The One You Feed - Exploring the Wisdom and Virtues of Our Founding Fathers with A.J. Jacobs

Episode Date: May 7, 2024

In this episode, A.J. Jacobs sets out on a journey of “living constitutionally” for a year! With a unique blend of humor and curiosity, A.J. and Eric dive into a discussion and exploration of the Constitution that offers many thought-provoking ideas to deepen the understanding of its historical significance and relevance in contemporary society. In this episode, you will be able to: Discover the historical significance of Election Day and its impact on our democracy Explore the overlooked modern conveniences that can shed light on the conveniences we take for granted today Uncover the timeless virtues embodied by the Founding Fathers and their relevance to our understanding of the Constitution. Dive into the intriguing world of 18th-century traditions and their relevance in today’s context To learn more, click here!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I think as a society, we should reward people who say, I was wrong, instead of saying, oh, you're a flip-flopper, oh, you have a spine. No, the true courage, the true vulnerability is saying, you know, I was wrong about that. I've grown, I've changed, I've evolved. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear.

We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction. How they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast

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Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this show is A.J. Jacobs, a journalist, lecturer, and human guinea pig who has written four bestselling books, including the much loved The Year of Living Biblically. He blends memoir, science, humor, and a dash of self-help. A.J. is a contributor to NPR, The New York Times, and Esquire, among other media outlets. Today, A.J. and Eric discuss his book, The Year of Living Constitutionally, one man's humble quest to follow the Constitution's original meaning. Hi, A.J., welcome back.

I am so happy to be back. If anybody is watching this, they are going to immediately notice that we are in person, which is a good thing. They're going to notice some other odd things. We are both wearing tricorn hats. Very true. We have pewter mugs. We have goose. They are goose. Yes. quills to write with. And the reason we're doing that is because you have a new book called The Year of Living Constitutionally, One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Constitution's Original Meaning. And so in addition to exploring the Constitution and what it means and how it's interpreted, you also attempted to live as if you were living in 1790, hence

the props that we have here. Exactly. And you are a great sport for wearing the tricorn hat. I think you look very handsome. I think you look terrific. So I was sort of leaning towards powdered wigs. Do they wear powdered wigs then? Oh, yeah.

And I do have one, but I thought that might be a bridge too far. Bridge too far. Yeah, I don't know. So, welcome back. Great to be here. And we'll get into the book in a minute, but we'll start like we always do with the parable. In the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild, and they say, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle.

One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops, thinks about it for a second, and looks up at their grandparent and says, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like to ask what that means to you in your life and in the latest work that you've done here. Well, as you know, I love the parable. And last time I was on, I talked about how it related to gratitude for me and how you can feed the good wolf by focusing on the hundreds of things that went right every day. Like I pressed the elevator button and the elevator came and I got in and I got out.

We got getting out to the important part there. Like, really? I mean, that's the part I'm grateful for. That is right. Yes. There was no, it didn't plummet and break my collarbone. So, yeah. But this time I wanted to do something different.

So I thought about the words and I drilled down on the word feed. about the words and I drilled down on the word feed. And it made me think of words like news feed and information diet. And I was like, maybe there's something there. Because what we feed our brain is then fed to the good or the bad wolf. And there is a lot of bad food out there information-wise. I mean, there's a lot of junk food on social media, in the news. And if I choose to do that, if I choose to click on, oh, look, there's someone throwing chairs at McDonald's, you know, that feels good in the moment, like junk food does, like a Twinkie does. Feels good going down, but in the long term, it's toxic. So I really try to make a choice in my information diet to have more good information than bad. And you can do that by, first of all, reading books.

A little self-serving, but I do think books are good. And they go deeper on a topic. They give you more perspective. I also feel when I read something, I don't want to be totally out of the news cycle. I want to know what's going on. But if I read something negative, the news has a I want to know what's going on. But if I read something negative, the news has a very negative bias because it's much more interesting. Layoffs are more interesting than hires, for instance. So I try to be aware of the negative bias. So if I read an article,

I did this just last week, I read an article about homelessness and how prevalent it is. And then I googled solutions to homelessness. And I read all of these articles and studies about how are people addressing this? Because the media often lays out the problem and forgets to talk about possible solutions. So that is feeding my good wolf, reading about the solutions and reading about the problems is feeding my bad wolf. So something I'm going to be doing a little more often is ask you, the listener, to reflect on what you're hearing. We strongly believe that knowledge is power, but only if combined with action and integration. So before we move on, I'd like to ask you, what's coming up for you as you listen

to this? Are there any things you're currently doing that are feeding your bad wolf that might make sense to remove? Or any things you could do to feed your good wolf that you're not currently doing? So if you have the headspace for it, I'd love if you could just pause for a second and ask yourself, what's one thing I could do today or tonight to feed my good wolf? Whatever your thing is, a really useful strategy can be having something external, a prompt or a friend or a tool that regularly nudges you back towards awareness and intentionality. For the past year, I've been sending little good wolf reminders to some of my friends and community members. Just quick little SMS messages two times per week that give them a little bit of wisdom and remind them to pause for a second and

come off autopilot. If you want, I can send them to you too. I do it totally for free and people seem to really love them. Just drop your information at oneufeed.net slash SMS and I can send them to you. It's totally free and if you end up not liking the little reminders, you can easily opt out. That's OneYouFeed.net slash SMS, and now back to the episode. As another way of relating to the news as part of this book, you, I believe, spent a fair amount of time reading newspapers from 1790, would that be correct? 1789? Absolutely, yeah. Ben Franklin's newspaper in Philadelphia. Yeah? What sort of fun things did you find? Well, it was fascinating because, first of all, it relates to what we were just talking about. Newspapers only came out twice a week,

so you did not have the 16-hour fire hose of negative stories in your face. It allowed you to process it and have some distance. One part I loved about reading these newspapers from the 1790s was seeing all of the things I totally take for granted that did not exist. So there was an article about this crazy new idea that they should put numbers on the houses in Philadelphia. So that you wouldn't have to say, oh, you go down that street and make a left at the big manure pile and then that's the big blue house. You could say, oh, it's 787 Washington Street. That's amazing that when things like that are invented, you're always like, how did it take that long for anybody to think of that? Right. And I just would never have even

thought that this was something to be grateful for. Yeah. This was not reading, but I also became very grateful for Elastic because as you can see, I tried to dress the part. Part of what I do as a writer is I really get into the lifestyle and try to get into the mindset of the founding father. So I would wear my buckled shoes and my stockings. And if you wear real stockings made in the style of the 1790s, there's no elastic. So they slip down your leg. You have to put on little tiny belts. They're not even garters. They didn't even have garters. They're these little belts.

The amount of time that I spent putting on sock belts and adjusting my socks, you know, I'll never get that time back. So it made me very grateful for elastic, which I had never given much thought to before. Me neither. But I can see the obvious upside to it. Yeah. Literal upside. Yeah. Yeah. It is amazing how we do take so many of the modern conveniences for granted. I think we all know that that's sort of a common thing to say, but I think I love what you're doing because you're sort of taking those away from yourself for a period of time.

And that is one of the ways that psychologists will talk about sort of getting out of that habituation loop where you just take everything for granted as you take whatever it is away for a little while. And you suddenly have a whole new appreciation for it. Right. It's sort of like Lent. I'm not Catholic myself, but I think that is a nice idea. Or like the Sabbath and just taking a rest and taking yourself away so you appreciate the things. Like, it was a very fair and balanced book that allowed me to see the different constitutional arguments really with very little bias on your part. And I really appreciated that.

Like, I just don't think that I get that many opportunities in modern day society to hear both sides of an argument laid out really sort of eloquently. Mostly what I hear is the opponent's argument laid out in sort of a straw man character way. So we can just tear it down. Yeah. But you resisted that temptation. Well, thank you. That is lovely to hear. Have you ever heard of the opposite of a straw man is a steel man?

So like the metal steel and that's people I disagree with. I try to present their argument in the steel man case, because otherwise, we're never going to get anywhere. We're never going to actually figure out what we can do to agree and move forward. So thank you. I am delighted to hear that. I will say, just to back up, this book is a semi-sequel to a book I wrote many years ago called The Year of Living Biblically. And that book was similar in that I tried to understand the Bible by following all the rules. So the Ten Commandments, but also the obscure rules like I couldn't shave the corners of my beard. I didn't know where the corners were. So the whole thing, I just looked looked like zz top to use a

very old reference and also uh yeah stoning adulterers so all right we gotta pause on stoning adulterers i heard you just mention that in passing that you were attempting to stone an adulterer in central park with really small stones right Is that accurate? That is 100%. So how did you identify said adulterer? Well, good question. As with this book, I was very much getting into it. So I had the robe, I had the sandals, I had my beard. And a guy came up to me and he said, in Central Park, he said, what's going on? Why do you look like that? And I said, well, I'm trying to do this experiment where I follow all the rules of the Bible from the Ten Commandments to stoning adulterers. And he said, well, I'm an adulterer. Are you going to stone me? And I said, that would

be wonderful. Thank you. What a nice offer. And as you mentioned, I had been carrying around stones, very small, pebble size, in my pocket, hoping I would run into an adulterer. So here he was. I took the stones out to show him that they were small. And he was very aggressive. He grabbed the stones and threw them at my face. So I thought, yes, thank you for that look of disbelief. Yeah, he was. So I thought I could throw one back at him, sort of an eye for an eye situation. So part of the book was to show that we should not take the Bible literally, that there's lots of wisdom in the Bible. And I feel this Constitution book was similar. And then I wanted to show the good and the bad.

I wanted to show there is so much wisdom in the Constitution. And then there are parts that are 230 years old that need some updating. So I tried to be, as you say, as balanced as possible. Yeah. And we're not really a show that goes into things like the Constitution a whole lot. So I think we're going to focus more on the wisdom that perhaps some of the founding fathers had. But there is one aspect that I wanted to talk about. And I was really intrigued by the idea of constitutional rights versus constitutional virtues. Can you just sort of share what that means and how it applies when we look at how we interpret the Constitution?

and how it applies when we look at how we interpret the Constitution? Absolutely. That was one of my favorite areas. And I think that is very relevant to this show, because the Constitution, as you know, has a bill of rights, the most famous ones about freedom of speech, right to bear arms, and all the others. But at the same time, back then, there was a lot of stress on virtue and responsibility and duty to your community, to your country, to your family. No one wrote a bill of responsibilities into the Constitution. into the Constitution. But that was just because it was so ingrained and so assumed that you would contribute to your community, that you would self-sacrifice, that you would sacrifice your own time and energy for the common good. It was also biblical, love your neighbor. So I think that that is something that we are missing today because rightly there is a lot of emphasis on our individual rights, which are so important.

But I think we've lost a little sense of that. Along with rights come responsibilities. Yeah, you talk about freedom of speech, right? We tend to think freedom of speech means we can say whatever, whenever, anytime. freedom of speech means we can say whatever, whenever, anytime, but that's not exactly how it was imagined and even implemented in the early days. Say a little more about that. Yeah, freedom of speech was much more constrained in the founding era. I don't want to go back to the founding era in that case, because it wasn't like Stalinist Russia, but it was much more constrained. You had laws in many states that were considered

constitutional that were blasphemy laws or laws against cursing. In New York in the late 1700s, you would be charged 37 and a half cents for every time you cursed or said the word damn. I tried to institute that with my family. I have teenage sons and I was like, this is a good idea to try to get them to clean up their language. It didn't work out great because they found this loophole. Oh, we don't have half a cent. So we'll just wait until it's 75 cents. And then it got to 75 cents and then they would curse again. Or half a cent. Right. So they found the loophole. But there was much more of a sense that rights are not absolute trump cards.

They talk about the social contract. When you are part of society, you are part of the social contract. And part of that is thinking about other people and not focusing solely on your rights, but also how it affects others. Yeah. And that's kind of what struck me in reading the book was that idea that in addition to the focus on the rights, as you said, there was the interpretation of these things through the common good. And, you know, it seems that with strict adherence to the constitution, And, you know, it seems that with strict adherence to the Constitution, that latter element is often left out. I think so. I think so. And it's been brought up throughout history.

I mean, that was John F. Kennedy's speech, his inauguration speech, I believe, where he said, ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country can do for you. I got it exactly backwards. Yes. Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. You could substitute community. You could substitute whatever, the world or people for that. But I think that idea has been lost a lot and we need to reclaim it. And I'm not saying I'm a perfect citizen at all, but it is something when I'm making decisions, that is something I try to consider. And in fact, Ben Franklin, my favorite of the founding fathers, he was sort of the first

self-help author. So he like spawned you and me. And he had a sample of his daily schedule. And when he woke up, the first thing he did was to ask himself, what good shall I do today? So it wasn't like, what can I accomplish for myself? It was like, what can I do for others today? And then at the end of the day, he would say, what good did I accomplish today? What can I do better? I love that. I wrote it out with my little quill pen and put it over my desk as sort of a moral compass to like, what good can I do today? And

when I get frustrated, like that editor rejected my article, I'm outraged. I'm like, you know what, that is not the main goal. I should be focusing on like getting into every magazine. No, I should be like, what good can I do today? Yeah. When I originally got sober in 12 step programs, that is a hugely emphasized part of recovery is what can you do for the alcoholic who's still suffering? Oh, I love that. And that translates into little things like, you know, washing coffee cups or making the coffee, being the person who shows up early to open the meeting all the way to, you know, showing up for people who need it, you know, but it's baked in and it's foundational. And early on, I lived that better than I've ever lived it since. Interesting. And I was probably happier in many ways than living out of that, like being the

central question of every day, right? How can I serve others, right? As an orientation really changes things. And early on, I had nothing else in my life except recovery, right? I had burned it all to the ground. So it was pretty easy to be like, well, if I'm going to orient around something, you know, I don't have a job, I'll just go to meetings all day. Like it was a different life then, right? But I sometimes look back on it and I'm like, I could move more in that direction. And it would be a positive. I love that. And I think what you said is, it's a delightful coincidence, whatever it is, that when you are serving others, that is a path to happiness. Yes.

And in fact, the constitutional scholar Jeff Rosen, who's head of the National Constitution Center, he talks about the mindset of the founding fathers was there's the famous phrase pursuit of happiness. But back then, the pursuit of happiness was not sort of this hedonistic approach. The pursuit of happiness wasn't about feeling good. It was about doing good. And by doing good, you start to feel good. Yep. One of my favorite phrases that I've used a thousand times on this show. Well, I couldn't have used it a thousand times because we only have 700 episodes. There's some exaggeration. Sometimes you can't think your way into right action. You have to act your way into right thinking, right?

That's the exact same thing. It's by doing good, you actually feel good. And you talk about that behavior changes emotion. You and I both love that quote so much. I think about it all the time. Right. And if I'm feeling depressed, I try to act like what would a happy person do? If I'm feeling pessimistic, what would an optimistic person do? And your mind catches up with your actions, with your behavior. Yeah. You talk about in the book, your own attempt to not swear.

Oh, yes. And, you know, using funny words instead of the swear words, it changed you. funny words instead of the swear words, it changed you. Right. Yeah. So I would use instead of the F word, I would say fudge. And my wife would make fun of me and said, you know, what are you? This is the Andy Griffith show.

What's going on? But it did have, like we talked about, the behavior actually changes the mind. Because I would say that word out loud and I would hear myself say it. And I'd be like, that is so ridiculous. But it took me away from that momentary anger. Yeah. And I think that was very helpful. So Ben Franklin, I want to see how much is the Ben Franklin quiz. No.

But I've often heard of Ben Franklin. I think he had his, was it 13 virtues? Right. And talk to me about how he cultivated those. Did he work on one at a time? Like what was his method of cultivating those virtues? I knew this at one point and I can't remember whether he did it like week by week. I will say I'm going to pivot. Pivot, yep. Because, and it's actually a very appropriate pivot, Pivot, yep. and say, you know what? I don't know. He, during the Constitutional Convention, said that the older he gets, the less certain he is of his own opinions. And he also told this great story at

the convention. He said, it was sort of like a joke. He said, there's a tale of the French lady and she tells her sister, why is it? It's so strange that I have never met anyone except for myself who is right in every instance. And his point was, we are all that French lady. We all think that we are right. And he was saying, have some epistemic humility and be okay with learning and change. It's a good pivot. That's a good pivot. Thank you. It's a good pivot.

And I will say one, I just want to add, that is one of my favorite pieces of wisdom from the 18th century is this idea that they were, I feel, more flexible in their thinking. Yeah. We are so intransigent and dug into our opinions and nothing can sway us. They were much more open. And you read the Constitutional Convention. There were ideas flying around. There was three presidents was very popular for a while.

And James Madison was famous for changing his mind. And it's not a negative. It's a positive to evolve. And his last words, according to lore, at least, his last words on his deathbed, where he made a face and his niece said, what's going on? And he said, oh, I just changed my mind.

And then he died. It could be about the bicameral legislature. It could be about soup. Who knows what he changed? It could be about the bicameral legislature. It could be about soup. Who knows what he changed? It could be about the nature of reality. That's it. He saw something at the last second of his life. Exactly.

Yeah. I love that story. I'm glad you brought that up. And I agree. I think being able to reflect on where we're wrong. Right. I interviewed Will Schwalbe earlier and a fair amount of the conversation we talked about, it's in context of his friendship with this gentleman, Chris Maxey, who apparently your son

went to his school, but about how wrong he was about that friend because they were so radically different early in their lives, right? Chris Maxey was a little bit of a jock, you know, and Will Schwalbe was a frightened gay kid, right? And he was so wrong about him. Yeah. You know? I think as a society, we should reward people who say, I was wrong. Instead of saying, oh, you're a flip-flopper. I agree.

Oh, have a spine. No. The true courage, the true vulnerability is saying, you know, I was wrong about that. I've grown. I've changed. I've evolved. Yeah. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden.

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Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason Bobblehead. It's called Really No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You know, embedded in Zen is the core idea of beginner's mind, right? I love beginner's mind, right. Just, you know, thinking I don't know all the answers.

Yeah. You know, how do I approach this thing fresh? And that's one of the things that the book really did for me Yeah. but I can understand. I can see how you would arrive at that conclusion at least. And that feels really important. And I mean, it's sort of a cliche to talk about the polarization, but that's part of the core problem. Oh yeah. I think the ability to take people at their word that they're not being evil, that they truly believe this. And maybe once you acknowledge that, you can present evidence and try to have a rational discussion. I mean, at the end, I am on the side that the Constitution needs to evolve and change. But I don't want to demonize the other side, because

then we're never going to get anywhere. Right. Yeah. Nobody's mind gets changed in the way we currently have dialogue. Right. It just never happens. gets changed in the way we currently have dialogue. It just never happens. It's not going to happen. I mean, the founding fathers said a lot, and they said some wise things. Alexander Hamilton, in the very first Federalist paper, which are these essays about the Constitution, said that in politics and religion, no one's mind has ever been changed by persecution. Yeah. And it's true.

Like, you cannot persecute someone into converting. And I mean, they'll say they're converted. Say they're converted, yeah. But yeah. Let's talk a little bit about other sort of virtues that the founding fathers would have had that we could learn from. Well, one huge one for me was the idea of thinking slow. So we love our hot takes. They were cold takes.

And it was partly the technology. I mean, I wrote with a quill pen, and it's a very different experience. I've been looking at this thing thinking, my handwriting is nearly illegible with modern technology. This is going to be something else when I try and write with it. Because it's, I mean, we're not talking about fountain pen. Like when you first started writing, I was like, you're thinking fountain pen. But that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about a feather that you dip in ink.

Yeah, a feather. You carve it into a sharp point and you dip it in ink. I found it actually a very lovely experience. It's sort of ASMR, the sound of it scratching. But your wife, on the other hand, a long-suffering woman, did not like it. She despised it. Would you like the chance to give her a public apology for everything you've done over the years? Would that be helpful?

Absolutely, yes. I am sorry, Julie. She has put up with a lot. But I do contend, I put myself through these crazy things and her. But in the end, I hope I'm a better person and we have a better relationship. It's worth it. That's the hope. Yes. We'll have to ask her if that's true. But yeah, I feel that when you're writing longhand, you don't have to write with a quill, but writing longhand provides a different experience. First of all, you don't have all the pings and dings and the lure of the internet.

So you can focus more fully. And you also, when you're writing longhand, you can't just press send. You can't write a couple of acronyms and then press send. I would actually send letters. So I would have to fold them, put them in an envelope. And it gives you a waiting period for your thoughts. Sometimes I would write an angry letter and then not send it. But I felt better.

I felt better. I got my sort of my point out. And I'm like, I don't really need to send it. But I felt better. I felt better. I got my sort of my point out. And I'm like, I don't really need to send this. I think that it leads to a less impulsive, more profound style of thinking. And that is something I would love to recover. Yeah. I'm a big fan of the angry letter that never gets sent. It's a useful tool.

You know, for me, if I realize like anything I say is not going to make the situation better. I'm a big fan of the angry letter that never gets sent. It's a useful tool, you know? For me, if I realize like anything I say is not going to make the situation better. Sometimes when you're angry, it makes sense in a reasonable way to address the issue, right? Right. Because to not address it is sort of avoidance. Right. But there are times that it just shouldn't be addressed at all, right?

But I'm still angry. Right. And so I would just find writing really angry letters would be great. And I just tear them up. I also used to have a rule that I could not send any email about anything important after 5 p.m. Interesting. Because I realized as the day went on, I'm sort of now I'm rushing. Right. And so it can be like 455 or whatever five minutes before

i'm gonna knock off for the day whether it's 5 p.m or 7 p.m and i'm rushing and i'm addressing something important and i'm rushing to do it yeah and i'm like i just set myself a rule like don't send it come back in the morning and see and many many many times i would come back in the morning and be like either the way i'm responding to this is i'm overly angry i'm overly frustrated or i'm not responding with enough care in the way that i'm like i'm just sort of being terse when this calls for something different than terse because i'm not rushing so i kind of agree you. I don't know if I'm going to go to a... Again, my writing is so bad, the computer saved me. Like, you know, I mean, it's so bad. Yes. I don't think we should fully return to quill pens. And I certainly use the computer during the year because I ordered these quill pens over a computer. I ordered my candles over

a computer. But whenever possible, I would try to see what are some of the advantages. And I love what you say about having that time. And a lot of times back then, if they were writing a letter overseas, the boats would go out maybe once every two weeks. So you would have two weeks to write a letter. And then if you wrote something crazy, you could bear it back. I recently started a pen pal relationship with a former guest of the show where we write each other actual letters. And I'm always like, why am I doing this? Like I would do this far more easily. I would not lag so long between letters if I actually could just do it on my computer.

And then I get a letter and I'm like, I love it. Right? Like I just love opening a letter and reading the thing. And so I'm glad we're doing it that way. Do you feel that you think and write differently when you're writing the letter or not necessarily? A little bit. What I would like to get away from is the feeling like I have to get it done quickly got it that mentality that is embedded in modern day culture follows itself into that process i would like to wall it off in some way right right you know i mean we're both of an age where letters were how you communicated yeah you know i used to love writing letters with my friends and getting letters in the mail and like it was just a right it's a different world I was just thinking they did write letters, but they,

they did have their own acronyms like we have on texting. So Y-H-O-S is how you would end a letter, your humble and obedient servant, A.J. Jacobs. So, so yeah, they had their shortcuts, but overall, it was a much more profound. Would you say that to like a friend? Like, who are you saying? Oh, yeah. And it is a little odd. But I do like the stress on humility. That is, you know, what we were talking about, being able to say, I don't know. And that was a big virtue. That was one of Franklin's 13 virtues was humility. Highly stressed in 12-step programs.

There you go. The other sort of the parallel to writing by hand, I feel, is meeting face-to-face. And that is something I try to do a lot because that is our right, peaceably to assemble, is right there in the First Amendment. And I felt that I shouldn't peaceably assemble over Zoom. I should peaceably assemble, have people. And one of the most meaningful experiences was I threw an 18th century dinner party where we had 18th century food like beef stew.

And we didn't do turtle soup, even though that was a popular meal. I decided that was hard to source. We had beef stew and we had people from all different ideological backgrounds and ethnic and geographical backgrounds come together. And we had a lovely discussion. We disagreed about a lot, but it was a lovely, civil and productive discussion. And actually one thing that it reminds me of, because I was just listening to your lovely episode with Chris about your friendship and how you loved to play guitar together. And that was very 18th century because there was no stereo. If you wanted music, you played music. And that was how they entertained themselves.

It was very much you were active. You were an active participant. You weren't sitting back watching a show. You were singing. You were dancing. You were having a discussion. I wish there was more of that for me, more of like playing music versus listening to it. I mean, I love listening to music. Don't get me wrong. It's one of my great joys in life. But the balance is a little off currently. should not take for granted that we can hear the greatest musicians of all playing in our house.

I mean, that was not true for 99% of human history. So listener, consider this your halfway through the episode integration reminder. Remember, knowledge is power, but only if combined with action and integration. It can be transformative to take a minute to synthesize information rather than just ingesting it in a detached way. So let's collectively take a moment to pause and reflect. What's your one big insight so far and how can you put it into practice in your life? Seriously, just take a second, pause the audio and reflect. It can be so powerful to have these reminders to stop and be present, can't it? If you want to keep this momentum going that you built with this little exercise,

I'd encourage you to get on our Good Wolf Reminders SMS list. I'll shoot you two texts a week with insightful little prompts and wisdom from podcast guests. They're a nice little nudge to stop and be present in your life. And they're a helpful way to not get lost in the busyness and forget what is important.

You can join at oneufeed.net slash SMS, and if you don't like them, you can get off the list really easily. So far, there are over 1,172 others from the One You Feed community on the list, and we'd love to welcome you as well. So head on over to OneYouFeed.net slash SMS, and let's feed our good wolves together. oneyoufeed.net slash SMS and let's feed our good wolves together. Early on, you began to go to reenactment battles as a way of immersing yourself more fully in what it was like to be there. But one of the very first experiences, you went to a battle that wasn't really exactly a battle, the Battle of Fort Lee. Right. Share some about that. Yeah. So to really get into the mindset of the founding fathers, I decided to join the New Jersey Third Regiment of Revolutionary War Reenactors. I would have preferred to join a reenactment group that reenacted the Constitutional Convention,

but that doesn't really exist. People prefer the muskets and the clothes. You could form a constitutional reenactment group. I don't know how many people would come, but you could give it a shot. I might be the only delegate. That's true. But yes, I loved these people, meeting them. And one thing that was actually quite moving, I had always seen reenactments as kind of

silly and something, you know, that was funny to watch on The Simpsons, but I would never do it myself. After talking to them, I saw why it was meaningful for them. One man said he became a reenactor after reading this amazing book, which I read. It was The Diary of a Revolutionary War soldier from Connecticut. And it was basically just how difficult life was as a Revolutionary War, how cold you were, how hungry you were. I remember he even talked about how he couldn't sleep because the whippoorwills were tweeting all night and it was keeping him up. So they had no shoes in the snow. And this man said, I just feel that I should honor them somehow for their sacrifice. And

this is the way I'm going to try to honor them, to try to keep this alive. Another one of the reenactors said, what I love about it is that when I go to a work party, what are we talking about? You know, the baseball game or the weather. Here we do actually talk about history and philosophy and they debate the issues and they realize these founders were flawed people. You know, we don't want to worship them, but they did have some virtues in addition to their flaws. And I found it quite moving. And my wife, my long-suffering wife, actually got into it, and she put on the dress and the bonnet,

and she actually said it was not a great time for women because one of the many problems was a corset. She had to wear a corset, which is not comfortable, and she hated the corset. And she said, a corset, which is not comfortable. And she hated the corset. And she said, that makes me more grateful for my life. It is another way to become more grateful for modern life. We have a lot of problems now. And I don't want to downplay that. But at the same time, we should not think the good old days were good because they were not. The good old days were dangerous, smelly, racist, sexist, homophobic. Well, let's not have this nostalgia for some past that didn't exist.

I agree. I think you do a nice job of balancing that in the book about sort of pointing out some things that maybe in the past were useful that maybe we think about carrying forward, and then all the things that clearly were not. And I think we've talked about this before, this idea that misplaced nostalgia, you could go back to nearly any year in the past, you know, if you were to like, throw me in a time machine, it would be a bad time to show up generally, you know, and even as a white male, but as a white male, it would even be better for me in most timeframes than the other person, right? Than the other people. And so, and you're trying to balance in the book, this

aspects of the constitution that feel valuable and the parts of it that feel like they are wrong, just plain wrong, right? You know, racism, slavery, sexism, right? And you talk about two figures in history who were fighting for the end of slavery, and they took radically different approaches to using the Constitution. Can you share that? Absolutely. And it's a fascinating story because it's about framing, which is something that we have talked about before. And I love when you talk about it on the show. And the two figures are William Lloyd Garrison, who was an abolitionist, and Frederick Douglass, who was a former enslaved man who then got free and became one of the great orators of all time. And William Lloyd Garrison, who was white, said the Constitution is a pact with the devil. He said, this is so far gone, it's so evil, because it endorses slavery, or allows slavery, that he burned it. He literally burned it in front of a crowd, and he would denounce it. At first, Frederick Douglass was on his side. He was an ally. But at some point in the 1850s, Frederick Douglass took a totally different tack. He changed.

He said, you know what? It would probably be more productive if instead of burning the Constitution, we saw it as a promissory note. That's the phrase he used. Because it does promise equality and liberty for all. And obviously, at the time, and still today, that is not true. So his thought was, let's try to make America live up to those words in the Constitution. So the founding fathers had flaws, but what they wrote was better than how they acted sometimes. These are the seeds in the Constitution. It contains the seeds of freedom and equality. Let's build on that. It's a very influential way of looking at

the world and the Constitution. That's what Martin Luther King used that phrase, the Declaration and the Constitution are promissory notes. Obama gave a famous speech on race where he had the same thing, that the solution to the problems of racism were in the Constitution itself. You just have to make the Constitution live up to its ideals. And I found that very inspiring. I like the idea of framing it as a promissory note. It's an ideal. You're always trying to make it more perfect. That's in the preamble, more perfect. We're never going to be perfect. But I mean, you look at the Constitution. When it was ratified, it was white men were the ones who could vote. And then over the years, people have had to fight so that black men could vote, black women, women, indigenous people. That kind of makes me more

optimistic. Also, it's very easy to be pessimistic when you read. But seeing the grand arc of American history and that we have had progress and maybe not enough, of course, but women can vote and that is something they have to fight for. So it makes me optimistic that we can get through these difficult times. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor.

We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's gonna

drop by. Mr. Brian Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really No Really, sir. God bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening?

Really, no, really. Yeah, really. No, really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really, No, Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think it's very useful to be able to look at progress. It's sort of what you're trying to do with the constitution. It's like to be able to look at the way things have really changed for the better. Right. And to say, we still need to continue moving. Right. And it's both those things. But I feel like if you embrace either one of those only, it's problematic. I know a lot of people who embrace, you know, people have more rights than they used to, they should just be happy with what they have. And that's short sighted, right? It's missing the fact that we far we've come, to me, makes me lose hope. It makes me not want to do anything. You know, I'm referencing another conversation, but we were talking about gay rights. And this person, you know, lived through the AIDS crisis, right? Been fighting for gay rights forever. And we were sort of having the same discussion about how far things have come.

Right. You know, how different the world is than 1984. Yeah. Right. And we still need to continue to work on that equality package. But it's both to me. I love that you say that. Amen is all I can say. It is inspiring to see the progress that's been made.

If you deny that there has been any progress, then like you say, you lose hope. It's like, what's the point? But seeing that we are able to change for the better, then I feel is like, okay, that's good. Let's keep going. Let's not burn it all down. Again, gay rights, I think is an interesting one to look at because it's probably the one that has changed the most in my lifetime, right? It's the one I've had the sort of front row seat to, to some degree. And there are still some gay kid being bullied somewhere at this very second, right? So, you know, for that person, this is a very real and still present and prominent problem. But I think about like, I watch TV now and I'm like,

there are gay couples, there are interracial gay couples featured in mainstream commercials. And I love it because it makes me go, that was unthinkable. Right. 20 years ago. Right. Right. Like if you'd told me that would happen, I would have been like, you know, it's not like even being optimistic. That's we're not going to get there. And yet we have. And it happened so fast. I mean, not fast enough, but the change from there's no way gay marriage will ever be legal to gay marriage, the majority of Americans being in favor of gay marriage was remarkably fast. And so I just, I really love that because it shows me the areas I feel like we're doomed. Right.

Like the one for me is climate primarily these days where I'm just like, we're never going to get it together enough to make a difference. And yet we could. Yeah. There's a great documentary about the ozone layer, which we have not fully solved, but mostly solved through international cooperation. And it was during the Reagan era that we did it, that we were able to stop people from using those fluorocarbons or whatever. And Reagan was actually the one who did it. He is like, in some senses, an environmentalist hero,

because he was the one who pushed forward on this, let's make the ozone hole, let's get an agreement, an international agreement. You watch that and you're like, oh my God, we can solve worldwide problems. It is possible. It's not crazy. Yeah, I would love to see that. I think that would be inspiring. Reagan does not make me think environmental hero at first glance. Right. You know, and one of the things I thought was interesting in the book, I mean, I just, I feel like I could just talk about the funny parts for our entire interview, but that's not the whole point.

But you are in Central Park fishing water out of a pond. Right. Because if you follow a strict interpretation of the Constitution, agencies like the FDA would be unconstitutional. Right. Because the Constitution says only Congress should make laws. And now we have all these regulatory agencies making laws, which I would in general say I'm very in favor of. Right. But first, it cracks me up that you actually tried to do that. I don't think that experiment lasted very long. But it made me see like, oh, okay, you know, there is a constitutional argument that makes sense that maybe there is overreach here. didn't really see both sides of. It is one that's going to become more and more important. It's how much regulation should there be? One side basically sees red tape, the bureaucracy, the regulations

as saving our lives. You know, otherwise we could drink water and it could be filled with lead. The other side sees red tape as strangling us, strangling small business. How can you start a small business when you have to hire someone to design a website that's for colorblind people as well as other sighted people? There's too many regulations. So those are the two sides. I think it was instructive because it's not like one side is greedy or one side is stupid. They just have these different worldviews. It's whether you think, partly, if people act without regulation, will that be beneficial for society? Or do we need some sort of governance so that we don't, say, destroy the environment? Yeah, it's got a little of the old Hobbes-Rousseau thing to it.

And I hate to say that I, being a generally optimistic person and believing the best in people, fall on the side of we need regulation or people will do awful things, you know? Like, I just think that's been shown kind of again and again if we don't fight for workers' rights or clean water or, you know, you can't dump your waste in the public sewer, that people will take the expedient, cheapest path. But I don't like that I think that because I want to think the best of people. I totally agree. I relate it to myself because I feel I have very little willpower.

because I feel I have very little willpower. You know, if I have the candy right at eye level in my pantry, I'm going to eat it. Yeah. And I think that's most humans. We don't have great willpower. So you have to set up structures so that you have to plan ahead. So put the candy out of sight. And as you've talked about on the show, the Odysseus strategy, because in the Odyssey, Odysseus was on a ship and he was going to be going through

the sirens who would sing these beautiful women and he would be tempted to dive in and then he would die, he would drown. So he bound himself to the mask. He had his sailors tie himself to the mask, put wax in his ear so he couldn't hear the sirens. And that to me is what I have to do on a personal level so that I don't just eat the worst food and do no exercise. I have to set up these structures so that I act in a better way than I am. And I feel that that is partly what government is about. And that's the founding fathers, too. They talked a lot about the importance of self-governance.

You can't have a good government of the nation unless the citizens are able to govern themselves and govern their worst passions and their most base anger and able to rise above that. And the founders were actually, I know that you are also a fan of the Stoics and Marcus Aurelius and writers like that. They were very much passionate. Well, that's ironic. Passionate about Stoicism. As you were saying that, it made me think, well, Odysseus' strategy did work and he was at the same time bound, right? Like he wasn't able to do very much. He wasn't going to respond to another situation. And that points to the balance that we're trying to do. As a small business owner, I get the frustrations with some of the laws, how complicated the tax code is. And I mean, you know, there are things I'm like, this is just preposterous. Right. And I'm really glad that I don't have to think too much about my drinking water. Right. I'm really glad that I don't have to think too much about the food that I eat. And I don't have to worry that this laptop is going to catch on fire. Right. You know, I mean, there's lots of things that I do. I'm really glad that there is the

regulation for. Well, I think it's what we were talking about before, which is a very founding father's idea, the idea of balance. They were obsessed with balance in every part of their lives. So there was the balance of powers, which is why we have the president, the Congress and Supreme Court, because they didn't want one to become all powerful. And the same in their lives. They tried to balance reason and passion. And the way they thought about health was the balance of bodily humors. That turned out not to be scientifically valid, but there is a homeostasis is still a very important idea in modern health. But there is a homeostasis is still a very important idea in modern health. So I am a fan of balance.

I try to have balance in my life, in my family life. So, you know, work-life balance, that's a big thing. So, yeah, balance, I think, is an underrated virtue. One of my favorites. Yeah. I'm a huge believer in the middle way. Right. As an addict, I don't follow the middle way because I couldn't.

So I am in that way, I'm an all or nothing thing. But I think in general, any opportunity, the best solution often lies in some sort of balance. Right, right. Although there is the, I think it's the Oscar Wilde quote, which is you should be moderate in everything, including moderation. Yes. So like. Sometimes you want to have that Thanksgiving meal where you just like gorge and like. Chris and I at 1030 last night after a magnetic field show, walked to a carryout and got two pints of ice cream and took it back to the hotel room. And we're like, screw it.

Let's just. What flavor? Let's have ice cream. I had chocolate chip cookie dough he had regular chocolate i think i made the better choice i'm living vicariously through yes it was it was a moment of immoderation but again once in a while right i would be remiss if i did not bring up the one you feed very own nicole zino, who is prominently featured in your book. Why?

Why is she in your book? She is a great American hero. I am a huge fan of Nicole. Hello, Nicole, if you're listening. We talked about some things from the 18th century that are worth reviving. And one of them is the idea that we should celebrate elections. Elections should be a festive. Back then, they were as big as Thanksgiving.

Election Day was something to celebrate this new idea of democracy. Now, it's a very constrained democracy because only white men could vote. But it was still the idea that you could choose your leader. And they would have, it was like a music festival. You would have farmer's market. You would have lots it was like a music festival that you would have, farmer's market, you would have- Lots of booze. It was a little, yes, it went way too hard on the booze.

But that was the era. That was the time. They were big day drinkers. But they also, in a more wholesome way, they had election cakes. And some of them were huge. Some of them were for the whole town. You would have 70 pound election cakes, bigger than a human. Wow. And they were made with cloves and figs. So maybe not the kind of cakes we love today, but the idea of a cake at election where you bake it at home, you bring it in to the community, you share, you share in the sweetness of democracy.

I was like, this is a great idea that we need to revive. So I started on Facebook, which I know is not very 18th century, but I put out the word, I want to revive this and have someone in all 50 states, at least one person in every state, make an election cake and bring it to the polls. And people responded. It was my favorite part of the whole, it was so heartening and inspiring because people were so hungry, no pun intended, for some positivity, something you could actually do. And people would make these cakes that were themed to the state.

So you would have peach cake in Georgia and you would bring, And the very first cake I received was from Nicole, because she had to leave the country during election day. So she sent it in early. She didn't send me the cake. I asked for photos. So I got these photos, and it's a gorgeous cake. She lives in Illinois, and it had a Lincoln silhouette, and it had stars and stripes. She did a magnificent job. And so, yes, she's a character in the book because she was the first to send in photos for the Election Cake Project. And we did get to all 50 states thanks to Nicole and other bakers like her. That's amazing.

I'm going to have to ask her whether she used figs and cloves in it. But I think in general, I think that kind of circles us all the way back to kind of where we started, which is not taking certain things for granted, right? And celebrating the fact that even though our system has many flaws, it is a system, you know, what's the old saying about democracy? It's the best of the worst solutions. That's not it. But what is the right? I know what you're saying. Basically, it's like, democracy is terrible, but it's better than all the alternatives, something to that extent. Right. But I love that idea of celebrating something that we do now take for granted. Absolutely. And yeah, I almost see voting or I have seen voting as a sort of a pain

in the butt, like, oh, I have to wait in line. But really, it is something to celebrate. And it's fragile. It is not something that is guaranteed to survive. Most of human history has not been a democracy of any kind, even a flawed democracy like the world has now. So yeah, fighting for that and making sure we keep it, whether it's with cakes or with other bigger structural changes like gerrymandering. And then I found that inspiring and it was a great way to end because it was a positive. So like we were talking about before, it's so easy to complain, so easy to find faults. But let's look for solutions. Let's look for how we can make this better.

So listener, in thinking about all that and the other great wisdom from today's episode, if you were going to isolate just one top insight that you're taking away, what would it be? Not your top 10, not the top five, just one. What is it? Think about it. Got it? Now I ask you, what's one tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny little thing you can do today to put it in practice?

Or maybe just take a baby step towards it. Remember, little by little, a little becomes a lot. Profound change happens as a result of aggregated tiny actions, not massive heroic effort. If you're not already on our Good Wolf Reminder SMS list, I'd highly recommend it as a tool you can leverage to remind you to take those vital baby steps forward. You can get on there at oneufeed.net slash SMS. It's totally free, and once you're on there, I'll send you a couple text messages a week with little reminders and nudges. Here's one I recently shared to give you an idea of the

type of stuff I send. Keep practicing, even if it seems hopeless. Don't strive for perfection, aim for consistency, and no matter what, keep showing up for yourself. That was a great gem from recent guest Light Watkins. And if you're on the fence about joining, remember it's totally free and easy to unsubscribe. If you want to get in, I'd love to have you there. Just go to oneufeed.net slash SMS. All right, back to it. You and I are going to continue in the post-show conversation. We might talk about some 18th century toasts. Maybe we'll do one together. We should have done it in the main interview, but we will also talk about whether you actually were authorized

by the U.S. Congress to become a pirate or not. That's not exactly accurate, but it's close. It's close. Listeners, if you'd like access to this fun post-show conversation, ad-free episodes, and you want to become part of what we're doing here and support something that I think is valuable, and I hope you do too, you can go to oneufeed.net slash join and become part of the community. AJ, thank you so much for coming on. It's always a blast. Thank you for wearing the tricorn hat, which you look spectacular in, and for drinking out of the pewter tankards. We'll have to take a picture of the tricorn hats for the show notes. Huzzah. Huzzah. If what you just heard was helpful to you,

please consider making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast. When you join our membership community with this monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members-only benefits. It's our way of saying thank you for your support. Now, we are so grateful for the members of our community. We wouldn't be able to do what we do without their support, and we don't take a single dollar for granted. To learn more, make a donation at any level, and become a member of the One You Feed community, go to OneYouFeed.net slash join. The One You Feed podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting the show. I'm Jason Alexander.

And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast,

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