The Jordan Harbinger Show - 564: A.J. Jacobs | It’s All Relative

Episode Date: September 23, 2021

A.J. Jacobs (@ajjacobs) is a New York Times best-selling author who went on a quest to help build the biggest family tree in history, as detailed in his latest book It’s All Relative: Adventures Up and Down the World’s Family Tree. What We Discuss with A.J. Jacobs: What did A.J. Jacobs learn by following every rule of the Bible literally for one year? How much do you really know about your heritage? See how relating to one another on a family tree of millions is a step toward overcoming the ills of modern tribalism and race relations. Why acknowledging the bad as well as the good revealed by digging into family history is important. The disciplined daydreaming of A.J.’s brainstorming sessions and how we can cultivate our own big-picture thinking. And much more... Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/564 Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course! Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This episode is sponsored in part by Conspiruality Podcast. You know how I'm always talking about critical thinking and spotting manipulation? Well, there's a podcast that's all about dismantling new age cults, wellness grifters, and conspiracy mad yogis, basically the wild overlap of spirituality and misinformation. It's called the Conspiruality Podcast. The hosts, a journalist, cult researcher, and a philosophical skeptic, dive deep into how this stuff spreads, from Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundation's dystopian vision of the future to how former leftists get pulled into far-right conspiracies.

An interesting episode to check out is called Speaking Truth to Goop, where Jen Gunter breaks down the pseudoscience behind the wellness industry in a way that is super entertaining and eye-opening. It's sharp, funny, and makes you a lot harder to fool, which, if you listen to this show, you know I'm all about that. From exploring cults to analyzing our cultural and political landscape, the Conspiratuality Podcast will help you stay informed against misinformation and resist fear tactics.

Find Conspirality on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you do. get your podcasts. Coming up next on the Jordan Harbinger show. You look around, I mean, tribalism in politics, I just think it is really literally tearing our society apart because we're all obsessed with our differences instead of focusing on the 99% of DNA that we share. This idea of one big family is one way to fight it. There's a great study last year by Harvard that showed when they told Palestinians and Israelis how closely they were related. They treated each other with kindness and more willingness to negotiate. So it's sort of this what behavioral economist called the family bias, that you are biased naturally to treat your relatives with a little more generosity.

Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills are the world's most fascinating people. We have in-depth conversations with people at the top of their game. Astronauts, entrepreneurs, spies, psychologists, even the occasional billionaire investor, mafia, or money laundering expert, or even a drug trafficker. Each episode turns our guest's wisdom into practical advice you can use to build a deeper understanding of how the world works and become a better critical thinker. If you're new to the show or you want to tell your friends about it and you're not sure where to get them started, I suggest the starter packs. These are collections of top episodes organized by topic. It'll help new listeners get a taste of everything that we do. here on the show, just visit jordanharbinger.com slash start to get started or to help somebody else get started with us. Of course, I always appreciate it when you do that. One from the vault today on this episode, we'll be talking with my friend AJ Jacobs. This guy is, he's super interesting. He's a

quirky dude. He does these extreme personal experiments. One was a year of living biblically, so he followed the Bible as literally as possible. We'll ask him about that. One of the other ones we focused on in this episode. He researched DNA, genetics, family, And he takes it to his usual extreme in a heartfelt quest that's quite fun. He's a funny writer. The way he tells stories is pretty unique. So we're going to explore a little bit of the family of humankind here. And today we'll discover how we're all related, just actually related.

Like we're all one giant family and why this matters in terms of everything from the structure of society, how we treat one another on a daily basis. And we'll also explore some concrete strategies on how to cultivate deeper, big picture thinking, better brainstorming and construct some of AJ's famous extreme personal experiments if we decide to do that for ourselves as well. So it's a fun conversation with a brilliant and quirky guy. I know you're really going to dig it. He's always fun here on the show. And if you're wondering how I managed to make friends like AJ Jacobs and book all these great authors, thinkers, and creators every single week,

it's because of my network full of wacky folks. And I'm teaching you how to build your own network for free over at jordanharbinger.com slash course. And by the way, most of the guests on our show, they're already in the course, they subscribe to the course, they contribute to the course. Come join us, you'll be in smart company where you belong. Now, here's AJ Jacobs. When people look at reality TV shows and things like that, and I look at your record here, the year of living biblically, kind of on its face, at first glance, somebody might say, look at this attention-seeking punk here, lived like the Bible for year. Tell us about what that was. I know we talked about it years ago, but I'm not going to be.

convinced everybody who's listening to this just listened to our episode from five years ago right beforehand. It started, this was a few years ago, and I grew up with no religion at all. As I say in the book, I'm Jewish, but I'm Jewish in the same way the Olive Garden is Italian. You too, right? I mean, even less so. I didn't even know about it until I was 13. Really? Here's how I found out that I was of Jewish ancestry. I'd come home one day from school, and I said something like, did you hear about this guy named Hitler? And my mom's like, yeah, I think I read something about that. And I said something like, yeah, it's so terrible all the things. And it wouldn't happen to us because we're not Jewish. And she said, that's funny because, you know, you look a little

bit Jewish. And I said, uh-uh. And she showed me pictures of all these people who we were related to. And I said, yeah, but these people aren't Jewish. She said, yeah, they are. And I said, well, wait a second. If grandma's Jewish and her grandma and her mom was Jewish and then you had the side of the Jewish and then that would, I don't understand. And she said, yeah, you're like one 16th, you know, on your mom's side and my mom's side. Since it's maternal, technically, you know, I fall into it. So when Hasidic people find out about that, they just go crazy. But for me, I had Christmas growing up because my parents thought it was easier.

My mom was non-practicing. And my grandma grew up in a Polish neighborhood in Detroit where you didn't say, Happy Hanukkah to your neighbors because they would egg your house or something like that. And everybody was Catholic, so they just went, screw it. And they just kind of didn't do anything. So I didn't know about it. And then in college, I kind of went to a couple of those like Jewish dinners and stuff. and I was like, okay, I'm done with this, I'm good, I'm all set now.

We're all good. We're done exploring this. So you didn't do a year of looking like Moses, because that's the other way to go, if you don't know anything about it. Right. Yeah, I knew nothing about it, so I thought one way to learn about the Bible might be to actually live it and dive in and sort of following the footsteps of our forefathers. I got a board of spiritual advisors.

I had rabbis and ministers and scholars, and then I wrote down every single rule in the Bible, and there are hundreds. And I wanted to follow the famous ones, like the Ten Commandments and love your neighbor, but also the weird forgotten rules, like don't shave the corners of your beard. I didn't know where the corners were, so I just let the whole thing grow. And I had this topiary on my chin, and I spent a lot of time at airport security. That's what I looked like. The Bible says to stone adulters, so I went ahead and did that. I used pebbles because I didn't want to spend my life in jail. That was the premise, and it was partly to explore what am I missing by not having any of these rituals.

It was partly sort of a way to take on fundamentalism because there are all these millions of people who say, oh, we live the Bible literally. And I was like, really, you live the Bible literally? But what about avoiding clothes made of mixed fibers? Do you do that? I mean, do you have a biblical slave? These are all things that they did in the Bible. So I wanted to show that fundamentalists are actually very selective. They're cherry picking. That's interesting because most people who just want to point out that fundamentalists are being selective, just say, hey, you're being pretty selective. Look at all these things you didn't follow.

And they write an article about it from Medium, and that's the end. They don't spend a year growing out the edges of their beard. I remember one story, you were on a park bench, and someone said they were an adulter just to see what you would do. he threw a pebble at him and then like gunned it away from him because he got angry. That's exactly right. You remember correctly. I don't often mention this, but he was like 82 years old. So I probably didn't need to gun it quite as fast. I thought this was a very simple way to show that fundamentalism is flawed. I mean, you can write an article, but this is a visual. Like you can see the craziness. You can see how crazy I look. What did your wife and family think about this? Because I assume there were a lot of things that were massively, massively inconvenient for them?

Well, I think it depends. There were pros and cons. My wife actually liked some parts of it because I was trying to be better. You know, the Bible says, don't lie, don't covet, don't gossip. And I live in New York City and I'm a journalist. So that was like most of my day. So I think I became a little more compassionate. So I really was working on this moral makeover aspect.

But at the same time, you had all of these ancient tribal crazy rules. rules like the Bible says you cannot touch women during their time a month when they're menstruating. But even more, Leviticus says that you cannot sit on a seat where a menstruating woman has sat because that seat becomes impure. And my wife found that offensive. So she sat in every seat in our apartment and I had to stand for most of the year. So in that way. And later I did a book on health, and I've learned how unhealthy it is to sit. So she was actually doing me a favor. That's the way I reframe it. I love that she decided to teach somebody who wrote part of the Bible, you know, thousands of years ago a lesson by making your life really hard during the hardest year of your life.

You know, I believe there are aspects of religion that I took away and made my life better, and I'm happy to talk about those. But I also believe that the Bible was written by some people, some of them obviously had serious issues. So there's one rule in the Bible that I always think about, which is that if two men are in a fight and the wife of one of those men grabs the testicles of the other man, then her hand shall be cut off. Like that's literally in the Bible.

And I'm like, why would anyone write that? My theory is it's got to be that this guy was in a fight. and the opponent's wife grabbed him by the balls, and he's like, this is never going to happen again. God is going to come down and say, you do not grab another guy's balls. Yeah, it's like, let the guys handle it. Don't be bringing your family into it

because he's not allowed to strike her, and she's literally got you by the balls. This is totally unfair. This is not how you're supposed to fight, apparently. And so unless you work for Fox News, you cannot break that rule. That is right. and it's right there in the Bible.

What did you take away from that experiment that improved your life that still sticks with you? I'm curious, because of course, walking around with a crazy beard and probably some sandals that you had to weave yourself or something out of children's hair

was really inconvenient. But what was good that you took away from this? Not lying seems very tough. I talked about that with Sam Harris here on the show, not lying anymore. It's extremely hard because white lies count and truths and omissions,

all of that stuff counts. Yeah. There was a ton of stuff that made my life better and that I still try to practice. I'll just give you a couple examples. One is the idea of gratitude because the Bible has a few lines where it says you have to be thankful for everything. So I took that literally. So I would press an elevator button and I'd be thankful the elevator came.

I'd get in the elevator. I'd be thankful it didn't crash and I break my collarbone. So it was a weird way to live because you were doing this hundreds of times a day. But it was also wonderful because you do very. realize there are hundreds, thousands of things that go right every day that we totally take for granted. And we, as humans, focus on the three or four that go wrong. So it's this radical shift in perspective that I still try to keep. Even something like whenever I'm online at the drugstore and it's a short line, really try to make a mental note. So next time I'm in the long line,

just remember that it evens out. I'm still atheist agnostic, but you can still see, still enjoy and find meaning and beauty in the rituals of religion, even if. So I do like getting together with my family and, you know, having Passover, eating this salty and sometimes gross food. And also the idea of community. That's a big one in the Bible. Because in biblical times, this idea of the individual was very minor. It was really all about the community, all about your neighbors and your tribe. And I do think we swung a little too much towards this idea of the individual and all of our rights. We've got all these rights, but we forget about the responsibility to the community. So I think we need more of a balance in that.

What inspired the newest book? It's All Relative. Why go out and prove that all humanity is one family and kind of do this large family reunion? Tell us what you grabbed from this and why you even started this journey in the first place. Yeah, this was a weird one because I did not expect to pursue this topic, but it turned out to be one of the most fascinating in my life. And it started because this is about three years ago, I got an email from this guy, and he said, you don't know me, but I am your eighth cousin. So I was immediately suspicious. I figure, all right, he's going to ask me to wire $10,000 to Nigeria. But actually, he was legitimate, and he's one of these people who is helping to build the biggest family tree in history with literally, literally,

millions of people in dozens of countries, hundreds of ethnicities, all connected on a single tree, that just blew me away. Because as I said, I always thought genealogy is a little stodgy, maybe not so sexy. But now, with all these technology advances, it is so relevant and it affects everything from politics to race relations and tribalism, which I think is perhaps the biggest problem humans face right now. So I fell in love with the idea and I decided this has to be my next book. You found out you were related to your wife. That's disturbing. Tell us how this happened because I can't imagine that news went over really well. Well, that's right. I took all of the DNA tests. I took like seven of them. But one of them, 23 and me, which we can talk about later, they send you a list of people

who share enough DNA that they are your cousins. So I get the list and I'm looking down. I don't recognize, don't recognize. Oh, wait, there's a name I recognize Julie Jacobs. My wife. I went in to show my wife, ironically, and I couldn't have scripted this, she was watching the Game of Thrones. And I was like, hey, look at this. We're cousins. I thought it would spice up our marriage, like the forbidden fruit. But no, she was grossed out. Yeah. But it actually, I have a whole chapter in the book about the history and ethics of cousin marriage, which is crazy. If you do buy this, I'd that we're all related, you're married to your cousin. You're a cousin, Stupper. Luckily, my wife is of Chinese origin, so it's a very distant cousin, but still, yeah, if we're all

related, then I guess we're all in that boat. Although in it's all relative in your book, you did have an interaction with a guy who runs a website that is for cousins that are in love. And we're talking like first cousins, right? Yeah, first and second cousins. I had two reactions. I mean, the first is, this is so gross, but that's a gut reaction. A lot of things I find gross, but shouldn't be illegal. So the more I thought about it and the more I talked to the head of the first cousin marriage, the more I kind of saw his point of view. I mean, I'm not in favor of Cousin there. I don't want everyone to marry their cousin, but if you do happen to fall in love with your first cousin, I do think you should be allowed to marry. And they actually

have their own link like Cusband. They become Cusband and wife. I can see why they need a website to kind of keep that under wraps. You probably looked into this. It's got to be anonymous or something like that, right? I mean, this is... Right. But I would say I always love to think about, you know, we look back 200 years and we're like, oh my God, they had slaves, what horrible people, and then just the list of all of the horrible things they did. So in 200 years, what are going to be our behaviors that people are going to say, man, those guys, what assholes? And it won't be high on the list, but I do think this revulsion to First Cousins marrying, they'll be like, yeah, big deal. Why would they care? Why did they find that so disgusting?

Some of the trends that you discovered in the big human family were even more interesting than some kissing cousins. Genealogy is like this far more exciting field than anyone ever thought. There's people who research, they only look for the black sheep. And I'm going to need an intro to this because I've got some black sheep in the not so distant past in my family. I don't even know how it was related to me directly. But on my mom's side, some guy, he was a mob enforcer, basically. The only photo we have of him is him beating someone up in the street, and it was in a newspaper, and it's him and a couple other guys in trench coats,

like, you know, destroying some guy who's on the ground. And it was because since he was also Jewish, he couldn't get a job. I think it was Ford or General Motors. They just wouldn't hire Jews. So he went and he worked for the union breakers who were basically just thugs contracted out from the company to the mafia. So in the end, he did get a job at Ford. wasn't on the assembly line. He got a job beating up people on the assembly line who are trying to

unionize. And he's also, it sounds like he's an entrepreneur. There he go. There's where it comes from. Yeah, he was a self-starter. There are people, this one guy who goes to these conventions, and he literally puts on black and white striped prison suits to advertise that he'll find the black sheep in your family. I didn't have any mob enforcers. I have to say I'm jealous. I had one guy who stole microscopes. It's a geeky crime, but I'm a fan of science. This, This guy got interested because his grandfather was in Sing Sing Prison for polygamy. I mean, one thing that I think is interesting is I think it's good to have people confront the black sheep in their family and realize that we all have good and bad in our family. It sort of democratizes things and makes us realize we are not beholden to our ancestors.

We can rise above them. And that's why that whole, I don't know if you remember this mini scandal where Ben Affleck was on one of those. Ancestry shows? Oh, no. Oh, yeah. It turned out one of his ancestors was a slave owner, and he lobbied the show successfully to get it censored from the show. Then the Sony hack happened, and it came out that he had censored this, and he got in a lot of trouble, which I think he deserved to get in trouble, because why censor it? The fact that he's not racist, I think that's a great educational moment. I think you can teach people listen. We all have horrible ancestors, but we don't have to follow in their footsteps. So that really drove me crazy. Yeah, I understand a little bit why, but I also think, you're right, it is inappropriate because it's kind of like you're trying to imply that people in your past have never done anything wrong, which is ridiculous.

This is also one of the reasons why when people, kooky people, in my opinion, claim things like, you know, I have an injury from a past life, or I'm having memories from a past life, it's never, yeah, you know, I was just some run of the mill. Pion, I was a farmer, and then I got killed in the war. I didn't last five minutes. I died at age 16. It's never that. It's like, I was a knight of King Arthur's Roundtable. You're never a shit shoveler in the middle of nowhere. That is such a good point. People are so selective in their answer. Oh, I'm a descendant of King Charles. Yeah, but you're also a descendant of, as you say, shit shovelers and stevedores and embezzlers own up to it. And actually, this I think does have profound

implications because there's a great study that showed that kids who are taught about their ancestors are better adjusted. This was an Emory University study. But it wasn't just that they knew the dates of their grandparents' birth, because, you know, who cares? It's the stories, and not just any stories, the fact that every family has had its ups and downs. Every family struggles and fails but perseveres and has grit and stick-to-itiveness. So I love. to tell my kids about all the failures in our families past and all my failures. I'm like huge about telling them all the terrible ideas I've had over the years and how much I got rejected to give them the idea that, you know, it's okay to fail. I may go overboard. I think sometimes they think,

God, dad is such a loser. Like all he does is have these failures. So I've got to adjust a little and tell them I do have occasional successes. But I think that is important to talk about the farmers and stevedores as well as the kings and popes. You're listening to the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest, A.J. Jacobs. We'll be right back. Thanks so much for listening to and supporting the show. My team and I work a ton to make every single one of these valuable, and our sponsors make it all possible.

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Everything's all in one place there. Please do consider supporting those who support us. And don't forget, we have worksheets for many of the episodes if you want some of the drills and exercises talked about during the show. They're all in one easy place. That link is in the show notes at Jordan Harbinger.com slash podcast. Now, back to A.J. Jacobs. But I would imagine at some point, DNA tests will be so ubiquitous and we'll be able to trace

lineage so well that we're going to find some crazy stuff because all those popes, all those priests and a lot of these high power people and Egyptian pharaohs, all these people's bodies and DNA is well preserved underneath monasteries, churches, in pyramids, cemeteries. There's a ton of DNA from people. That brings up so many issues. I mean, I think as more and more people get their DNA, and now there's like five million who've done it, there's going to be some great parts to society and also some really potentially troublesome parts. I mean, first of all, the world is going to be like one huge Moray-Povitch show because there is 2% of all offspring are from a father who is different than the one they thought. Two percent made, you know, two percent of seven billion people.

That's a shitload of people who have a different father. And I have a chapter in my book on one of the crazier stories where this guy, he had nine siblings. they all got tested as adults and found out they had nine different dads. Oh, man. So it was like a reality show times 100. But it actually, I found it inspiring, interviewing this guy, because first of all, the father treated all of the kids as if they were his own, even though he knew the whole time that none of them were.

I thought that was nice, this idea that family doesn't just have to be DNA. Yeah, it can be wider and should be wider. My mom comes from, as you know, mob enforcer's side. there's plenty of other black sheep that are less interesting. So she always says things like friends of the family you get to choose. You know, it's a cute sort of saying, but also what she means is oh my God, if I couldn't choose at least some part of my family, I'd go crazy because half of her family is actually crazy. You do have to really pay attention to the idea that tribalism is a, for better or for worse, it does affect us. And you mentioned this earlier in the show as well as in the book.

Tell us why tribalism is something that you feel so strongly about. Oh yeah, I think it is possibly the biggest problem because it also affects every other problem. Because if we're all in these little separate warring tribes, then we can never get together and solve the big problems, which are huge and need worldwide cooperation, like climate change or these pandemic diseases. I do think a little bit about the AI robots taking over the world, as crazy as it sounds. It worked when we were paleolithic because you were in a small tribe, and yeah, you needed to protect that and keep your DNA in deep. So your kids and close relatives.

But nowadays, it's just spun out of control. And you look around, I mean, tribalism in politics, the red states versus blue states and rural versus city and just this increasing obsession with race and ethnicity and identity politics. I just think it is really literally tearing our society part because we're all obsessed with our differences instead of focusing on the 99% of DNA that we share. This idea of one big family is one way to fight it. It actually, there's empirical evidence that it kind of works. There's a great study last year by Harvard that showed when they told Palestinians and Israelis how closely

they were related. They treated each other with kindness and more willingness to negotiate. So it's sort of this what behavioral economist called the family bias, that you are biased naturally to treat your relatives with a little more generosity. So if we can take this bias and hijack it and apply it to everyone in the whole world, your big family, it might actually help. I've seen this on a personal level. Judge Judy, I always found her incredibly just a real bitch, just obnoxious. then I found she's my eighth cousin.

And I'm like, you know what? That Judge Judy's not so bad. She's just doing her stick. And underneath, I'm sure she's a sweetheart. I'm going to give her the benefit of the death. And it's kind of irrational, but it works. It really worked for me. You know, when someone cuts me off in the highway,

I try to think that guy, we probably share a 10th grade grandfather. And if we both have offspring, then they'll be related. So let me try to give him the benefit of the day. out and say that his kid is sick at home and he's not a total asshole. I, you know, I still get angry and occasionally flip people off, but I think I do it less. Yeah, I think it would be something that would be hard to shake because there's plenty of people who treat their family poorly. So it probably also depends on what kind of person you are initially as well, of course. And I do have a chapter on family feuds, including the Hatfields and McCoys, you know, the ultimate family feud.

that was really interesting because I interviewed both of them. And a few years ago, they actually had like a reunion of both and they signed a peace treaty. And their argument is, well, if we can do it, anyone can do it. Wow. So you met the actual Hatfields. So they're real. I didn't even know that was real. Oh, yeah.

It started with a few different thing, but one was the stolen hog. And then also there was a Hatfield woman who married a McCoy man or the other way around. And, yeah, a lot of murders. Then they decided, you know, this is silly. partly it's like we don't want to be known as the ultimate irrational hillbilly feud. Let's try to improve our lot. So they did. They signed this peace treaty and they had a big reunion.

And instead of killing each other, they played softball. And it wasn't perfect because I think the Hatfields accused the McCoys of cheating and bringing in a ringer. And I think the Hatfields crushed them by like 15 to 1. So, you know, not perfect. Chili cook-off, softball game, wrestling match. And I fight. Yeah, Clay Pigeon. What could go wrong at a Hatfield-McCoy reunion with a little clay pigeon shooting?

It's definitely something that surprised me to read that that was actually real. I just thought that was part of Huckleberry Sin or something like that. Very much real, yeah. And they have hundreds of descendants. I think some of them have gotten married. So there you go. I mean, because that's another thing I'm hoping, this trend towards intermarriage, I think is a good thing. And Jordan, you said your wife is of Asian descent? Right. Yeah. She's Taiwanese,

you know, and her family came over from China in the 50s or something. So if we're related, it's pretty damn distant. There's this line in the movie Bullworth. Do you ever see that movie? No. It's an old movie. It was with Warren Beatty and he plays a senator who's trying to fight racism. And he kind of goes crazy. And his platform is he says he's interested in pro-creative, racial deconstruction. And someone's like, what are you talking about? He says, everybody got to keep fucking each other till we're all the same color. Kind of a joke, but I actually think it is one solution that I am hopeful about because intermarriage has increased dramatically, and I think it'll continue to do so. Hopefully, yeah, everyone will be fucking each other till we're approximately the same color.

And that might be better for us. Who knows? It may actually be. It is funny how, learning of our ancestry changes behavior. I was watching a documentary the other day on Netflix called Keep Quiet. Have you seen this? It's about this Hungarian right-wing politician who is, his whole platform is anti-Semitism. He gets elected to the Hungarian parliament, and his whole platform is the Jews are the biggest problem in society. And, you know, he's just shockingly and disappointingly successful in spreading his message. He founded this party with a couple of other people. he's the vice president of the party, and then somebody who doesn't like him,

who's also a right-wing, crazy person, does a bunch of research on his family and says, you know, these people, they look Jewish, and your grandma looks Jewish, and then he finds out this guy's grandma was deported. And they go, why was she deported from Hungary? And they look her up, and she went to Auschwitz. She's Jewish on his mom's side.

The whole family knew the whole time. Turns out he's Jewish. Amazing. And it worked, right? he kind of changed his point of view. He got ejected from the party, and he became an Orthodox Jew. That isn't a crazy story. I mean, I think that that is one of the potential benefits of these DNA studies.

I mean, there's tons of interesting stories. I have one in the book about this meteorologist in Texas. He was adopted, but he found his biological mom, and she was this evangelical Christian, and he's gay. So, like, how did she deal with that? She actually became more open-minded. Now, it's interesting because you also have the opposite reaction. There are a lot of interesting articles about these guys on white supremacist websites who find out

they're part Jewish or part African American from DNA tests. They say, oh, no, these 23 and me is a multicultural conspiracy owned by a Jew. I don't believe it. So I am hopeful that the first will happen more often than the second, that people will be like, oh, and have a little revelation. But it's sort of up in the air, how this is. will play out. A lot is up to us how we interpret this data. So what's their dumb theory? It's that since this is owned by a Jewish person and that it's a conspiracy to what convince everybody that we're all

sort of related and we're all really one ethnicity that's sort of been divided by this hair of DNA and they can't handle that because it screws with their identity. Yeah, they are all about racial purity. Actually, I just read a statistic, 0.03% of the people who do the My Heritage DNA test are from a single ethnicity. So that's 99.97% are not. So, yeah, they refuse to accept it. What I love is to think about the fact, it's not just that we're a mix of ethnicities. We're a mix of species. Because as you probably know, these DNA tests show you what percentage Neanderthal you are. And Neanderthal was a different species that died out. It's like lions and tigers mating and having ligars or tigrons. That's what we are. We're mutts. We're a mix of

species. We're not even one species. We're like humanderthals. So the fact that people would be obsessed with the purity of race, I just find laughable in that we're not even a pure species. I have a story in the book about this one woman who, she was redheaded and, and, you know, and and white skin. So she always thought she was Irish. She took the DNA test. Turns out she is part Irish, but she's also part Latina. And more than that, she's part Native American Latina, Taino, the Native Americans of Puerto Rico. And she's like 6%. And she always hated her Irish side. So she's now decided she identifies as a Latina. And more than that, she identifies as Taino Native American. Because I'm sure people with like 80% Native American,

are going to be like, what the hell? You have 6% and you're co-opting my ethnicity. So it's going to get messy. I'm a techno-optimist. I still think overall it's going to make the world better when we realize how much of a mix we are. Well, I got into my 23 and me earlier to see if we were related. I don't have any identical strands of DNA with you, AJ. I saw that and it broke my heart. I know. I was like, nothing? And I don't believe it, actually. If you are part Jewish, you're definitely quite closely related. It depends what scientists you ask, but one MIT study showed it was about 70th cousin. So that's not that far off. So you and I are blood cousins. I did notice that you and I have the exact same percentage of Neanderthal DNA. Oh, no. I have a section on the Neanderthals

because they get a bad rap, but they weren't so bad. The scientists say that they could talk and that Their voices sounded like Julia Child, the chef, which like raspy and high-pitched. So it makes them less intimidating to me, you know, it's like, oh. The Ministry of Silly Voices kind of voice. Exactly. That's right. Oh, my gosh. I can only imagine.

I guess we'll never really have to know that our distant relatives are like that. It does not surprise me that I have a healthy Neanderthal percentage. This is the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest, AJ Jacobs. We'll be right back. Now for the rest of my conversation with AJ. Jacobs. I also found when I looked at my ethnicities, I'm 4% Yakut, and I had to look that up. Yeah, what is that? That is a Turkic people that lives somewhere in Central Asia. So if I am distantly related to my wife, it's almost certainly through the Yakut side of people that had

come out of Africa, up through Europe, went east instead of west or whatever, and then became, I don't even know if they're nomadic or what. They look like the people that you see who have like falcon hunting and things like that. They have a lot of beads and a lot of colorful stuff like that. And I guess it's just like a relatively small people. Are you going to identify as Yakut go and like adopt the Yakut rituals? Maybe you should. What's really strange is where did that come from? And my mom said that a lot of our older relatives have some Asian-y features that everybody uses to be mystified about. My mom theorizes slash jokes around that some Genghis Khan type just kind of raided the whole thing and, you know, we've got some of that going on.

So you did marry your cousin. That's exciting. Who knows? Unavoidable, really. Unavoidable. We have the Neanderthal thing, but you and I were seemingly unrelated, which again, I don't believe. If we both have Ashkenazi Jewish heritage, even in the family oral history that goes back a couple of generations at most, then that cannot be accurate. I mean, the Ashkenazi Jews are what they call politely an endogamous population, which means inbreeders. There was serious inbreeding. So the average Ashkenazi Jew, the estimates vary, but probably around 7th or 8th cousins. So we definitely are cousins. And by the way, you might

have heard about the Icelandic are also one of the most endogamous societies. They marry each other all the time. To the extent which they came out a couple of years ago with an iPhone app, The logo is bump phones before you bump in bed because it will tell you how closely you are cousins so that you don't like inadvertently marry your second cousin. Oh, man. So if you match up on Tinder and it's like, hey, we need that little plug in on Tinder that says, hey, you're too closely related. You probably shouldn't meet up, but you can be friends.

Exactly. Well, this was interesting. One of my advisors is a brilliant geneticist. and he says that from a purely evolutionary point of view, the ideal mate for you is a fourth cousin, because you don't want too close a cousin because then the immune system is too close and you might share weaknesses,

but too far away and your kids become a little less viable, like lions and tigers, their kids are not as viable. So he says the ultimate from an evolutionary point of view is fourth cousin. So I've been talking to him like, we should start a dating app where you can find the fourth cousins in your area and like, you are a perfect match for me. There's probably something to be said for that. I don't know who would want to fund that and put their name on it, but it's possible. And it's not a science yet. I mean, not a perfect science. It is getting better because the more people who join, the better the databases and the more accurate. But for instance, I did another DNA test a few years ago, and it showed up that I was mostly Jewish, but 14% Scandinavian. And I was psyched. I was like, all right, get out the cross-country skis. Let's have some herring. And then the results kept getting adjusted downwards. And now I'm like below 1% Scandinavian on there. It's like all my Swedish ancestors were just tragically killed. But it's because of their database. They had too many Scandinavians in their data. database and it was throwing things off. So yeah, I would take all of these results with a little bit

of a grain of salt, but they're also not completely hokom. They're not just astrology. There is a good amount of science to it. And the big trends, like if they say you're from Northern Europe, you can be relatively sure that's accurate. When they try to get down to like you're from Scotland versus Ireland, they don't have that nailed down yet. Yeah, that might be splitting hairs at that point. I guess once they can really nail down what everything is they can trace your exact relatives all the way up the chain somehow. That'll be interesting. How do you think about getting into these types of extreme experiments, breaking the world record for a family tree, living biblically for a year? Were you always a big thinker? Were you always thinking about these grandiose experiments? I mean, I love to

brainstorm. Some people get ideas in the shower. I have some of those, but more often than not, any ideas I come up with that are halfway decent, I actually have to carve out 15 minutes of my day, turn off all computers, all cell phones, surround myself with some materials like magazines and books, and just devote myself to brainstorming. One of the techniques I use in brainstorming is pushing everything to the extreme. So like just taking everything to its logical extreme. Because when you do that, I think it reveals some truths. In one sense, it's absurd. But at the same, same time, it clarifies and it produces wisdom. So, for instance, I remember like 10 years ago, I read The World is Flat by Tom Friedman, and it was all about the beginnings of outsourcing,

how these big banks would outsource their boring tasks to India. So I was like, how can I take that idea to the extreme? What if I did it and outsourced my entire life? So what if I hired a team of people in Bangalore, India, to do everything for me and answer my phone, answer my email, argue with my wife, read my kids' bedtime stories. So I was like, you know what, that could work. So I did it as an experiment and it turned into an article, which then got some lovely traction, including it was reprinted in our mutual friend Tim Ferriss's book. That is one way I like to think. Just take things to the extreme because it's very clarifying. At one last caveat on those brainstorming sessions, I would say that 99% of the ideas I come up with, if not more, are terrible.

But I do think creativity is a numbers game and that you really do have to come up with tons of ideas until one of them sort of sticks and you keep coming back to it and like, you know what, that could work. So that was a long-winded answer to why I take things to the extreme. I like that, though. How do we cultivate that type of thinking? If we're not used to that, if we're used to thinking too small or if we've maybe we've found that we do this or we've been accused of doing this, how do we cultivate that type of bigger picture thinking in ourselves? That is a great question. Wayne, I do recommend this idea of cutting off all distractions and just brainstorming for 15

minutes. I like to sort of be very strategic in my brainstorming. So it's not just flow of consciousness. I'll have various ways to come up with ideas. and one of them is taking it to the extreme. I was just talking about this recently. I forget where. But if you come up with just any old topic, like snowman, okay?

I'll say, I'm going to brainstorm for five minutes about snowman and try to approach it from every angle. So, like, what if it was instead of a snowman, it's a snow woman? Or what about if it's like a snow transgender person, like a non-binary snowman? What would that look like? And what about instead of the pipe, he's like vaping? So, again, none of the other.

of these ideas ever went anywhere, but I think that it trains the brain. It keeps the brain loose, and the cliche is that the brain is a muscle, but I think there's truth in that. So I use that, taking things to the extreme, sort of playing with every idea, looking at something very closely, so like close up. So think about the snowflakes, just zoom back and think about a world filled with snow people. It's these meta strategies to brainstorming, instead of just letting you brain wander, which can work. I'm not disparaging that, but for me, sort of being very disciplined. It's almost disciplined daydreaming, which I know is a paradox, but it really works for me. I want to wrap with this story. You met some really interesting relatives of your own,

including David, who was this older guy, World War II veteran and kind of a joker. And I love his humor. Tell us his story that he had told you before he had happened. away about him getting shot down over Germany. This really was one of the main themes, I think, of looking at your predecessors. It's just the sacrifices they made are just astounding. I often complain about stuff, but then when I look at what's come before me, I realize I am just a lucky bastard. So he was in World War II in the Air Force, and his bomber was shot down over Germany.

He had to bail out. He was floating down in the parachute, and he saw all of these farmers and their wives running towards where he was going to land. He landed, and this German farmer had a shotgun and was about to shoot him, but his wife begged for mercy. The farmer's wife is like, oh, he's too young. So they spared him. He was then taken to a Nazi headquarters and put on a train to a prisoner of war camp. What I find so moving is the scene on the train. where he is sitting and he said, this was the lowest point of my life, of course. I was on a train, going to prisoner of war camp. I was a Jew surrounded by Nazis. I was sitting next to this guy who was a Nazi guard. And I looked over at the guy and the guy offered him a cigarette. And David took the cigarette and smoked it. And he was like, that saved me. Just that one small gesture of humanity proved that even in the most inhumane circumstances, there is still humanity. And he was weeping when he was telling this story. It meant so much to him. And I told my kids, you know, this is not a license to smoke. Smoking is still bad for you. But it shows you that I sort of the theme of the book, that deep down,

we do share far more than what separates us, even that the Nazis, they had some humanity, gives me a little hope. I love when he's in the prison barracks. There's some other prisoner. He says, weren't you in New Jersey Seahawken High School class in 1938? And David says, nope. And then hours go by where they're just sitting in silence in the winter and in the cold. And then he pipes up and goes, but I was in the class of 1939.

And he just lets this joke drag out for like hours. I love that you like that. I know. It shows that, again, same theme, even in the worst circumstances, he was able to play a practical joke in a prisoner of war camp. I don't know if I would have had the ability to do that. I'd be like, oh, yes, I wasn't. We hawking high. Oh, my God. Thank God. I found you. But instead, he's like, nope. Yep, I got to wait for the proper comedic timing. And also, he probably figured I might have like five years to execute the punchline of this joke. So we're in no way. rush. That would have been brilliant if he waited the full like two years. Yeah, that would have been great. Well, thank you very much for coming on the show. Thanks so much for your work as well. So funny and just interesting, entertaining and educational at the same time. Well, right back at you.

AJ Jacobs, the book is called It's All Relative and it'll be linked up in the show notes as usual. If you're looking for another episode of the Jordan Harbinger Show to sink your teeth into, check out episode 147 with Eric Audey here on the Jordan Harbinger Show. Pakistan was just one of the many bad things that happened to me in my life. I've had so many things happen, and I just learned to get over it. You know, you get knocked down six times, you get up seven. And that's the only way I've ever known how to live. When I got out of the cab with the suitcases to leave Pakistan,

the guy who was there was like, next time you come back, we'll show you around, we'll hook you up with some girls, you'll have a great time. And I'm humoring this guy. I'm like, yeah, sure, next time I come back. I know for a fact, I'm never coming back to Pakistan. Country sucks. That fucking country sucks. And I'm good at finding, like, good things.

that I've ever with. So it's early in the morning, and I go into international departures and there's a long line curving around the corner. I'm waiting in line, and the line goes all the way up this wall to where there's customs tables. And when the customs officer sees me and flags me,

because I'm about six inches taller than everyone, and I get brought to another room. Finally, the guy who asked me if there was narcotics in my suitcase, comes in, and he's holding these two sandwich-silled things, and his exact words to me is, what is this? And I said,

I don't fucking know what it is. Yeah, sure. He says, this is all film. I said, why are you showing me this? Because it came out of your suitcase. Felt like such a fucking idiot. Yeah, because I thought that the DEA was going to hook me up, you know, because they were going to see that I'm innocent.

I truly thought those guys are going to be there to help me now. Because I wasn't guilty, so this shit doesn't happen to innocent people. Three years of my life for a crime I didn't know I was being used to commit. To hear the rest of one of the most harrowing stories, I've ever heard in my time doing this podcast. Check out episode 147 with Eric Aday here on the Jordan Harbinger Show. Always love talking to AJ Jacobs. Such a funny dude. One thing that didn't make it in the show in the book that I thought was really entertaining, AJ spent a lot of time trying to chase down celebrities and stuff like that to get this concept of the giant family reunion publicized. So

he's literally chasing down Mark Wahlberg and Melissa McCartney. It's a movie premiere. And he's like, it's your cousin, it's me, it's cousin AJ Jacobs, and Mark Wahlberg comes over like, yeah, I don't think so. And I don't know if I'd want to mess with Mark Wahlberg. One, you know, he seems like a very strong, kind of aggressive guy, but he also looks kind of cranky all the time. If you look at Mark Wahlberg and you look at AJ Jacobs, you're not going to see a ton of similarity. Go ahead and Google AJ Jacobs. You know what Mark Wahlberg looks like, Marky Mark, right? They don't look related, you know? So I'm sure he just thought, oh, great, another crazy person who thinks were related. AJ Jacobs waving around a copy of this DNA report.

It's like, I'm not looking at this. I'm in the red carpet right now, you crazy fool. So you can just tell any kind of experiment that AJ Jacobs does is, it's going to be similarly ridiculous. And I love the fact that he goes through with all these things. His poor wife must be so annoyed.

Big thank you to AJ Jacobs. The book title for this episode, once again, is It's All Relative. Of course, we'll link that up in the show notes as well. Links to all books from all guests, always in the show notes. please use our website links if you buy books from guests. It does help support the show.

Worksheets for the episodes are in the show notes. Transcripts are in the show notes. Videos of our interviews are on our YouTube channel at Jordan Harbinger.com slash YouTube. We've also got our Clips channel with cuts that don't make it to the show or highlights from the interviews that you can't see anywhere else.

Jordan Harbinger.com slash clips is where you can find that. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram or just hit me on LinkedIn. I'm teaching you how to connect with great people and manage relationships using systems and tiny habits over at our six-minute networking course, which is free over at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course teaching you how to dig that well before you get thirsty. And most of the guests on the show, they actually subscribe to the course and contribute to the course, so come join us. You'll be in smart company where you belong.

This show is created in association with Podcast 1. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Millio Campo, Ian Baird, Josh Ballard, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for this show is that you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting. If you know somebody who does weird, quirky experiments or is interested in genetics or DNA or ancestry, share this episode with him.

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