The Daily Stoic - AJ Jacobs on His Year of Living Constitutionally (Muskets and Tricorne Hats Included)

Episode Date: November 30, 2024

There have been few changes and additions to the United States Constitution since it was ratified in 1788, despite life being wildly different now a few centuries later. To really put the document into a modern perspective, author AJ Jacobs decided to literally live by the Constitution for a full year and documented the experience in his new book The Year of Living Constitutionally. In today’s episode, AJ spoke with Ryan about his inspiration for the book,  the contradictions of the Founding Fathers, and the evolution of Presidential power. AJ Jacobs is a New York Times Bestselling author, journalist, lecturer, host of The Puzzler podcast, and self-proclaimed “human guinea pig”. Check out his latest book The Year of Living Constitutionally! Pick up a signed copy of AJ Jacobs’ book, The Year of Living Constitutionally at The Painted PorchFollow AJ Jacobs on Instagram @AJJacobsInc and X @AJJacobs. Check out AJ’s podcast The Puzzler!🎙️ Listen to AJ Jacobs’ previous interview on The Daily Stoic | Apple Podcasts & Spotify✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us:  Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to the daily Stoic early and ad free right now. Just join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcast. I've been traveling a bunch for the tour that I'm on and I brought my kids and my wife with me when I went to Australia. When I'm going to Europe in November, I'm bringing my in-laws also. So, we're not staying in a hotel. We're staying in an Airbnb. The first Airbnb I stayed in would have been in 2010, I think. I've always loved Airbnb, that flexibility, size, location. You can find something awesome. You want to stay somewhere that other guests have had a positive experience. I love the guest favorites feature that helps you narrow down your search to the most popular, coolest houses. I've been using Airbnb forever. I like it better than hotels. So I'm excited that they're a sponsor of the show.

And if you haven't used Airbnb yet, I don't know what you're doing, but you should definitely check it out for your next family trip. We've got a bit of a commute now with the kids and their new school. And so one of the things we've been doing as a family is listening to audio books in the car.

Instead of having that be dead time, we wanna use it to have a live time. We really wanna help their imagination soar and And listening to Audible helps you do precisely that. Whether you listen to short stories, self-development, fantasy, expert advice, really any genre that you love, maybe you're into stoicism. And there's some books there that I might recommend by this one guy named Ryan. Audible has the best selection of audiobooks without exception and exclusive Audible originals all in one easy app. And as an Audible member, you choose one title a month to keep from their entire catalog. By the way, you can grab Right Thing Right Now on Audible.

You can sign up right now for a free 30-day Audible trial and try your first audiobook for free. You can get Right Thing Right Now totally for free. Visit audible.ca to sign up. Welcome to the weekend edition of The Daily Stoic. Each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space, when things have slowed down,

be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal, and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoke Podcast. I guess it was two years ago, maybe a year and a half, I don't remember. I was flying home from Newark.

I like to fly to Newark when I'm in New York City. You fly to Newark, you get a hotel downtown. It's the fastest way in and out of the city in my experience. JFK has always been a disaster for me unless you're taking a helicopter, which is not cheap. That has really nothing to do with what I was gonna say. I was standing outside Newark Airport because I got in there early and I was like,

it's nice out, I'll just chill here instead of breathing stale air in the airport and being around disgusting people from all over the world. I get so sick when I travel just because it's people from all over bringing whatever their kids brought home from school. And you know, ugh. Anyways, I'm just hanging out outside of the airport

and I'm just sort of leaning up against one of those silver metal things in front of every airport and this car pulls up and AJ Jacobs gets out and I've known AJ for 10 years. I've known his work for every sort of the human guinea pig. He does a bunch of hilarious books. My Life as an Experiment, The Year of Living Biblically,

which was turned into a TV show. And there he gets out. I go, oh man, AJ, what's up, man? This is awesome, hilarious. And we're chatting a little bit. He's there with his family. They're about to go on a trip. And I said, what are you working on these days?

And he said, I am spending a year living constitutionally. I said, what are you talking about? Is I'm trying to live by the constitution. I'm doing a book exploring the US constitution. I said, oh man, you know what book you should read? You should read First Principles by Tom Ricks. I'd had him on the podcast, I'm a big fan of it. And he said, really? Okay,

I'm definitely going to read it. And he sent me a note afterwards. He said, this book was perfect for what I am working on. We've been chatting ever since when we were going back and forth to get this scheduled. He was signing his emails the way they used to. They would say, like, you're a humble, dutiful servant. And I replied, you if you ready obstacles the way you know what I am about to do I replied day of Olente Which is basically God willing because that's how the founders used to sign their letters, too So it's been awesome to nerd out with someone and watch this book come together The year of constitutionally is awesome. And then I had him on a couple years ago to talk about

The year of constitutionally is awesome. And then I had him on a couple of years ago to talk about a book called The Puzzler, One Man's Quest to solve the most baffling puzzles ever. My wife's obsessed with puzzles. She does them in bed with one of my sons before bed every night. AJ's awesome. He also has this podcast called The Puzzler,

which we recorded a bit after. I'll run that on a Thursday episode. He said I could run it. He quizzed me on stoic philosophy and I did pretty good. I think I got all the questions, but one right. He's awesome. You can listen to his earlier episode on the podcast. I'll link to that in the show notes.

You can follow him on Instagram at AJ Jacobs, Inc. You can check out his podcast, The Puzzler, and of course, The Year of Living Constitutionally. Very grateful that AJ came all the way out to the painted porch. We did this in person. We've done it remotely before, but I really wanted to see him in person again

and I wanted to do a legit interview. And I think we did an awesome job and I think you're gonna like this. If you're looking for someone who is funny, who's insightful, whose books, they sort of take you on a journey, but it's like also an educational one, even though it's very entertaining,

you can't do better than AJ Jacobs. Yeah, I was trying to think. So the last time I saw you was at the airport. We bumped into each other at the airport. Exactly. And then the time before that, you were on a treadmill desk in a hotel gym. And I still, I treasure the fact that you thought

that that was cool as opposed to incredibly dorky, which I think is- It's a little of both. Fair enough, fair enough. Yeah, that was fun. So you spent a year as basically this side of Colonial Williamsburg didn't go all the way in, but close. Yes, I took it as far as I could. I had the tricorn hat. I had ye old musket. I had a musket that I carried around New York, as is my Second Amendment right, of course.

I wrote a lot of the book with a quill pen and burned candles and quartered a soldier. Oh. So that was, and asked him to leave, as is my Third Amendment right. So yeah, it was a wild year. It was fascinating and weird and enlightening, which is my favorite combination. Of course, what should be enlightening,

them all being products of the enlightening. Exactly. Did writing with a quill pen, I know you have one, but like some writers today use typewriters for a reason or Robert Caro does it all longhand still. Was there something, given that they produce so much beautiful writing, even their letters are just like better than stuff

We do do you think there's something about that medium of writing that makes you better? Absolutely do I love that you asked it because I think it changed the way I thought and wrote and Just being off of offline. So there are no dings or baldness cure ads, I think it allowed me to think more subtly and deeply and nuanced, I hope anyway. And I am a huge fan of writing by hand. Now, I don't think we all have to go back to the quill, like I'm not, but writing longhand like Robert Caro or even just using one of those software apps that cut you off from the internet. That is huge.

And you know what else was, I think helped my thinking. I tried to go by the 18th century news cycle, which was twice a week. Ben Franklin's newspaper came out twice a week. So you had time to contextualize, think about it. It was all about like the cool take instead of the hot take. Well, my wife and I were talking about that the other day, where like, if you were like trying to settle a dispute with a letter, or you're writing, you're in an argument with your spouse, but Ben Franklin's in England or France and his wife's home in America.

You'd have to really, as opposed to even texting where you're going back and forth, just having to really think about what you think and take your time with it, how much more conducive that would hopefully be to both understanding what you have to say and what they're saying and be conducive to like settling the issue.

Do you know what I'm saying? 100%. I think that, I mean, it's like a waiting period for your thoughts. And it's very good for controlling the passions and the anger because sometimes I would write a seriously angry letter with my quill and then I'd be like, all right, I got it out and not even send it. And it's funny you bring that

up because I actually, one of the ways we met each other was through Tim Ferriss and Tim had excerpted my article that I wrote a long time ago on outsourcing my life. And one of the things I did was when I got in an argument with my wife, these outsourcers in Bangalore, India argued for me and it was wonderful. She loved it and it allowed me to sort of get my anger out. But then it was sort of channeled through a much more polite. Well, we have a bunch of letters that Lincoln wrote

that he didn't send. Oh, interesting. After Gettys that Lincoln wrote that he didn't send. Oh, interesting. Like after Gettysburg, General Meade didn't follow up on Robert E. Lee, and Lincoln wrote this very nasty letter about it. And then he realized the guys only had the job like two weeks. This isn't conducive to anything. So he signs it to General Meade, puts it in his desk, never sends it. So we know what he was going to say,

but then we also know that he didn't say it. That is fantastic. And I think it's, yeah, it's a huge exercise. It's a wonderful exercise. I mean, you can try to replicate it with a computer, but you're like saying, I'm gonna type the email, but I can't send it for another three hours. There's something cathartic probably too

about writing it by hand. Absolutely. Because it's more of a physical act. Right, and there is research, I don't know how airtight it is, that it makes you think differently, you remember things better because of the motor neurons that are being used.

I do all my research that way. By hand. Yeah, so when I'm reading, like I'm just going through this huge book right now and I have to transfer it all to the physical note cards and then the physical note cards become the building blocks of the chapters. But yeah, there is, so it's like, I read this,

fold pages, transfer to note cards, then note card, then I'm typing, but I've engaged with the material a couple of times as opposed to like people go, oh, you can just do this with Evernote like on an ebook or something. But I feel like copying and pasting, you're getting no retention. There's nothing happening with copying and pasting.

And you know, probably the Ben Franklin had this exercise he used to do where he would read an essay and then later he would try to recall it word for word and write it down, and that's the way. I mean, it was good for his memory, but more it was good for thinking through the issues. So, because I'm just going through this book about Lincoln right now,

and one of the things he was talking about is, he didn't have paper as a kid. He was so poor he didn't have paper. And so he would like read or hear things that he liked, and he'd want to write them, and he would like read or hear things that he liked and he'd wanna write them. And he would write them on boards or in the sand or on like with a charcoal stick, like on a wall. He just wanted to feel it going through his body.

But even that they said when he was lucky he had a buzzard feather pen that he could use with like Blackberry ink. But that was when the family was flush. Most of the time he was literally writing things like in the dirt or on a board. What a story. That's amazing. And I do know back in the 18th and 19th century, they had these commonplace books, which were physical books where you would write quotes and things, and I have adopted that. I did do it a little offline with the pen

when I was doing this book. So yours is, you have a digital commonplace book. Right now I have a digital, I call it, I have several files, but one of them is called One Thing. And I try after every, like after today, every conversation or every book or movie, I try to write down one thing that really struck me. Interesting.

And I find this more useful than trying to remember a lot of things or nothing. Well, cause it's like, if you got one quote out of a book and that quote sticks with you, that was worth reading the book. Absolutely. You don't need to remember the dates and names and every, it's like, if you get one thing out of it,

that's worthwhile. That's my premise, exactly one thing. Well, speaking of letters, so Seneca, most of his writing that survives to us is his letters. He wrote these letters to his friend, Lucilius. It was one, they basically have different jobs in different parts of the empire. And one of the letters, he says,

look, why don't we just try to send each other like one thing a day? Like I'll send you something, you send me something. And so a lot of the letters he's like, and don't forget, here's the one thing. And it's like a quote from Epicurus or it's this insight from, I like the idea of wisdom not being this like epiphany

that you get, but this cumulative process of just taking one little thing out of every day, every experience, every interaction. And I also love the fact that it's a ritual and a discipline, because I think that's the only way I get things accomplished. So I hadn't heard that. Yeah, but I think, to your point about whether it should be digital or physical, I think the more painful it is,

like the more it takes out of you to record the knowledge, the better it's gonna stick in your mind. And it's like you sweated for it, so it's worth more. Right, I agree, yeah. The Ikea effect, I think, yeah. That's what they call it. When you build a table from Ikea, you like it better than just buying a, except for this table, which is awesome.

Or it's like the reason people like, have a positive memory of their time in a fraternity is because it was painful and expensive to get in. So you're not gonna be like, well, that was a total waste of time. Because... That is, and I did love, I did a lot of sort of DIY stuff,

which is something I do think we've lost. So I loved making my own quills and carving the quills. That is something that we don't like, because on the one hand you read the writings of the ancients or the founding fathers and they're like, it's like, just like us. And then, but what you can miss is just like, how awful life probably was. Do you know what I mean?

Like Thomas Jefferson is writing and it's like his genius invention was like this chair where you like stomp on it and it like has like a leather fan. Have you seen this? No, I haven't seen. That's his chair and it had like a foot pedal and you could go like this

and it would just like swing like a piece of leather above him just to create a modicum of airflow because it's so fucking hot. And yours like that was like peak technology. Like it would have sucked to be this person. Well that is one of the takeaways of my experiment was that the good old days were not good in so many ways. And the cutting edge medicine included the tobacco smoke enema, which was literally blowing smoke up your ass,

like a tube with a little bellows, smoke up the ass to cure stomach. Sure, that should do so much. That's it. And I'll give you another example of, because it was really helpful. And so I became very grateful for democracy, and I became very grateful for elastic socks.

That was another one, because I wore these stockings that would just fall down. So every morning I had to put on these little sock belts, these garters, and it was such a pain in the ass. The amount of time I wasted putting on sock belts, I'll never get back. So these small things that we take for granted. Yeah, someone, I forget who it was.

I remember they were like, think about what it must have taken for the Emperor of Rome to read at night. Like, multiple people, torches, like just the number of servants required for just like an ordinary task that you take completely for granted. Right. And so, yeah, even these, and many of the founders had these luxurious lives

comparatively, it still was terrible. Absolutely. And somehow they're pondering these higher things still and coming up with these ideas. It makes the writing more impressive in a way because you're just like, oh, you're writing this and sweltering Philadelphia or whatever, you know, people and sweltering Philadelphia or wherever.

You know, people are dumping their chamber pots out the window. Like, just the noise and the disgustingness. I mean, must've been insane. And the heat, they wrote the Constitution in this room where they kept the windows closed because they didn't want anything leaked out. And yeah, just the smell and the horror.

Just there was tobacco spittoons everywhere and people were just spitting. Things must have been disgusting. Absolutely, yeah. I did, I wrote a column for Mental Floss for a long time called The Bad Old Days. And it was about everything you can think of, child rearing, every aspect.

Even the Titanic, which was supposedly the ultimate in luxury, it had a pool the size of this table, filled with cold salt water. Nowadays, even a crafty cruise has eight pools with whirlpools and warm water. with whirlpools and warm water. and unmeasurable approaches to marketing your business is over. With Constant Contact, get email marketing that helps you create and send the perfect email to every customer. Connect with over 2 billion people on social media with an all-in-one tool for posting and sharing, and create, promote, and manage your events with ease, all in one place.

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After last year, he's learned a thing or two about hosting and he's ready to rant against Christmas cheer and roast his celebrity guests like chestnuts on an open fire. You can listen with the whole family as guest stars like Jon Hamm, Brittany Broski, and Danny DeVito try to persuade the mean old Grinch that there's a lot to love about the insufferable holiday season. But that's not all. Somebody stole all the Children of Whoville's letters to Santa, and everybody thinks the Grinch is responsible. It's a real Whoville whodunit. Can Cindy Lou and Max help clear the Grinch's name?

Grab your hot cocoa and cozy slippers to find out. Follow Tis the Grinch Holiday Podcast on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Unlock weekly Christmas mystery bonus content and listen to every episode ad free by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Spotify or Apple podcasts. The thing back to founding of America,

how they were able to tolerate the barbarism that was slavery. I've sometimes wondered if it was just everything was awful and cruel. And so comparatively, the sheer brutalism of it was somewhat obscured. Does that make sense? Like, when you look at, okay, like just the ordinary crimes that would be punished with death or torture, like think about how many of the people were in America because they like stole a loaf of bread

or something in England, right? And then they became sent here as an indentured servant. And then we're expecting them, one generation out of that form of slavery or 10 years out of that form of slavery to be like, it's actually totally wrong and morally abhorrent to inflict that same thing or a worse version of that thing on this person from a continent that I can't even conceive of

who is different for me in all these ways that I don't understand. Like I think I sometimes wonder if just the awfulness of the world made empathy so much harder. That is an interesting, it's a great hypothesis. I don't know whether, I will say it's many of the founding fathers knew slavery was an abomination, including Jefferson, and he was just too hypocritical and lazy to give up his lifestyle.

But I will say one of the big themes that this book talks about is how do the concepts like morality change? And the Eighth Amendment says no cruel and unusual punishment. And back then- That's like, that had to be in the Constitution. It was so normal, cruel and unusual punishments. Well, more than that,

what was considered non-cruel or non-unusual, like the pillory where they put your head in the, and this was, you know, it may sound funny, but it was horrible. Like people were throwing rocks, dead animals, feces, and it was just massive humiliation. And I actually, as part of this, I did buy a pillory off of Etsy from like an adult store.

Okay. But I couldn't force myself to actually put my kids in it. I put myself in it and- For how long? Well, I just wanted the feeling for like five minutes. But of course, my wife was like, you know, I'll let you out if you promise to fold your sweaters, that kind of thing.

Sure. So I was in there longer than I wanted. Yeah, it's just like, let's say you're some peasant in Virginia and you just some peasant in Virginia, and you just spent 48 hours in the stocks for some preposterous moral infraction. Watching someone whip a slave is going to strike you differently than it is going to be me,

where I find both of those things utterly inexcusable and wrong. Do you know what I mean? Like if you're just like, the world is cruel and awful and it's widely accepted that we treat others cruel and awfully, it makes it hard to see the other people. It's like even now, like if your life sucks, it's hard for you to care that much about, I don't know,

an illegal immigrant or something, right? Because you're caught up with your life. What about me? You're on Maslow's hierarchy of needs. You're not even close to the point where you can indulge in costly empathy. That is such an interesting point. I will say, what also is fascinating to me is a big lesson of this year of living constitutionally is how complicated and nuanced this whole

topic is because on the one hand, yes, they had terrible empathy and it was racist, sexist, homophobic, dangerous. On the other hand, in a narrow way, they had this idea of virtue and sacrificing for the common good. And so my thought is we should ditch much of what the 18th century was about, but be inspired by the better parts. So don't throw out the baby with the dirty, cold, gross

18th century bathwater. And one of those things is virtue, which they had a very narrow perception of because it was only white people, but this idea of sacrificing for the common good. And Ben Franklin, who is my favorite founding father, every day in the morning, he said, what good shall I do this day? That was his motto. And I was so inspired by that.

I wrote it with my quill pen and put it over my desk. And what good shall I do today? Like, there's a story about Washington during the Revolutionary War, where he has like an overseer where his relative is in control of his plantation and the British are approaching and the cousin I think comes out and says like, hey, this is Washington's plantation. Like here's some stuff. Can you not burn it down?

And the British were like, okay, cool. And they worked out like a deal. And when Washington heard about it, he was like furious. He was like, I'd rather burn down like a thousand times and get special treatment. And so yeah, there is this sort of narrow conception of honor and virtue and stand that we would love to have politicians that were like, no, no, no, me first.

I'm not gonna get special treatment. That's not how any politician operates today. And then at the same time, yeah, he's writing advertisements to like, retrieve his runaway slaves. So there's this, it's fascinating the compartmentalization of them at that time. Yeah, it is astounding. And yeah, and in some ways, they really were admirable,

and in some ways, just absolutely abominable. But the admirable and in some ways just absolutely abominable. But the admirable parts, one of the ones that inspired me, which I think is something you and I have talked about, I do think the founding fathers had more epistemic humility in many ways. And so Ben Franklin, my favorite as I said, he at the Constitutional Convention said, the older I get, the less certain I am of my own opinions.

Fantastic. He also told a little parable. He liked the jests. So he said, there was this French lady who said to her sister, sister, I don't understand it. Why am I the only person I've ever met "'who is correct on every single issue?' And that's brilliant.

So his point is we're all the French lady. It was sort of Daniel Kahneman kind of biases. So to have some of that humility would be awesome to recreate. So that was one of the points of the book is like here are the things we don't want to go back to, but here are some elements of their worldview that can inspire us.

And I think he said something like he didn't agree with a good chunk of what they decided on in the constitutional convention, but he was saying like, as I get older, I'm less certain that I'm right. So I'll defer to you guys, which is such an incredible, the idea of a politician or an intellectual going, I'm satisfied not getting everything I want here,

or that I'm willing to compromise, not just like, hey, I'll meet you halfway, but to say, this is in the ballpark of what I'm wanting and you guys feel really strongly about your stuff. So like, I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt. It's such an interesting way to think about something that again, we think of the constitution as this, like not all of us, but this perfectly formed

like work of genius, as opposed to like kind of a working draft compromise of a bunch of different interests. Oh, hugely. And what I think is fascinating, I mean, I think that the Constitution contains parts that are so inspiring and amazing and sort of the big bang of democracy. But then, at the same time, it's got all of these problematic parts, and they knew it was imperfect. George Washington wrote a letter to his nephew saying, this is an imperfect document. Well, you've got to improve it. And that's why they built in the

amendment process. And even like on the very low level, it was imperfect. There are two different spellings of the word Pennsylvania, like they couldn't get that right in four pages. Did they do the weird capitalization thing where they can't decide what letters are capitalized and not capitalized? That's my favorite thing about like 19th and 18th century writing. Just the random capitalization.

Well, they loved capitalizing nouns. And Ben Franklin wanted all nouns capitalized. I like that. I'm like like yeah, give me some capital So what gives you another way to do emphasis other than italics, right? Exactly So yeah, they definitely there are if you look at the Constitution it is capital heavy I think they would be surprised if not outright disappointed That there basically hasn't been an amendment

to the Constitution in what, 50 years? Oh yeah, since 1992. Is that 50? A little less. What was that one? That's the one about pay raises, right? Exactly. Yes.

Exactly. Well, yeah, no, they would have been shocked, I really believe. I think that they wanted it to be hard to amend the Constitution, but as I say, they knew it was imperfect. They were entrepreneurial, flexible thinkers. They knew things were going to change.

What they didn't see coming was this rigid two-party system. They knew, James Madison knew there would be factions, and he thought that that actually was a feature, not a bug. But he thought there were lots of factions, all sort of more like a European parliament type thing. So they, I think would be really disappointed that we've gelled and frozen into these two factions and can't pass an amendment.

Yeah, although I remember in political science in college, it's like they were surprised, but then it's also inevitable because if you don't have a true parliamentary system, right, it eventually becomes winner take all. So every like you basically just get two parties, you're never going to get a sizable minority party, or multiple minority parties that come together sporadically, it's just not gonna, not gonna happen.

Well, but what is interesting is reading how the Constitution was created, it could have gone towards that parliamentary system. There were many times where Madison wanted a cabinet that sort of vetoed the president. So the president didn't have as much power. And yeah, there was talk about the Congress electing the president, which is more,

and my favorite, which I did a petition for, was that when the idea of a single president came up in the Constitutional Convention, several of the delegates said, are you jesting? This is, that's a terrible idea. We just fought a bloody war to get rid of a monarch. And now you're saying this elected monarch, this is one of them called it the fetus of monarchy.

The president is just gonna get more and more powerful. And so they wanted three presidents, like a triumvirate or even 12. Ben Franklin mentioned 12 presidents. And I thought, who knows, maybe it's a terrible idea like RFK jr. And Trump and Kamala and that might be but their point was they they would not like The president's power now both sides and I'll just quick example George Washington issued eight executive orders

Trump and Obama both issued over 200 executive orders. So the presidents, that fetus of monarchy was true. The fetus is out of the womb. The imperial presidency. The imperial presidency. Yeah, I mean, the famous story in Stoicism is Marx really becomes emperor, and the Stoics had always been somewhat resistant

to the idea of an emperor. And so the first thing he does because he has this stepbrother, because the succession plan was weird, is he names his stepbrother co-emperor, which is a nod to the Roman consul system. And in the Republic, there was two consuls or basically two presidents,

that served like a one year term. And it was usually like the two eminent men who were often opposed to each other, sort of simultaneously serving. And then obviously Caesar breaks it up with the triumvirate or whatever. But the idea of sharing power is really interesting. That is, I didn't know Marcus Aurelius did that. That makes me like him even more.

Yeah, to think the first thing he does with absolute power is he gives half of it away. That is extraordinary. And there is, I mean, there is some out there. Switzerland has basically seven presidents that rotate in a one year. Don't a lot of European countries, it's like you have a chancellor and a president or a prime minister and a chance like they'll have like, what's interesting about the British constitutional monarchy is you basically have the Queen or the King, which is the sort of representative of state, right? And then you have the prime minister who's the political figure, and they separate the two. So it's like who meets the chiefs when they win the playoffs or when they win the Super Bowl or the Warriors when they meet the playoffs.

Does that need to be an elected leader, you know, or... Is that the same as your hard bargaining political per... We kind of do this like where the vice president has a more ceremonial role and travels around. But, like, do you need your president to attend state funerals? Probably not. No, I think there's something to be said for the division of labor.

Yeah. And I'm not a fan of monarchy, so I don't understand why my wife is still obsessed with like Harry and all this crap. But yeah, an elected king or an elected, you know, temporary king who can do the parties, the pomp and circumstance, and let the governing be done in a more efficient way. And probably does a significant amount of back channeling. It creates kind of a separation between the hard nose part of politics and geopolitics and then the friendship connection, the stuff that we celebrate in the Olympics. You know, there's like the Olympics and then NATO. They're different.

Right. Yeah. And I think that the founders, they might approve of that had they known how powerful the president would become. Because again, they never saw it. It was for them. Congress was the first article of the Constitution, the longest, that's where most of the power resides back then. And then the president and then the Supreme Court is like the runt of the litter. Like that's not impressive. They would have been shocked by the politicalization of the Supreme Court. And I think they would have been shocked by the way that Congress and the Senate have both utterly abdicated any serious governing role.

You know, like the idea was that they are the chief lawmakers and then the president is the guy who signed the law or potentially vetoes a bad law and then enforces the laws that he signs. Right. I interviewed Adam Kinzinger and he was sitting over there and he was talking, he was like, it's like people in Congress think there's like a super Congress who actually does the legislation. It's like, if you hate how things are,

your job is to come up with better laws. The president can't actually do that. But yeah, our vision of it is like, the president gets up, delivers the state of the union, tells Congress what he wants them to do. And basically for the last couple of generations, Congress just says, no, they don't go, actually, what we're going to do is this instead. They just say no. They're like, they're the check. If the president's supposed to be the check on congressional power, if Congress just sees them as a check on presidential power and the Supreme Court says, oh, we just kick things back to Congress,

then who the fuck is solving the problems? You know, it's a nonsensical system in that way. Yeah, no, it has, I think, gone a little off the rails. And I will just in defense of Congress, I went as part of this, I went to meet with Congress for a couple of reasons, to present my petition, to ask for my constitutional right to be a pirate, because that's in the constitution, the privateers.

I can be a privateer, get a letter of mark. But I think there are very serious, well-meaning people in Congress. But part of the problem is systemic, like the need for a supermajority where 60% of the Senate, that's not in the Constitution. And James Madison wrote that this is a terrible idea when it was proposed much later. And he said, we're gonna be the tyranny of the minority. We're gonna be at the mercy of the minority. If you make it so that any legislation that's real requires 60% then we are going to be in this gridlock.

So if you get rid of that. You'll never get anything done. Yeah, and that's part of the reason why Congress has is so ineffectual. Another part is they gave up a huge amount of power to these federal agencies like the EPA, and those are under the president, technically. So yeah, there are reasons why the Congress has, aside from incompetence,

which I'm sure is part of it, but there are structural reasons why and that those need to be changed and to get Congress, which is what represents the people, not the president. then. by releasing bacteria over San Francisco to test how a biological attack might spread without alerting the public. These might sound like conspiracy theories, but they're not. They're well-documented government operations that have been hidden away in classified files for decades. I'm Luke Lamanna, a Marine Corps recon vent, and I've always had a thing for digging into the unknown. It's what led me to start my new podcast, Redacted Declassified Mysteries. In it, I explore hidden truths and reveal some eye-opening events, like covert experiments and secret operations that those in power tried to keep buried. Follow Redacted

Declassified Mysteries with me, Luke Lamanna, on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen ad-free, join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen ad free, join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app. Hello, ladies and germs, boys and girls. The Grinch is back again to ruin your Christmas season with his The Grinch holiday podcast. After last year, he's learned a thing or two about hosting and he's ready to rant against Christmas cheer and roast his celebrity guests like chestnuts

on an open fire. You can listen with the whole family as guest stars like Jon Hamm, Brittany Broski, and Danny DeVito try to persuade the mean old Grinch that there's a lot to love about the insufferable holiday season. But that's not all. Somebody stole all the children of Whoville's letters

to Santa and everybody thinks the Grinch is responsible. It's a real Whoville whodunit. Can Cindy Lou and Max help clear the Grinch is responsible. It's a real who-ville-who-done-it. Can Cindy, Lou, and Max help clear the Grinch's name? Grab your hot cocoa and cozy slippers to find out. Follow Tis the Grinch Holiday Podcast on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Unlock weekly Christmas Mystery Bonus content and listen to every episode ad free by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Spotify, or Apple podcasts. So many of the systems that the founders were setting up were about checking power and that, you know,

ambition checks ambition, but like they couldn't have conceived of a world in which you could have power that wasn't in the political system. So now, I guess what I'm saying is, it's like people get elected to Congress to become famous and to have a media platform, which is power. Just the idea that it's never followed up with, and then we pass this law to do X, Y, or Z. Right.

Right? So like, I forget which congressman there was, but every congressman gets a congressman and woman gets a budget to do their staff. And he's like, I spent all my budget on a comms staff, like a communication staff, not like a legislative staff or a staff that would even handle constituents problems. It's all about basically creating a media platform. Right. And so, but that is power because it's fame and it's influence is just not, they were just, they just thought everyone would be drawn

towards using the levers of governmental power to do things or not do things. And we have a system now where it's sort of been hijacked to like have opinions about things, but not like do things. And we have a system now where it's sort of been hijacked to like have opinions about things, but not like do things. And I think a big part of that is sort of the celebrities. Is that a word of politics and the cults of personality? And a big problem with that is because it's so visual, you can see these people and they become these you know characters. Whereas back then there was some of that where George Washington was

worshiped at his time. But they would write pamphlets under pseudonyms because they wanted the ideas out there not attached to the people. And so I do think we need to go back to some of that. And there's that famous story of when Kennedy, JFK debated Richard Nixon, you know about that, people who listened on the radio thought Nixon won. People who watched on TV thought Kennedy won because he's tan, he's good looking. Nixon is sweaty and slouched. The medium is the message. Yeah. So, so I think this visualization and celebrities of politics is a huge problem.

Yeah. Well, so speaking of power, I mean, obviously, one of the most famous moments from this period of time is, and I was just in in Maryland the other day, where Washington first resigns his military commission and then later as president resigns after two terms. The idea of giving power away is so fundamentally part of it and rooted in the Roman story of Cincinnati. Exactly. They loved Cincinnati. Yeah, an astounding, as we said, he has a lot of flaws, but that is an astounding, and in fact,

there's the story of when King George III was told that George Washington was going to give up power, he said if he does that, he will be the greatest man ever. And he did, and that's the putting country over party, putting country over party, putting country over personal gain. That's the kind of virtue that I love. And in the book that I talk about,

that's something that we need to regain. Yes, the idea of walking away and passing the torch. Well, also that, to me that's also fundamentally rooted in this idea, he understood power's not good to have. That you don't wanna have it for too long because it changes you also, I suspect. But the idea of, yeah, passing the torch is clearly generationally something

we're struggling with right now. How young the founders are kind of blows your mind. Right, yeah, I think Madison was 33 when he wrote the Constitution, and I think the average age at the Constitutional Convention was 42, and Franklin was the old guy. He was the old guy, which, you know, I love him.

But yeah, I think that is a problem and we should have term limits on the legislature, the fact that, and also the Supreme Court, I'm all for that. I do think they were very entrepreneurial, as I said, and flexible thinkers. So they wanted, and Jefferson, he said every 19 years, there should be a new constitution.

So he was kind of a radical in that way. That's a little much for me. But I do think they were much more interested in new fresh ideas. Yes. Yeah. The idea is in some of the cases where they didn't have term limits, I think they were just taking for granted that most people died pretty young. Exactly. That was the driver of turnover. just taking for granted that most people died pretty young. Exactly. That was the driver of turnover.

Right, and you have to be 35 to be president? That was considered old. That was like, wow, you've been around, you deserve to be president. You've lived a life, you've got five years left. So let's get them in there. You had the idea that the average age would be in your 70s or 80s and that you could reasonably

operate potentially into your 90s is, that's just too much. No, it was a very different, you know, the phrase, the past was a different country. And I think that was one of the lessons I learned because part of this, the goal of this book was can I get inside the minds of the lessons I learned because part of this, the goal of this book was, can I get inside the minds of the founding fathers? Yeah. Probably, I can get close. Yeah. But I can never get inside their minds. Even something like the idea of rights. They had a very different conception of rights and that is totally underestimated. But their conception of rights, I think in America, we tend to think of rights

in a more absolutist way. And they saw, they believed that you were born with natural rights. But once you entered into society, those rights were constrained by the general, the common good. So you could be regulated by the government. And the First Amendment is a good example.

This was fascinating to me how different the First Amendment was because I'm a huge fan of the First Amendment, but the 21st century and 20th century First Amendment, not the 18th century First Amendment. Back then, the First Amendment meant, yes, you're freedom of press, you can write a book. But once it's out there, the government can come in

and it can punish you if it is causing a danger to the- But basically just a prior restraint. It is a prior restraint. That's exactly the phrase they used. And one thing that I was shocked by was how many blasphemy laws there were, anti-cursing laws. You could, in New York, when the Constitution was passed, if you cursed or blasphemed, 37 and a half cents fine for every curse. And I, since I was living constitutionally,

I said to my teenage sons, you know, this is it. Like you curse. And they were like, I don't have a half cent. So they kind of weaseled out of it sometimes. But it was fascinating to see that, yeah, even the first amendment was very different in their conception. Yeah, that's interesting.

One of the things I've taken from them is that even though they were prescribing a bunch of rights or protections, that that didn't mean that this was always in lockstep with that sense of virtue or that sense of restraint by other means. So the idea that just because you could do X, Y, or Z legally didn't mean that they wouldn't have judged you quite harshly for doing so. Like there's even the famous story of Washington

where the founders make this bet, like they dare each other for one of them to slap Washington on the back and call him George. So it's like, obviously, Washington is not proposing some law where you have to call people sir or, you know, like, his hereditary title is absolute and you can go to jail for... But he's very much under the impression

that no gentleman should transgress that sort of social more, right? And so there was this sense that just because something was legal didn't mean it was okay. I think maybe it was Adams had something like, you know, without virtue in the people, they pass through it like a whale through a net. The idea was you would still, even if not Christian, because a lot of the founders were deists, but there was this classical virtue that was supposed to be the final check on

the system. And they were worried at the end of their lives, they wrote a lot about, they were worried that Americans were not virtuous enough and that this American experiment was not going to work out. And I hope that they are wrong. I mean, I think now it's become very timely as to whether we have enough virtue and thinking of the common good to keep this experiment going.

And as you've talked about on your pocket, putting country over party, putting country over your individual ambition, that is a huge virtue that I don't see a lot of. Yeah, yeah, the idea of being of service, the idea of responsibility or obligations, those seem like very old fashioned out of step values. Right, and yeah, I would love to get back to some of that.

And yeah, so I have at the end, I have sort of 10 takeaways, but one of them is to try to return to virtue. As I said, that sort of is a big theme. Like with my Bible book, we don't wanna go back to, I live by the Bible literally, we don't wanna go back to stoning adultery. I don't wanna have to have a huge beard. But there were ideas about gratitude,

and again about the common good and about, they had a much less individualistic view, so it was more about the common good and about, they didn't, they had a much less individualistic view. So it was more about the society. I think we need a balance. I love individualism, but I think it needs to, you know, rights need to be balanced with responsibility. And I think we've gone too far towards the individualism and forgotten about our responsibilities. I did a piece for The Economist a couple of years ago because there's a Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor and Victor Frankel had proposed that there'd be a statue

of responsibility to counterbalance it. I did not know that. Yeah. That's ingenious. And one of the places they suggested it should be in San Francisco. I think there's something very fitting about it being in San Francisco because that was also a big place of immigration.

And that's also where it's an innovation hub. I like the idea of it being balanced on the two coasts. And then Silicon Valley being a place of possibility and disruption and ambition that needs... So it is the embracing of the liberty that needs to be balanced out with the responsibility. That is so cool. I'm gonna read that.

That is awesome. And as part of this, I interviewed dozens of constitutional scholars and one of them was an expert on foreign constitutions but also on family constitutions. And there's a movement of people writing sort of these family constitutions. And there's a movement of people writing sort of these family constitutions and I thought as part of my year I'm going to do this. And one of the things was I had a bill of rights so we all agreed that my kids were not very good delegates.

They were all like Rhode Island. You know Rhode Island didn't even show up to the Constitution Commission but I finally got them and And we had the Bill of Rights, I have the right to sleep late and not be made fun of. But we also had a Bill of Responsibilities. It's partly your responsibility to at least feign interest in your brother's passion for chess or whatever it is, because that's what you would want him to do. Like, you know, and that there were a lot of responsibilities because it's not all about rights.

It's very hard to have a society where it's everyone is focused solely on their own good. Well, that's what's so fascinating about Benjamin Franklin, because on one read, he's sort of the original American hustler, entrepreneur, because on one read, he's sort of the original American hustler, entrepreneur, self-made man. But what does he do with the majority of this money and interest?

First off, he goes into politics, but he invents like fire departments, libraries, basically all these communistic or socialistic enterprises for the good of... He develops these things that are commonly owned by the people of Pennsylvania or for the people of Philadelphia. So it's this balance of like, yeah, go be successful,

but then also use a chunk of that energy and focus to design institutions, things that are for everyone and that don't have a profit motive necessary. So interesting. Yeah, you're absolutely I had not seen him that way. But you're absolutely right. I mean, one of the reasons I love him. I mean, he like they had a flaw. He was a terrible husband. He was like a crappy father. He was an abolitionist at the end of his life, very strong abolitionist, but I love his curiosity. I mean, just the fact that when he was in his 80s

on his last trip back from Europe on a boat, instead of kicking back or playing shuffleboard, whatever they did, he was doing scientific experiments on the boat. Like measuring the Gulf Stream. Yeah, measuring. He would take a bottle and put it down deep and, you know, try to get the temperature from depths of the ocean.

I love that you know that. Yeah, so he is to me, just an inspiration. Yeah, it's not like he made his fortune on that potbelly stove or the lightning rod or the spectacles. I don't think he made any money from any of his inventions. He made all his money from intellectual property and the gazettes and the almanacs that he published.

But I don't think he like profited from these experiments or inventions that he did for the most part. It was the idea of like, you know, like who invented the polio vaccine? He's like, it's like- Yeah, it's like patting the sun, you know? It's like for everyone. He felt called to contribute to the common good

very clearly. Yeah, yeah, a great man. I love him. Very funny too. Well, I do, yeah. He has that famous Fart Proudly essay. Do you know about that? Oh yeah, no, he wrote a,

it was an essay when he was, cause he was a scientist. It was half serious, half joking. But he said, one problem, let's look at human problems. One is f fart smell terrible. And he says, with our scientific knowledge, can we create a potion that would make fart smell good? And what I love is now we have the technology, you know, we have gene, we have CRISPR, we can make

fart smell like lavender, if we put our minds to it. You know, they have invented something that you feed cows because I have some cows. The technology hasn't trickled down to regular people yet, but I think it's going to be transformative. It's like these seaweed pills that, because the cows are like one of the number one producers of methane. Right.

But if you feed them these seaweed pills or you dilute some of their food with seaweed, it like lowers it by like two thirds or even more than that. And so yeah, they are gonna change cowfarms. Have you done that? Have you bought them? No, no, it's like one of those things, you know, it's like every couple months

I read some article about how they're about to invent like 3D printed houses that are gonna change everything. But then it's like, where can I buy one of these 3D printed houses? It's like, it's not a real thing. Right, right. That's where the pills are. Got it. But they-'s like, where can I buy one of these 3D printed houses? It's like, it's not a real thing. Right. That's where the pills are. But they will. It will. Yeah, it's like, some universities working on it. It'll come happen at some point. But it's, it's like, yeah, that just those those, the idea that you can change the course of human history through a little invention. That's, that's Franklin's life right there. Right. Well, that was one of the takeaways from the book was

that I think most big social changes require thousands of people, which was kind of the point of my book on gratitude, how it took a thousand people to make a cup of coffee. At the same time, one person can make a huge difference. And one of my favorite stories for researching this book was that the 19th amendment, the giving women the right to vote. Comes down to one guy.

You know that story. Barry Burns, right? Right. So you want to tell it or you want me to? Why tell the story in Courageous Calling? No way. Yeah. Yeah.

That's hilarious. Yes. I thought I had read all your books, but I just thought carefully enough. I love that story. I thought I had read all your books, but I just not carefully enough. I love that story. One guy flips his vote basically and that's what leads it to pass. Because one guy voting in Tennessee, which was the last state needed to ratify the amendment, it all comes down to this one guy.

And honestly, it comes down to his mother wrote him a letter and was like, Harry, don't be an idiot. Yeah. His mother slipped a letter into his suit pocket saying, be a good boy. That was literally in the letter, be a good boy. And then she had some wordplay, you know, as a puzzler I like, she said, don't be a rat on ratification.

And he switched his vote. He was leaning the other way. So yes, sometimes one person, you know, the idea of the trim tab that Buckminster Fuller talks about, it's a part of a rudder on a ship, like a big ship. So if you have a cruise ship and it's going hundreds of miles, if you make this a very small part, but you turn it a little, that can change the course of the boat, this huge boat, by dozens, hundreds of miles. And I like that as a metaphor. I think, yeah, we, we want

to be empowered to have agency, so that we can make a difference. And actually, another story in the book about one person making a difference is the 27th Amendment, the one that you were talking about. Oh, the Congress can't vote to give themselves a raise. It's the next session. So you can vote them out if you're angry about it. Exactly. Do you know the story of that?

I vaguely know the story. Well, I'll tell it very quickly, but this guy was a student at the University of Texas, Austin. Yes, yes. And he wrote a paper about this lost amendment that Madison wrote about congressional pay, and that it was still sort of in a zombie state. It wasn't totally dead, it wasn't alive. And if enough states, legislatures passed it,

it could actually become an amendment. His teacher said, that's a stupid idea, gave him an F. He said, I'm gonna prove that teacher wrong. He spent 10 years writing letters. State legislatures finally got enough states to pass it that this was the last amendment. And I interviewed him for my book, A Fascinating Guy. And he, like we were saying, is very worried

we're not gonna have another amendment for a long, long time. Yeah, the great man of history theory is sort of not in vogue academically or in the media, but it's really where most history most history was changed by singular individuals making singular decisions. I think the focus on systemic or structural explanations for things is really important because it makes it clear that just because you're doing the right thing doesn't let you off the hook, you know? But yeah, history is changed by individuals all the time.

And by luck, I think we underestimate that. I mean, that is the vote on three presidents was seven states to three. So if it had been just two states had flipped and there were only three people in each state, so who knows, maybe like half a dozen people had changed. Would America have three presidents? It would look fair. And then maybe all of the other countries would have three presidents. So I love the idea of keeping... That's one of the reasons to me to study history is to see how different life could be so that you keep your mind flexible and are open to new solutions.

David McCullough, who wrote that amazing book on John Adams and I love his Truman biography, he was saying that that's something that a historian can never lose sight of, which is first off that all this stuff was new to the people as it was happening. Like they were living in it not as history, but in the moment,

and that it could have easily been otherwise. That if you lose, if you see history as deterministic, that it was always going to the way, go the way that it was going to because of these trends, what you're missing is all the individuals who are making choices and how if they had chosen differently, things would have gone very differently. Right. And it is also a problem, I think, that once it becomes set in stone, it's very hard to change. So we've got to change that.

My friend, Will McCaskill, who founded A Pact of Altruism, talks about, yeah, he's probably been on the show, right? Yeah. But he talks about one sort of trivial example of this is Happy Birthday to You. And that is the song we all sing millions of times a year. And it's a terrible song.

It is like a dirge. It's really depressing. Happy birthday to you. I've never heard a negative opinion on Happy Birthday, but okay. But I buy it. I don't like it. But it's so hard to change now because it's never heard a negative opinion on happy birthday, but okay, but I buy it. I don't like it and But it's so hard to change now because it's such a ritual So yes this idea of keeping your mind flexible and and realizing things are not set in stone

balanced with the importance of tradition and and stability So I mean balance that was another big takeaway of my book is balance was such a huge idea back then. They taught balance of powers, the balance of bodily humors is the way they saw health, which was totally wrong, but I still. That's why they end up getting bled. Yeah, exactly, bled.

And still our language is filled with it, like livid and phlegmatic and all this has to do with phlegm and the liver and bile, bilious. But anyway, the idea of balance is one that I love, and I think it's a stoic idea, right? It's a very stoic. Yeah, that's temperance. Yeah, temperance.

Well, and at the same time that these founders were coming up with the ideas for America, there were a group of people who get together in England, who instead of questioning whether the monarchy should exist or whatever, led by Thomas Clarkson, they go, hey, maybe slavery sucks. Like maybe slavery is not okay. And they start the modern political movement that leads to the abolition of slavery in the empire and then in the world and then ultimately in America. And it's just like, yeah, we say people can't change history

but for all of human history up until that point, it was totally accepted that even if you didn't individually own slaves, that it was legal for other people to do it. Or even if you hated it and you thought it should be illegal, you were resigned to the fact that it had always been thus and probably always would be thus. Right. And the Quakers, where I know where it changed.

They changed it, yeah. And one thing that was fascinating, I love getting the feedback from this book because, well, first of all, I tried to, I do in the end believe that living constitutionalism is a better approach than originalism, but I tried to steal man both sides and present both sides. But, um, so I've gotten good feedback from both sides, but one feedback I thought was particularly interesting. He, this guy said, you make, you are assuming that America, the creation of America was a good thing,

which is a very deep seated assumption of mine. But he said, what if the history had gone the other way? The British abolished slavery long before the US did. So maybe if we had stayed a colony of the British, so this abomination would have been gotten rid of much sooner. And I was like, wow, that is an interesting, I don't know whether that's a hot take or a cold take,

but it's an interesting way to look at it. Yeah, Andrew Roberts wrote an interesting biography of King George, and it's fascinating to read history from a British, like first off to read about this guy that's basically a caricature to us from the perspective of a British person talking a lot about the revolution. And he talks about how basically, like, all the things that Jefferson lists in

the Declaration, like most of them are like pretty flimsy, like the arguments are pretty, like the all men are creating all that's good, but the grievances are like pretty flimsy. I thought it was interesting. But but basically, smart people at that time are like, hey, maybe like the king needs to move to America. Like the idea that you could have an empire in square miles, significantly larger

and a population significantly larger outside your capital. It's just, it was like, even people like Ben Franklin were able to just look at like birth rates and go, this is going, this isn't sustainable. Like you can't continue to rule us from afar. So there's also another interesting thing where it's like America as a separate country,

as opposed to the new center of gravity of the British empire is also really interesting. That is interesting. And that should be moved to the White House. That would be fascinating. I mean, the fact that I listened to this one great, these two great historians, professional historians who have a podcast,

and they did a Revolutionary War series from the British side, they're British historians. And it was hilarious and fascinating and infuriating for me as an American, I felt my tribalism because they were saying these guys were whiners, they were paranoid. They said, look at the statistics. They were paying one-tenth of the taxes of the British

and yet they were whining. And I did look into it and it seems that that is an actual correct statistic. We were paying less in taxes than British citizens and yet we were outraged because we didn't have representation, which was a good point, but we are still paying a lot less. When Samuel Johnson was like,

I don't care about the yelps of liberty from the drivers of Negroes. You know, like just the sheer hypocrisy of it, too. We think about it as this modern understanding of hypocrisy. But the British thought it was hypocritical. They were talking about. Well, I think even they I mean, Jefferson knew he was a hypocrite. He knew he was a hypocrite.

And he said slavery is an abomination and he said he was too I for Avaricious, I believe that was the phrase he used he Avaricious and I do judge him harshly But at the same time I try to remind myself not to get arrogant because in 200 years When people look back, what are they gonna to be like, I cannot believe this guy. I just took an airplane to Austin, knowing that it is terrible for the environment. When they spend a year living as AJ Jacobs from 200 years ago. That's right. They'll be like, what is this?

This hypocrite jerk. Help me like this hypocrite jerk. Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it and I'll see you next episode. If you like The Daily Stoic and thanks for listening, you can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts.

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