The Jordan Harbinger Show - 994: A.J. Jacobs | The Year of Living Constitutionally

Episode Date: May 23, 2024

What can a year of following the US Constitution per the founding fathers' intentions teach us about the future of democracy? A.J. Jacobs has answers here! What We Discuss with A.J. Jacobs: The founding fathers were not entirely in favor of pure democracy. They feared mob rule and wanted checks and balances to prevent a tyranny of the majority. The Constitution was a big step forward for democracy at the time, but still had elements of elitism. The original meaning and interpretation of parts of the Constitution, such as the Second Amendment and free speech rights, are quite different from how they are viewed today. Both liberal and conservative perspectives would likely disapprove of some of the original 18th century understandings. The founding fathers seemed more open to changing minds and flexible thinking compared to the intransigent political positions common today. Examples like Ben Franklin and James Madison illustrate their willingness to admit uncertainty and change opinions based on reason and evidence. American democracy is fragile and must be actively maintained and protected. A.J. Jacobs remains optimistic that reforms and hard work can help save the American democratic system, but it requires dedication and the American people deciding to "lift the sun up" on the country's future. We can help revive an appreciation for democracy by making it fun and celebratory again, like it was back in the early days of America. Baking "election cakes" to share and enjoy while voting, or hosting festivities at polling places, can inject some much-needed positivity and help encourage participation. Simple acts like this are a good starting point to begin strengthening our civic society and democratic institutions. And much more... Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/994 This Episode Is Brought To You By Our Fine Sponsors: jordanharbinger.com/deals 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.

Coming up next on the Jordan Harbinger Show. Ben Franklin, in the Constitutional Convention, he got up and he said, The older I am, the less certain I am of my own opinions. He told this little story parable joke. He said, there was a French lady who said to her sister, It's so weird, I am the only person I've ever met who is right on every single issue. And his point was, we're all that French lady. We all have this cognitive bias that we think we're right.

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If you don't get another podcast, app, you're going to end up only seeing part of the show. YouTube music does not have Skeptical Sunday or Feedback Friday. You're not going to be able to get those episodes of the show. So get Castbox or Pocket Castro on Android or iPhone if you want to continue to get the show. Skeptical Sunday and Feedback Friday, once again, not included in YouTube music. So you've got to switch off of that or Google Podcast is just going to forward you there and you're not going to be able to get most of the episodes of the show. Today on the show, AJ Jacobs, who decided to live as they did during the time of the Constitution. Now, this might sound odd, and it is, of course, until you

hear that he's done the same in the past living as they did during the time of the Old Testament for a year, which was much worse. We talked about that in a previous episode of the show. We'll explore some of the ideas of the founding fathers, probe the very basic foundations of our democracy, and to keep things light, we're going to discuss him carrying around a musket in Manhattan, writing a book with a quill and ink, spending a year wearing a supremely dorky tricorn hat, which he's a you can see if you're watching us on YouTube, among other stunts. Here we go with AJ Jacobs. I'm guessing you're one of the only people in New York City that legally has a gun.

Exactly. Exactly. People need to buy more 18th century guns. Yeah. Because they are technically antiques. Technically antiques. Yeah. So, wait a minute.

That's kind of an interesting. Is it a loophole? It's not really a loophole because if you were really going to assault somebody, you would not probably choose that thing. It is very hard to, yes. It takes, you know, a couple of minutes to load, and by the time you load it, they would have tackled you. Yeah. I remember there was a pro-gun control.

I don't know what you call it. Anti-Second Amendment pro-gun control commercial a long time ago. And this guy walks into the office and he's like, clearly a disgruntled employee. And he's like, I'm taking you all with me. And everyone screams and he fires this musket and it like flies, the ball like flies into the wall. Right. And wildly. And then everyone runs out.

and they show him and he pulls out the powder skin and he pulls out the ramrod and he puts the ball in the musket and he puts the powder in and he sticks the ramrod in there and he puts the little gauze or whatever in there to cover the powder and by then everyone is long gone and they just kind of fade out as he is reloading this musket and it's like pro gun laws were made in a different era it's time to update our laws i'm totally adlibbing this because this is like an ad i saw twice a decade ago right But I just, it reminds me of that because is that a good place to start the show? Maybe. Because what do you think about that? Because you are a weirdo with a musket in Manhattan. It's true. Clearly this has crossed your mind at some point.

Last time you did, you called me a lovable weirdo. I wear that with pride. You are one of my favorite weirdos. And I'm glad to have you back here. I am honored. I am honored. I hope to keep that. Yeah. So, well, should I explain quickly why I had a musket carrying around in, New York? I think we like put a pin in that as some sort of awkward cliffhanger. Like I never really usually do on the show. And then we just back the truck. We will be back the horse and carriage all the way back because you're wearing a tricorn hat in case you're not watching on YouTube. He's wearing a pirate hat for lack of a better term. It's not really a pirate hat, but everybody who sees that probably thinks you're being a pirate. Is that they do? I get a lot of

yes, I are matey. Yeah. But it is an officially, a revolutionary war hat, a trillions. So yes, we'll start with the muskets. Well, we don't even have to start with the muskets. Let's start with, what did you do to even get to the point where you're buying a musket and a tricorn hat? Because, all right, what people may not know is that you're a guy who experiments and you just go whole hog into the experiment. There was a previous, a long time ago, we had you on the show episode 174.

We had you on again, 564. And one of them was about coffee and you tracing the origins all the way back to wherever and thanking everyone. But one of them, I think, was about your year of living biblically where you didn't wear mixed fabrics and you didn't sit on a chair that your wife had sat on while menstruating. And I can't believe that's the example that I remember. And then a guy in Central Park asked if you would stone him to death because he was an adulter and then he threw like a pebble at him and he got really pissed off and you ran away. Am I still remembering? You are 80% right. Okay. But you got the general gist. I wanted to understand religion because I knew nothing about it, grew up very secular. And the way

I like to understand things is by walking the walk, talking the talk, wearing the robe, grow in the beard, throw in the pebbles. Yeah. And I love it. And that was one of my favorite books to write the Year of Living Biblically. And I had always thought, well, I could do a very similar book about the Constitution. Right. Because it is actually, we treat it very similarly. It's this revered document that some people say we have to stick to the exact meaning from 230 years ago. Yeah. Other people say, no. No, it's got to evolve. Life has changed. And I felt this was the most urgent and timely book I could write. Because every day, I'd read another news story about the Constitution. This was having a huge impact on my life, on millions of other lives, how we live. And I knew nothing. I mean, you are a recovering lawyer. So you knew some. Yes. I knew the preamble from Schoolhouse Rock, but I knew nothing. I had never read it. from start to finish. And I said, I'm going to try to go back to basics and understand this document by living it, experiencing the original meaning. So, like we said, I carried a musket around the upper west side of New York where I live. I gave up social media and wrote with a quill pen

and handed out pamphlets. I quartered a soldier. I didn't chop him in force. Oh, that's a relief. I boarded him in my house. So, yeah, it was a fascinating year. There were two main goals. One was that I wanted a crash course in the Constitution. So when I hear a politician say, oh, the Constitution says you can't play violent video games, then I would be, okay, I'm in a better, more empowered place that I can judge whether that's true.

But the other question I want to get to. with you as well, is are there practices from the founding era that would make our lives better, that would make our country better? And there's much that we don't want. It was racist, sexist, smelly, dangerous, no antibiotics. So we don't want to go back. But are there aspects such as slowing down your thinking and sacrifice, self-sacrifice as a way to happiness or the important of being flexible thinkers, those are things I discovered throughout the year that maybe we need to revisit. Yeah, it's interesting. When I was reading the book, I was thinking about all those people that do really crappy things and call themselves patriots. Not everybody who calls themselves a

patriot does crappy things. I'm just talking about the people who do crappy things and call themselves patriots. And I'm thinking, you know, next time you hear someone say something like that, you're in a really strong position to be like, well, actually, you don't know what the hell you're talking about. And Ben Franklin, who is actually kind of undisputably a patriotic guy, said the opposite thing that you're saying right now. Mr. Hates everyone who isn't a, you know, X or what. So I'm curious if you've run into that. You made a list of stuff that you like and stuff that you didn't like at the end of your experiment, or at least during some point of the experiment. I'm curious if that's a good place to begin with this conversation, because changes in the constitutional.

were kind of a big deal in the beginning, right? It was like, we the people think this. I mean, granted, we the people back then was probably like only white Christian men or something or above a certain age. Right. But at the time, even that was kind of progressive because it wasn't like, we the people, these seven guys in this room who own all of the land or whatever it was going on in in Europe at the time.

Yeah, no, it was a big step forward. It was the big bang of democracy, as one of my advisors calls it, but also at the same time, it had elements of elitism and oligarchy and some of them were slave owners. So it's a complicated document. And that's what I love. It's not one or the other. It is a complicated. And the key to me is trying to make America live up to the best parts of the Constitution. So the parts about equality and general welfare because the society that they had was not living up to what the ideals of the Constitution.

The founders themselves knew that they could be better. So is the document, this is probably a dumb question now that I think about it, but I'm going to ask anyway, because that's kind of the point of the show. Is the document aspirational? Because it sounds like they were writing, hey, this is the way we definitely should do things. But then sort of in their private lives, it was like, I mean, I'm not really doing this. that. This is probably also really crappy, but, okay, we want to write down the thing we want to be, not the thing we currently are, because it's kind of all flawed and messy. I love that you say that. I think it is. It was aspirational. I mean, Thomas Jefferson knew he was a hypocrite, and he was very,

he said, I'm lazy and I'm greedy, but I know that slavery is wrong. Really? Yeah. Wow. So you can condemn them, and we should condemn them for being hypocrites. Some of them. Some of the, them. Ben Franklin was at the end of his life leading the abolitionist charge. But yeah, this was what Frederick Douglass, the great civil rights leader in the Civil War, called, it's a promissory note. It's like an I owe you. It says, here is what we should be. Let's make America live up to that. Tell me more about the hypocrisy thing. Did he really note that somewhere? Like, hey, I've got slaves and I kind of need them to make money and I like money because I'm greedy, but man, I'm going to hell for this. I mean, is there some version of that in a diary somewhere? Not those words exactly, but pretty much,

that is a paraphrase. Yes, they were aware of their hypocrisy. And I don't know whether that makes it better or worse, but as you say, they wrote about freedom and equality. And yet they were slave owners and they were incredibly sexist. So it was a fascinating time. And lucky, we have gotten better. It's easy to read the news every day and be completely depressed and say, oh, we are just as bad as ever. But we are not as bad as ever. We have made progress as a country. And by the way, speaking of which, reading the news 16 hours a day, like the negative bias news, is terrible for our democracy. Yeah. Ben Franklin's newspaper, paper came out twice a week. So during this year, I tried to read the news only twice a week.

So much better because you are able to have perspective. You're able to step back and say, all right, let's think about solutions instead of being depressed and stressed every moment of the day reading about how horrible it is. So, yeah, I recommend you don't have to do twice a week, but just do half an hour a day of reading news and try to cut yourself off the rest of the day. you will be happier. I am a big believer in that. I mean, I think that's almost certainly true. We know that from some of the other episodes we've done on this show that reading things like news triggers a stress response, almost like a fight or flight response. Doing that to yourself every hour for five minutes is not a good idea. Right? That's just not good for your immune system and all kinds of

other things. And so reading it twice a week almost sounds difficult because you have to get away from it. Now it's very difficult to do if you have a television and a phone. You really have to almost put those things. You've got to put the phone down and pick up a musket instead and walk around with it. I'm not sure. I recommend that. But I do agree. Yes, put down the phone. And I will say, I wrote a lot of this book with a quill pen, a goose quill. Yeah, that's, I've got questions. Oh, I loved it. I don't think everyone has to toss their laptop and pick up a quill pen. But just being offline where there are no dings or pings and just being able to have to be able to think. It made me a more nuanced and deeper thinker, I believe, because you are able to focus.

And I loved it. My hands were literally ink-stained wretch as they, so, and my office looks like, I don't know, a Jackson Pollock because it's got ink all over it. Your wife must be thrilled, by the way, with the whole question. She didn't love that. She didn't love the candles, which kind of smelled like ass. There was... I'm going to talk about that. Or arse, I guess they would say back then.

Yeah. And I did board a soldier for a few days. She didn't love that. So, yes, she was very patient, but hopefully in the end, she's okay with it because I think I improved our lives in certain ways. She's looking at the book advance, and she's like, fine. Exactly. Okay, so you wrote half the book, and how many letters can you write before you have to dip the quill back in the ink? It depends, it depends.

But I can write about six or seven words, usually. Oh, that's not too bad. Yeah, it's not too bad. And there's something lovely about the ritual of dipping the ink. And the sound, it's scratch, scratch, scratch is funny because there are these ASMR videos on YouTube of people writing with a quill pen. because it relaxes some people. My wife hated it. She hated the scratch, scratch.

But I found it soothing. Yeah, I probably would agree with it. I can't watch ASMR videos because it makes me almost like want to punch the wall because it's too soft. And it's sort of like, the people who like it, they're like, oh, it's like a little massage in the back of your skull and your spine.

For me, it's like somebody tickling something or that I can't reach. And in order to scratch it, I have to like explode and rage for just a second. So those don't work for me. She's probably more like me as opposed to the people who watch in ASMRVity. But I am not going to whisper the entire podcast. I don't want to trigger you.

No, I appreciate that. It's not even the whispering as much as, no, it's the whispering. It's the whispering and the touching of the microphone. There's a woman who does it and she's always getting demonetized because it's a little bit like, it's not even her fault. It's a little bit porny just because she's really attractive and she's smiling. and a lot of the people that watch it are probably totally normal. But when YouTube was trying to figure out what to do with ASMR in the beginning,

they were like, we don't like this and we can't quite figure out why, so we're going to block it and demonetize it. And she's like, I'm just whispering to people. And then I'm, I don't know, tapping my nails on a piece of slate. And they're like, we don't get it. So we're going to demonetize this because it seems fetishy. And she's like, well, maybe it is, but that's not my fault. If somebody's doing something weird to this besides going to sleep,

Is that really on me? And she's got a point. And I feel bad for her. This is how she makes a living. But, okay, so when you were living biblically, how did you write back then? Were you writing, were you chisling the draft of the book into stone tablets? I should have. That is a great point.

I did. I wrote by pen a lot, but I also used my laptop. I mean, I do use my laptop. I see. When I have to. So I ordered my candles over my laptop. I ordered the quill pens. You didn't write a horse to Boston.

Exactly. To pick it up. I did ride a horse at one point, but that was, but it's very hard to get permission to ride a horse in Manhattan. They really made it difficult. Can't you just go to one of those carriage drivers near Central Park and be like, hey, I need to ride this horse with you for like half an hour? I thought about that. But I also thought carriages, those carriages are not old enough. They're not 18th century.

Yeah. But you would be riding the horse, not the carriage, right? You could just say, hey, take the horse. Oh, I see, riding the horse. Yeah, maybe. I have a feeling they. They are not, they don't love that idea. But I'm going to try it.

You give me a good idea. Yeah. Your year is, the book is out. So you're kind of off the hook on doing a lot of this stuff. It's true. It's true. Back to some of the slavery language. You mentioned in the book that the language shows that they knew enough to try and cover

up what they really meant. Can you tell us what you mean by that? Like, what's the language in the Constitution that gives you the idea that they knew slavery was wrong, but they just weren't in the mood to do anything about it because it was profitable or for whatever reason. Yeah, they never used the word slavery. Oh, really? Okay. Servitude and labor and other euphemisms. So some of them, some of them were apologists for slavery. But what was interesting was I had a section on race relations, of course, in the Constitution. And what I found fascinating was that there are two ways to approach this. There are the people who,

said during the Civil War that the Constitution is a pact with the devil because it allowed slavery to exist. And there was an abolitionist, a white abolitionist, William Lloyd Garrison. And he literally burned the Constitution on stage in front of hundreds of people and said, the Constitution is the worst thing ever. Now, Frederick Douglass, who was a great civil rights leader, at the time, for a while he agreed with Garrison and said this is a pact with the devil. But sometime in the 1850s he changed his mind. He changed his tactics. He said, you know what, let's instead of burning it, try to make it into what you said,

an aspirational document and try to make it live up to its best parts about equality and make it what we were promised, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in the declaration. So I thought that was fascinating. You can see it as completely evil. It's a lot about framing. How do you frame that document? Do you focus on the worst parts or do you try to make it live up to the best parts? You hint in the book that the founding fathers might not really have loved the idea of democracy, which was surprising to me. It seems like they kind of were reluctant to praise democracy, like, all right, I guess people can vote. And even if they're an uneducated non-landowning lump, but we want to make sure that we have kind of a check on that just in case. Can you speak to

that a little? Because that was surprising to me. When you're in elementary school, middle school, high school, and you're learning about the Constitution, you learn about these sort of superhero guys who are like, we want everybody to be equal and we want everybody's voice to be heard. And that's like kind of BS, right? Right. It's interesting because one of the famous, toasts of the time was when you had a drink, you would say freedom from tyrants as well as the mob. They were very afraid of the mob. And they thought that you needed sort of this. They don't mean Italian organized crime. They mean the mob of people. They might have been afraid of that too. But they were afraid of the rabble. They thought that you needed sort of this elite group

of educated people who would provide reason and cool the passions. So I will say the Constitution was still the greatest leap forward for democracy at the time. They said, we are getting rid of the king and this idea of hereditary power. That's huge. That is a huge leap forward. But at the same time, they didn't go to complete democracy. And they still had this elitist attitude that white males were the ones who would vote. And a lot of American history and a lot of the amendments to the Constitution are about trying to make it more democratic, about trying to give black people to vote, women the vote, even people under 21. Originally, the voting age was 21. That's not, doesn't seem like a bad idea. I mean, back then, 21 was probably like an old guy halfway through

his life, right? And 18 was a little bit. Now, I say this is somebody who was definitely in that camp at age 18. Now 18-year-olds are largely morons, just as they were when I was 18, and again, I include myself in that bucket. I had no business voting until I was like 30, if you ask me. Absolutely. And there are interesting proposals about how you should have a randomly selected group of people who are allowed to vote, and they have to learn all about democracy and civics. That would have been great. And I don't know if that's a good idea. It could be a terrible. idea. But that stuff's always used to disenfranchise people, though, right? Like, it would have been great if everyone had to take a government class and pass. And then you get a code from your county

after you pass an exam. And they're like, you can vote because we know that you know how to read the candidate stuff and sift through the disinformation and make good choices. But then it's going to be like in certain areas, they're telling you what to vote for. And then the curriculum's going to have to be standardized. But if the curriculum's not standardized, then you don't get the card, but some areas with poor people, surprise, surprise, they don't have the resources to get the standardized curriculum taught to them, so now they can't. Like, that stuff is always, oh, yeah. It's like the arguments for the Second Amendment, right? Like, once you start restricting it, it just gets restricted in ways that are unfair a lot of the time. And then it's a slippery

slope. And then it's like suddenly, oh, look at the only people who get taught this are elites that are wealthy and go to private schools and live in these towns. It's like it just ends up that way, a lot of the time. And that was, they had these literacy and character tests. in the 60s in the South, where they would give people these incredibly hard tests, and they usually gave it to the black voters, but let the white voters in. And these were, I took some of them. They are hard. They are so, like, you need a PhD in government studies to pass some of these. It's ridiculous. That's what I'm talking about. So they've already tried this, and it was already used for nefarious

purposes. Right, exactly. This would have been a slightly different this. idea of a lottery system. But yeah, that brings up a broader point, which is trying ideas. The founding fathers were very entrepreneurial. They had all of these ideas that in the constitutional convention that we have never heard of, I always thought, this is the way our government is, it's how it was created, this is it, this is our only option. But no, you look at the convention, there are ideas like three presidents or 12 presidents. When one of the delegates said, I think we should have one president,

a lot of the delegates said, are you crazy? We just fought a bloody war to get rid of a king. Why do we want one president? Why do we want one person in power? Ben Franklin wanted 12 presidents at one point. So it went to a vote and the one president did win, which is why we have it.

But it is interesting to think. Can you imagine, like, Biden and Trump and RFK Jr.? Like sharing a co-working space in the Oval Office? Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Wow. Can you imagine the Secret Service budget at that point? Just be ballooning out of it. Yeah, we're on Air Force 11 right now and we're just trying to get clearance for takeoff. There's 10 other planes in front of us and guess which ones? Yeah, no thanks. It's already pretty expensive having the leaders we have. I think we're. we're good on this. Yeah, I don't approve of three, but I do just want to say the idea of restraining the power of the president. So you don't have this one person who is all this power

is a great idea. And that our president now, both Republican and Democrat, is way too powerful. The founders would be shocked that they have so much war power, so much power over trade. It's called the imperial presidency. Like, we are that when that guy said that, the fetus of monarchy. I think the fetus is like now an adolescent or at least a tween. So you think the office of the president has too much power accumulated over time? Way too much, yeah. And I'm not alone. I mean, there are lots of political scientists who agree with me. Sure. Or I agree with them, I should say, that, yeah, it's gone out of control and we need to put some restraints on it. A lot of folks complain about our government being, there's too much

red tape, right? There's the check, but the checks and balances seem to be a feature and not a bug. There's a reason that things move. People will usually say like, look, Xi Jinping just says, we're doing this and the whole country is they're subsidizing this and we've got a full court press on that. And it's like, we need to do more of this. But people only say that when it's like, we need to subsidize our semiconductor industry and make sure that we're creating things here and we're not dependent on China for manufacturing. It's like, great. Then we want the executive branch to be able to snap their fingers or the government to be able to snap their fingers and get that done. But for everything else, maybe we don't want that.

Well, yeah, I agree that the balance of power can be a feature, not a bug, sometimes. But I will give you one example. I remember talking to this woman who was a mother of a kid at my school, and she grew up in China. And I said, what was school like? And she said, well, we would start the day with eye exercises. And I was like, what? And she'd say, yeah, we would have to spend five minutes. You would look up with your eyeballs, then look to the right, and then look down.

And it was just because there was some quack doctor who convinced the Supreme Leader of China that this was good for kids, which is not. There's no science behind it. But can you imagine the millions, billions of human hours that were wasted? Yeah. Because one person decided, so that is the downside of authoritarianism. A mild. I think there are worse downsides, but I'm with you. Yeah, I was about to say that is a very mild example.

Yeah. In North Korea, can you believe they're doing eye exercises? It's horrible. Also, they're starving to death and you get executed for sitting on a newspaper. But the eye exercise thing, my God. Yes. Yeah. Well, it's a spectrum.

But the, um, yes. So the good part is, yes, you cannot have. what they call the tyranny of the majority in America, where you get 51% and then you're able to do whatever you want. The downside is we have too many checks and ballot or too much red tape stopping us from doing what needs to be done. So for instance, in the Senate you might know they need a super majority to pass anything. That's 60 votes. That was not in the Constitution.

and James Madison, in fact, said this is a terrible idea because the minority can hold the majority hostage. And here we are. So we need to get rid of some of these hurdles in the Congress to make it so that it can actually do something. Speaking of weirdos and hats, now's a good time for a word from our sponsors. We'll be right back.

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Again, at six-minute networking.com. Now, back to AJ Jacobs. I know one reason we have the Electoral College is originally because the founding fathers, et cetera, at all, wanted a final veto on who got elected because, like you said before, they were terrified that the people would choose somebody that was bad for them. Maybe bad for the elites at that point? Who was that for, for them? Well, they were just afraid of a demagogue. And so they installed this system.

It has several reasons for it. But one of the reasons was that these educated elites, who were the elite, who were the electors could, if us stupid people elected a demagogue, meaning someone who was like a tyrant in the making, then these elites could say, oh, no, we're going to overrule that and install someone rational. And ironically, it seems to have worked the other way because now you can get a minority of the votes, but still become president. And so, yeah, I am not a fan of the Electoral College. It is a problem. Yeah, I mean, it's a really good point.

I hadn't thought about the fact that we have the exact problem it was designed, well, kind of the inverse problem that it was designed to protect against. We can have tyranny of a minority instead of a tyranny of the majority, which if you learn about in law school, it's like bad ideas should have ways to be stopped, whether most people want them or not. And that's sort of what the electoral college was supposed to do, but it's worked out in vastly different ways. Let's lighten it up for a second.

Tell me about privateering, because this is kind of a cool relic, and you made it a valiant attempt to become a pseudo-pirate, I guess you could call it. I don't know. Tell me what this is. Yes. Well, this is right there in the Constitution. What's amazing about the Constitution, it has these parts that are so inspiring and relevant, like the preamble about we the people. then you get to parts like Article 1, Section 8, where it says that Congress has the power to grant a letter of mark and reprisal. So I was like, what the hell is that? So I look it up. Turns out, like you say, it's basically legalized piracy. It is government-sanctioned piracy. So this was crucial in the Revolutionary War because we didn't have much of a Navy. So we needed private citizens. If you had a fishing boat, you go to Congress and you say, I want to put some

cannons on my fishing boat and go out and capture British ships. And they said, go for it. You get to keep the booty. You get to keep. And whatever it was, sherry, booze. It could have been booze. Wow. Could have been supplies or guns. And without that, without these legal pirates, the official word is privateers. They are privateers. And without them, we would not have won the Revolutionary War because they captured about 2,000 British ships. So this is in the Constitution. That's a lot. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, no, for that time. Wow. How long a period of time did it take them to capture 2,000 ships? That's an enormous amount of votes, period, even of any size.

You know, this was throughout the war for the whatever it was, the seven years of the war. That's crazy. Remember, these are not robots because they're not doing it off the coast of the U.K. of Britain. They're doing the south the coast of the United States. So these are ships of various commercial boats of all sizes. That is a lot of boats. Right. Some are whaling ships, some are, but they were going out there. They're sort of unsung heroes because they do have this sort of

sleazy reputation of being semi-pirates. So we don't have statues to privateers. But really, we wouldn't have had it without them. Naval mercenaries, basically. Yeah, it was naval mercenaries. Exactly. It was like, what is it? Blackwater? Blackwater. Yeah. But this is still in the Constitution. So my goal in the year of living constitutionally was to try to express the original meaning. So I'm like, we have not had a privateer since 1815,

but it's still in there. So I got a meeting with the congressman, Roe Kana from California, and I said, I would like to apply to be a privateer and do my patriotic duty. What I loved about him is he was super enthusiastic at the start. He's like, let's do it. Let's do it. Let's make this happen. But he didn't know what I was asking. He didn't know what a letter of Mark was. And then when I told him, he's like, oh, maybe that's not the best idea. So you're going to go to the Taiwan Straits. And I'm like, I'll do whatever you want. My friend has a fishing boat. I'll go out and do my patriotic dude. So I never did get it. He said he brought it up to his colleagues. And his assistant addresses me as captain, which is nice. But I have not officially become a privateer.

You know what the office talk was, like, he's got muskets. Should we just sort of slow play this guy until he gets medicated? Because we don't want him coming in here with those muskets. It might only be one shot every three minutes, but it takes a long time to evacuate our building. Clearly, you're the crazy guy who wanted to take over a ship, right? I mean, that's for sure. Because what ship were you thinking, hey, I'm going to go for it? I'm going to go down.

Taiwan's a little far. I mean, you could have gone to, like, Cuba or something like. that and taking one of those. No, there's a lot of places that we have conflicts. I was willing to experiment. I was willing. And he wasn't the only, I met with another congressman or senator. I met with Senator Ron Wyden from Oregon. Okay. Because I was expressing my rights to petition. So I had a petition in like parchment with quill pen, hundreds of signatures. And it was what we mentioned before, which was I wanted to revisit the idea of three presidents, which I don't really want to revisit, but I do want to bring up the idea that the president is too powerful. So Senator Wyden,

I came in with my tricorn and the whole deal. He was very nice. He said, you are injecting an aspect of common sense and logic into, which I'm not sure is true, but he did. He was very supportive. No, it's something you tell crazy people when you know they have guns. I think that's, he's going, security, security. Yeah. What is this guy doing? There was a safe word in that sentence somewhere, where is this just like pushing a button under the desk? Like, oh, he said the phrase, and then the guys with the earpieces are like running in from the hallway. That I never thought of, but you're probably right.

Yeah. He did, though. He does agree that the president is too powerful. We have a budding monarch. Yeah, it's back to some of these original ideas. You mentioned the phrase originalism shows up in the, or the word, originalism shows up in the book a lot. What is this? Because I see this in the news all the time, like, this justice is an originalist, and this argument is originalist. And my dissent is because this is too originalist in nature. What is this? Why is this showing up so much? And is this a bad idea? Is it a good idea? Well, there are two main ways of interpreting the Constitution to oversimplify. One is called originalism and one is called living constitutionalism.

originalism says that we should focus on the original meaning when it was ratified in 1791. That is the most important part. Now, living constitutionalists will say, no, the meaning has to evolve because life has evolved so much. So we have to take in to account the original meaning, yes, but also the consequences to society now. What was the purpose of the law? What has the Supreme Court ruled in the last 20 years? So those are the two balance. One is very focused on sort of a single criterion, and the others have a bunch of factors.

And I'll give you an example of how these differ because they have created very different rulings, because right now the Supreme Court is made up of six conservative justices, five of whom consider themselves originalists. in some way. And one of the most originalists is Clarence Thomas. So he would say, for instance, that the 14th Amendment, the 14th Amendment came after the Civil War and it guarantees equal protection to all. Now, when it was written, it was written after the Civil War and the people who wrote it and ratified it were talking about protecting black men because they were targeted after the Civil War. They were not thinking about women or gay people or gay marriage. That was just not in their mind. So according to Clarence Thomas, the 14th Amendment says nothing

about gay marriage and that we should have equal protection for gay people in marriage. It is a much narrower thing. So he has indicated he would overturn Obergefell, which is what when gay marriage was ruled to be a constitutional right. Now, the living constitutionalists, most, if not all, but most of which are more liberal, would say, no. When it said equal protection, yeah, it didn't mean that then, but now life has changed. Morals have evolved. So we have to evolve along with it. So now it does have to apply to women. It has to apply to gay people. It can yield very different results. Was free speech, for example, the same back then as it is now?

I feel like that's something that's probably changed quite a bit. So much. It is crazy. And what I learned talking to these free speech historians is that neither liberals nor conservatives would like the free speech from the 1790s. A lot of what we consider free speech came around in the 1940s and 50s. thanks, weirdly, to the Jehovah's Witnesses, who filed dozens of lawsuits to expand free speech.

But the original free speech was much narrower. So they believed you did have free speech up to a point. But you had to balance your rights against the common good. And the government could come in and say, well, that's sedition and that is threatening our common good. John Adams had a lot of sedition laws. they consider the federalists his party considered perfectly constitutional in fact one guy was thrown in jail for making an ass joke an arse joke he made an arse joke at the expense of john adam really yeah

they were having some ceremony where they shot off cannons and this guy cracked a joke he said well I wish one of those cannonballs would go up john adams arse and someone heard it reported him thrown in jail zinger it's not that the worst joke ever. Yeah, I feel like that's not a jailworthy. Now we're like, hmm, was breaking windows into the Capitol building and then trying to go and get these speakers and then climb through the, was that sedition? And meanwhile, this guy's like, up yours, man. And they're like, well, that's clearly sedition. You're going to prison. Now we have people that are like, hey, just because I went armed and killed a police officer doesn't mean I really wanted

to do sedition. That is such a great point. And can you imagine if they did like all of the late night hosts would be in jail. Like, you know, every stand-up comic. Well, I would also, all of us would be anybody who, with a personality of any kind would be in prison by now. That's right. Also, cursing. There were state laws against cursing. So you couldn't say, you know, the F word, the S word, or blaspheme. Wow. I tried that with my kids, because in New York at the time of the Constitution, it was 37.5 cents fine for every curse. So I said, my kids are teenagers. I'm like, this is good.

I'll clean them up. They, you know, being teenagers, they found the loophole. So they would curse and I'd say 37.5 cents. Oh, I don't have a half cent. Right. Why don't we wait until it's 75 cents? And then I would be 75. They would purposely curse again.

Why didn't you adjust for inflation? Well, that's a good point. Yeah, I did calculate it. I think it was 20 bucks. It was about 20 bucks. Yeah, that's a real incentive for a teenager unless they've got, I don't know what allowances are these days, but that's a hefty fine right there, 20 bucks. Yeah, you're right.

You're right. That was a weird part of my project because the founders did not believe in paper money. They were very against paper money. Really? They thought that it, I don't know what they would have thought of Bitcoin, but they certainly because they thought it was a way for people who borrowed money to cheat the lenders because of inflation, the paper money would become less valuable. And they were very concerned about the rich people lending money. Everything had to be tied to gold or silver. So for this, I got rid of all

of my paper money and credit cards and tried to buy things with gold and silver. I like bought gold over the internet. How did that go? Well, I was able to buy my colonial clothing with gold and silver. Shocking. Those guys except like Bitcoin and pure gold way down on a specific scale and that's it. Well, it was funny because the guy I called to buy gold from, he's like, oh yeah, you're doing it because, you know, the banks are closing and the end of the world. And I'm like, well, I'm actually trying to live like 1790.

I'm a kook, but I'm like a kind of different flavor than that. And he's like, oh, okay, look, this is just a business. I'm larping as somebody who thinks society's failing. And you're larping as a 1776 guy. Exactly. What happens when you go to a bodega and you're like, do you accept, and they're like, yeah, all the apps? And you're like, hold on, let me finish my sentence. Do you accept pure silver that's 97% pure?

and the guys are like, how would you even do that? Just because you're not meaning like you're paying all in quarters, right? You're talking about literal. No, no. I had a scale. I would bring a scale and I would bring like the little metal shards and I would offer it. I came close at the farmer's market. Some of the people were like, not yet, which I think meant we're about to have the apocalypse.

And as soon as that comes, come on back with your gold. Yeah. But until then, please pay with a mass. card. Yeah. Until then, yeah, just use tap. So what do you think the founding fathers would have thought about social media? I mean, you mentioned Ben Franklin getting his news twice a day, but surely he was having

conversations with people. Twice a week. Twice a week. Twice a week. Sorry. James Madison would have hated social media so much because it is a nightmare to him. Because what we talked about before, he was afraid of the mob. and he wanted this class of intellectuals, such as newspaper editors, to sort of filter the information

so that the politicians never had to talk directly to the people. So having people tweet at him and making arse jokes over Twitter would be his nightmare. And, yeah, I think, I mean, social media has its pros and cons, but I do think it has contributed to the political crisis. are in right now. Yeah. It is the whole enraged to engage model. And these guys were very skeptical of anger. George Washington had a huge temper, but he spent a lot of his life trying to control his temper because they believed that you needed to govern your passions in order to govern a country. So they were very into sort of the stoic. They read a lot of stoics about keeping their anger at bay. And there is

is a famous story of George Washington, which I think is true. It's not like the cherry tree one. Oh, that does, that's not true. I'm sorry. I don't want to, I don't want to burst your bubble. I cannot tell a lie, but I can throw a temper tantrum. Exactly. Yeah, I always thought it was ironic that the point of that story was don't tell lies, but the guy who came up with it was totally lying. So it seemed a little paradoxical. How do I make up a bullshit story about being truthful and not lying? Exactly. Parson Weems. That was the guy who came up with a biographer. But yeah, so in a very early election, George Washington was up against this other guy and the other guy lost his temper and hit George Washington with a hickory stick. And George Washington just left the scene. Then he sent word he wanted to meet this guy the next day. And the guy's like, oh, George Washington was big. Like he was a powerful guy. This guy was like, oh, man, he is just going to. kick my ass. Instead, George Washington came, extended his hand in friendship, and said, I forgive you, and I'm sorry that I offended you by what I said. So that, I mean, is Washington, as we said,

had a lot of flaws. But just that idea of controlling your anger and trying to rise above it, I mean, that, can you imagine a politician now doing that? They would like, they would go on MSNBC or Fox News and just rail against the other guy. That's for sure. But I think the question would be, why did that guy have a hickory stick on it? What is that? He just carries that around.

They love their walking sticks. Oh, yeah, that's true. I think one of the reasons that I'm asking about social media is, and maybe this is a better question, at what point does technology just advance so much that the same right doesn't apply in the same way? Because I was thinking to social media and free speech,

but for example, what some folks think about the Second Amendment, right? Maybe it made way more sense back then for everyone, quote unquote, to have a musket and know how to use it. Because who knows that we're fighting against the Native Americans and the Brits and maybe the French are going to cause some ruckus up there in Canada. Or maybe the government becomes tyrannical. It's totally new. It's a new government with new ideas. And we're not sure how this whole voting thing is going to work out. But maybe they didn't want high school kids and gang members in organized crime to have essentially unfettered access to semi-automatic hands.

And to be fair, I don't think anybody wants that. I don't think anybody wants criminals to have easy access to gun. Guns, I don't want to straw man the pro second amendment folks, because that happens a lot in these types of conversations. But it seems like when they were thinking, hey, we should make sure everybody has access to a musket. They weren't like, we got to make sure that criminal groups have easy access to guns just like normal sane people who aren't destined for prison. Yeah. Well, I love that question. And let me lay out the two sides because the gun control advocates would say just that. they would say. The technology is so outstripped the words in the Constitution that it's almost a coincidence that an AR-15 and a musket used the same word. It's almost like if you had a law that said that wheeled vehicles

can go down this lane and wheeled vehicles at the time were carts or bicycles, now you have Mac trucks. Are you going to allow those Mack trucks to smash into everything on the lane? So that is the side of the gun control. The gun rights would say, no, the technology is different, but the principle is the same. It's like, are you going to say the free speech only applies to wooden blocks and etchings? So those are the two sides. What I find interesting is I talk to some great Second Amendment scholars, and one of them, Saul Cornell, argues, both sides would not like the original meaning of the Second Amendment. So you can make arguments about gun control and whether it's good for the world.

But don't appeal to the Second Amendment because originally the Second Amendment, the liberals would not like or the gun control folks would not like how military life was. It was your duty. It was your civic duty to have a gun because you might be called up to be a minute man and fight for your country. So it was very military. If you were an adult male, you were required to be in the law. militia and show up every few months to train. Now, on the other side, the gun rights advocates would

not like how involved the government was. They did not see regulation as a negative. They would come to your house and inspect your guns to make sure they're working. Can you imagine? That would not fly. No. Right. Because now they're like, we don't even want gun owners to be on a list. And I remember talking with show fans about this because I was like, yeah, we should have a list. And they were like, Here's, I know you don't mean this in the, you know, some people were like super angry and other people emailed and they were like, hey, here's why this is a bad idea. I always prefer those kinds of emails instead of like, ah, you're a fascist, you prick. It's like, well, okay, clearly we disagree on something. But now they explain anytime you're on a list, it's so the government can come and

take your guns. And I'm, hey, look, that totally makes a lot of sense if you're thinking about this from a, the anti-tirity perspective. But it sounds like back then, it was like, not only are you on a list, you better show up on the weekend and take target practice. And then we're going to show you how to clean the thing and make sure that it's in working order. Yeah. This is not just floating around in your garage. It was your public duty. It was part of the government.

Yeah. Now, I will say, I love what you said about you prefer people not calling you an asshole. Yeah. But instead trying to. And that is one of the other big takeaways from the 18th century is that I believe that those founding fathers were much more open to changing their mind than we are. They were much more flexible in some ways. And I'll give you two examples. One, James Madison, father of the Constitution, his last words on planet Earth were

he was dying and made a weird face. His niece said, are you okay, uncle? And he said, oh, it's okay, I just changed my mind. And then he died. So we don't know. Did he change his mind about Congress? Did he change his mind about the wallpaper? Like what was, but up until the last moment he changed his mind.

And the second quick story is Ben Franklin in the Constitutional Convention. He got up and he said, the older I am, the less certain I am of my own opinions. He told this little story parable joke. He said, there was a French lady who said to her sister, why, it's so weird. I am the only person I've ever met who is right on every single issue. And his point was, we're all that French lady. We all have this cognitive bias that we think we're right. But like, what is the chances that me, A.J. Jacobs, I'm right on every single topic under the sun.

I'm the one in eight billion. Like two to one, three to one, somewhere in there. So I don't. Somewhere in there. I do think that they were much more flexible thinkers. And now we are so intransigent and refuse to consider any change despite the evidence. So that is something I think we need to recapture. I agree. That's partially because now it's a competitive sport. Back then, if Ben Franklin changed your mind about something or you changed his mind, it would be like, oh, fair play.

You made a really good set of points. My mind has changed. You'd probably like shake hands and have a beer. Now, I'll tell you, I changed my mind on a few things on the show. The show is largely about critical thinking, so I change my mind on things when I get new information. And I'll sometimes say that on the show. I'll be like, hey, you know, I used to think that the COVID-19 lab leak theory was like this weird fringe conspiracy theory.

And now there's a lot more evidence to back it up that didn't exist before. And instead of getting emails like, Bravo, that's good. Yeah, I've reconsidered some things. I get people going, ha, you're such a dumbass. I told you that a long time ago. Also, the alien people who inhabit bodies of President Biden and Anderson Cooper. And I'm like, oh, no, you're just a nut and you think you're right about everything. I don't get emails that are like, oh, yeah, you've come around.

You get people who are actually angrier that you've changed your mind because they were always right about it. And it's like, what? You're mad that I agree with you? This is unhinged. That is fascinating. But I totally get it. I mean, we need to make changing your mind virtue. Great again?

No? Oh, great. Good one. They're thinking like, ah, you're a flip-flopper. But it's like, well, yes, we should all aspire to be flip-floppers when we get new credible evidence about something. You know, I will say also the people who are most angry about it, they're also in the broken clock that's right twice a day camp because they weren't right about that because they had evidence that didn't exist before. They were right about that because they

believe in kooky fringe theories, which it was actually back then. They didn't have enough evidence to say. And now, you know, when you read more about lab leaks at labs all over the place and you look at these different, like now there's more credible evidence for that. Meanwhile, it was wrong, really, before, to think that. You had the result right, but your decision-making process was connecting dots that weren't there. It's not like you can replicate that and be right about other things. I love that. And I try to change my mind whenever I can't. I mean, and in this project, I changed my mind on several things. One of them was states. I never really got the idea of states. And I'm not alone. Alexander Hamilton in the Constitutional Convention was like,

shouldn't we just get rid of states? I mean, why should we have be two governments? Why it'll be confusing? People won't know who to obey. And so I always thought, because also states sometimes are very retrograde in the block civil rights legislation, for instance. Well, yeah. But on the other hand, there are very smart people who point out they're good laboratories.

Like you can come up with an idea, test it out on a state level, whether that's, you know, Obamacare started in Massachusetts. or gay marriage, and then if it works, then you can expand it. So there are advantages now, I see to states, but it's still a very weird system. Slavery! Not as fun as the fine products and services that support this show. We'll be right back. If you like this episode of the show, I invite you to do what are their smart and

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I am more than happy to surface that code for you. Yes, it is that important that you support those who support the show. Now for the rest of my conversation with AJ Jacobs. Now we're getting down a path that we probably don't want to go down, which is what stuff should actually

still be states rights and what stuff shouldn't be. But I'm not qualified for that, and I don't want to piss off half of the listenership by getting it wrong because I'm doing a knee jerk. This should be states, right, so this shouldn't. It's like, I'm just going to shoot myself in both feet if I do that. Tell me about the candles that smelled like ours. What's going on here?

Your poor wife, by the way, must have been so annoyed by all these shenanigans. Well, the original, the fancy people at that time used spermaceti asetti candles, which is not sperm. It's actually, it's weirdly that it's called spermaceti. It's something weird in their brain cavity, some waxy substance. It sounds like sperm and confetti mixed together, which is not, nobody wants that. Well, some people, some people might. Yeah, that's true.

Not nobody. Not literally nobody. So those didn't smell at all, but there are problems with getting whale spermaceti candles now. But so the next level is beef tallow candles, which are available on Etsy. Those were the ones that were sort of the cheapest, the ones you would buy at Costco. but they smell. They smell like meatloaf.

So they made the whole apartment stink. So then I had to upgrade to beeswax candles, which don't smell as bad but are more expensive. So that is my tale of candles. You live in an apartment. Your neighbors must have been like, what are you on one of those carnivore diets? You mind opening a window in January?

Exactly. That is right. Yeah, I know. It is hard to live in the 1790s in an apartment. First of all, you realize things to be grateful for that you never were grateful for. Like elastic. I will never take elastic for granted again because my socks, I wore these 1790 socks that had no elastic so they would like fall down and puddle around my ankle. You had to put on every morning.

I had to put on little sock belts, you know, not even garters. Garters are too fast. Suspenders. They were little belts. Like they looked like smurf-sized belts, and you'd have to strap them on top of your socks every day. And the kitchen, there was no sink in the kitchen in the 1790s. They'd have to go and schlep the water from the, so I tried to replicate that by schlepping the water from my farthest bathroom, which was not the same. You know, it is not the same.

But you realize that life has gotten better in some ways, that we really. Let's be grateful for elastic. Let's be grateful for antibiotics. Let's be grateful that we don't have to have tobacco enemas, which was a very popular way to cure all sorts of ailments. They would literally blow smoke up your ass. That is what a tobacco enema is. And it's very popular. Is that where that expression comes from?

Because it has to be. I have spent way too much time trying to research whether that is. And it is still undetermined to me. It might have come from that. It might have come from something. But it is literally blowing smoke up your ass. Wow. They had like a little bellows, like a little squeeze box on a hose, and they would go,

shoot, shoot, shoot. And then the smoke would go up your butt. I'm not even going to say the thing that came across my mind. While you're schlepping water back and forth and you're wearing a tricorn hat and your apartment smells like ours, did your kids just entirely stop having friends over to the house at that point? Yeah, they are, you know, they put up with a lot. Some parts they liked, some parts they liked. One of them, when I joined the Revolutionary War reenactors and actually went out onto the field with my musket and died for my country, by the way, I died. One of them went, and he kind of looked like a cast member of Hamilton. They gave him a cool hat. And so he liked that. But yeah, there were challenges. The other challenge was, if you, Antoninz Scalia, who's sort of one of the founders of

originalism, he argued, you know the phrase cruel and unusual punishments. Sure. That is a famous, you know, the Eighth Amendment says we cannot use cruel and unusual punishment. But that's a good example of what did that mean? What does that mean now? What did it mean then? Back then, you could do a lot. You could, flogging was not considered cruel. Branding was not considered cruel. And the pillory was very popular. This is the wooden thing. You put your hands and your head in. Antonin Scalia himself said, if you are a hardcore

originalist, then you should accept the fact that a pillory is not cruel and unusual even today because it was not cruel and unusual in 1791. And I thought I should at least investigate this. So I went on Etsy and you can get pillories. Now they, it's more for, yeah, exactly. Yeah, comes to the paddle. I don't want a kink shame. Well, weirdly, they also, they said, do you want padding around the neck? And I was like, if I'm getting a pillory, like that seems counter to the, you don't want like a comfortable pillory. But I bought it and I consider it, should I punish my kids and say you can either have a day without Wi-Fi or you can do five minutes in the pillory. I could not bring myself to do that.

And in fact, the only one I could put in the pillory was myself just to see what it was like. Yeah. But I did not want my kids around because I knew that they would just leave me in there. Well, yeah. And so I did have my wife there to let me out. But she also took advantage and was like, I'll let you out if you promise to fold your sweaters, that kind of thing. Right.

So it was not a successful. What you don't want is your kids walking in on you and the pillory in your wife standing there over you. Because that's something that they, first of all, they're never going to believe the reason that you were in there and they're never going to unsee that. And it's just going to be something that you have to explain. Well, hopefully never, but it's just going to be an awkward, yeah, awkward forever. And I said no photos. There are no photos that exist. Yeah, no photos.

That's one of those things that happened. Yeah, well, I'm not even going to go into that. There's so many roads we could go down there. Let's change the subject. Voting used to be a party where people would have parades, farmers markets, they would get liquored up. I think we should bring that back. Because the only way I can stand going to a farmer's market

is if I've had a couple of shots. Well, I am 100% with you. That is one of the other big takeaways is when voting started, at least for the privileged few who could vote, they were awestruck by how exciting it was. I mean, no one had ever voted for their own leaders. So it was a party.

It was like, yeah, Farmers Market, it was Coch. It wasn't quite Coachella. I wouldn't say that. It was festive. And you had election cakes and you had rum punch. These cakes, sometimes they were huge. They were 70 pounds and people would bring them to the polls and it would be a big party. My contention is we need to recapture that.

We need to get back that joy. So I started this movement during my year, and I got hundreds of people to bake election cakes and bring them to work or to the polls. And it was so lovely. It was one of my favorite parts because people are so depressed, including me, about the state of politics. So doing this one small positive thing, even if it's just baking a cake, it's like a foot in the door. It's like a little glimpse of optimism. And people were so psyched, I'm going to do it again in November.

So I want thousands of people to bake these election cakes to remind us the catchphrase, democracy is sweet. So let's try to keep it. And let's bake the cakes. The original recipe is kind of gross. It's got cloves and figs. So I didn't make people do that. But people were creative. In Georgia, they had a peach cake.

And, you know, Michigan apparently has cherry. Cherry cake. Yeah, that makes sense. And there are studies that say if you make, more festive, then people will come out to vote. So it's not a small thing. I mean, it is a small thing, but it is an important thing. It's actually a really good idea. Yeah, let's do it. In Australia, they have the democracy sausage, it's called. They like barbecue at, so let's do it. Let's make democracy fun again. You just don't want to see how that sausage is made, am I right?

And party like at 1799. Now it's interesting. You see like, oh, you can't even give out water in the 100 degree heat in Arizona or whatever state of, it. was maybe it was Georgia for people who are standing in line to vote. And back then, it's like, no, we're giving out shots of whiskey. That's what's happening. This is, oh, yeah. We're going to make sure you're, you can barely see the ballot when you get by the time you get in there. Exactly. Like, there is a list of the liquor that George Washington bought for voters in a very early Virginia election. And it is a stand. They would make like a fraternity be like, whoa, that's a little much. Yeah, take it easy, buddy. Yeah. Yeah. My gosh.

The book's interesting. You asked a soldier to quarter in your home that was sort of, you know, less of a, it didn't sound nearly as awkward as it probably was. The Supreme Court wasn't as powerful as it is now. Women had very few rights back then. There's all this romantic paternalism in something called the coverage system and women couldn't own property or run for office or bartend, which was kind of interesting. I just thought like these things you learned during your experiment here were quite interesting. But in the time we have left, I really want to hear more about. the muskets. So you got a couple muskets. You showed them off here on the video to remind everyone again, you are in Manhattan. So how does one go and buy a musket? Is this a mail order thing, or is there like a gun show for antique guns in New York? Well, a little of both. I went, I got my first one on Ye Old Internet, and it was a big gun store in Texas that sells actual guns from the 1790s. So the first one I bought was actually used in the War of 1812. Wow. Which is amazing. I mean, it is a piece of history.

Yeah. So that was fine for reenactments where you don't actually shoot the little lead balls. But I wanted to go to a firing range with my reenactor friends and actually shoot little posters of redcoats. So I had to get another musket, which my wife was not happy about. That was a replica. So this one was made like 20 years ago, but it actually has the exact same look and machinery of one from the 18th century. and that was the one I took out to the shooting range. The other one I actually was the one I carried around New York, which was weird because you had all of these mixed reactions. You had people who would cross the street to avoid you.

Yeah. It did come in handy once, which was I'm walking along and I go to my morning coffee shop with my musket on my shoulder. And this other guy arrived at the same time, and he's like, you go for you. first. I'm not going to fight you on who goes first in line. Right. Because you are carrying a musket. You are armed. And I was like, oh, all right, well, I can see how it can come in handy. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Going to the actual range was fascinating because you had to, like we said earlier, there are 17 steps to actually fire. It's like building an IKEA table. Like, it is a process.

You have parts left over and you're like, I hope these weren't that important. And my wife still complains. She's like, it's dangerous to have it in the house. I'm like, there is no way, even if I had the lead ball, that I could remember all the steps and figure out how to shoot it. It is too complicated. So I think we're safe. Yeah, that's a weapon. You don't have to worry about being used against you in those situations.

It's like, there's all those stats. Like, guns are more likely to be used against you. And it's like, by the time someone has gotten that and figured out how to use it and then they fire and it's like accurate to. within 17 feet at 20 feet or whatever the range is on those things. It's like, I don't think we have to worry about that. How loud is it, though? That's, do the hardcore war reenactment guys, they fire these things, right? But do they wear ear protection when they do it? Yes, which is not so authentic, but a lot of them do wear ear protection. I will say it can be dangerous. When I went to go fight in this one battle in New Jersey, one guy, one of my fellow soldiers, put too

much gunpowder in the barrel and it exploded in his face and he had to go to the hospital. So yeah, you do have to be careful. It is still a gun and it is still loud and it still kicks back. But it is also, it's very not an accurate gun. No. Because the bullet comes out, the ball comes out at weird angles because it's not a rifle, a rifle where it spins and this one is more it's bouncing along like a Like in a bowling alley when you have the gutters up, it just bounces back and forth in the barrel, and then it'll shoot out wherever you want. So I was a terrible shot, but I was able to console myself by saying, well, that's authentic. They were terrible shots back then, which is why they lined up. That is the craziest way to fight a war.

They would line up and all be in a line because they had such bad aim. The downside was when the other guy was shooting, they were just a wall of flesh. Right. It was a horrible way to. And then you get a ball lodged in you at low speed. I mean, all war is terrible. Yeah. My God.

So what were some of your main takeaways from your year of living constitutionally? You mentioned slow news. I know in the book you say you talk about embracing virtue. What are we talking about with this? Well, that one I love because they were very. Very, nowadays virtue, that word, it sort of has a, you know, virtue signaling. Oh, you're just being pretentious. You're asking where the honey, were the bees treated nicely when they made this honey for my pancakes. But then virtue was a huge deal. The word virtue is mentioned more often than the word freedom in the letters of the founding fathers. And the idea of virtue at the time was self-sacrifice. It was thinking of the common good, thinking of the the community. And whether that was being on the bucket brigade, like everyone was a firefighter, if you would have to go and put out fires, or it was joining the militia and fighting for your

community that way, everyone thought their individual rights were important, but they also thought of their responsibilities. They were very concerned about what can I do to help others. and that I love. I mean, again, the virtue at that time was very constrained because it was only for a part of society. But I do love the idea of trying to, I wish that the Constitution had a bill of responsibilities in addition to a bill of rights. But they just assumed that the responsibilities everyone knew that you were supposed to think of others. And I don't want to go back to militias, but I do think, what if everyone had to, like in some countries, you have to spend a month doing AmeriCorps or something to bind our society together? Because we don't have a glue right now, and it is abundantly and scarily clear that we are splitting in two. And we need some sort of glue.

And I think that this idea of virtue is one way to go about it. So that was a big takeaway, yeah. Are you optimistic about where America said? I mean, you seem like a generally optimistic guy, but I don't know. You also just said it seems like we're splitting in two, so I'm not sure how to reconcile that. I am optimistic with an asterisk, I would say. And actually, can I just tell the quick story of in the constitutional convention, George Washington was sat in this big wooden chair, and there was a carving on the back of the chair,

and it was of the sun, but it was only half the sun. like you could only see the half above the horizon. So you don't know. Is it rising? Is the sun rising or is the sun setting? And Ben Franklin said he thought about it throughout the whole convention at the end. When they finally made a constitution against all odds, Ben Franklin said,

Now I know the sun is rising on America, not setting. So I loved that as a metaphor. Is the sun still rising on America? Because it seems sometimes like it's setting. And my conclusion at the end of this was it's up to us. It's not like a natural force like gravity. We are the ones who are going to decide whether the sun rises or sets. I mean, I feel that we can make democracy work, but we have to have reforms and we have to get in there. We have to bake cakes for starters, but that's just the start. We have to work on gerrymandering. We have to work on reforming the Supreme Court, all of these things. But we can save it. I mean, they had a much harder row to hoe than we do back then. Like, the odds were stacked even more against them. So things are looking somewhat bleak now, but with hard work, I believe we can save our democracy.

But we have to do it. We have to be the ones who lift the sun up. How glad is your wife that you are done with the beef candles and the schlepping of water? And maybe soon the tricorn hat. The muskets might be on eBay at some point. I mean, she must be somewhat relieved. She is quite relieved. This was not great, but I think the Bible one was worse, because as you mentioned, there was the beard.

And like you said, that women who are menstruating are considered impure. And if they sit in a seat, then the seat becomes impure. She found that offensive. So she sat in every seat in our apartment. So I had to stand for pretty much most of the year. Wow. So that, I think, was even more of a challenge for her. So what's the next zany idea?

Can you give us a sneak preview of what you're going to do next? Do you not know? I love ideas from readers. So I do have, I'm starting a substack called Experimental Living. So I want people to come in and, I mean, the ideas that I get, I've done a couple. One that seems popular is that people say I should become the greatest lover and do all the positions in the Kama Sutra. And I did bring that up to my wife, Julie, and she's like, absolutely not. That is to...

Wow. Yeah. So, first of all, we know that you're the one that puts that in their entry. Hey, some random person sent this in, honey. What do you think about that? Honestly, no. All right. I don't think I have the back flexibility to do it.

So I leave it to someone younger. So leave it to the next generation. Wow. Cringe. I know. My last book was about puzzles. So I have a podcast about puzzles. So I'm working on that.

That's a daily podcast. cast. The puzzle pod. Wow. The puzzler with AJ Jacobs. That's a commitment daily. That's tough, man. That's a tough cast. Heavy lifting. It's only eight to ten minutes. So at least it's that. Still. It's not like yours. Getting on like every day. Well, is anything quite like the Jordan Harbinger show? I don't know. Exactly. AJ, thank you very much, man. Like I said, you're one of my favorite weirdos. So I always enjoy these conversations. Well, I loved it. You are my favorite. You're still weird. You're still somewhat weird. Oh, yeah. So I can say that, a quasi-weirdo. Well, it was a joy, and thank you again for having me on. I've got some thoughts on this episode, but before I get into that, here's what

you should check out next on the Jordan Harbinger Show. What I tried to do was thank a thousand people who had even the smallest role in making my cup of coffee possible. And a thousand years ago, oh, that's not a lot. It's a lot. Oh, my God, it was a lot. A hundred people would be a tedious No, it was way more than I anticipated. Ten times that many. Everything we do requires hundreds, thousands of interconnected people and that we take for granted. And just making this mental switch, just from a selfish point of view, is very good, because it really does help you appreciate the hundreds of things that go right every day

instead of focusing on the three or four that go wrong. There's a great quote, I wish I'd come up with it myself, but it says, it's easier to act your way into a new way of thinking than to think your way into a new way of acting. So I had to fake it for a long time. You know, I would wake up in a grumpy mood, but I'd be like, I have to spend an hour calling or visiting people and thanking them. And I'm not in the mood to do that. No. So it was like acting.

It was like method acting. And I would force myself to do it. But I'll tell you, by the end of that hour, your mind, you know, the cognitive dissonance is too. much, your mind will switch over to gratefulness. There's a great quote that happiness does not lead to gratitude. Gratitude leads to happiness. Having that mindset really will make you happier. For more with AJ Jacobs and his fascinating journey to thank everyone involved in his cup of morning coffee and an inside look at just how complex the supply chain of our lives really is, check out episode 174 of the Jordan Harbinger Show. So I realized we weren't clear about the candle thing,

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

and they were stinky, they dripped everywhere. I mean, can you imagine living with this guy during this? It must have been just patently ridiculous. I can imagine his kids being like, oh, God, dad's writing again because the whole house he said smells like beef stroganoff slash I think he said ass but whatever um it might seem like he's pretty committed to the bit until you hear about some of the revolutionary war reenactment folks that he was around they would count stitches and they would march barefoot and they would not use

hearing protection so a lot of them couldn't hear well because they were firing muskets with no hearing protection that's a little bit too hardcore for me no thank you i found it interesting that no official religion, you know, the United States we have no official religion, that's a federal thing only. States are allowed to have an official religion. I actually had no idea. I should probably stop talking about this. We don't want to give people any ideas. The big lesson here is there's nothing natural about democracy. It is fragile. It must be maintained. There's a rise of authoritarianism around the world that's very sad to see. I don't think we're going quite that way. My optimism still stands, but we really do have to protect our institutions. I thought this was an enlightening episode

because he really does get into the history and the nitty-gritty about things. You can see how this document has evolved. How some people want it to evolve more, others don't want it to evolve at all. It's really kind of an interesting culture war. And I think at the end of the day, we need to remember that we are Americans. We stand for American values, and we need to circle the wagons around what that means. Or we might just lose our way, and that would be tragic. All things AJ Jacobs will be in the show notes at Jordan Harbinger.com. Advertisers, deals, discount, and ways to support the show, all at Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show.

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