Here's Where It Gets Interesting - The Year of Living Constitutionally with A.J. Jacobs

Episode Date: May 27, 2024

Imagine walking into your polling place on Election Day, and openly declaring who you were voting for. That is exactly what today’s guest did when researching and writing his book, The Year of Living Constitutionally. Author A.J. Jacobs joined Sharon McMahon to share what it was like to live a year, interpreting the U.S. Constitution literally. What is in the Constitution, and what is not? From implementing in-home cursing laws, to carrying an 18th Century musket around Manhattan, you will love this entertaining experiment of how the Constitution impacts modern American democracy. Special thanks to our guest, A.J. Jacobs, for joining us today. Host: Sharon McMahon Audio Producer: Jenny Snyder Production Assistant: Andrea Champoux Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Here's where it gets interesting is now available ad-free. Head to SharonMcMahon.com slash ad-free to subscribe today. Hello, friends. Welcome. So glad to have you with me today. My guest is such a fun one. It is AJ Jacobs, who has written a book called The Year of Living Constitutionally, in which he basically tries to go back in time and live according to the way that

the framers of the Constitution intended. And it is both highly entertaining, but also really, really educational. And I think you're going to love this conversation. So let's dive in. I'm Sharon McMahon, and here's where it gets interesting. Well, thanks so much for being here today, AJ. It's great to chat with you. I've been looking forward to this for a while, so I appreciate you making time. Oh, my pleasure. I'm a big fan, and I love what you're doing, and I think our visions are very aligned about educating and inspiring people to keep our democracy. I mean, you really shot to fame with your previous book, A Year of Living Biblically,

where you followed all of these sometimes very obscure rules in the Bible and you grew this very large beard and, you know and had all of these really unique experiences. And so you decided that you were inspired by your previous experience to undertake another experiment, a year of living constitutionally. And when I first heard about this project, I was like, so are we talking muskets on the streets of New York? And in fact, yes. Yes. In fact, yes. That is what we were talking about. What made you want to do this? What about these year-long experiments? That's a long commitment to a bit, AJ. I do, like my son says, I commit to the bit. Well, I loved writing The Year of Living Biblically,

and part of the motivation was I grew up in a very secular home. I knew very little about the Bible or religion, and I thought, well, here's one way to actually learn is by doing, by walking in the footsteps or the sandal steps of our forebearers. And I had the same feeling about the Constitution a couple of years ago. It became shockingly clear. I knew so little about it. I never read it. I knew the we the people part from the Schoolhouse Rock.

But every day I would read another big news story about how this 230-year-old document was having a huge impact on my life, on all Americans' lives. And I thought, well, let me try that same approach where I dive in and I walk the walk, I talk the talk, I wear the tricorn hat, carry the musket, as you mentioned, and eat the mutton and see what I can learn, try to get the original meaning of that constitution, get in the mindset of the founders to see how should we look at it today? How much should we hew to the past? How much should we evolve it? I knew it was going to be a little bizarre, a little odd, but I hoped that I would be more knowledgeable. I would feel more empowered to go out there and act and know what really is the Constitution, what it really says,

and hopefully feel more optimistic, which did happen. I want to hear more about that. I definitely do. And we'll get to that. But I want to talk a little bit about your three important revelations you say in the book. You say, I undertook this quest because reading the news over this past year led me to three important revelations. The first one is just how much our lives are affected by this document that was written so long ago. And it is very true. Our lives today continue to be impacted on a daily basis, whether we realize it or not, by this document that was written in long, hot Philadelphia summer by a bunch of dudes wearing short pants in a stinky room because it didn't wash that often and they kept the windows

closed. And you say the second revelation was just how shockingly little you knew about the Constitution. You mentioned how you knew about the preamble, thanks to Schoolhouse Rock, and a few other famous passages. And you know what? You are not alone in that at all. Most Americans, I would be willing to venture, have not sat down and read it. First of all, they think it's like reading the Bible. They think, wow, that's going to take like a year to read the whole thing. But it's actually not that long. It was designed to be printed in newspapers. But my point is but you're not, my point is you're not alone in not having read it. Most Americans know about, you know,

right to free speech, right to bear arms. They can name you some concepts that are in it, but most people have not sat down to read it. And then you also say third, you realized just how much the constitution is a national Rorschach test and that everyone, including you, sees what they want. So I'm curious about these three sort of revelations that you had. And I wonder if you can just sort of walk us through them and tell us a little bit more about what you learned. Well, first, I realized the Constitution, you look at the Supreme Court decisions, it affects where we go to school, what we carry, women's reproductive health rights, all sorts of every aspect of our life, the government regulations, everything is

affected by this document. I also realized how little I knew, as you say, and it is only four pages. They're long pages. They're big pages, but it takes about a half an hour to read, and I recommend reading it and, of course, talking about it, which is what you do so brilliantly, and I realized it is so different from what I thought. It's got parts that are so inspiring. The first 52 words, the preamble, where it talks about we the people and the general welfare and blessings of liberty, hugely inspiring. Then it's got parts that are so shockingly archaic. You can't believe there's like this part about, I'd never heard about basically government sanctioned piracy.

You can apply to Congress to become a privateer. So it was this wide variety. It's not a monolith. It's got wonderful parts and it's got parts that are extremely problematic. So that was that. And then the third revelation, when I did the Bible, I read there was a poet, it might have been Yeats, but he wrote this famous line, we both read the Bible day and night, but you see black and I see white.

And I feel that is the way a lot of people read the Constitution. They read it to reinforce their prior beliefs, the confirmation bias. And I wanted to try to erase that and read it and see what did it mean at the time? What did the founding fathers really mean, which is strikingly different from the way most of us read it now? And how much should we pay attention to that original meaning? Well, how much should we weigh in consequences of now? How much elasticity should there be in the Constitution? I love that. You mentioned in your book, too, that you knew that you could not just go it alone. You couldn't just be like, well, I figured out the Constitution on my own, that you would need a team of advisors. I want to hear more

about who was on this team of advisors. How did you choose them? I loved my team. And they were law professors, scholars, people like you. And they ranged because I wanted to be exposed to all points of view. So I had the most progressive law professors who say the Constitution is just like Play-Doh. You can mold it any way you want. It's almost postmodern. Others were so originalist, meaning they were so obsessed with the original meaning, that they refused to even today capitalize the phrase Supreme Court. Because if you look in the Constitution, it's a lowercase s. Well, I love how you sort of divide the book into topics so we can kind of get our arms around this.

And the first topic you dive into is voting constitutional style, voting 18th century style. And I love that there's a picture of you standing by a streetlight in a one-way sign wearing your puffy jacket and your tricorn hat with a pitcher of juice. Is that what that is? A pitcher of juice? It's actually, it's spiked juice. It's rum punch because they loved their rum punch. Now, that was what I found fascinating about elections. And this is a running theme. There were parts of elections then that were terrible. It was restricted to white men. But then there are parts that are interesting and worthy of looking at again. And one of those was that elections were festive, at least for the restricted group. They were seen as, like Thanksgiving, this new right to choose your leaders was something to be celebrated. So they had farmers markets, music, rum punch, and election cakes. They had these, which were made with figs and cloves. So maybe not everyone's taste.

But the idea was to celebrate this right. And people would bring election cakes, sometimes huge, 70 pounds was one recipe. And I love that. So at the start of the book, I made my own election cake. And then by the end of the book, at the November 2023 elections, I decided to start an election cake movement and try to get people in all 50 states to bake election cakes to celebrate the fact that democracy is sweet and we want to keep it. And they brought it to the polls. I got all 50 states and it was so inspiring. It was my favorite part of the whole project. There was so much negativity. You get fire hose of negative stories,

but here's a little something you can do. And that's what I love about you is you inspire people to roll up their sleeves and democracy is a verb. And that's what I wanted to do is get people involved. And they brought their election cakes and they spread this joy of democracy. I love that. That's such a fun touch. And I think we sometimes underestimate how much little things like that make a difference. Like democracy is sweet, have a little piece of cake. We should celebrate the fact that we have the right to vote because there are so many people who have gone before us who have literally given up everything so that we can sit here and eat cake and celebrate our right to vote. So well said. Love that. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a fun tradition.

Well, I'm doing it again in 2024. I thought about it like you and your listeners are the perfect people. So anyone who wants to bake an election cake, email me and yeah, let's do it. In Australia, they give out election sausages. That's right. Exactly. I'm a vegetarian, so that wouldn't quite work for me. I prefer the cake. And also, Australia gave us the secret ballot. So thank you to that. Yeah. People, first of all, don't realize that voting, in addition to being restricted to wealthy white men, was also not secret, was also conducted in like taverns. And you just kind of stood up and you were like, hey, I'm going to stand for this election. Pick me, buddies. And people could just be like, yep, that sounds good

to me. You know, raise your hand, stand up, whatever it is. It was not a secret system. There's even in Hamilton, they tried Aaron Burr for like, you're campaigning? You're openly campaigning? What? It was seen in such like poor taste to campaign for yourself. It was seen in such like poor taste to campaign for yourself. Yeah, well, I love that. As you say, how different things were. And that is one thing that strikes me. And one what I did try to recreate it.

For instance, I went, I live in New York City. I went to the poll and I went to the cafeteria at the public school and I said, I'd like to vote for Kathy Hochul for governor. And they said, shh, I can't say that. I said, I just want to vote like they did in the founding era. No, we've moved past that. But like you say, it was very different and they didn't campaign as much. They stood for office instead of ran for office. And one thing that I love that you bring up a lot is that what we do now and assume was in the Constitution was not necessarily in the

Constitution, including the Electoral College, the winner takes all. That was not always the case, as you brilliantly point out. This was a revelation in what was in the Constitution and also what was not in the Constitution. And also the fact that there are elected officials today who are telling their constituents that it was in the Constitution and that we should, you know, we should uphold what our forefathers meant when the Constitution was at its inception. It's like, but sir, perhaps one should actually read it then before trying to tell the rest of us what's in it and getting it wrong. Absolutely. So much was in. Like the idea that the Supreme Court has all this power. That's not very original. That's not what's not in the Constitution. The entire federal court system outside of the Supreme Court is not in the Constitution either. We invented all of that. And that's not to say there's anything wrong with the federal court system. We need more of a court system than just

the Supreme Court, clearly. But it's great evidence for the fact that not everything that we do in government has to be in the Constitution, and not every idea in the Constitution is a great idea. Exactly. And one thing I did admire about the Founding Fathers was the flexibility of mind and reading about the Constitutional Convention and how many ideas were throwing out. And if we had an alternative universe, if a few delegates had voted the other way, we would not have one president. We'd have three presidents. Because when the idea of a single president came up, several of the delegates said, what are you crazy? We just got rid of a king. We fought a bloody war to get rid of a king. You want another one? They called it the fetus of monarchy. And in a sense, it is, it became the fetus is now a tween

the American president of both parties has become crazy powerful, so that was one of my rights was that I tried to express was the right to petition the government, so I wrote a petition to try to reconsider the three presidents

what if it were that we actually got back three presidents? I don't honestly think it's a great idea, but I like bringing up the idea we can change the structure. It's not etched in stone forever. I'm Jenna Fisher. And I'm Angela Kinsey. We are best friends. We are best friends, and together we have the podcast Office Ladies, where we rewatched every single episode of The Office with insane behind-the-scenes stories, hilarious guests, and lots of laughs.

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I want to get into the chapter on the First Amendment, because what would be different in the year of living constitutionally about the First Amendment versus how we view it now? Amendment as a writer, of course. But what I realized, I'm a fan more of the 20th and 21st century version of the First Amendment, which was much more expansive than back in the founding era, which was surprisingly restricted. It wasn't Stalinist Russia. I don't want to over-exaggerate, but they had many more restrictions on what people could say and write than we do. And just one example is that many states had blasphemy and cursing laws, which were considered perfectly constitutional, because the idea was that you had to balance your rights against the common good, and often the common good won. That was a much more prevalent way of looking at it. And so I, as someone trying to get back to it, I decided to instate some blasphemy and cursing laws in my apartment because I have teenage sons. I'm like, well, this is a good way to clean up their language. This is a good way to clean up their language. It did not go great because it was actually 37 and a half cents per curse in early New York.

And so my son would curse and I'd say, put in 37 and a half in the jar. He'd say, I don't have a half. Let's wait till it's 75. It got to 75. He would curse again on purpose to get it to the half cent. So it was a bit of a disaster. But the idea was, to me, really interesting that they balanced the common good, and they saw that cursing and blasphemy, they believed, was bad for society, so that they put restrictions on it.

The Jehovah's Witnesses in the 40s and 50s filed a ton of free speech lawsuits with the Supreme Court. So we can partially thank the Jehovah's Witnesses for our broader free speech today. That's fascinating. Were there any other restrictions that you found on free exercise of your own religion? In any ways, was it different in your year of living constitutionally? That is such a great question. And I did actually work on a chapter about religion. I ended up not using it, partly because it is such a complicated issue that I felt I couldn't even do it justice in one chapter. I would have to write a whole book about it. Because it still debated how much religion was a part of the founding vision. I tend to believe it was not a huge part, but I can see the arguments on the other side. My favorite founding father is Ben Franklin.

And he was very open. He said in the convention, he said two things I love. One is the older I get, the less certain I am of my own opinions. And then he told a little joke at the convention where he said, it was a little parable about a French lady who said to her sister, it's so strange. I don't understand why I am the only person I've ever met who is right on every topic. And of course, his point was, yeah, it's so weird. We are all that French lady. We all believe we are the ones who are right on every topic. But of course, that's not true. You should have humility and say, I don't know. So that is one of the areas

that I decided I'm going to save for another book. But you might know, I'm sure you do know more, what is your take on how religion was different in the founding era versus now? Well, I do think there was potentially much less tolerance for different types of religious practices, just like there was less tolerance for coarse language, for example. There was a much narrower range of socially acceptable than there is today. It was a little less laissez-faire. I don't think there's any sense that the founders would have said, hey, go ahead and worship the flying spaghetti monster and build a temple to him on Park Avenue. You know what I mean? I don't know that that would

have gone over particularly well. And of course, many of the colonies were founded by specific religious groups. You hear about the Massachusetts Bay Colony being founded by Puritans, Maryland being founded by Catholics, Pennsylvania being founded by Quakers. So there was this sense of, you know, pluralism amongst the country at large. But within the colonies, prior to the Constitution being written, prior to it becoming the United States of America, before the Articles of Confederation, etc. It was perfectly acceptable to restrict religious practice within your own colony. In fact, in some cases, it was illegal to even trade with people who were Quakers. If you were a Quaker in Massachusetts Bay, you could be imprisoned,

you know. So the founders didn't necessarily come from this paradigm of incredible pluralism. It was something to be worked for, not a thing that came from a sense of incredible benevolence. They were calling on sort of like the better angels of our nature to be able to tolerate other religions, not because they were like, all religions are fine and good, and we should all do what we want, and we should all feel how we feel. That was not their viewpoint. I love it. And it reminded me of one part I did get into in my book, which is the First Amendment says you cannot have an established religion. It said that Congress cannot. But what's interesting was that just at the time, that only applied to the federal

government. States could and did have established religions, meaning that only people of their one religion could vote or serve on a jury. So it was not until much later, after the Civil War, until much later after the Civil War, that the court decided that those First Amendment rights applied not just to the federal government, but to the states. That's right. You're exactly right that it was not until the Civil War amendments were passed that your constitutional rights extended to state governments. For example, states can and did significantly restrict your right to own weapons. States had significant restrictions in some cases, specifically for certain types of people. Like if you were the wrong color, you were not allowed to have weapons at all, for example. And the Supreme Court said that was perfectly fine because your constitutional rights are only enforced by the federal government, not by state governments.

And it wasn't until nearly 100 years after the Constitution was written that they decided, based on the 14th Amendment, that your constitutional rights also had to be enforced by state governments. Right, right. And I did, of course, have a whole section on the Second Amendment, and I wanted to express it as it was expressed in the 1790s. So I did buy an actual musket from the 18th century on ye olde internet, and I had it, and I carried it around in New York, and I went out, and I actually went to a shooting range with my Revolutionary War reenactors and I shot it. And this is a very different experience than modern guns. It is like 15 or 16 steps to actually shoot it.

You have to put the ball in. You have to take out your ramrod, put the ramrod down, replace the ramrod. So it is a very different machine than what we have now. And I do think the way they interpreted the Second Amendment is different than the way both gun advocates and gun control advocates understand it now. And a lot of that is due to a great scholar named Saul Cornell, who is at Fordham, and I recommend his work on the Second Amendment. But they saw it as much more of a civic duty that you were defending, you were part of your militia. So gun control activists would not like that pretty much all adult men had guns.

But gun rights activists would not like that the government could come and inspect your weapons to make sure they were in working order. There was much more regulation as opposed to less regulation. I thought your chapter about quartering soldiers, that amused me very much. You were like, I had no idea it would be so difficult to find a soldier who'd be willing to quarter in my New York apartment. I'd been searching for weeks and it's been rejection after rejection. It was very hard. So in your mind, you're like, well, I mean, if I'm going to live constitutionally, I'm going to have to get a soldier to come live in your apartment with my family. Exactly. Yeah. So it is the Third Amendment. So it's not like down in the obscure ones says that you do not have to quarter soldiers,

meaning put them up, not chop them into force without your consent. And this was a huge deal at the time because that was one of the main grievances of the Revolutionary Wars. The British soldiers would come and eat you out of house and home. But it also implies that if I do consent to have a soldier stay in my apartment, that's my right too. And I thought it was actually a very early American way to do because they were much more hospitable. There weren't as many hotels. If someone, stranger showed up, you would put them up. So yeah, I had a hard time. I asked for a British soldier. The British government shut me down, actually. And I went to Times Square. I asked sailors walking around Times Square, and they said, sorry, we have to get back to our ship.

But I finally found a friend of a friend who was an active duty soldier. And he was coming to New York and needed a place to stay. And I put him up, like three days, three days. My wife was not overjoyed. But he turned out to be a very nice soldier, very, very respectful, made his bed. And one thing actually that I thought was interesting is I got to interview him about his life. And again, he felt a duty. He was a former investment banker who decided to join the army because he felt a duty and wanted to be part of something bigger.

And he talked about the unfortunate divide between civilians and the military now, which did not exist at the founding. I live in a bubble. I'm on the Upper West Side of New York, so I know very few military people. And so I do think that is a problem. I think it is better when people of different backgrounds, including civilian military, are able to interact. Because otherwise we end up with what we have now, which is a completely divided country. Well, there was no professional military, you know, like we think of, well, you got to join the military. He's in for four more years, et cetera, et cetera. There was

just not a professional military. It was the military was y'all, you know? Right. And it was your duty and you felt the duty to do it. And that is one thing I do love about the 18th century mindset, which as we've discussed in many ways was sexist and racist and smelly and bad. But the sense of duty to the community, whether it was joining the militia or being part of a bucket brigade to put out the fire. That, to me, this idea of responsibility in addition to rights, that, to me, strikes a real chord. Yeah, to whom much is given, much is expected. And much has been given to us in the United States, regardless of how many grievances we have. We enjoy much because of the sacrifices of our ancestors. Absolutely. It has gotten better. I mean, I tried to read the news only twice a week because that's

the way they did it then. I got to tell you, that was wonderful because it gives you a little more perspective. But you read the news now and you get the feeling, oh, this is the worst time in history. But yeah, no, it's not. It is not. And we have made progress. And if we acknowledge that, I feel we'll be more inspired to fight for more progress. Are we actively enslaving people on the plantations? No. Does that mean that everything's all hunky dory and we can be like, well, we fixed it. It's all good. No, of course not. But if you look at the sum total of what life was like for the average American, you have a reasonable expectation that your child will live

to age five. I mean, smallpox had a 30% mortality rate. Just the idea that like something is bothering me and I can see a doctor and have a reasonable expectation of having it addressed. I can see a doctor and have a reasonable expectation of having it addressed. Like even that. You're absolutely right. Amen to that. I mean, sometimes when I'm feeling down or frustrated about the state of the world, I do, I have a three word mantra, which is surgery without anesthesia. Because imagine how horrible that is.

And the fact that we don't have that, our health care system is a bit of a mess, but we do have anesthesia. So let's be grateful for the advances we have made. Yes. In fact, founding father, John Adams's daughter, had breast cancer and had to have breast cancer surgery without anesthesia at the home of John and Abigail Adams. Wow. They basically gave her a rag to bite on. Oh, horrible. I want to hear a little bit more too about the section you have on the Supreme Court. I found it, you know, like you have these reflections at the end of each chapter,

because that was, you know, what a lot of founding fathers were actively engaged in the self-improvement process of life, especially Benjamin Franklin. You mentioned that you were, that he's your favorite. And that was something Ben Franklin absolutely did. He every day was like, here's where I did well, here's where I fell short. Here's how I can be a better person. And sometimes it was like, dang, lay off, like have a night off then. You know what I mean? The self-flagellation is a bit much, but it made me chuckle. When you go to visit the Supreme Court, you mention like in your self-reflection that you're angry with yourself for getting angry about the line cutters at the Supreme Court. Your self-reflection was very amusing. I'm angry that I got so mad about

the Supreme Court line cutters. Well, just to explain, the Supreme Court, you can wait in line and the first 50 people in line are able to actually go in and see the Supreme Court in session. But you have to get up. I got up at like two in the morning to wait in the cold. But some people have figured out a hack. They hire line waiters. You pay a professional line waiter. And I got so angry at this that it was not healthy. This is not what I should be spending my time on. And like you say, the founders were very interested in governing themselves, governing their passions, is what they called it. And you couldn't have a good government of our nation without having some control over your passions. Now, I think perhaps they went too far. And, you know, I do think that I am pro

positive emotion. But I also think we live in an outrage culture that would shock the founding fathers and is not productive. And George Washington was famous. He had a very bad temper, but he was famous for fighting his entire life. And there's one anecdote, which is actually, for fighting his entire life. And there's one anecdote which is actually, as far as I can tell, true, unlike the cutting down the cherry tree, that he was early in his career, he was up against another politician. The other politician lost his temper and hit George Washington with a stick, with a club, and George Washington went away and then sent word that he wanted to meet this man the next day. The man figured, oh my God, he's going to just kick my butt. But instead, Washington offered his hand in friendship and apologized for anything he might have said. And taking that high road is

just, it's something that you don't see a lot right now, but that I think the world would be better if we did more of that, less outrage and more problem solving. And there's a phrase I love that I heard from a psychologist for raising your kids, which is, don't get furious, get curious. And that's what I try to do with politics because it's so easy to get furious. But let's get curious of how did we get here and what can we do to get out of it? I think if the founders had spent their entire lives engaged in outrage politics, we would have no constitution to begin with. They would just spend their whole time being like, can you believe what Samuel Adams did? Can you believe that Ben Franklin only has gout because he eats so many sausages? I mean, if they had spent their entire lives engaged in outrage, and that's not to say they didn't have any, they certainly did. But

I read this book not long ago called The Pursuit of Happiness, which was written by Jeffrey Rosen, who's the director of National Constitution Center. And it was basically about how the founders spent an incredible amount of time examining what does the pursuit of happiness actually mean when it comes to the foundations of our democracy? And from a foundational perspective, it has never meant pleasure. It has never been meant do what makes you happy. The founders believed that happiness came from a well-ordered life, a well-ordered interior life, kind of like Ben Franklin with his

constant pursuit of self-improvement and a well-ordered society. That was what the pursuit of happiness actually meant. It didn't mean like, start a rock band, go on tour. You know what I mean? Play different cities every night. It makes me happy. That's not to say that you can never do anything that you enjoy. The founder certainly did that. But that was not what was meant by the pursuit of happiness. The idea that you needed to be responsible for yourself and control yourself and happiness was found through controlling the more base instincts that humans are prone to. The argumentation, like being argumentative and being outraged all day long, those were not productive for a well-ordered society. And we have certainly gotten away from that, AJ. I love what you say about that. One of

my favorite revelations was that I was trying to use 18th century technology. So I wrote with a quill. I wrote much of the book with a quill, and I found it changed the way I thought because it slowed me down. And, you know, we talk about hot takes. This allowed me to have a cool or cold take because I couldn't just type an acronym and send it and have this immediate reaction. I had to get out the paper, get out the pen, send it off in a letter. And I do think that lends itself to deeper, more subtle, nuanced thinking. And I, like you say, if the founders had social media, I don't think we would have had a constitution or a country. It's not, you know, yeah, you're absolutely right. We could talk about that all day, but they had many flaws.

But one thing that many of them were committed to was improving their self-discipline. It's not a virtue that Americans espouse today. Self-discipline is something that many Americans think is something that other people should have, but they don't need to have it because they're right. They're like the French lady who's right 100% of the time. I don't need to discipline myself. I'm always correct. Yeah, exactly. And you weren't just disciplining yourself for the sake of flagellation, like you say. It was because you wanted to be better in the future and you wanted to contribute to others. So it wasn't all about yourself. You were thinking of others, this idea of responsibilities in addition to rights. And it wasn't all about yourself. You were thinking of others, this idea of responsibilities

in addition to rights. And actually, when I did my own family constitution as part of the Year of Living Constitutionally, and one of them was including a bill of responsibilities in addition to a bill of rights, because I think the founders would have included that if it weren't so obvious to them that people did have responsibilities. That's one reason why things like the Second Amendment don't specify exactly what is meant by a well-ordered militia, etc., because some people argue that it was so obvious to people that it didn't need to be delineated. Of course, that's what it means. It means if your country needs you and you have to fight an enemy, they're going to call you up. You should be ready to go if you're called upon. Some people feel like that was so obvious to the

people at the time that they didn't need to specify what it meant. It was like, yeah, duh. Of course, that's what it means. I heard that yes from my advisors. And I think it was a theme in America that you hear even up to John Kennedy that don't ask what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. I think if someone said that today, that if a candidate said that today, they'd be like, no, that's not, I'm not voting for you. But I love the idea of trying to remember that rights come autobiography. And he started every day with the reflection, what good shall I do today? And I was so inspired by that. I wrote it with my quill pen and put it over my desk. And it's just a lovely moral compass. Like, what good can I do

today? As opposed to, you know, how many likes can I get on this particular post? That is not really the meaning of life. That is not the big goal. What would you like for the reader to take away when they read this book and they close the last page and they tuck their little takeaways in their pocket? What do you hope those things are? Well, I hope that they had an entertaining time because, as you point out, you can learn and be entertained. But I also hope they feel empowered in a couple of ways. First, they feel empowered that when they hear someone say, oh, that's not constitutional or that is constitutional, that they'll have the knowledge to judge for themselves. And I feel I have gained that knowledge and can see the nuances there. I'll also hope that they'll be empowered to go out and act to help save our

democracy. And whether that's just reading the Constitution and talking or listening to your podcast is a great example, or baking an election cake, as we discussed, just something to get in there and not retreat into complete apathy and nihilism, but get in there and work to save our democracy, because it is an amazing system that we should be allowed to choose our leaders and have a say in it. It needs reform. We need to work on it, but let's get to work and eat the cake. Have our cake and eat it too. Because democracy is sweet and it's worth saving. Agree. I thought your book was both entertaining and so educational. Your writing style is extremely accessible and amusing. Like I mentioned, there were a number of places where I was like, that is really funny. I really found the whole like, I need to find some more soldier to live

in my house. I'm real mad that you're cutting in line. I love that you have a sense of humor about this entire process. So the book I found to be a really accessible way of interacting with the Constitution. I got a lot of books about the Constitution back here, and some of them are 900 pages long, and they're wonderful and great, and I recommend them. But the average person is not going to be like, let me get that from a beach trip. You know what I mean? Like, that's not going to be something most people dedicate their time to. And so I really enjoyed how this book helps the average person who you mentioned, I had never read the Constitution.

The average person can learn so much about the Constitution from reading this book and learn about it from the different perspectives because you actually take the time to lay out, here are some perspectives on this topic. Here are some other people's perspectives on this topic. But you do it in an approachable, accessible way. And it was just a really fun read. I really enjoyed it, AJ. Oh, wow. Well, that was, I mean, coming from you, coming from anybody, that would be a fantastic praise. But coming from you, it is huge. So thank you. Thank ye, I guess I should say.

Thank ye. You can buy A.J. Jacobs' book, The Year of Living Constitutionally, wherever you get your books. If you want to learn more about the Constitution in a really accessible way, this book is a great way to do it. You can pick it up at your local bookshop or go to bookshop.org and you can support independent bookstores there. Thanks for being here today. This episode is hosted and executive produced by me, Sharon McMahon. Our audio producer is Jenny Snyder. Our production assistant is Andrea Shampoo. And if you liked this episode, we would love to have you share it to

social media or to leave us a rating or review. All of those things help podcasters out so much. Thanks for being here and we'll see you again soon.