extremely depressed, isolated. Insolvent. By the way, most of the early presidents, remember, they were a lot of slave owners. They were big landowners. They left office completely penniless. You didn't have presidential pensions until after Herbert Hoover. Washington's whole plantation was in a total state of disrepair. George Washington. I mean, imagine that people don't know this part of the story.

So he leaves office and he goes back to Mount Vernon. He never leaves Mount Vernon again. He spends all of his final years chasing down people who owe him money. He has to start a whiskey business, not because he's passionate about whiskey, but he's completely broke. And on top of this, he's the most famous man in America. So all these tourists come to Mount Vernon and they just kind of get dropped off there. And he's stuck hosting them and paying for them. And he does. He's endlessly kind and patient to them. And he has no choice. And he's dealing with voyeurs. And so this idea that you

go from being the most powerful person in the world to all of a sudden just an ordinary citizen, it's the most dramatic retirement you can imagine. That's a great point. And Eric is a good comp for that because you're climbing, you're climbing, climbing, then you get to whatever the end goal is of that. And then I imagine you start looking around and go, well, what's next? Nothing's gonna top this.

I think, and we were just talking about this. I had gone to a resort over Christmas. It's where you want to end up. And I'm looking around and I'm looking at all the people and I cannot help but notice that generally my trips to Holiday Inn Express is the people are much happier and people are having more fun. And I was like, what is going on? And then my conclusion was you've reached the end of the line of hoping for something more or wishing for something more or thinking of something that you're aspiring to. It's like, well, there's not a nicer hotel for us to really think about being at. And just

the kind of hopelessness that all of a sudden takes over in those moments. And so, yeah, someone like Eric or these presidents, I have to imagine it's like, what on earth would I do next? So it's interesting, this elusive question of what do we do next? We're all going to ask it so many times throughout the course of our life. And you never know when you've achieved your greatest moment of power. I think if you look at Eric as an example, you would think that being CEO of Google is as high as you can get. I would argue that his journey and broadening into kind of unmatched public intellectual after that with expertise on such a wide swath of topics far eclipses what he achieved as CEO of Google. And he built one of the great companies of all time. And I think he would even acknowledge

that that was not something that was predictable. And this is part of why being alongside him while he was going through that journey inspired me to ask the question, who else has kind of figured this out? And this relationship between ambition and happiness is very interesting when you look at these former presidents. So I look at seven in the book. Each one of them answered the question of what's next in a very different way. Each one of them found, I think, greater purpose and meaning after they left the White House than their journey to it or during their time in it.

And yet many of them were still unhappy later in life. And part of what fueled their ambition after the White House is they didn't know how to not be ambitious. They were just successful because they found a way to channel it that helped them recapture that sense of purpose. I think in some respects, the only president that I focus on that I think has achieved genuine happiness is George W. Bush. Right. Yeah. We'll get to him at the end, but you chose seven presidents and they're spanning all the different eras,

which to me seems a bit obvious, but they also span different parties. That was intentional, right? I imagine that you wanted this to remain apolitical and everything else. It kind of worked out that way, but it wasn't intentional. So if you look at the 45 men

who've been president 46 times, because Cleveland was president twice, you eliminate the eight that died in office, you eliminate the handful that died shortly thereafter, you kind of ignore the one who's sitting in office today or just left because too soon, and you canvas the rest of them. And I was left with seven by default, because there were really only seven that I thought were worth writing about. With George W. Bush, I looked at that a little bit differently. I wanted to look at the active living presidents and ask the question, which ones stand out?

He's the only one whose popularity has doubled since leaving office, and yet he's invested less time and energy into shaping his legacy than probably all of them. And so that was worthy of its own study. Is that him or that's lucky for him that the world took a turn where we now look back and think, oh my God, he was so great. I mean, just circumstantially. It's an astute observation,

Monica. I think it's a combination of the two. So one, he has this unique ability to move on. I went and I spent two days with him in Kennebunkport. I did hours and hours of interviews with him. Can I ask quickly, was that a hard interview to get? Yeah, I had known him over the years. I worked in his administration. I think it was a hard interview to get only insofar as he hadn't given any interviews about his post-presidency before, certainly at this length. I watched him paint for hours. Yeah, he loves to paint.

He said this is a crucial part of his finding purpose. Look, I think Bush has this psychological uniqueness where he's not introspective. What he says is, you know, when it's over, it's over. I don't miss it. I genuinely believe him to sort of understand how a human being can detach in that way. It's like a psychological thriller into like a powerful and ambitious person's brain that is counterintuitive to everything that we know. I think that he has a rigorous adherence to the principle of one president at a time. Other presidents say they do, but they can't resist the urge to insert themselves. He never once has inserted himself. He never once mentions his successor by name. He didn't do anything during the debates when Trump was blasting Jeb. He said nothing publicly. So it's a remarkable discipline.

So I think that Americans appreciate that reverence for the Washington principle. It's aged really well in the era of Trump. And it's not that he doesn't have ambitions and causes he cares about. He's done with politics. What's interesting is that he's found a post-presidential voice through painting that allows him to push those causes in a way that doesn't undermine his successors. And the causes that he's pushing, you know, the story of American immigrants, the story of veterans, these are some of the things. How's he doing it with the painting? So he paints, he had a painting instructor who told him, paint the portraits of people you know who other people don't know. And he said, I've known a lot of veterans over the years. And he just started painting them.

I've known a lot of great American immigrants. A lot of them served in my administration. A lot of them have gone through the programs of the Bush Center. He just started painting them. And it reminds people in the United States that while they didn't like the war in Iraq, while they didn't like a lot of his policies, there's aspects of who he is as a person and what he championed that they don't mind reflecting positively about. Yes. Well, I think he has a touch of what McCain had, which was I obviously was on the different end of the political spectrum than McCain. But he had these moments where he displayed great character and integrity.

Just these moments where you're like, whatever our differences, I can tell there's a good man. And I think that burbles through with George W. Bush. I know there's some sect that wants to try for war crimes, but suffice to say, I was vocally anti the Iraq invasion as well. try for war crimes. But suffice to say, I was vocally anti the Iraq invasion as well. But all that to say, my personal experience was I went to this really great resort in Africa with Kristen in 2012. We were there during the rainy season, so there was no guests but us. So we were talking with the different staff members. We got a lot of FaceTime with them and we were kind of gossipy asking who had been there and what it was like. And Bill Gates had just rented out the entire place for his family. And then George W. Bush came up.

Every single one of the people that worked there said their favorite guest of all time was George W. Bush, that he spent every single night out at the fire talking with the staff late into the night. There's no cameras around. There's no way he thinks that's getting back to anybody. And I hear a story like that and I'm like, you know, I don't agree with him on a lot, or rather I didn't, who knows where he stands now, but I can't

not take that in as data of someone I appreciate or admire in some way. Well, what's interesting about Bush, one, he took several trips to Africa after leaving office. He had championed this PEPFAR program that has had a meaningful impact. PEPFAR? Yeah, the President's Emergency something or that focuses on countering HIV, AIDS, and malaria and tuberculosis. And it really moved the needle in terms of reducing the spread of those viruses

across the continent. But as president with the Secret Service around and the protocol and so forth, he never got a chance to actually experience the effects of it. With each of these presidents that I write about, they're such seemingly unrelatable figures, right? How many of us will ever become president, right? You can't imagine a human being that is

less relatable to the rest of us. Yeah, there's been 45 of them. And yet when you delve into their post-presidencies, you feel this connection and relatability to them, which is what got me so excited about it because it's counterintuitive. The fall from power, whether it's being fired by the American people or just being termed out, it's a greater fall than just about anything else. And there's a vulnerability that comessome and almost agitated view of trying to shape your own legacy in your lifetime. And what he says is, look, they're still writing books about the other George, meaning George Washington. By the time they get around to me, I'm going to be long gone. And he looks at it as just kind of sad and tragic that people would waste the short time that we have in life trying to shape their legacy after. And I reflected on this conversation with him.

I've always had this saying of like, I don't want to be ancient Egypt, meaning I don't want to waste my time trying to build a tomb that I'm never going to get to see and that explorers are going to find later on and probably get sick as soon as they enter it. Yeah. And I think all of us, by the way, subscribe to that. There's these demons that lurk on our shoulder telling us to think about the future and think about our legacy when our actual legacy, it's our children, it's our friends and our family, but more importantly, it's our enjoyment of the present. Well, right. So I'm always trying

to understand why I think most people think about a legacy. It doesn't interest me at all because I'm not going to be here to observe it. And then I wonder, is it part of me being an atheist, which predisposes me to that? Because I don't think I'm going to be up in heaven watching people regale stories of me. So since I'm not going to observe it, I don't even give a shit. But I do wonder if that's somehow rooted in my lack of belief in an afterlife. But back to Bush. Oh, go ahead, Monica. No, I just had a thought for the first time. Oh my God, how did you enjoy it? It's so rare to have a new thought that I have to share it. I think Bush is maybe the only president, definitely in my lifetime,

that maybe has no ego or very little ego and little narcissism. I think some narcissism is the reason these people come to power. Like I think it might be part of it and that's okay as long as it's managed. But I don't think he has it, which is why, not to defame him in this, but a lot of people thought he was not smart. But I think it's actually because he just didn't present with this ego and this trying to be smart or on or brilliant. He didn't care. I think that's right. The apathy about the judgments that get levied in his direction mattered very little to him as president. They matter far less in his post-presidency.

Almost like Buddhist. Well, I think it has to do a lot with where you come from. And I'm going to argue that his transition was aided in this in a weird way. So the lanes in his family were taken. The dad was the head of the CIA. He knew all things. He was a genius. He was a master politician. Jeb was probably doing better in school. He was the family fuck up. He was getting in trouble. He was running a baseball team into the ditch. Like he was comfortable in that role. So I think part of it is just the benefit of he wasn't the shining star everyone was betting on. And lo and behold, he ends up in president. People start slinging mud at him.

He's like, yeah, that's kind of my role in my family. I'm used to this. So that's one thing I think is on the table. And then I'm curious if you think the way he seemingly so easily let go of that experience, do you think that's been informed by the fact that it maybe wasn't even his agenda to begin with? He inherited the mission and therefore it was easy to let go. in the post-presidency for a different set of reasons. Sometimes by design, sometimes they knew exactly what they wanted to do and being done with the presidency unshackled them from other burdens. In the case of Bush, he's just kind of a chapter guy. He lives his life in chapters. There's a beginning, a climax, and an end, and then it's on to the next chapter. But I think

when you talk about legacy, that's really one of the big themes of the book is how we think about legacy. And there's no blueprint for it. And different presidents will be more relatable to other people. But the burden of legacy means different things to different people. So if you look at Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson, who's the first one that I write about, is the co-founder of the Republic. He's 33 years old when that happens. 33 years old when he co-founds the Republic. He doesn't want to be in service after that. He tries to retire three times. And he has to serve as Secretary of State. He doesn't want to be in service after that. He tries to retire three times,

and he has to serve as Secretary of State, he has to serve as Vice President, he has to serve twice as President. There's only three things etched on his tombstone, author of the Declaration of Independence, author of the Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom, and father of the University of Virginia. And what's interesting about that last part, which is what I focus on, his burden as a founder was they knew that they left potentially terminal flaws in the architecture of the republic. And if they didn't train the next generation to be able to iterate on those flaws and improve upon the republic, what he founded would never survive. So he always wanted to build the country's first arts and sciences university, divorced from a sort

of strict adherence to religion and theology. And so he had this idea for the University of Virginia. It juxtaposes in a very interesting way with what's happening at university campuses today. At 82 years old, in the final chapter, final year of his life, he opens the doors to the University of Virginia. And with that inaugural class in the first six months, a group of students cover themselves in masks

in a way that is sort of like the anonymity of social media. And they start rioting across the campus that he designed. They throw bags of urine at professors. They beat one with a cane, leaving him like bloodied and humiliated. They chant down with European professors. And then here's the catch. In this weird twist of Southern honor, none of them would give each other up. So Jefferson, who is the rector for the university, he calls an all-student assembly to bring them before the disciplinary committee. The disciplinary committee for the university, he calls an all-student assembly to bring them before the disciplinary committee. The disciplinary committee for the University of Virginia was Thomas Jefferson,

James Madison, and James Monroe, three presidents, by far the most intimidating disciplinary committee past, present, and future. And here's the best part of it. So Jefferson stands to address the students who, again, won't give each other up. And before he can get words out, he starts hysterically crying. And so the image of an 82-year-old Thomas Jefferson bawling in front of them causes little 5'1 James Madison to stand up, put his hand on Jefferson's shoulder. And before Madison can speak, the students one by one confess and get expelled. Listen, this is the great hack.

I watch it with my wife all the time. My instinct is to, when there is a rabble, when there's crazy teenagers, they need to be dominated. Some alpha's got to step in and control this. And I've watched the kill them with kindness approach, and it is shocking. I was just talking about this. I was driving with my best friend Aaron in the car yesterday, and someone cut me off. And I said, you know, I've been really trying this thing where instead of engaging with the person that cut me off, I just try to remember how I feel when I cut someone off, which I do often.

I feel like an asshole. And then I'm sitting in my car and I'm an asshole. And if they're really nice about it, I feel like even more of an asshole. But if they start honking and flipping me out, then I'm in it with them. And so I'm like, that's got to be my new policy. But yeah, what an unforeseen outcome for him to just be emotional and vulnerable and saddened by the whole thing and that that elicits that response. When you compare and contrast that with today, I love this story because it's a reminder

that authority matters and who sits in the seat of power matters, not just because they have power, but they command such a level of respect that you don't end up with this tyranny of the majority against the leadership, whether it's at a business or a university. And this is why I love history, because everything that we see today, as crazy as it seems, we've seen some version of it before. And a lot of the clues and the ingredients that tell us how to navigate it and tell us to calm the heck down because we're having a present day freak out, they exist in these powerful anecdotes that are lost in the annals of history or sort of stuck in the footnotes of history. We are collectively living the same way we live individually, which is we rediscover the same fucking epiphany every six months.

Like, I don't know about you, but Monica and I talk about it all the time. I have a realization. I'm like, oh my God, of course, that's what I got to do. And then my second thought is, oh my God, I knew that eight months ago and I forgot it. We had this great comedian and actor, Rami Youssef, and he was telling us that the Arabic word for human is forgetful. And you're right. We've done all this before. We just think we haven't. Yeah. And social media has not just compressed the volume of content that human beings are willing to consume. It's made us impatient to dig into the facts around the present. And it's made us lethargic about reflecting back yesterday,

let alone several hundred years. And to go back to this question of legacy and burden, so much of how we pursue a legacy, whether we're a very important person in our own mind or in reality, is a function of the burden that we feel. And so John Quincy Adams is another interesting example. This one blew my mind because to me, this is a lesson in one's ego, because as much as we do repeat history, this is unimaginable in the current era. Oh, yeah. I mean, so John Quincy Adams' presidency was basically an intermission between two of the greatest acts in American history.

The first one kind of top-down architected for him by his famous parents, John and Abigail Adams, that kind of manufactured a president. And his presidency was a disaster. I mean, he almost drowned while skinny dipping in the Potomac and had to ride back in a horse and buggy naked to the White House. He was basically like a political stillborn on day one. So he accomplished nothing as president. But what's interesting is his second act, he went on to to the White House. He was basically like a political stillborn on day one. So he accomplished nothing as president. But what's interesting is his second act, he went on to serve nine terms in the House of Representatives. Nine terms! A man who began his career appointed by George Washington dies serving in the House of Representatives alongside Abraham Lincoln,

this living connection between these two generations. And what's fascinating about John Quincy Adams, he felt a different burden from Jefferson, which is he only knew how to serve. He grew up in one of the great service families in American history. And so when the presidency is done, he doesn't know what to do. He's already served everything else. He just hasn't served in the House. They convince him to run. He ends up in the House. He has no plan. And over the course of a couple of years in a much lower station, he finds a much higher calling. And he ends up inadvertently becoming the champion of the abolitionist movement because

he's bored in Congress. And so he's just reading petitions. But a lot of those petitions are from abolitionists. And he sees the reaction from the slavocracy in Congress and thinks, how dare you try to silence these petitioners? They then try to silence him with the gag rule that says you can't talk about slavery in Congress. He fights it. He bamboozles them, he outsmarts all of them, and ultimately, he gets the gag rule repealed. He goes on to basically take abolitionism, which was really a fringe and a radical cause in the 1830s. And by the time he dies in 1844, he's really transformed it into a mainstream movement. He's done a bunch of the legwork for Abraham Lincoln to walk in and take it to the next. I mean, just imagine that a freshman congressman named Abraham Lincoln

serving alongside this like shrinking, frail, sort of weird looking human named John Quincy Adams, who's this living relic in the house. Where's that magic today? Yeah, he becomes a real defender of free speech in addition to helping forward the abolitionist movement. But the notion of Obama becoming a congressman for nine terms, I feel like ego-wise that's unimaginable. I don't know if it's a different time. Yeah, it feels like a big step down societally. Well, you're kind of getting at, it's the story of reinvention. So part of this question of what we do next and part of what we learn from these presidents is there's an element of reinvention.

And it depends on what they want. In the case of John Quincy Adams, he reinvented himself as a public servant and he got to experience something new. It didn't matter that he was in the House of Representatives and had been a president. It's that this was a cause that he decided to take on, not that his parents decided to take on. Whereas you look at Herbert Hoover, here's a man who lived to be 90 years old. He's defined by three and a half years of the Great Depression. Before he was president, you could not find a more revered man. I mean, this was the man who fed the world after World War I, fed largely black communities after the devastating Mississippi floods in 1927. He had risen from being an orphan to a self-made millionaire. And then he becomes

the sort of symbol of the wealthy class with the Great Depression. And his name is in tatters. He was a man who needed to be needed, to quote Arthur Brooks, and he lusted after an opportunity to serve. He spends his 30-plus year post-presidency recapturing the title of the great humanitarian. And once FDR dies, it was like the never-ending presidency that just kept tarnishing him. Harry Truman, who also didn't like FDR, resurrects him, and Hoover kind of repeats it all over again. He becomes a great humanitarian, feeding the world this time after World War II. He reminds the world that he was a great executive because he's brought in to reorganize the executive branch of government. And then he achieves a bipartisan status in 1960, being asked

to reconcile Richard Nixon and JFK so that during the Cold War, America looked unified. And what's interesting is when he loses his bid for reelection in 1932, he is sort of grappling with recovering his good name, which is vanity, and recovering his platform of service. And only when he decides he's done with politics in 1940, does he relinquish that vanity. And he finds a sense of peace with a very focused path towards figuring out how to serve the world again. And what's interesting is he does in his lifetime recover his good name. He just then posthumously ends up having it tarnished again. And so his story is a fascinating one, not of reinvention, but recovering what he once had lost. Right. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert,

if you dare. Sasha hated sand, the way it stuck to things for weeks. Sasha hated sand, the way it stuck to things for weeks. So when Maddie shared a surf trip on Expedia Trip Planner, he hesitated. Then he added a hotel with a cliffside pool to the plan. And they both spent the week in the water. You were made to follow your whims. We were made to help find a place on the beach with a pool and a waterfall and a soaking tub and, of course, a great shower.

Expedia. Made to travel. Grover Cleveland, I didn't even know this about him. He's the only president to ever run for a non-consecutive term and win, which obviously has some very interesting parallels we should talk about with what's happening now. He lost his popularity and he tried to go back in time and become president again and recapture it. But for him, that didn't work out so well, did it? Grover Cleveland, I include him as the story of kind of a comeback. So if each of the seven presidents represents a different model, Cleveland is the only president who has recaptured the presidency. Now, that's obviously very relevant to today. It's increasingly looking like for the very first time since 1892, and the only time since 1892, you're going to have two presidents in a rematch as the nominees

of the two major parties. It's happened only once, and only three other times in history have former presidents even run on a third party ticket. Van Buren did it as a free-soiler in 1848, Millard Fillmore did it in 1856 as a know-nothing, and Theodore Roosevelt did it as a bull moose in 1912. But this particular rematch, we've only seen once in history. But differently than today, Grover Cleveland never lost the popular vote. Cleveland loses his reelection in 1888 because he takes a principled stand on the tariff. And he basically does a kamikaze mission against the Democratic Party wishes where he loses the presidency, but he achieves his goal. So he had won the popular vote, but he lost the electoral

college. And Cleveland represents a cautionary tale because there's an interesting aspect to this. And Monica and I were in a very juicy way talking about this before. Cleveland becomes the second president to get married while president of the United States. His best friend, Oscar Folsom, died in a very 19th century type of accident, which is a horse and buggy accident. Classic textbook. His daughter, Frances, Cleveland became her official guardian. And huge age difference between them. Back up.

I got distracted by Monica's great joke. What a perfect timed classic. So his buddy dies in a horse and buggy accident. Then what happens? So then he becomes the legal guardian of his young daughter. Her name is Frances. He calls her Frank. She calls him Uncle Cleve.

He starts courting her when she was in high school. And while he's president of the United States, he's courting her while she's at school. The first term or the second? It's the first term. He ends up falling in love with her. How does he have time? He's running the country, he's courting a teenager. Men always find time. Well, by the way, just for the record, we'll get back to the story in a second, just one tangent. Poor Grover Cleveland is going to have his name resurrected because

Donald Trump is likely going to be the Republican nominee for president. So there's a natural parallel. And while one might think, oh, this is great for Cleveland, people are going to finally remember him. It's a disaster for him because he was involved in a very not okay for the Me Too era. I don't think the resurrection of Cleveland is going to age very well. Well, according to someone you're the legal guardian of, it didn't go great for Woody Allen and age gap and a high school student. No, this is going to be very uncomfortable. Like leaving high school, the Secret Service rolls up and the guy that's trying to take you out on a date, the president's at your high school. Well, there's an amazing story.

And he's your dad, kind of. He basically is her father. So there's an amazing story. So while he's president, he proposes to her by letter. How old is he at the time? He's close to 50 at this point. And she is? She's in her 20s.

They started the courtship when she's a preteen. So he sends this letter of proposal and she accepts. And to get ready to be first lady, her mother takes her on a trip across the Atlantic to get refined in Europe. And the telegraph operator intercepts a love letter that he sends and assumes that he's secretly engaged to the mother. Well, that would be the most natural assumption. So the papers print this and he throws a tizzy fit. Why do they keep trying to marry me off to old women? Don't they know that I love her daughter? So he's offended. I mean, I don't think God, they think it's the mom.

Well, look, eventually they were going to find out, right? So she ends up as the youngest first lady in history, 21 years old. That'll never be replicated. So he's happier than he's ever been. And when he throws away the presidency, all he wants is to retire, have children, have this happy family. But all she wants is to come back and be first lady. So when they're leaving the White House, she tells the White House butler, make sure the furniture is exactly as I left it. Make sure all the decorations are exactly as I left it. I'll be back in four years. She's living out a kind of princess fantasy at that point. Also Stockholm Syndrome. Yeah, sure. Stockholm Syndrome, classic stuff. But she decorated the place and wants it

the same. So, you know, and I can't imagine she was terribly attracted to him. No, he was disgusting. Big mustache, very heavy, kind of oafy. He doesn't get compared to William Howard Taft just because Taft was the more enormous of the two, but he was a close second. Okay. Wow, wow, wow. So when he comes back, what's the second go-round like? So the tragedy for him, so he decides to come back to the presidency in part because she wanted it, but he was very worried that his successor, Benjamin Harrison, was going to take the United States off the gold standard, which was going to bankrupt the country. He was worried about a rising tide of imperialism, and he genuinely felt that he was the only one who could come back and save the country from economic ruin. So he gets elected again, so wins the popular vote for the third time.

By the time he takes the oath of office, the country has descended into the worst depression in its history. A group of opportunistic settlers, along with the de facto U.S. ambassador in Hawaii, decides to depose Queen Liliuokalani and set in motion the annexation of the islands. And then on top of that, he sort of lost his time at peace with his new family. And so he's miserable in those last four years. And while he retired happier than he's ever been after the first term, he retires after the second term and has a second post-presidency, leaving him depressed, having lost those valuable years. He had saved the country from the ruin that he worried about, but it takes him years to recapture the level of peace that he found after his first term.

I like including this chapter because so many people, regardless of, again, whether they're top of their game or not, want to come back, right? You want to get back what you lost. And Cleveland offers a cautionary tale that there are certain factors that you cannot control, and maybe it's not all it's cracked up to be. The problem is we focus on the success stories. Michael Jordan came back and won three championships. Steve Jobs came back and became this iconic figure. But there's a big graveyard of people that tried that and didn't find success. They are the exceptions to the rule.

Absolutely. Okay, and then we have William Howard Taft. I like this one the most. He didn't want to be president at all, but his family very much wanted him to be. And his good buddy, Theodore Roosevelt, wanted him to be. But he had wanted to be on the Supreme Court originally. That was his dream. Each president is meant to represent a category

of problem that somebody's grappling with. So all of us know somebody, or maybe we include ourselves in this. We know what job or opportunity we've always wanted. And by the time it came our way, the timing wasn't right. There was a reason we couldn't say yes. Life was taking us in a different direction. So we defer this dream.

Taft wanted nothing more than to be on the Supreme Court. He was ideological about his love for courts and the justice system, and it was his dream. And he married a woman named Helen Nairn, who wanted nothing more than for him to be president. He had three brothers who wanted him to be president, and he had a mentor and friend, Theodore Roosevelt, who wanted him to be president. And Taft was just one of these figures who, he was heavily influenced by the people around him. He ran his court as the patriarch of the family, like an impotent leader influenced by those around him. And so he turns down an opportunity to serve on the Supreme Court three times. And when he turns it down for the third

time, a reporter asks his son, do you think your father will be president of the United States or serve on the Supreme Court? The response is, Ma wants him to be president. Oh, wow. And what's fascinating is he never gives up on the dream. He appoints six justices to the Supreme Court, more than any other president in history, including a chief justice. But he very cleverly appoints a chief justice who's at such an advanced age that hopefully he'll die. You think that was calculated? It's known to be calculated.

Oh, wow. He gets lucky in 1920, Warren Harding names him to the Supreme Court. Well, first he loses an election in a very embarrassing way. He comes in third for his second term. This is another tragic story of relationships. William Howard Taft and Theodore Roosevelt were best friends, and Taft never wanted to be president. But when Theodore Roosevelt and he sort of split and ended up in this vicious feud that was really driven more by

Theodore Roosevelt's desire to become president again, which required him to break the friendship, Taft decides to be zealous about trying to get reelected to deny Theodore Roosevelt the chance to be president again. Theodore Roosevelt storms out of the Republican convention and forms a new party as a bull moose, and he ends up splitting the Republican vote. Split would be conservative. He basically wins almost the entire Republican vote and hands Woodrow Wilson the presidency. And so he assumes he's never going to get this chance. But an incumbent coming in third.

Again, that's such a rare occurrence. Not just coming in third. Coming into a distant, embarrassing third. So Taft was politically destroyed, lost his platform. Can I ask you to bring it into current politics? So the fact that Theodore Roosevelt stormed out and just decided, well, obviously the party's going to run the incumbent, but I want to run again, so I'm starting this thing. Obviously, we've passed this point, I imagine, but that seemed semi-foreseeable for the Democrats

this go-around. Because a lot of people don't want this incumbent to run again. And I imagine there's some presidential hopeful that thinks, even though I won't be the party nominee, I got to run against. That seemed like it could have happened. So it's very interesting. Like when I set out to write this book, obviously I wasn't thinking about the 2024 election because writing books takes forever.

And we find ourselves in a situation where two men, one who's an advanced septu two men, one who's an advanced septuagenarian and one who's an advanced octogenarian, both presidents are about to embark on a rematch. And we're in this situation, despite the fact that both of them have less popularity than last time, because you have two presidents that don't want to give up power. We've never been in this set of circumstances where you have these two candidates that are so old and both presidents. And so this question of a third party have these two candidates that are so old in both presidents. And so this question of a third party naturally has come up a lot in the context of the 2024

election. But the history of third parties is very important. There's only one time in history that a third party candidate has won the presidency, and it was 1864. We were in a civil war, and Andrew Johnson was picked by Abraham Lincoln to form a new National Democratic Union ticket. But this was a peculiar set of circumstances during the Civil War. Every other third party candidate in history has done nothing but take votes away from one of the two major parties. And so here we're about to enter, as we kind of go into less than a year until the presidential election, the open question of third party selfishness. There's any number of third party candidates that will enter the race, and they'll tell themselves all kinds of stories. This is the righteous thing to do. It's about the issues.

Maybe I have some kind of a chance. But make no mistake, any third party candidate, whether it's no labels or someone else entering the race, is going to take votes away from one candidate or another. I believe that RFK Jr. will take away from Trump. I think everybody else takes away from Biden. The problem is this election is going to come down to a handful of districts in six states. And so even single digit thousands of votes, 10,000 votes here, 10,000 votes there, it matters a lot and it can flip a state. Yeah. Anyone who is doing it to be like, oh, Biden's too old, but who's a Democrat is fucking us up. I mean, that is just the truth. We can't hand over anything to Trump at this point. Well, again, and I just love seeing how often these debates funnel into this is a very Kantian

utilitarian argument. So if I'm a Kantian and I'm like, no, no, I will do the right thing. This is unacceptable. These are the two options. There's virtue in that claim. I'm like, no, no, I will do the right thing. This is unacceptable. These are the two options. There's virtue in that claim. I reject that this is. So it just is really like, does the means justify the ends or does the ends justify the means? I think both are very compelling arguments. And I don't think anyone should be embarrassed to feel either way. But you say this a lot, right? You say, are we living in a world that should be or a world that is? Sure, I do. And we are living in what is. And right now, what is, is Trump and Biden. I know. And we have to make decisions based on that. For four more years, that's it. I have a fantasy, though, where, yes, it's Trump or Biden, but there's this enormous silent majority that is just participating

because they believe in that. So it may turn out that 60% of the country, and I think that's probably accurate, doesn't want either of them. My pick wouldn't be a Democrat or a Republican. It'd be like a hardcore centrist that goes, no, no, I'm going to split both these fucking votes. I think the most dangerous third party candidate

is the invisible candidate of not voting. This to me is the biggest wild card, which is given that both candidates are, let's just say, not terrible. But hold on. Biden is not a terrible president just because he's old. He has done a good job. It is not fair to say. He went to Hawaii and looked at 3000 people who had just had their entire life burnt to the ground, and he said, I know exactly what you went through. Our house burnt down, which wasn't even true. But you're taking one sound bite, one thing that he said versus what he's done over the past four years. It's not fair, especially compared to what was before that and what will happen again.

Here's what I think, Monica. He isn't even within the top 1,000 best options to run the country. But are you even following? Okay. So to arbitrate between the two of you, it is a matter of fact from the polling that both of them are less popular. That is a statement of truth. So I worry about large segments of the population not voting.

Not voting is, by the way, depending on what state you're in, is a de facto vote for one candidate or the other. In each state, there's one candidate where the voter turnout problem with certain communities is a bigger vulnerability. And by the way, for Biden, there's a real question about Michigan. If the war in the Middle East persists of large numbers of voters in Michigan choosing not to vote, which again, by not voting there, it's a de facto vote for Trump. Really quick, drill into that because I'm from Michigan. In and around Dearborn, very, very large Arab American population, very upset with Biden's handling of the war in the Middle East. Supporting Israel. Exactly. And so if you're the Biden camp, there's a concern that you

have that come November, if the war is still going on, I assume the policy stays the same, that there's a risk of some of those voters not turning out. The only hiccup for that logic, in my opinion, is Trump is even more pro-Israel than Biden. So that assumes a level of rationale. I mean, I think there's a recency bias that we find with a lot of different parts of the electorate. And look, it's very hard to get in the heads of the electorate as well. I mean, the one thing we know about polling is it's consistently wrong, and yet we continue to put it up on this pedestal as right.

How many times do the polls have to be incorrect where we basically just declare they don't matter? The problem is, absent something else to fill that vacuum, we can either make up our own facts or we can rely on what our opinions are. Yeah, we do the best we can. We poll. That's about all we can do. But I interrupted you. So that's what's currently on the table. We okay? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay, we got sidetracked with William Taft. When he does end up getting appointed to the Supreme Court as the Chief Justice, what is his career like then? William Howard Taft is a fascinating case study in what it looks like to defer a dream and finally achieve it in the last chapter of life. His last 10 years of life where he's Chief Justice of the Supreme Court are by far the happiest years of his life. And so, look, it's an incredible story of persistence. And it's a reminder that the most powerful position we may achieve in our lives is not necessarily the one that makes us the happiest. He's the only president to serve at the top of two branches

of government. So he's a unique figure in American history. And was he a better chief justice than he had been a president? Oh, he's a much better chief justice than he was president. I would describe him as a boring but very important chief justice. First of all, he believed that the Supreme Court needed its own building for proper separation of powers. I mean, imagine this. The Supreme Court used to be in the basement of the Senate. So talk about meddling from the legislative branch. But the Supreme Court, before he took over, was kind of a somewhat feckless institution, overwhelmed by cases, no ability to stack rank and arbitrage. And he sets in place a series of reforms that massively improves the efficiency of the court and radically transforms it into the institution that it is today.

What I take away from that is ego, basically, kind of like what we were already talking about, that you have to step over the notion that you're demoting yourself, that your greatest happiness might be a job that was under, in quotes, the one you previously had. I think a lot of the presidents that I write about did this. Jefferson, if anything, I think he felt the presidency was a blow to his ego and a waste of time and not necessary for him to ensure that the next segment of the republic was preserved. In the case of John Quincy Adams, to ensure that the next segment of the republic was preserved. In the case of John Quincy Adams, the ego was in being hyperactively serving the country. In the case of Cleveland, he didn't lust after the presidency.

Remember, he didn't want to come back. His ego was wrapped up in making sure the country wasn't economically destroyed. I think Carter is the first one that you really have to talk a bit about ego, because when he's defeated by Reagan for re-election in 1980, it's really devastating. He loved being president, perhaps more than anybody. And he leaves office and he says, you know, my faith compels me to do whatever I can, whenever I can, for as long as I can. And he makes a decision to do the opposite of what George W. Bush did and not leave the spotlight. He's a million dollars in debt. So he has to deal with that first because his peanut farm pretty much went bankrupt in a blind trust. But Carter leaves office and says, you know what? Screw this. I'm not going to stop being president. I'm going to transform the

idea of being a former version of my greatest act into an institution in and of itself. And he builds a post-presidential administration and he does some great things. I mean, guinea worm basically doesn't exist anymore. It was a disease that was curable, was devastating large portions of sub-Saharan Africa, and he basically eradicated it from the globe. But he did a lot of annoying things as well. So when George H.W. Bush is prepping to go in to get Saddam Hussein and Iraqi forces out of Kuwait, Jimmy Carter secretly writes a letter to all the permanent members of the Security Council, except for Margaret Thatcher, because he doesn't trust her, basically asking them to turn on the United States and not vote for a UN Security Council resolution. Jim Baker says, if this isn't a violation of the

Logan Act, which is that you can't moonlight U.S. foreign policy without being government, I don't know what is. So I was a child when Carter was in, but he's probably the first president I remember seeing on TV. And I guess my thoughts about Carter, if I had to summarize him, was that he was genuinely a very nice and good and principled man. And that maybe he proved the point that you can't really be so nice and principled as the president because you're dealing with adversaries and enemies that are not playing by the same moral code as you are. He seems to be a test case of that. When he leaves office, the Iranian hostage crisis is in full swing. There's people in Tehran that are waiting to be rescued that he

doesn't really know how to navigate that. And the economy is in a fucking nosedive. So is my summation of him in my mind, is that semi-accurate? I think that's right. Carter leaves office just about as unpopular as Herbert Hoover left office. And he spends his final hours as president working to finalize a deal to get the hostages out. And as one more insult to Carter, the Iranians don't sign on the dotted line until after Reagan's been sworn in. And Reagan very graciously sends Carter to go greet the hostages. There's an argument that he did it to just get Carter out of the country, so he wasn't a nuisance. But what's interesting about Carter and Trump side by side, if you go back to the founding fathers, they created a republic to be the anti-monarchy. And they were very worried about ex-presidents. So Hamilton in Federalist 72

writes, does it serve the stability of our government to have half a dozen or so men elevated to the highest office in the land wandering around us like discontented ghosts? He legitimately was asking, what the heck do we do with our ex-presidents? And here we are 200 plus years later, and I think we have an answer to Hamilton's question, which is ex-presidents can either be your greatest ally or they can be your foe. By the way, Carter was both. Carter was a tremendous ally to George H. W. Bush when they sent him down to Panama to monitor the election and challenge Noriega. He deployed valiantly, consistently with the administration and did a lotga. He deployed valiantly, consistently with

the administration and did a lot of good. But when Bill Clinton sends him to North Korea because he knows it's Carter's lane, instructs him to be a messenger, makes it very clear you don't have any purview over U.S. foreign policy, and Carter says fine. And then Carter negotiates his own nuclear deal and Clinton finds out about it on CNN. That's an example of a disenchanted ghost. Again, you look at Donald Trump, who's been a thorn in the side of his successor. It's interesting that we're still grappling with this question of what to do with ex-presidents. We just have examples now of how they function, but the founder's question persists.

Carter was the longest living post-presidential chapter of his life. For 42 years, he was out and about after he left office. He's, yeah, we have to say active post-presidency because he's still alive. He went into hospice care almost a year ago. But you're right, though, his active post-presidency ends at 42 years. And what's interesting is you compare and contrast Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush. Both of their popularity has surged in the post-presidency more than just about any other post-president, but they did it in very different ways. Carter did it by being a thorn in the side of his successors, but also being a partner to his successors by doing good work that reminded people of some of his virtues, election monitoring, disease eradication. People like seeing old,

gentle presidents kind of endearing. He's always, to me, felt like Mr. Rogers if he was a politician. Like, oh good, Mr. Rogers is there. He's going to worry about these people eating. It's interesting. When I tell people that I wrote a book on seven post-presidents, the first name they always say is, oh, you must have included Carter. Wow. Why do you suppose? I think some of it is, if you look at the age of Americans, most Americans today know Carter as a former president and never experienced him as a president. I was born in 1981.

I was born in the year Reagan was shot, not the years that Carter was president. So I only know him as a former president. So I think his longevity, the fact that he's not been an invisible post-president, he's the one that everybody immediately thinks about. I think we can all agree that regardless of one's age, you're probably not reflecting a lot on Grover Cleveland and William Howard Taft and even John Quincy Adams, despite his famous last name. Now, you didn't include him for obvious reasons, I guess. But where are we tracking Obama?

Thus far, it appears to me that he has launched kind of a media business. He seems to be like a middle ground between Carter and Bush. And by the way, I just want to flag, I admire both qualities. I admire that Bush has such reverence for the office that he has proceeded the way he has. And I admire that Carter got into that game to change the world and he never quit trying to change the world. I see the virtue in both things. It appears that Obama is somewhere in the middle of those two on the spectrum. So far, if I look at Obama's post-presidency, it's very TBD. And I say TBD because we wouldn't be talking about William Howard Taft if he hadn't eventually gotten to serve as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. So sometimes they arrive at it late.

What if Obama goes back to the Senate? Wouldn't that be mind-blowing? Obama left office a pretty young president. He left office still relatively popular, which is unusual. A historic figure with a real following. I would argue that there's been two follies so far. One, I think his post-presidency lacks definition. Maybe not to him, but to those of us sort of voyeuristically looking on, I think there's an element of we don't get it yet. We see the activities, but if you ask me what sense of purpose is he driving towards in the post-presidency, it's hard for me to ascertain at this moment.

I think it's kind of an unfair level of expectation we have, too. It's like, by all rights, he should be able to hang in Martha's Vineyard and ride out the rest of his life. He aged himself 16 years within eight years. The dudes deserved it. And yet, I do feel this weird thing of like, he's such a principledpled, powerful and effective human that I guess I think he should do stuff. What do you think, Monica? Yeah, I think it's because we love him so much and we miss him actively because of the way things have gone.

I think we're feeling a little bit desperate. But he is, though. Did you guys see the movie, the Julia Roberts and Mahershala Ali? Is it a doc or a narrative? No, it's a movie on Netflix right now. Leave the world behind. It's a book, but his company produced the movie. And it's so obviously hitting you over the head with these separations and polarizations are going to kill us.

So he's trying to help and sort of impact us and tell us what to do or mitigate the divide. Cautionary tales. Yeah. That's what I would want him to do. I think he's trying to do it without doing it in the political arena

because the political arena is ridiculous right now. Part of the problem is he's sort of straddling the Carter and Bush model. So he's injecting himself enough into the debate to not be able to absolve himself

of responsibility and say, I just want to hang out at Martha's Vineyard. But he's not diving into a set of issues in enough of a way to drive that agenda. I accept the fact that there can be something in between Bush completely moving on and expressing himself through painting and Carter never going away. There's every reason to believe Obama might get there. I didn't include him because I don't believe he's there. There's no conclusion for you to really draw yet. But the book does draw conclusions. And through these examples, there are lessons in managing stress and in transitioning jobs, shifting from someone who lives to work to

someone who works to live. Tell me what philosophies you walked away from and which ones you cherry picked a la carte that you hope to infuse into the sadly second half of your life. We're almost there. I'm 42 years old. I found at times myself sort of tortured by writing this book. It's a weird thing for somebody who's 42 to obsessively spend three and a half years digging into the last chapter of life. You're left feeling quite insignificant because you realize these people achieved a level of influence and impact that you'll never achieve. And a lot of them struggled in that final chapter of life.

I felt sort of tortured by that. And in the midst of writing this book, I also transitioned jobs. I spent 13 years at Google and Alphabet and then went to Goldman Sachs. And it was a stark contrast. I went from remote work in an unregulated tech company where I had total flexibility to a regulated industry where you pay for coffee, you go into the office five days a week, you wear a suit, you can't just like take a bath at two in the afternoon. Why did you take that job? Because that's where you're at currently. Almost all my friends, plus or minus their 40th birthday,

made a decision to either not just change jobs, but change careers or double down on what they're doing. Post-COVID or 40? What's more relevant? I think the combination of the two forced a lot of us to reflect. It turned out perfectly for you to not know. Yeah. Which is which. And it's funny, when you're working remotely, you kind of tell yourself this story that I'm living the dream. I see my kids all the time. I can be on my own schedule. And only when I started at Goldman did I realize there's a set of rituals that I was missing. The ritual of saying goodbye to my kids and going off to work and then coming back and having them greet me at the door.

The ritual of giving a shit what I looked like. Yeah. And a vacation. People around. Not like working where I sleep or working where I eat or working where I go to the bathroom. They give you a compartmentalized life that maybe you missed. Yeah. And so that was sort of interesting. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. What is your role there?

So I'm the president of global affairs, and I also co-head innovation at the firm. Because every time I've emailed you in the last year, you've been in a dramatically different time zone, and we literally can't get on the phone. You've been in the Middle East for the last three months, and you were in Africa at one time. Obviously, something international is afoot with this job. Part of the reason I went to Goldman Sachs, which is not an intuitive move, you would think the other direction would be more intuitive. I had always been interested in this relationship

between business and geopolitics. Geopolitics has always been my passion. And basically until COVID, unless you were at a tech company or like an energy giant, geopolitics didn't really impact business that much, right? You had a tech competition between the US and China, but it hadn't turned into this very, very complicated relationship. To really quick give an example that's so on the surface right now is you have Taiwan, who's currently making all of the chips that we all need. And China

very much believes Taiwan is part of it. And there is great fear that they are going to invade and claim it. And then because they're holding this tech, Taiwan's going to get a lot of international support, probably including us, that otherwise wouldn't be on the table. So when you look at tech and finance, it's so intertwined. It's so intertwined, but it's even bigger than that. So when COVID happens, the geopolitical center of gravity moves from this kind of war on terror framework that we've been in for 20 years to a competition between the US and China, where the US realizes, oh, my gosh, we're completely reliant on China for all types of supply chains,

not just tech. China realizes, oh, my gosh, it's a huge, huge problem that the US has such a dominant position with the dollar as the reserve currency. And by the way, the two countries are basically locked in a battle for the world's technological infrastructure being built, and they have very different models. So all of a sudden, this happens, and every single business in every sector and geography finds them caught in the crossfire of this competition. And all of a sudden, this platform that I'm on at Google, which is really about tech, I feel it shrinking, which is a funny thing to say, because you think about the reach of Google, which is really about tech, I feel it shrinking, which is a funny thing to say, because you think about the reach of Google. Google is the best platform in the world to talk about tech. But all these non-tech businesses are getting dragged into the geopolitical dynamics.

And I was sort of in search of a platform that was broader. And David Solomon, who's the CEO of Goldman Sachs. And a DJ. And a DJ. We'd been friends for 13 years, and we'd always get together once a quarter for a meal. And I remember we We'd been friends for 13 years, and we'd always get together once a quarter for a meal. And I remember we were each other's first dinner during COVID, where you could go to a restaurant. And he said to me, there's a huge shift with all the businesses that we work with, which is all they want to talk about is geopolitics. And it strikes me that we need a machinery to offer them an opinion about where this is going, but we need to just commercially help them navigate it.

He said, I don't know exactly how it's gonna work, but come to Goldman Sachs and let's figure this out together. And it's honestly, it's been the most extraordinary year and a half of my career because how many times in your life do you walk into a new building in a sector you've never thought much about

or worked in where every day you're learning something new and you've got hundreds of new people that you didn't know exist. The last time that happened was like summer camp, honestly. Right, or college or something. It's a very unusual and precious experience. But isn't it the most energizing and it slows time down again for you?

I find that to be a great gift when you can submerge yourself in something that's completely out of the operating system that's working in the background, your subconscious, forcing you to be present and mindful and thoughtful. The context can do that for you. Someone I know you've had on a number of times, Adam Grant, who's a mutual friend of both of ours. I sort of somehow convinced Adam to be my unofficial therapist during COVID. I couched it as be my coach, which he sort of reluctantly agreed to. It really turned into therapy. The medical board probably prefers that. Yeah, exactly. But this is at a point where I felt so overcome by worrying. And because I

could sense my platform shrinking, but I couldn't quite define it, I started to get very anxious about what's next. I was living to work, meaning my entire day was taken up by working for some sort of unknown outcome. And Adam encouraged me. He said, have some structured worry time. He's like, what are some things that you habitually do? I said, I love taking baths. I just sit in warm water for hours.

I love a bath. You're so unique with the oddity collection and the baths. You're a very special person. You are. I wanted to say about nine times throughout this, the fucking recall of the names and the date. It's so brilliant. It's very intimidating.

It's bonkers. It's bonkers. It's very intimidating. It's like talking to Wikipedia. Also this morning, I was looking you up again and I saw the Goldman Sachs thing and I was like, is this the same? I got nervous. I was like, oh wait, it's a new Jared.

Right. Because no one can transition industries like that, besides you. What Adam taught me was two things. One, if you're a worrier, you're a worrier. Focus on what you have agency over, which is just give yourself some structured worry time. So when you work out, when you sit in hot water, just decide that's what I'm going to worry about. That's what I do. And it gave me a lot of clarity. And what's interesting about this job is I don't

quite know how that transition happened mentally for me. But if I reflect on my sort of year and a half at Goldman Sachs, I would say the biggest and most important attribute for me is going from somebody who lives to work to somebody who feels like I work to live. I don't know how long it'll last, but at least at this moment in time, it's the first time in my life where I don't think about what's next. And so people ask me, what do you want to do next? And I say, honestly, I woke up this morning, I feel like I have the coolest job. The people I'm interacting with, the things that I'm working on, the issues that I'm grappling with are the exact ways that I want to spend my time. I go home. I see my incredible three daughters and wife. I go to sleep. And what

I want to do next is I want to just do that again tomorrow. Right. Right. Right. I would say to the extent that I do worry time now, I worry about that being a fleeting chapter of my life and getting sucked back in to the morass of what I experienced before. And maybe we should all just be paying attention to our forecast indicators that when you find yourself working and living to focus on what's next, maybe you need to shake something up in your life. We bring it up nonstop. Yeah, the more you can be obsessed in pursuing process over results, generally the happier you're going to be because the results are completely unknown and out of your control, but the process is largely in your control. Yeah. Now, I think there's a pervasive

stereotype about finance people, and even Goldman Sachs, I think, is a triggering word for a lot of people post-2008. But I will say we've talked with Ray Dalio in particular. I think I went into that interview with one sense of what Ray Dalio might be. And then after we met him, I'm like, this is one of the most spiritual, thoughtful, generous, creative people. Are you finding that to be the case where like your own stereotype of that sector has been challenged? I wouldn't say I had a dogmatic view of finance. I viewed it as something that I would never be interested in. Right. And finance as a topic in the abstract was never something that I gravitated towards. But in context, I find it really interesting

because if you look at all the geopolitical tension, we're probably in the most unstable geopolitical moment in more than two decades. And if economists are saying we're going to have a soft landing in 2024, the geopolitical landing is going to be a very, very hard one. Yes, there's a war in the Middle East. Yes, there's a war in Europe, but it's the sustained tension between the U.S. and China that's going to get worse for longer. Taiwan gets all the oxygen. I worry more about a conflict in the South China Sea, but I worry that the short-term dynamics around supply chains, where we remain overly dependent on China for a number of supply chains that can't be diversified, is what's at greatest risk of shocking the system. I also think people are generally a bit naive about how much the economy plays a role in our overall social stability.

When you look at times where unemployment falls below some threshold, that's when revolutions happen. It is such the bedrock we build everything else on, and it can easily be undervalued, but I think it's incredibly important. If you look at every economic anomaly that you see today, it has some geopolitical explanation. If you look at every geopolitical dynamic, it has some economic explanation. And so what's interesting about being at a place like Goldman Sachs, you sit at the nexus of these two things. So I'm able to look at the world now through both vantage points. And sometimes I'm led to a conclusion about what's happening geopolitically by an early warning signal

I see in the economy and vice versa. So is it safe to say your role right now is to be looking at the geopolitical landscape of different regions and or countries and trying to predict how stable that will be for business? So that's part of it. There's like 12 questions that are persistent right now. If you talk to any business, including Goldman, everyone's asking the same obvious set of questions about U.S.-China tensions, supply chains, the war in the Middle East. It's a predictable set of questions. I view each of those questions as the equivalent of a picture on a puzzle box. And then I go and I find all the different pieces of expertise that exists throughout Goldman Sachs that exists with clients of the firm, and I piece them together into some kind of conclusion about what's happening. And then I take that conclusion and I show up to all the businesses that we work with, whether they're sovereign wealth funds or multinational corporations

or family office. And you realize that the combination of what we know as Goldman, what they know, because they're seeing a lot, you end up with an enormous amount of expertise in the room. So that's the first part of the job. But then the second part of the job, which is more exciting, is given this sort of one plus one equals three dynamic, can we generate a new opportunity together that we're only able to think of because of this combined expertise? So one model is there's a set of mandates that as a business you're chasing. There's another model, which is you roll up your sleeves with the businesses that you're working with and you come up with a mandate together and you chase it in partnership. How are you in the Middle East currently? You've been there for the last three months. What lens are you looking at that through? What are you seeing

that's really not being talked about? In the last three months, I've been in just about every country in the Middle East and North Africa. I've met with the leaders of most of these countries. And the social mediafication of this war is unlike anything that we've seen before. There's more hours of footage uploaded to all the major platforms than there have been minutes of the entire war. Oh, my God. And it's being algorithmically targeted in ways that we've never seen it targeted before. It's creating an element of identity politics on the ground. But more importantly, it's creating a reservoir of content that I believe is going to risk radicalizing the next generation. It'll resurface for the next 20 years.

And I like to remind people, the 9-11 hijackers, they were radicalized by watching far less footage that had no algorithmic component to it coming out of Bosnia in the 90s. So this is on another scale. Yeah, I just listened to a daily about the Houthis, and I was really shocked to learn that all the recruitment or a good deal of the recruitment is happening on TikTok. And I guess my knee jerk was, how could that be allowed on TikTok? Why aren't there any guardrails? I think the challenge with all of these social media platforms is they're so vast, they are very difficult to regulate. The adoption is at such a scale by young people that you can't put it back in a box. It's become a seemingly intractable

problem. I remember, you know, at the height of ISIS, I had interviewed a lot of former ISIS fighters. And when I was at Jigsaw, we spent a lot of time in Iraqi prisons interviewing incarcerated ISIS fighters. And the thing that we were always struck by is how much the internet took somebody who was never religious, sometimes they actually were another religion before, how fast technology allows the radicalization process to happen. And that was a very different algorithmic moment. And so the algorithms are just an evolutionary accelerant in the radicalization process. And radicalization takes on a lot of different forms, but the most pervasive attributes of radicalization are it's the process by which one learns about an issue in a bubble and how that bubbled information reinforces explanations for why they don't like something that is happening in their lives. And it becomes a great diversion.

And the more it distracts from a trouble that they have day to day, the more zealous they become about it. Yeah, it has a self-accelerating quality to it. To me, this is one of the seminal challenges of our generation. And isn't that what Jigsaw was kind of addressing? When I was at Jigsaw, and it's still thriving, but part of the reason I founded it was I believed as you added another 5 billion people to the internet, all the problems of the physical world would spill over online. And the only way to get ahead of that was you had to build technology to address the

challenges that were destabilizing the internet. What we found is it's very difficult. If you look at dis and misinformation, one of the biggest challenges with it is all the evidence suggests that once somebody has absorbed the disinformation or received it, you really cannot retroactively change their mind. This is why fact-checking doesn't work. Totally. We've got a bunch of experts addressing this. It does nothing. You will never out-fact somebody. You're not going to hold up a book to them and get them off their position. It's actually even worse than that because all evidence suggests that when you try to interject to tell somebody something's wrong or something's falsified or you should double check your sources, no matter how you slice and dice it, that interstitial or that injection makes somebody more likely to share the falsity that they've absorbed.

It encourages them and fuels them to be even more virulent. Oh, my God, Jared, you're so smart. I've had 20 minutes to think about our little dust up. And I want to say a i apologize oh you don't have to i just want to acknowledge i know why i'm so emotionally activated by this particular issue is to me it's very reminiscent of let's ignore the truth for our loyalty to a patriarch let's lie in service of our loyalty. Feels very dysfunctional family, the alcoholic who we're pretending is not an alcoholic. It's really

ripe with childhood stuff for me. The notion that I'm saying, no, this isn't the best option. Everyone's saying, no, but you're a Democrat. It has more weight than it should. And that's on me. And obviously I'm not promoting anything that would elect the other person that I like even less. It really brings up, let's all just ignore these things that are uncomfortable because we're on this team and that's our dad. I definitely understand that. And I appreciate it. And I will say, and I include myself in this. Everyone in this room is extremely privileged.

We're so privileged that we get to look at the Maui Comet or these little things that are just like, oh, these things that aren't that impactful for what they're doing. And I think that's just because of our privilege. And if you're in it and you're looking at really the state of the country and what's going to happen, it's just so much a no brainer. It scares me that we would be pushing anyone away from that. And if Trump gets elected, we know him at this point. It's not going to be a presidency. It's going to be four years of him getting back at his enemies. It's going to be a true disaster that we can't have. But yes, I appreciate that. Yeah. Something else is happening in my body when that topic comes up. I get it.

Yeah. It's hard. What do you think about all this, Jared? The country's at a pretty critical inflection point right now. And I think it's very easy to make it about Biden or make it about Trump. I actually think it does a disservice to the inflection point to focus on the people. At the end of the day, 70 million people roughly voted for each of them, and probably some version of the same will happen. Again, this election is not going to be an election where one candidate blows out the other. And so we're missing something

systemic that's happening in this country. And we're doing a disservice to it when, again, we focus on two individuals. I'm not trying to trivialize. At the end of the day, they're the likely presidential candidates. But you're the emblem on the hood of the car. The car is the issue, but we're really hyper-focused on just the emblem that sticks out of the end of it. People are really not just upset on both sides, but the polarization is getting much, much worse on both sides. And look, if you had asked me in 2019, and maybe you did, I would say we've been through polarized moments before. What's unique, though, is we've never been through

such a polarized moment in an era of not just social media, but hyper-algorithmic targeting within these social media platforms. It's uncharted territory because it's adding machinery into the mix that's guiding a lot of this polarization. You're right. And even in my lifetime, I've seen these little swells of this issue or that that is divisive. But what is great is humans fatigue. And I think if there wasn't this intervention with the tech, naturally, I think it would dissipate a bit. I think we're all exhausted from it. But we have this thing that's smarter than us that's hacking a region of our brain that is the cocaine that can keep you up past 24 hours. So it's like we have fatigued, but we have this dopamine machine in our hand that can get us back online and make us rally for another two hours. This idea of mental isolationism, I think it just doesn't work for the same reason that geopolitical isolationism doesn't work in an era of globalization.

Yeah, every time I talk to people, the words I hear are, I'm overwhelmed, I want to opt out, and it's just not pragmatic and it's not realistic. That being said, I do think that there's interjections that we have to make in our own lives. I had sort of a big transformative moment over New Year's. I'm not sure what triggered it, where I just decided that it's not just that I'm on my devices all the time. It's like a real addiction. I feel it when I don't have my phone, I am reaching for something. Yeah, yeah. You're in a dopamine deficit and you're uncomfortable like you're an addict. I'm certainly not trying to trivialize addiction by drawing a false parallel, but I think we are all addicted to our devices.

And what I find is some of the solutions are actually very simple. Like I come home now and there is no reason for me to be on my phone from the time I wake up to the time I drop my kids off at school or from the time I get home in the two hours while the kids are awake before they go to bed. And I find it's actually not enough to put it out of reach. So my thing is I put it in my coat pocket, in a closet, in a different room where I close the door. I'll tell you the biggest impact that I felt is I feel more present, but it actually changes the behavior of my kids as well

if they don't see me addicted to it. Well, they're not competing also for your attention, which has its own set of outcomes. What's hard is then I go on a trip when I'm away from my family and I'm on my phone the whole time and I come back just like heavily addicted to it again. Yeah. Well, Jared, you're incredible.

I think you've absorbed Eric Schmidt's most impossible landscape of knowledge and even more impressive than last time. So I hope you'll come back. Yeah, thanks for coming. You're such a good guy. You're such a fucking good guy. Great guest too. Of course you and Adam are friends.

All right, well, be well. I want everyone to read Life After Power. It's incredible. There's beautiful lessons to take away from all these different folks who have, as you said, made the biggest transitions imaginable. So thank you and good luck with the book. And we'll see you again soon. Thanks, guys. Stay tuned to hear Miss Monica correct all the facts that were wrong.

It's okay, though. We all make mistakes. Jared Cohen fact check. I think we need to disclose for full transparency to the listeners, the Cherries. The Cherries. That we just went through an incredible ride. Yeah. And you're going to go through the same ride. I'm going to go through the same. The Cherries. That we just went through an incredible ride. Yeah. And you're going to go through the same ride.

I'm going to go through the same. No, no. The Cherries. Oh, should they choose to listen to the cult episode of Armchair Anonymous? But, yeah, it was heavy. Yeah, it was heavy. What's your energy out of 10 right now? It's low.

Could you give it a number? Well, I'm on malaria pills. Do you feel yours at all? Because I don't. I feel a little funny, just a little bit though. Not like crazy. Okay. Which is good.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's just hearing a bunch of stories of people being taken advantage of is hard. Yes, it is. It is. It's so sad. It's the worst thing you can do is take advantage of a vulnerable person. Especially the ones that were born into these ones where it's like, well, to leave it is to leave every single person you've ever known or loved in your life. Exactly.

I mean, it's all bad. It's if you're born in, you're losing everything. If you were recruited in, it's because you're vulnerable to that and you got preyed upon yeah which is also heartbreaking horrifying yeah yeah rough rough rough but that's coming that's coming that's coming your way you want to feel maybe don't listen no they should actually i think this one is should be mandatory required listening oh wow we've never done that. Then I'm gonna. Okay. So use it or lose it. Use it or lose it. What's RL?

Really? Required listening. Oh, required listening. We're doing something a little different today. We are. Yeah. We're going to do a couple quickies. Yeah.

Some facties on our good friend, Jared Cohen. Yes. Who we love. What a good boy. Brilliant. Total good boy club. Yeah. Best boy, you mean.

Best boy. Yeah. And he is so smart. He a good boy. Brilliant. Total good boy club. Yeah, best boy, you mean. Best boy. Yeah, and he is so smart. He's so smart, I know. He's crazy. We talk to so many people, it really humbles you. Or humbles me. Like, God, all the names and the dates and the this and the that. Wow.

I know. Pretty impressive. So we're going to do a little bit of facts, and then we're going to play you our segments. There's four of them, four episodes of the Puzzler podcast, AJ Jacobs, who we've had on this show before. Yes. Who we loved. Very fun episode with him on. Yes, where we did puzzles. So many puzzles. Oh, it was great. And now he has a podcast where he does puzzles. He has people on to do them.

And so we did that. We were guests. And this week, he did a Monica and Dax week. Week? Like Fargo. Yeah. We got our own week like we were a great television show. Exactly.

And they're quick little episodes. And so we're just going to play them for you after this. Maybe you'll enjoy it. And then go listen to AJ's podcast. For more puzzles. Follow it. Yeah. They're very short and fun.

They're a little blast. Yeah. I think a huge percentage of people do these different New York Times daily. Wordle. Five minute. Yeah. Wordle's one. There's the math one.

There's, you know. Yeah. I think people like little pops of. Sure. Yeah. Intellectual stimuli. Yeah. Okay, so a few facts for Jared.

Okay. One, and this is the most important one. What's the brand of the presidential limo that Kennedy was assassinated in? Your guess was a 64 Lincoln Continental. Yeah. And it's a 61 Lincoln Continental. Ah, okay. So you were close. Yeah, three years off a 61 Lincoln Continental. Ah, okay. So you were close.

Yeah, three years off. Yeah, but close. I can't even say I knew with any certainty what really, what year I thought it was, other than I think he was killed in 64. What year did he get assassinated? Maybe it was 63. So I was kind of assuming it was like a current model. 63.

63. Okay, so that thing had been around like a current model. 63. Okay. So that thing had been around for a couple of years. Probably takes a year to build one of those things though. All the bulletproof stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Convertible.

Not a great idea. I don't know that there's been convertibles. Since? Post. I don't think they should ever do that. Well, have you noticed what the Pope rides around in? The Popemobile. He's got like a huge glass roof.

So you can still see. So it's like he's in a convertible, but it like a huge glass roof so you can still so it's like he's in a convertible but it's bulletproof glass that's so people can see him yeah they can see him you know one time i was walking down the street home from here uh-huh and the president drove by in that monstrous car but i mean it was kind of hard to well which is on purpose i believe i didn't know what car he was in. Was there a bunch of motorcycle cops? I mean, it was.

Hundreds. Hundreds of cars in succession, same type of car, and then motorcycles and all these things. And it was him. And then he went to Little Dom's. No way. I'm pretty sure. I find that really hard to believe. I really think so. I really, really think so.

It was Donald Trump? They call it. biden they call that he drives around in a cadillac limousine that's like um all the american presidents or the last bunch i know this from working at general motors because it's part of the fleet program so i believe he drives around on a in a cadillac limousine, but it's on a suburban chassis so that it can withstand a ton of weight because that thing weighs so much because of all the armor and stuff. But it has a fun name. Will you find out what the fun name of the president's limousine is? It's like the monster or the something. The beast.

The beast. Cool. Yeah. And it looks preposterous. It's a Cadillac limousine but it's very the wheels are huge it looks like a monster truck wow i don't remember that part i just i just saw him and then and i was at little dom's after that and uh he he he found his wallet he was there there's no way they were letting people he stayed in the car but someone came out and got his food. Oh, okay.

I believe that. I didn't believe he sat at a table and ate at Lil Dom's. They'd have to shut down the entire restaurant, and they would have had to do background checks on that one. No, he would have been like, she's cool. I know her. I've heard her show. She's great. Yeah, so anyway, that was exciting once.

Okay, what does PEPFAR stand for? The U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. Okay. Okay. Okay. Was George H.W. Bush the head of the CIA? Yes, he was. CIA director?

He was a director, yep. Under Reagan? Ford brought Bush back to Washington to become the director of central intelligence under Ronald Reagan. Wait, he served as a 43rd vice president, vice president under Reagan. Oh, right. He was his vice president. He can't be the director of central intelligence and the vice president. Or he has to investigate himself.

What about also he was the president? He was also the president. He's had a lot of jobs. Wow. Remember, wasn't it him whose nurse gown was open? You saw his butt. I hated that. Oh, did that happen?

I think so. I hope I didn't make that up. When would he have been in a nurse gown in front of cameras? For Halloween? Did you see him? About Bush? George H.W. Bush. Did he go as a patient on Halloween?

No, he's old. I know, but why would there have been cameras in the hospital? I'm going to look up George H.W. Bush butt. Or hospital gown, too. Sounds nice. Okay, I think I made it up. Maybe it was on a cartoon. Maybe he saw it on The Simpsons.

I could see them doing it. It's never really been my show, but. It's impossible not to catch some episodes though, right? Maybe it was, it was somebody. I know it was somebody. And I remember thinking, this is a disgrace. Like they don't need to do this. Anyway, you mentioned that Rami said that the Arabic word for human is forgetful.

Yes. The Arabic word for human being is insan, which is derived from the word nasyon, which means to forget. It's a good one. Yeah, I know. I like that. Now, DPhil versus PhD. Right. That's what they do in England.

In England, they call it a DPhil. You hate that? Sure. It's just one more thing to learn, I guess. Can't we all just call it the same thing? Well, I mean, really, exactly. Then we're the ones that changed it. And we just flipped it?

Yeah, because PhD is... DPH. Yeah, exactly. DPhil is a doctor of philosophy and PhD is a doctor of philosophy, but we just did... We messed up all the letters. Why did we do that? Sure, be unique. Why did we put philosophy first? Well, because they were the parents

and we were the kids and we wanted to have our own thing. It's an age old story, really. Liberal arts education. Think about it. Oh, one thing I really wanted to bring up. He says that William Taft's wife, it sounded like he said Helen Mirren.

Oh, sure. And it's Helen Heron it sounded like he said Helen Mirren. Oh, sure. And it's Helen Heron, which, so he said Helen Heron. But if you don't know Helen Heron, you heard that as Helen Heron. And you're familiar with the actor Helen Mirren. Wonderful actress. Wonderful, wonderful actress. Celebrated and cherished actor. Also someone, if she asked for your dick mold.

Yeah. Also someone, maybe Kristen would for your dick mold. Yeah. Also someone, maybe Kristen would say yes. Maybe. I totally agree. Yeah. If you don't know what we're talking about, listen to the Bradley Cooper fact check. Right. It might be a real crazy conversation to just hop into.

Yeah, I think Kristen would be fine with that penis mold to Helen Mirren. Those are my facts. Obviously, Jared's full of facts. That's all he does is talk about facts. He's a fact machine. He is. But I trust him. Yeah, we trust.

He's a trusted brand. He's a very trusted brand. I guess I have one update about whiskey. Oh, okay. Because when I told the girls that I had told the whole story about whiskey on the podcast, they said, and then you told them about him getting lost and i was like no because that happened the day after we recorded so same week rough week for whiskers same panic too all of a sudden no one knows where whiskey's at okay and this is at a point where we have we have eight house guests and then there's us four so we have three families staying at the

house and then us four and everyone is deployed to find whiskey i sit it out i'm like someone needs to stay at the house and like if he just walks into a bedroom i can sure this is going on for a while people are people are in cars kids are crying people are you know he's gotten eaten by a coyote he's got he's been hit by a car what time of day is this this is like midday on a sunday okay everyone's on high alert and looking there's a lot of little kids staying at the house so all these little girls are really upset that the dog they just met has probably been eaten by a coyote so again it's just pandemonium everyone's unhinged and then at some point after about an hour of this someone hears barking from the yard so there's a we have a dog run i don't know how someone would get in

trouble in this dog run you let them out the back door of the house and it's totally fenced in and it's like fake grass so that they can pee and it's totally fenced in and it's like fake grass so that they can pee on it and stuff and doesn't ruin it well also there's like a trench where the electrical stuff and everything has been buried and there's a drop so there's wood that covers that so no one falls into that hole somehow whiskey got himself in there and it's just been in a box no and with it closed yes he's under wood he's like somehow he's gotten himself somewhere he can't get out of and he's under a sheet of plywood oh my god barking and someone hears his faint bark oh oh he's with all those wires the tricks will not end the wires well no there's

nothing exposed down there oh okay it's like an access box in case someone has to get into there how did he get there i guess he was able to there was a big enough gap that he could get himself down in there and then he couldn't get out but But he's just, he's under a pile of wood and the dog run. So you got him out? Yes. Got him out. But you didn't cry like you cried when Matt got under the pool? No, because again, we're like hot on the heels of Valentine's Day.

And I'm like, this dog won't quit. It's like every couple days now where the whole family is going to be in a tizzy. Tizzy. And then, oh, I just want to add too, because I had a fair amount of commenters say, why don't you just get him doggy steps to get up on the bed? And guess what? I did that. I did that a year ago because it was already annoying a year ago,

back when it was still much better than it is now. Get him doggy steps. They're soft. They're inviting. They're nice. Put food on every layer of it. He won't do it. He will not walk up steps.

And let's remind people, he has three legs. I know, and he does, but he somehow gets up the steps in the house to the second floor when he wants to just fine. Yeah. He's an obstinate little bastard.

He'd rather be lifted than walk up those steps. Of course, who wouldn't? Yeah, and he knows if he sits. Except he doesn't also want to be picked up. He'd rather be lifted than walk up those steps. Of course, who wouldn't? Yeah, and he knows if he sits. Except he doesn't also want to be picked up. He doesn't want to be picked up, and he doesn't want to stay on the bed anymore. Yeah, last night trying to watch the final episode of Mr. and Mrs. Smith, other update. What an incredible finale.

I know. I'm like, I'm so mad we're going to have to wait probably two years or something for the next installment. I mean, they left it up to like they could or couldn't. They don't have to do another, but I want them to. They must do another. I know. Okay, so he is wreaking havoc. And again, it was a power struggle.

So I had put him on the bed. He jumped off, put him on the bed. I had done it four times in the middle of this episode. on the bed he jumped off put him on the bed i had done it four times in the middle of this episode and then when he came the fifth time back and started barking i was just looking at him absolutely not i'm not picking you up you just you gotta stay down there he like does this weird like i think they're called pat grunts when the gorillas do it it's like pat grunts yeah he's like making this weird noise yeah and he's and he's barking and i look at him no i'm not gonna pick you up you won't stay up here this is madness

it's very distracted during most of the finale and then finally you know kristen took him down to bed thank god we the problem is we have people staying in the room where his cage is. In his little box that he sleeps in his house. Yeah. So I don't know if we can put him. I don't know. Why don't you move the house to the main. My bedroom?

No, to the main area downstairs. Because he does it because he'll bark in there. So we have figured out that he likes being in the one. I mean, I will say I do feel like you guys have, like, he. I know. I had a lot of people like, you need Caesar and you need a good trainer. No, not Caesar. I don't need that.

I'm like, I don't have time to train this dog. I already have two kids and several full-time jobs. I don't have time to train this dog. Right. You don't. And I think he's beyond training, if I'm being honest. But I just mean, like don't and i think he's beyond training if i'm being honest but i just mean like i don't think i don't think he's not he's had a trainer and stuff it's just he knows what he can get away with and he does like any animal like any person i mean if i think

if you just put him in his box and just let him whine and whine and whine like eventually he'll stop well you would think but no he doesn't stop that's what's incredible he has such stick-to-it-ness you gotta applaud it well you have to let it go maybe for five but the kids wake up and then they're all upset why is whiskey barking and then they're they're not asleep because definitely we've tried to let him as we'd say cry it out right i do feel he's running the house this is a codependent enabling that's exactly what i told him when i looked at him i said i'm i'm not i can't be codependent and lift you up anymore because you're upset you're down there it's just ruining my good time

and then you're looking at him and you're like he doesn't understand any of this he doesn't know how to think you gotta get him out of the room and close the door i know but then he'll just bark. He'll bark forever. It's crazy. Then I'm like, well, let's put him in the dog run in this safe cage and then can't do that. I mean, yeah. Well, that's a whiskey update. Okay.

I'm sure there's more to come. Great. Yeah. God knows what. He'll get himself lodged in a tree or something. Yeah. Yeah. Well. But watch Mr. and Mrs. Smith.

Oh, it's so good do that listen to our puzzles listen to puzzles enjoy enjoy your puzzles yeah and try to play along yeah although we were pretty quick we didn't do too shabby if i'm being honest you you shined in particular you too no good job it was uh i was proud to have you as my partner. Me too. I always am. Alright. Love you. Hello Puzzlers. Welcome to the Puzzler Podcast. The free perfume spritz at your puzzle department store. I am your host AJ Jacobs and I am your host, AJ Jacobs, and I am with today's guests, the amazing Dax Shepard and Monica Padman, hosts of Armchair Expert and much, much more.

Welcome, Dax and Monica. Oh, we're delighted to be back. Thank you for having us. Can we be on every day? Absolutely. I'm so sad you're not on this network doing this. Yeah, it's a shame. This will be a hostile takeover and a game of puzzles.

We are ready to be taken on. We would be honored. Are you kidding? Well, today, speaking of podcasts, today's puzzle is called Armchair Export. That's not an E, that's puzzle is called Armchair Export. That's not an E, that's an O, because we are very tricky here at the Puzzler. So the idea is that all the answers in this puzzle are podcasts that you know and love,

but we have changed one letter. Oh, cool. So I'm going to describe the podcast. So for instance, I kind of gave it away, but if this were a podcast from Dax Shepard and Monica Padman about shipping upholstered seats

overseas, that would be Armchair Export. Okay, I see how this works. I'm glad you gave us the example. Me too. I thought you were just going to change one letter and see if we knew. It'll be obvious. But then I got scared that we'll expose ourselves as not knowing as much about our industry as we should.

This is true. Okay. Well, these are relatively big ones. Okay. But I'm here for hints too. Oh, yeah. Well, I'll give you one more example. If the clue was a podcast about a guy who gulps a lot of drinks very quickly, and this was hosted by A.J. Jacobs and is featuring guests Dax Shepard and Monica Padman.

Okay, the chuggler pod. The guzzler. Oh, or chuggler. The guzzler. Oh, couldn't it have been the chuggler? Well, if that were a word, yeah. Chugging! And you changed all the Zs to Gs.

Chugging is a thing? Judzler, the juggler. You gotta change like, six letter. Just one letter change? Yeah. Oh my God. Just one letter, right. Good thing we practiced.

We could do another puzzle where you change three letters and the juggler would be nailing it. Say any word you want, really. It rhymes. All right, word you want, really. It rhymes. All right. Are you ready? Yes. This is a podcast from the New York Times about

the latest news in small ornamental lace mats. Little lacy mats. The doily. The doily. The doily. doily the doily who wouldn't listen to that they

grandmas would unite around that one yeah they would this is a podcast about a former late night talk show host who makes meals for his hungry pals um yeah Conan who needs a friend, but.

Is it called Who Needs a Friend? But he's making meals. It's kind of a- You got it, you're there. Okay, who- Conan, wait, what is the real one? That's the question. We're trying to first start with the,

we know it's Conan and he wants a friend, but we're not sure what the perfect- Yes, it's not want, he does more than want. He- He needs a friend. Needs a friend. Oh, okay, so- Exactly.

Okay, so now, so Conan Needs a Friend is a real name. Yeah. And then the clue was a show about a guy who makes food for friends. Food. Yeah, exactly. So he cooks for friends or he- Needs like a K and-

Can you add a K? Oh, that's that's good i like that i'm gonna give you credit that is not it but i really like that yeah because also that would could be a massage show yes you're right he gets knots out a little let's try to get it though correctly after dark conan needs a friend you. You're thinking too clever. This is just like if you're giving someone something to eat, you are. Oh, Conan feeds a friend! Of course, Monica.

It was right there. Conan feeds a friend. Nicely done. But I prefer the needs a friend. Alright, we got two more. This podcast features first person true stories told from the point of view of a green citrus fruit why from npr they're often like very almost twee stories is it this it's this american life i i

made a face okay so and then and then we got a lime in there. Yeah, it's a lime. This American. Lime. This American Lime. This American Lime. Another potential hit. Wow.

Love it. We really worked through that one. We did. I could see. I saw the gears turning. Well, this one actually is a little harder, but I'm confident. All right. So this one is a very big show.

You may not have heard it, but it's a lovely show. It's a podcast about ropes, ties, and pretzels, among other things. It's hosted by Chuck Bryan and Josh Clark right here on the iHeart Network. Ropes, ties, and pretzels. Stuff you should dough. Stuff you should dough? Oh, because you dough pretzels? I like that.

I like that too. But it doesn't even work. You're there. Okay. Stuff you should know. Yeah, stuff you should know. I love that show. We got to mess with know.

New? You've got ropes, ties, pretzels. Stuff You Should Not. Stuff You Should Not. Oh, wonderful. Good job, Monty. Wow. Well done.

Look at that. Those are the nicest boys in the world. I want to shout out. Those are the nicest boys in the world. I'm so shout out. Those are the nicest boys in the world. I'm so glad you said that. I am a huge fan as well. Me too. Actually, Chuck was a guest right here on The Puzzler.

Oh, of course. Did he kill it? Did he do so well? Yes, he was lovely. And he's a good chuckler. He just chuckled his way through it. We had a good time. Well, you did great.

You got them all. Thank you. I can't believe SmartLess wasn't in that mix, right? I was already preparing. How is he going to change one letter of SmartLess? Kind of a made-up word. But that's hard because that word is so specific. Yeah.

It's hard to swap out a letter. One letter, it almost can't be done. SmartLess. Oh, I got a show about someone who's never had an accident in their slacks. Shartless. That is fantastic. You just took it to a new level.

Or maybe took it down to a new level. Shartless. Oh, I hope that doesn't get edited out. We love the Shartless boys. We'll throw an E on it and we will keep it in that people need to know well today we have a movie themed puzzle for you because i know you are both movie fans and have appeared in movies so and actually i will say, I came up with several movie-themed puzzle ideas. My first idea was rejected very vigorously by the puzzle staff.

The first idea, though, if you go on IMDb and look at DAX, if you look at your list of credits, do you know what the first idea is? Vomiteer at Party. Is that what you're going to? Yeah. I wear that with great pride. If you can start a career as vomiteer at party with no lines and work your way up to a cast member on Parenthood. What a life. Sky's the limit.

Did it say vomiteer? The one I saw said guy vomiting at party. I think I've classed it up by saying vomiteer at party. You're right. It's actually lower brow. Guy vomiting at parties. I think I've classed it up by saying vomiteer at parties. You're right. It's actually lower brow. Guy vomiting at parties. Wow. I didn't know about the noun vomiteer. I love it. Well, clearly I did a great job vomiting

because it led to all kinds of things. Vomiteer, is it a play on volunteer? It's like group vomitorium. Vomiteer at a vomitorium. Wow. Okay. It's got hints of Romeium. Vomiteer at a vomitorium. Wow. Okay. It's got hints of Rome, ancient Hellenics, liberal arts education. Okay.

Well, I was going to do sort of a theme of other cinematic spewing, like The Exorcist. Oh, we would have liked that. Well, you're nice my next time you're on yeah instead i would love to try a puzzle called name that title drop and you might have heard the phrase title drop my kids taught it to me it is when a character says the title of a movie during the movie itself oh Oh, I love that. Okay. Sometimes met with a round of applause

if the movie is good enough. Oh, yeah. There you go. I've seen that. The most famous title drop, one of the most famous is Doc Brown telling Michael J. Fox, next Saturday night we're sending you

Back to the Future. Exactly. So in this quiz, we're going to play you a clip from a couple of movies, and we bleeped out the title drop. But we didn't bleep it out. I decided I would actually say the phrase

title drop. Oh, great. So I can express my acting chops in case you're casting anything. But here goes. Please play clip number one. Village Police Department. Yeah, hi, look, I'm calling from Paris.

I have a son who's... Title drop. I knew it from the ringing. I love that movie so much. Wow. And it's timely because we're just coming out of Christmas. So I've seen it recently. This doesn't air until August 18th.

Oh my fuck. Just to let you know. Well, what is it, Monica? Tell us. Home Alone. Home Alone, baby. You are. That was so fast.

That was crazy. Yeah. She was way ahead of it. Do you think you would have got it? It's hard to know because you were saying it before the clip was even over, I think. If I'm recollecting correctly. I couldn't help myself. I'm proud to be in this game with you and business.

I have a feeling the rest are going to go to you. Because my brain doesn't work well like this. Okay. Auditorily. No sinuses. Like when people play music, I don't know the song this. Okay. Auditorily. No sinuses. Like when people play music, I don't know the song until the song's over, basically. Right.

But this was just the one I knew I was going to get. Yeah. This is such a shoo-in for you. You probably watched this four times in the last two months. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah, I feel this puzzle is like,

if you love the movie, you know it. If you don't, then you're shit out of luck. All right, so here's clip number two. I just want to say to the listener who can't see Monica, she's using her left hand to push the clip, and it's shocking how uncoordinated she is with her left hand. She's having the hardest time getting her finger just to the mouse pad. And I relate.

I tried to write with my right hand the other day, and it't be done so i'm not casting any dax is left-handed i think that you don't understand because you have to use your right hand in life because this is a right-handed world you live in right and i left these like right-handers don't have to use their left hand almost ever true that's true okay true. Okay, are we ready? Are you feeling some empathy? Yeah. Nice. Everything I think and everything I do is wrong. I was wrong about Elton.

I was wrong about Christian. Now Josh hated me. It all boiled down to one inevitable conclusion. I was just totally... Tidal jump. Oh, I love it it do you know it the i feel like these are really on a platter for you i'm i don't know it clueless clueless clueless yes these are great i love this game something does happen to my brain though when i see that you have it and then i immediately go

like oh i don't have it she has them and immediately go like, oh, I don't have it. She has it. And then I can't even think any longer. Mental games. Is that what it is? Yes. You need to get a little bit tougher mentally. I need to block you out during this is what I need to do.

Yeah. But you're in my peripheral. Do we want to be in separate booths? We're going to call you back in 25. I'm going to patch in from central LA, and she's going to stay here. All right. Well, we have two more. Oh, by the way, I could have done, I looked at your IMDb list for any title drops. There was one, but I was, it was too late. I couldn't get the clip,

but it was something along the line of you're just jealous about my superior retailing ability. you'll never make employee i feel like baby mama has to have been said in baby mama as well don't you think malika yeah but maybe not by you not by me no they wouldn't entrust me with the title drop i actually i wonder if it's in there i could see see them not. Yeah, they're so good. They're so good. But who knows? I will fact check that. All right, what about this? Oh, yeah, we have two more.

Give Monica some time to get her hand up there. It'll be 10 to 12 minutes. She just needs a little 10 minutes heads up. Tell her to start playing Clip 5 right now. Okay, we ready? All right, Clip 3. This is clip three. You felt it your entire life,

that there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me. Do you know what I'm talking about? Tidal drop? Matrix? drop matrix matrix good job i didn't have that well done well we've gone like early on girl movie now boy movie no matrix is very gender nooch i've watched it many times i just didn't i didn't know it well enough. It's a great movie. And by the way, this was the scene right before he offers him the blue or the red pill.

The pill. Yes. I would have a hard time. I might take the blue pill, personally. Oh, wow. Wow. I should, because I've got way too lucky of a life. I don't know why I would want to find out none of this is real.

Yeah. Although, if you've listened to the show, you know that we are under a very firm belief that we're living in Monica's father's simulation. all of us including you yeah you're part of it so and it's so i guess you owe a show a thank you as well because for me yes i love the role he's assigned me yes thank you thank you monica's dad i have some notes i have some notes for him but overall it's not that. Now, this one, I do feel guilty because I happen to know that this is a favorite of Monica's. I don't know whether...

Dax, I think you like it too. So maybe Monica, just kind of hold your outbursts. I'll hold my water. Okay. All right. Play clip number four, please. You're a pack of vultures at the feast. Tidal drop.

Beaks bloody. That's for you? Yes. What? Well, you did say on a show, maybe recent dish, that you love this movie. Let me play it again. Can I play it again? Can we do a second?

I'm so glad you didn't get it immediately. Can we get a second? Is it breaking the rules to hear it twice? No. Play it as often as you want. You're a pack of vultures at the feast. Tidal drop. Beaks bloody.

This really cannot be perfect. It's English, right? Are we seeing some kind of a period piece or some kind of? He's not English. Well, interesting. He's not English. I mean, well, interestingly, the actor is English, but I believe the character is Southern. Oh.

And I love this movie. I will give you, it is, Daniel Craig is the one who's saying it. Oh, I got it. Yes, you love these movies. Oh! Yes, the Ryan. Oh, my God. Yes.

Inheritance or? Knives Out. Knives Out. Knives Out, that's it. Exactly. Wow. Knives Out, beaks bloody. Yes, he's definitely playing a southern gentleman, and he is English.

I totally, that was hard. It was very hard because it sounded a little English and southern. It sounded like it was going to be from the 20s. It sounded like it was an old movie. A period piece. Interesting. Period piece, period piece. Well, I loved that movie.

I loved Glass Onion, too. Did you see that one? Loved. So we were three of four. We did. We got it. Strong C plus. We did. We got it. Strong C plus. We did get it with a little clue.

A little clue. Pretty big clue. I am glad, because otherwise it would have been like, you know, it was too easy. Right. Thank you for showing your human. Oh, that was fun. It was. This is so fun, AJ.

It is, AJ. I loved having you, our amazing guests. I just didn't. Well, anytime you want. Listen, if you want any puzzling on the armchair expert, you know I'm happy to provide. We know where to go. There you go. Thank you.

We may rudely accept that casual invitation, as they say. Yeah. Are you kidding? Honored. And by the way, I did try to do an F1 puzzle, and I failed. Oh. I would love to see the attempt. Yeah.

All right. Well, I hope you do better on these than I did. I feel good. I feel you will. I'm nervous all of a sudden. Because this is a type of puzzle that we invented here at the Puzzler, in the Puzzler Laboratory. And we think of it as a rebus for your ears. So we call it sort of an earbus, trademark pending.

So the way it works is I'm going to say a word in a certain tone of voice or an accent. And if you combine the word and my manner of speaking, it's gonna reveal the answer, which is a two word phrase. So it's easier than it sounds. It's easier. So if I said, for instance, if I said, tide, that would be- Slow tide, high tide.

High tide. Slow tide? Exactly, or rising tide. Oh, rising. Or low to high, but yes, high tide or rising tide. You're going to hate us as guests because we can't help but go long. But I just want to say that one of the funniest moments. Are you kidding?

I was banned from doing this in a game we would play called, what was that game? Categories or something where you're going to try. There's like 15 words out on the board and you're going to say, okay, I'm going to say one word and you to guess three of those code names oh i love that game yeah and this was an outlawed clue that i you'll remember it because i said pro tologist oh yeah it was really because australian was one of the things and then like doctor was one and then toilet or something. And everyone was really mad I used an Australian accent. But it's very similar. Cheater. There might be some bad accents.

You ready for your first EarBus is banana. It's banana. Yeah. Do you know it? Yeah, but go ahead. Let's do it on three. One, two, three. Banana split.

I love it. And I two, three. Banana split. I love it. And I love the delivery. All right. Well, you're a natural. You're two naturals. Ready? Ready? We got live-er.

Live-er. I like they're looking up. That means they're thinking. Live-er. Just so you know, it's sort of in the genre of Banana Split. So it's like live-paws-er, live-braver. L-I-V-E-R, but I'm pausing between live and er. What happens with live?

Half-life? No. No, it's got the word liver in it. It's something liver. We got fatty liver. We got liver and onions. Chopped liver!

Chopped liver! Chopped liver! Oh, yay! High five! Nicely done. Alright, you ready for more? You are on your own roll. All right.

Scientist. Mad scientist. Look at that. No hesitation. No hesitation. Unbelievable. AJ, if these went on into infinity, we would sit here and do it. This is like our favorite kind of entertainment.

It's like the button, the drug button for a monkey. I got no plans. Oh, yeah. That's great. All right. Well, what about this one? Example, example, example, example. It's a two-word phrase. Quadruple example. It comes out of that.

Four examples. Four examples. Ah, great job, Monica. Four examples. You're on fire. Four examples. Oh, sorry. No, it's great. Quadruple example Four example Great job Monica You're on fire Four example Oh sorry No it's great We're playing it fast and loose With the spelling of four

But yeah You're gonna get hung up on that I love that Cause I love you solved it As you said it That was amazing Yeah that's always fun Alright what about this one

Motion Slow motion As you said it, that was amazing. Yeah, that's always fun. All right, what about this one? Motion. Slow motion. Yeah. She had to look. She was trying to be kind. She already had it before I was saying. She had already had time to look at me to go like, go ahead.

All right, we had only two more, only two more. As you're nodding your head too. So if there's any effort to let me think I had it before, you blew that by nodding your head too, so like if there's any effort to let me think I had it before you blew that by nodding your head as you looked at me. You are doing much better than I did with eight fours. Okay, ready? Sayers. Naysayers.

Oh, good job. That was good. I didn't. And you weren't even like condescendingly looking at me. Don't get defensive over there. I didn't. And you weren't even condescendingly looking at me. Hey! Don't get defensive over there. I'm intimidated by your intelligence. It's a compliment to you that I'm a... You're upset.

I think you both are right in there. Well, this one, this is a little callback to something Dax said. Rouge football. Rouge football. English rules football, rules football. English rules football? Well, I'm a terrible actor, so yeah. Okay, so maybe, is it Scottish? Scottish rules, that was.

No. Say it again. This is great. This is so bad. Rules football, mate, mate. Oh, Australian rules football. No. Exactly. What football no exactly now how did you do what does that even mean i don't get it well that you're hearing it for the first time which puts you at a deficit for sure yeah what is that i have heard that i have no clue what it is oh i don't know

it's like a game it's like sort of rugby mixed with football australian football. I mean, it's fun to watch. They don't wear helmets and they just like beat up on each other. Does everyone have cauliflower in the air? Well, if you have it, great. Great for you. Okay, yeah, I didn't mean to shame anyone. I didn't know about that,

so that went my whole out. My apologies on the, that was a hard one because my accent was more like Lucky Charms Leprechaun or something. I one because my accent it was was more like lucky charms leprechaun or something i don't know what it was all right well you did fantastic even with the accent so thank you as many of your fans know and you have a lot of them at the end of your show, Monica often does a fact-checking segment. Were you correct? We do.

Yeah. And you did it for my segment. Thank you. Do you remember if you erred in any way? I did in the sense that I said I didn't know something. So you told me. Yes. Because the question was about turkeys and whether turkeys, do they come from Turkey? Why are they turkeys?

Are they American? And Monica found out, yes, they are. They are native to America. And Turkey has no actual turkeys. It's a feather in the cap of all Americans. That's right. Turkey hails from here. That's right.

of all Americans. That's right. Turkey hails from here. That's right. And just so you know, 99.9% of the facts being corrected are ones I get wrong. So generally it's just to attack me and not the guest.

I am sorry about this. But I'm equal opportunity failure. So if you are going to mess up, I am going to call you out on it. Yeah, it's not going to slide by. Not under her watch. That's right. I am going to call you out on it. Yeah, it's not going to slide by. Not under her watch. That's right. I'm ready to be fact-checked.

And in fact, I may have messed up the fact-checking story about you fact-checking me. So we're going to have to fact-check that. But in this game, I am going to tell you two facts about puzzles, about the history of puzzles. And you are going to try to figure out which is true and which is fake. Which is true. So one truth and one lie. Are you ready for your first set of potential truths?

Yes. All right. They're all about puzzles. Option one is the current fastest solving of a Rubik's Cube is 3.1 seconds. Okay, that's fact one. Fact two is if you turn a Rubik's Cube randomly at the rate of one twist per second, it will take 3.1 million years to solve on average. So the 3.1 seconds or 3.1 million years this is a toughie now my instinct

is by that 3.1 million years number because i have tried numerous times to solve one and i don't think if you gave me 3.1 million years even spinning it intentionally i wouldn't get it okay and then also have you seen these people do these? I mean, they're doing it with one hand. It's insane. Blindfolded. Yes, but exactly. Blindfolded.

And I do think it's the younger generation is really on top of like mastering the Rubik's Cube. Now, so I think the first one's true. You do. Yeah. And I think maybe the second one is just simply unknowable. True. Okay. Our final answer is A is correct and two is potentially unknowable. You know your Rubik's Cube.

3.1 seconds by Max Park. Done in 2021. Unbelievable. It sounds like a boy's name, Max. It sounds like we don't know the name, the gender. Increasingly. I mean, it's on YouTube if you want to see it. It is crazy.

I wish I had the time. And by the way, I never met him, but I did for my book meet the man who holds the foot record because you can solve it with your feet. And that's about 16 seconds. 16 seconds with the feet? That's a real thumb your nose at us simpletons they can't even do it with our hands was that a pun were you going with a pun or that was no that that would

have been an accident all right yeah uh but by the way if you did the random thing it would take 111 billion years no yeah it's crazy there are 43 quintillion possible combinations which is just on you that is it's not unknowable but unfathomable like you but also a great use of time you know so are there anything worth dedicating billions of years of your life to it's got to be that are people who are solving it then, they know how to solve it and then they're just working on the time? Like they know there's a trick or a hack. There's a system.

There's a system, yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, they're algorithms. It's like chess, right? They've watched the many different permutations of moves so many times that they intuitively and immediately recognize the pattern and know what the response to that given pattern is. So they can probably glance at that cube and they go, oh, it's that pattern.

It needs to be spun right, left, to, you know, I imagine that's cognitively what's happening. Yeah, that's exactly right. And that's why they can do a blindfolded because they they're allowed to see the the cube before they put on the blindfold otherwise that would be pretty impressive oh good i'm glad you explained that because i was like how would someone do a blindfolded that doesn't make any sense the colors feel differently like what are we talking well synesthesia all right are you ready for your next fact-checking challenge? Yes. All right, this is, why were readers of the Baltimore Sun furious about the April 26, 2020 puzzle page?

Was it because, A, the newspaper printed a crossword puzzle where the black squares were in the pattern of a satanic pentagram, or B, the newspaper printed a spot the difference puzzle where the two images were identical. So they had to find the differences, but the newspaper accidentally printed the same image. So there were no differences. Well, I want to ask a question to you, I guess, as my partner. Yeah.

He said April 26. When is April Fool's Day? That's the first, right? Yeah, that's the first. ask a question to you i guess as my partner yeah he said april 26 when when is april fool's day that's the first right yeah that's the first so it's not like they would do the identical pictures uh as an april fool's gag we've passed that by 25 but it was an accident it could have been an accident which is why it drove people insane do we know if it was an accident or intentional well it doesn't matter because in the fake scenario, fake or real scenario, it was an accident. They did not. Right.

I think it's the pentagram. You do? I do. Wait, and can you remind me where we are? Boston? Baltimore. The Baltimore Sun newspaper. I think it's the identicals.

You do. Well, we're going to have different. I like it. You promised me there would be arguments. Someone's going to take the lead right now. Okay, well, that's our final answers. I like it. You promised me there would be arguments. Someone's going to take the lead right now. Okay, well that's our final answers. I say pentagram. Monica,

you are the winner. Yay! Oh, he loves when I win. I do. No victory's worth you being in a good mood. Well, I'm very proud you went for that one, Dax. And Monica, yeah,

I love that. It's one of my favorite puzzles of all time. Think how many hours were wasted where people were like, where is it? I would be.

Enlisting their family members. Oh, wow. It's heartbreaking. It is just heartbreaking to think about. They should lose their puzzling license over that. All right.

We have one last fact checking for you. I'm going to give you two riddles. One of these two riddles is the first recorded riddle in history. And one is something I made up this morning. Okay. Okay. Are you ready? Okay.

Okay. Are you ready? Riddle A, what gets fat without eating and pregnant without having sex? And you can try to guess or I can give you the answer. That's not part of the actual fact-checking puzzle. But what gets fat without eating and pregnant without having sex is, I will say, both of these are Babylonian puzzles. So they're funnier in the Babylonian. And they like rice or something. Well, like what gives birth?

Well, like rice gets fat without eating. You just put it in water, right? Water is good. Water is, I like water. So like the ocean or like? Water is a cool thing. Water, but up in the air. Like when?

Evaporation? Rain. Yes. Clouds. Rain. Rain cloud. That's it. Rain cloud.

Gets fat without eating, sure. Gets bigger and pregnant. I guess like the baby is the water, the rain. That's a little abstract. I'm not on board. I don't feel bad for not being, because I still don't see. I don't see it. I've never looked up in the sky and said like, holy crap, that cloud has twins.

Look at the size of it, right? Yeah, and you never see one plopping out another cloud. Right. Good point. Good point. No one's ever said it's raining babies either. Let's just add that. No one said that. Okay. That's interesting. Good point. No one's ever said it's raining babies either. Let's just add that.

No one said that. Okay. That's interesting. All right. So you're skeptical of it, but maybe if you spoke Babylonian, it would make more sense. All right. Here's the other possible riddle. What is a crop that grows in all four seasons? A crop that grows in all four seasons.

And it's a riddle, so it can't, it's not just like corn. Like, it's not like a real answer. Right. I don't know, though. Wasn't clouds, was there an attempt at a real answer? Well, I already. Already, I feel like I know. Me too.

The first one is. Is his. No. I think AJ's. Oh, he thinks we're thinking crops Early agriculture Civilization I just think whatever this riddle is Whatever this answer is probably better

Should we just Let's try to find out the answer Let's work it for a minute Okay Crop in all four seasons What is a crop that grows in all four seasons So yeah you got it It's something that grows

In all fours But it's not you got it. It's something that grows. In all fours. But it's not like you said, it's not like corn, but it is something that grows. A crop of, like crop top, right? The top, that's interesting. Oh, hair.

Ah, yeah. Hair. Hair, that's gotta be it, right? That's it. The first one is the first riddle. Okay, because it Hair. Hair. That's got to be it, right? That's it. The first one is the first riddle. Okay. Because it's so stupid. This one was a little bit clever, so I think AJ made it up.

Okay. All right. I'll stick with you. You are right. And thank you for thinking I'm more clever than Babylonians. You sure are. I'm honored. You would never say that cloud thing.

I mean, these folks, what would they think? I was just reading Hammurabi's Code this morning, and I was equally flummoxed. It's no wonder this riddle didn't hold up. Yeah. Well, you did great. You busted me. I appreciate it.

Let's be clear. Monica did great. She's three for three. I'm two for three. Two for three. That's still a C. Oh, yuck. That's still a C. A C. Oh, yuck. Really, really good.

That's very Magna of you. Puzzlers, please don't forget to subscribe to the Puzzler Podcast, and we will meet you here tomorrow for more puzzling puzzles that will puzzle you puzzlingly. Bye.