Speaker 1: I think as a society we should reward people who
Speaker 1: say I was wrong instead of saying, oh, you're a
Speaker 1: flip flopper or have a spine. No, the true courage,
Speaker 1: the true vulnerability, is thing you know I was wrong
Speaker 1: about that. I've grown, I've changed, I've evolved.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 2: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
Speaker 2: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think,
Speaker 2: ring true, and yet for many of us, our thoughts
Speaker 2: don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 2: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 2: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 2: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 2: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent and creative effort
Speaker 2: to make a life worth living. This podcast asked is
Speaker 2: about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 2: how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 2: Our guest on this show is aj Jacobs, a journalist, lecturer,
Speaker 2: and human guinea pig who has written four best selling books,
Speaker 2: including the much loved The Year of Living biblically. He
Speaker 2: blends memoir, science, humor, and a dash of self help.
Speaker 2: AJ is a contributor to NPR, The New York Times,
Speaker 2: and Esquire, among other media outlets. Today, Aj and Eric
Speaker 2: discuss his book, The Year of Living Constitutionally, One Man's
Speaker 2: Humble Quest to Follow the Constitution's Original Meaning.
Speaker 3: Hi, Aj, welcome back.
Speaker 1: I am so happy to be back.
Speaker 3: If anybody is watching this, they are going to immediately
Speaker 3: notice that we are in person, which is a good thing.
Speaker 3: They're going to notice some other odd things. We're both
Speaker 3: wearing tricorn.
Speaker 1: Hats, very true.
Speaker 3: We have pewter mugs. We have goose.
Speaker 1: They are goose.
Speaker 3: Yes wills to write with absolutely. And the reason we're
Speaker 3: doing that is because you have a new book called
Speaker 3: The Year of Living Constitutionally, One Man's Humble Quest to
Speaker 3: follow the Constitution's Original meaning. And so, in addition to
Speaker 3: exploring the Constitution and what it means and how it's interpreted,
Speaker 3: you also attempted to live as if you were living
Speaker 3: in seventeen ninety. Hence the props that we have here exactly.
Speaker 1: And you are a great sport for wearing the tracorn mat.
Speaker 1: I think you look very handsome. I think you look terrific.
Speaker 3: So I was sort of leaning towards powdered wig. Did
Speaker 3: they wear powdered wigs?
Speaker 2: Then?
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, and I do have one, But I thought
Speaker 1: that might be a bridge too far.
Speaker 3: Bridge too far. Well, I don't know, So welcome back.
Speaker 3: Great to be here, and we'll get in to the
Speaker 3: book in a minute, but will start like we always
Speaker 3: do with the Parable. In the Parable, there's a grandparent
Speaker 3: who's talking with their grandchild and they say, in life,
Speaker 3: there are two wolves inside of us that are always
Speaker 3: at battle. One it's a good wolf, which represents things
Speaker 3: like kindness and bravery and love, and the other's a
Speaker 3: bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear.
Speaker 3: And the grandchild stops and thinks about it for a
Speaker 3: second and looks up at their grandparents says which one wins,
Speaker 3: And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd
Speaker 3: like to ask what that means to you in your
Speaker 3: life and in the latest work that you've done here.
Speaker 1: Well, as you know, I love the Parable, and last
Speaker 1: time I was on I talked about how it related
Speaker 1: to gratitude for me and how you can feed the
Speaker 1: good wolf by focusing on the hundreds of things that
Speaker 1: went right every day, Like I pressed the elevator button
Speaker 1: and the elevator came, and I got in and I got.
Speaker 3: Out, and I got getting out the important part there,
Speaker 3: Like really, I mean, that's the part I'm grateful for
Speaker 3: that is right.
Speaker 1: Yes, there was no it didn't plummet and break my
Speaker 1: collar bone. So yeah, But this time I wanted to
Speaker 1: do something different. So I thought about the words, and
Speaker 1: I drilled down on the word feed and it made
Speaker 1: me think of where it's like news feed and information diet,
Speaker 1: and I was like, maybe there's something there, because what
Speaker 1: we feed our brain is then fed to the good
Speaker 1: or the bad wolf, and there is a lot of
Speaker 1: bad food out there information wise. I mean, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of junk food on social media in the news,
Speaker 1: and if I choose to do that, if I choose
Speaker 1: to click on, oh look there's someone throwing chairs at McDonald's,
Speaker 1: you know that feels good in the moment, like junk
Speaker 1: food does, like a twinkie does, feels good going down,
Speaker 1: but in the long term it's top. So I really
Speaker 1: try to make a choice in my information diet to
Speaker 1: have more good information than bad. And you can do
Speaker 1: that by first of all, reading books and little self serving.
Speaker 1: But I do books. Good new books are good and
Speaker 1: they go deeper on a topic. They give you more perspective.
Speaker 1: I also feel when I read something, I don't want
Speaker 1: to be totally out of the news cycle. I want
Speaker 1: to know what's going on. But if I read something negative,
Speaker 1: the news has a very negative bias because it's much
Speaker 1: more interesting. Layoffs are more interesting than hires, for instance.
Speaker 1: So I try to be aware of the negative bias.
Speaker 1: So if I read an article, I did this just
Speaker 1: last week. I read an article about homelessness and how
Speaker 1: prevalent it is, and then I googled solutions to homelessness
Speaker 1: and I read all of these articles and studies about
Speaker 1: how are people addressing this? Because the media often lays
Speaker 1: out the problem and forgets to talk about possible solutions.
Speaker 1: So that is feeding my good wolf. Reading about the
Speaker 1: solutions and reading about the problems is feeding my bad wolf.
Speaker 3: So something I'm going to be doing a little more
Speaker 3: often is ask you, the listener, to reflect on what
Speaker 3: you're hearing. We strongly believe that knowledge is power, but
Speaker 3: only if combined with action and integration. So before we
Speaker 3: move on, I'd like to ask you what's coming up
Speaker 3: for you as you listen to this. Are there any
Speaker 3: things you're currently doing or feeding your bad wolf that
Speaker 3: might make sense to remove, or any things you could
Speaker 3: do to feed your good wolf that you're not currently doing.
Speaker 3: So if you have the headspace for it, I'd love
Speaker 3: if you could just pause for a second and ask yourself,
Speaker 3: what's one thing I could do today or tonight to
Speaker 3: feed my good wolf. Whatever your thing is, a really
Speaker 3: useful strategy can be had. I mean something external, a
Speaker 3: prompt or a friend, or a tool that regularly nudges
Speaker 3: you back towards awareness and intentionality. For the past year,
Speaker 3: I've been sending little Goodwolf reminders to some of my
Speaker 3: friends and community members, just quick, little SMS messages two
Speaker 3: times per week that give them a little bit of
Speaker 3: wisdom and remind them to pause for a second and
Speaker 3: come off autopilot. If you want, I can send them
Speaker 3: to you too. I do it totally for free, and
Speaker 3: people seem to really love them. Just drop your information
Speaker 3: at oneufeed dot net slash SMS and I can send
Speaker 3: them to you. It's totally free, and if you end
Speaker 3: up not liking the little reminders you can easily opt out.
Speaker 3: That's one you feed dot net slash sms and now
Speaker 3: back to the episode. Is another way of relating to
Speaker 3: the news. As part of this book, you I believe
Speaker 3: spend a fair amount of time reading newspapers from seventeen
Speaker 3: ninety would that be correct, seventeen eighty nine.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, yeah, Ben Franklin's newspaper in Philadelphia.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what sort of fun things did you find?
Speaker 1: Well? It was fascinating because, first of all, it relates
Speaker 1: to what we were just talking about. Newspapers only came
Speaker 1: out twice a week, so you did not have the
Speaker 1: sixteen hour fire hose of negative stories in your face.
Speaker 1: It allowed you to process it and have some distance.
Speaker 1: One part I loved about reading these newspapers from the
Speaker 1: seventeen nineties was seeing all of the things I totally
Speaker 1: take for granted that did not exist. So there was
Speaker 1: an article about this crazy new idea that they should
Speaker 1: put numbers on the houses in Philadelphia so that you
Speaker 1: wouldn't have to say, oh, you go down that street
Speaker 1: and make a left at the big manure pile, and
Speaker 1: then that's the big blue house, like you could say, oh,
Speaker 1: it's seven eighty seven Washington Street.
Speaker 3: That's amazing that, Like, when things like that are invented,
Speaker 3: you're always like, how did it take that long for
Speaker 3: anybody to think of that?
Speaker 1: Right? And I just would never have even thought that
Speaker 1: this was something to be grateful for. This was not reading.
Speaker 1: But I also became very grateful for elastic, because, as
Speaker 1: you can see, I tried to dress. The part of
Speaker 1: what I do as a writer is I really get
Speaker 1: into the lifestyle and try to get into the mindset
Speaker 1: of the founding father. So I would wear my buckle
Speaker 1: shoes and my stockings, and if you wear real stockings
Speaker 1: made in the style of the seventeen nineties, there's no elastic,
Speaker 1: so they slipped down your leg. You have to put
Speaker 1: on little tiny belts. They're not even garters. They didn't
Speaker 1: even have garters, They're these little belts. The amount of
Speaker 1: time that I spent putting on sock belts and adjusting
Speaker 1: my socks, you know, I'll never get that time back.
Speaker 1: So it made me very grateful for elastic, which I
Speaker 1: had never given much thought to before.
Speaker 3: Me neither, but I can see the obvious upside to.
Speaker 1: It, Yeah, literal upside.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, it is amazing how we do take so
Speaker 3: many of the modern conveniences for granted. I think we
Speaker 3: all know that that's sort of a common thing to say,
Speaker 3: but I think I love what you're doing because you're
Speaker 3: sort of taking those away from yourself right for a
Speaker 3: period of time. And that is one of the ways
Speaker 3: that psychologists will talk about sort of getting out of
Speaker 3: that habituation loop where you just take everything for granted.
Speaker 3: Is you take whatever it is away for a little
Speaker 3: while and you suddenly have a whole new appreciation for.
Speaker 1: It, right. It's sort of like lent. I'm not Catholic myself,
Speaker 1: but I think that is a nice idea, or like
Speaker 1: the Sabbath and just taking a rest and taking yourself
Speaker 1: away so you appreciate the things.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So your book talks about the Constitution a lot,
Speaker 3: and I really appreciated it because I felt like it
Speaker 3: was a very fair and balanced book that allowed me
Speaker 3: to see the different constitutional arguments really with very little
Speaker 3: bias on your part. And I really appreciated that. Like,
Speaker 3: I just don't think that I get that many opportunities
Speaker 3: in modern day society to hear both sides of an
Speaker 3: argument laid out really sort of eloquently. Mostly what I
Speaker 3: hear is the opponent's argument laid out in sort of
Speaker 3: a straw man character way, so we just tear it down. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but you resisted that temptation.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you. That is lovely to hear. Have you
Speaker 1: ever heard of the opposite of a straw man is
Speaker 1: a steel man, so like the metal steel, and that's
Speaker 1: people I disagree with. I try to present their argument
Speaker 1: in the steel man case, because otherwise we're never going
Speaker 1: to get anywhere. We're never going to actually figure out
Speaker 1: what we can do to agree and move forward. So
Speaker 1: thank you. I am delighted to hear that. I will say,
Speaker 1: just to back up, this book is a semi sequel
Speaker 1: to a book I wrote many years ago called The
Speaker 1: Year of Living Biblically, and that book was similar in
Speaker 1: that I tried to understand the Bible by following all
Speaker 1: the rules, so the ten commandments, but also the obscure
Speaker 1: rules like I couldn't shave the corners of my beard.
Speaker 1: I didn't know where the corners were, so the whole
Speaker 1: thing I just looked like zz top to use a
Speaker 1: very old reference. And also, yeah, stoning adulterers.
Speaker 3: So all right, we got a pause on stoning adulterers.
Speaker 3: I heard you just mention that in passing that you
Speaker 3: were attempting to stone an adulterer in Central Park with
Speaker 3: really small stones. Right, accurate? That is, did you identify
Speaker 3: said adulterer?
Speaker 1: Well, good question. I listen. As with this book, I
Speaker 1: was very much getting into it. So I had the robe,
Speaker 1: I had the sandals, I had my beard. And a
Speaker 1: guy came up to me and he said in Central Park.
Speaker 1: He said, what's going on? Why do you look like that?
Speaker 1: And I said, well, I'm trying to do this experiment
Speaker 1: where I follow all the rules of the Bible, from
Speaker 1: the Ten Commandments to stoning adulters. And he said, well,
Speaker 1: I'm an adulterer. Are you going to stone me? And
Speaker 1: I said that would be wonderful. Thank you. What a
Speaker 1: nice offer. And as you mentioned, I had been carrying
Speaker 1: around stones, very small, pebble size, in my pocket, hoping
Speaker 1: I would run into an adulter. So here he was.
Speaker 1: I took the stones out to show them that they
Speaker 1: were small, and he was very aggressive. He grabbed the
Speaker 1: stones and threw them at my face. So I thought, yes,
Speaker 1: thank you for that look of disbelief. Yeah, so I
Speaker 1: thought I could throw one back at him. Sort of
Speaker 1: an eye for an eye situation. So part of the
Speaker 1: book was to show that we should not take the
Speaker 1: Bible literally, that there's lots of wisdom in the Bible,
Speaker 1: and I feel this Constitution book was similar. And then
Speaker 1: I wanted to show the good and the bad. I
Speaker 1: wanted to show there is so much wisdom in the Constitution,
Speaker 1: and then there are parts that are two hundred thirty
Speaker 1: years that need some updating. So I try to be,
Speaker 1: as you say, as balanced as possible.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and we're not really a show that goes into
Speaker 3: things like the constitutional whole lot. So I think we're
Speaker 3: going to focus more on the wisdom that perhaps some
Speaker 3: of the founding fathers had. But there is one aspect
Speaker 3: that I wanted to talk about, and I was really
Speaker 3: intrigued by the idea of constitutional rights versus constitutional virtues. Oh,
Speaker 3: can you just sort of share what that means and
Speaker 3: how it applies when we look at how we interpret
Speaker 3: the Constitution.
Speaker 1: Absolutely that was one of my favorite areas, and I
Speaker 1: think that is very relevant to this show because the Constitution,
Speaker 1: as you know, has a bill of rights. The most
Speaker 1: famous ones about freedom of speech, right to bear arms,
Speaker 1: and all the others. But at the same time. Back then,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of stress on virtue and responsibility
Speaker 1: and duty to your community, to your country, to your family.
Speaker 1: No one wrote a bill of responsibilities into the Constitution.
Speaker 1: But that was just because it was so ingrained and
Speaker 1: so assumed that you would contribute to your community, that
Speaker 1: you would self sacrifice, that you would sacrifice your own
Speaker 1: time and energy for the common good. It was also
Speaker 1: biblical love your neighbor. So I think that that is
Speaker 1: something that we are missing today because rightly, there is
Speaker 1: a lot of emphasis on our individual rights, which are
Speaker 1: so important, but I think we've lost a little sense
Speaker 1: of that. Along with rights come responsibilities.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you talk about freedom of speech, right. We tend
Speaker 3: to think freedom of speech means we can say whatever whenever,
Speaker 3: any time, But that's not exactly how it was imagined
Speaker 3: and even implemented in the early days. Say a little
Speaker 3: more about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, freedom of speech was much more constrained in the
Speaker 1: Founding era. I don't want to go back to the
Speaker 1: Founding era in that case, because it wasn't like Stalinist Russia,
Speaker 1: but it was much more constrained. You had laws in
Speaker 1: many states that were considered constitutional that were blasphemy laws
Speaker 1: or laws against cursing. In New York in the late
Speaker 1: seventeen hundreds, you would be charged thirty seven and a
Speaker 1: half cents for every time you cursed or said the
Speaker 1: word damn. I tried to institute that with my family.
Speaker 1: I have teenage sons, and I was like, this is
Speaker 1: a good idea to try to kint them to clean
Speaker 1: up their language. It didn't work out great because they
Speaker 1: found this loophole. Oh, we don't have half a cent,
Speaker 1: so we'll just wait until it's seventy five cents, and
Speaker 1: then it got to seventy five cents and then they.
Speaker 3: Would curse again a cent.
Speaker 1: Right, So they found the loophole. But there was much
Speaker 1: more of a sense that rights are not absolute trump cards.
Speaker 1: They talk about the social contract. When you are part
Speaker 1: of society, you are part of the social contract, and
Speaker 1: part of that is thinking about other people and not
Speaker 1: focusing solely on your rights, but also how it affects others.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's kind of what struck me in reading
Speaker 3: the book was that idea that in addition to the
Speaker 3: focus on the rights, as you said, there was the
Speaker 3: interpretation of these things through the common good, and you know,
Speaker 3: it seems that restrict adherence to the Constitution, that latter
Speaker 3: element is often left out.
Speaker 1: I think so. I think so, and it's been brought
Speaker 1: up throughout history. I mean that was John F. Kennedy's
Speaker 1: speech is inauguration speech. I believe where he said, ask
Speaker 1: not what you can do for your country.
Speaker 3: Ask what your country can do for you.
Speaker 1: I got it exactly backwards. Yes, ask not what your
Speaker 1: country can do for you, Ask what you can do
Speaker 1: for your country. You could substitute community, you could stop
Speaker 1: institute whatever the world or people for that. But I
Speaker 1: think that idea has been lost a lot and we
Speaker 1: need to reclaim it. And I'm not saying I'm a
Speaker 1: perfect citizen at all, but it is something when I'm
Speaker 1: making decisions that is something I try to consider. And
Speaker 1: in fact, Ben Franklin my favorite of the Founding fathers.
Speaker 1: He is sort of the first self help author, so
Speaker 1: he like spawned you and me like and he had
Speaker 1: a sample of his daily schedule and when he woke up,
Speaker 1: the first thing he did was to ask himself, what
Speaker 1: good shall I do today? So it wasn't like, you know,
Speaker 1: what can I accomplish for myself? It was like, what
Speaker 1: can I do for others today, and then at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, he would say, what good did
Speaker 1: I accomplish today? What can I do better? I love that.
Speaker 1: I wrote it out with my little quill pen and
Speaker 1: put it over my desk as sort of a moral
Speaker 1: compass to like, what good can I do today? And
Speaker 1: when I get frustrated like that editor rejected my article,
Speaker 1: I'm outraged. I'm like, you know what, that is not
Speaker 1: the main goal I should be focusing on, like getting
Speaker 1: into every magazine. No, I should be like, what good
Speaker 1: can I do today?
Speaker 3: Yeah? When I originally got sober in twelve step programs,
Speaker 3: that is a hugely emphasized part of recovery is what
Speaker 3: can you do for the alcoholic who's still suffering?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 3: I love that, And that translates into little things like,
Speaker 3: you know, washing coffee cups or making the coffee, being
Speaker 3: the person who shows up early to open the meeting,
Speaker 3: all the way to you know, showing up for people
Speaker 3: who need it. You know, but it's baked in and
Speaker 3: it's foundational, and early on I lived that better than
Speaker 3: I've ever lived it since interesting, and I was probably
Speaker 3: happier in many ways than living out of that, Like
Speaker 3: being the central question of every day, right, how can
Speaker 3: I serve others? Right? As an orientation really changes things.
Speaker 3: And early on I had nothing else in my life
Speaker 3: except recovery. Right. I had burned it all to the ground. Right,
Speaker 3: So it was pretty easy to be like, well, if
Speaker 3: I'm going to orient around something, you know, I don't
Speaker 3: have a job. I'll just go to meetings all day. Like.
Speaker 3: It was a different life than right. But I sometimes
Speaker 3: look back on and I'm like, I could move more
Speaker 3: in that direction, sure, and it would be a positive.
Speaker 1: I love that. And I think what you said is
Speaker 1: it's a delightful coincidence whatever it is, that when you
Speaker 1: are serving others, that is a path to happiness.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: And in fact, the constitutional scholar Jeff Rosen, who's he's
Speaker 1: head of the National Constitution Center, he talks about the
Speaker 1: mindset of the founding fathers was there's the famous phrase
Speaker 1: pursuit of happiness, But back then, the pursuit of happiness
Speaker 1: was not sort of this hedonistic approach. The pursuit of
Speaker 1: happiness wasn't about feeling good. It was about doing good,
Speaker 1: and by doing good you start to feel good.
Speaker 3: YEP. One of my favorite phrases that I've used a
Speaker 3: thousand times on this show. Well, I couldn't have used
Speaker 3: it a thousand times. I have seven hundred episodes. There's
Speaker 3: some exaggeration. The uh. Sometimes you can't think your way
Speaker 3: in the right action. You have to act your way
Speaker 3: into right thinking. Right, that's the exact same thing. By
Speaker 3: doing good, you actually feel good. And you talk about
Speaker 3: that behavior changes emotion.
Speaker 1: You and I both love that quote so much. I
Speaker 1: think about it all the time, right, And if I'm
Speaker 1: feeling depressed, I try to act like what would a
Speaker 1: happy person do? If I'm feeling pessimistic, what would an
Speaker 1: optimistic person do? And your mind catches up with your
Speaker 1: actions with your behavior.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you talk about in the book your own attempt
Speaker 3: to not swear, and yes, you know, using funny words
Speaker 3: instead of the swear words it changed you.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, so I would use instead of the F word,
Speaker 1: I would say fudge, and my wife would make fun
Speaker 1: of me and that you know, what are you?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 1: This is the Andy Griffith Show, what's going on? But
Speaker 1: it did have like we talked about, the behavior actually
Speaker 1: changes them all because I would say that word out loud,
Speaker 1: and I would hear myself say it. And I'd be like,
Speaker 1: that is so ridiculous, but it took me away from
Speaker 1: that momentary anger.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 1: And I think that was very helpful.
Speaker 3: So Ben Franklin, I want to see how much this
Speaker 3: is the Ben Franklin quiz. No, but I've often heard
Speaker 3: of Ben Franklin. I think he had his was it
Speaker 3: thirteen virtues? Or and talk to me about how he
Speaker 3: cultivated those did he work on one at a time?
Speaker 3: Like what was his method of cultivating those virtues?
Speaker 1: I knew this at one point, and I can't remember
Speaker 1: whether he did it like week by week. I will say,
Speaker 1: I'm going to pivot. Pivot yep, because and it's actually
Speaker 1: a very appropriate pivot because Ben Franklin was very humble
Speaker 1: about what he knew, and he was okay with not
Speaker 1: knowing things, and he said we should all be more
Speaker 1: open and vulnerable and say, you know what I don't know?
Speaker 1: He during the Constitutional Convention said that, and the older
Speaker 1: he gets, the less certain he is of his own opinions.
Speaker 1: And he also told this great story at the convention.
Speaker 1: He said it was sort of like a joke. He said,
Speaker 1: there's a tale of the French lady and she tells
Speaker 1: her sister, why is it. It's so strange that I
Speaker 1: have never met anyone except for myself who is right
Speaker 1: in every instance. And his point was, we are all
Speaker 1: that French lady. We all think that we are right.
Speaker 1: And he was saying, have some epistemic humility and be
Speaker 1: okay with learning and change.
Speaker 3: It's a good pivot. That's a good pot Thank you,
Speaker 3: good pivot.
Speaker 1: And I will say one I just want to and
Speaker 1: that is one of my favorite pieces of wisdom from
Speaker 1: the eighteenth century, is this idea that they were, I
Speaker 1: feel more flexible in their thinking. We are so intransitent
Speaker 1: and dug into our opinions and nothing can sway us.
Speaker 1: They were much more open and you read the Constitutional Convention.
Speaker 1: There were ideas flying around. There was three presidents. Was
Speaker 1: very popular for a while, and James Madison was famous
Speaker 1: for changing his mind and it's not a negative, it's
Speaker 1: a positive to evolve. And his last words, according to Law,
Speaker 1: at least his last words on his deathbed where he
Speaker 1: made a face and his niece said what's going on
Speaker 1: and he said, oh, I just changed my mind, and
Speaker 1: then he died. It could be about the bi camera legislature.
Speaker 1: It could be about soup. Who knows what he.
Speaker 3: Changed could be about the nature of reality.
Speaker 1: That's it.
Speaker 3: I saw something at the last second of his exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I love that story. I'm glad you brought that up,
Speaker 3: and I agree. I think being able to reflect on
Speaker 3: where we're wrong. I interviewed Will Schwalby earlier, and a
Speaker 3: fair amount of the conversation we talked about it's in
Speaker 3: context of his friendship with this gentleman Chris Maxie, who
Speaker 3: apparently your son went to his school, but about how
Speaker 3: wrong he was about that friend because they were so
Speaker 3: radically different early in their lives. Right, Chris Maxie was
Speaker 3: a little bit of a jock, you know, and Will
Speaker 3: Shwawby was a frightened gay kid, right, and he was
Speaker 3: so wrong about him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I think as a society we should
Speaker 1: reward people who say I was wrong instead of saying, oh,
Speaker 1: you're a flip flapper, have a spine. No, the true courage,
Speaker 1: the true vulnerability is thing you know, I was wrong
Speaker 1: about that. I've grown, I've changed, I've evolved.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know. Embedded in zen is the core idea
Speaker 3: of beginner's mind, right about just you know, thinking, I
Speaker 3: don't know all the answers, you know, how do I
Speaker 3: approach this thing fresh? And that's one of the things
Speaker 3: that the book really did for me was allow me
Speaker 3: to look at the opposing constitutional arguments in a fresh
Speaker 3: way to actually go, oh hmm, okay, I can see
Speaker 3: that that makes sense. I'm not sure I still fully agree,
Speaker 3: but I can understand. I can see how you would
Speaker 3: arrive at that conclusion at least, and that feels really important.
Speaker 3: And I mean it's sort of a cliche to talk
Speaker 3: about the polarization, but that's part of the core problem.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I think the ability to take people at
Speaker 1: their word that they're not being evil, that they truly
Speaker 1: believe this, and maybe once you acknowledge that, you can
Speaker 1: present evidence and try to have a rational discussion. I mean,
Speaker 1: at the end, I am on the side that the
Speaker 1: Constitution needs to evolve and change, but I don't want
Speaker 1: to demonize the other side because then we're never going
Speaker 1: to get anywhere.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, nobody's mind gets changed in the way we
Speaker 3: currently have dialogue. Right, it just never happens. Well, it's
Speaker 3: going to happen.
Speaker 1: I mean, the Founding Father said a lot, and they
Speaker 1: said some wise things. Alexander Hamilton, in the very first
Speaker 1: Federalist paper, which are these essays about the Constitution, said
Speaker 1: that in politics and religion, no one's mind has ever
Speaker 1: been changed by persecution. And it's true, you cannot persecute
Speaker 1: someone into converting. And I mean they'll say there, but yeah.
Speaker 3: Let's talk a little bit about other sort of virtues
Speaker 3: that the Founding fathers would have had that we could
Speaker 3: learn from.
Speaker 1: Well, one huge one for me was the idea of
Speaker 1: thinking slow. So we love our hot takes. They were
Speaker 1: cold takes. And it was partly the technology. I mean,
Speaker 1: I wrote with a quill pen, and it's a very
Speaker 1: different experience.
Speaker 3: I've been looking at this thing, thinking my handwriting is
Speaker 3: nearly illegible with modern technology. This is going to be
Speaker 3: something else when I try and write with it, because
Speaker 3: it's I mean, we're not talking about fountain pen. Like
Speaker 3: when you first started writing, it was like thinking fountain pen.
Speaker 3: But that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about
Speaker 3: a feather that you dip an ink.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a feather. You carve it into a sharp point
Speaker 1: and you dip it in ink. I found it actually
Speaker 1: a very lovely experience, the sort of asmr the sound
Speaker 1: of it scratching.
Speaker 3: But your wife, on the other hand, a long suffering woman,
Speaker 3: did not like it, despise it. I have to have
Speaker 3: the chance to give her a public apology for everything
Speaker 3: you've done over the years. Would that be helpful?
Speaker 1: Absolutely? And yes, I am sorry Julie. She has put
Speaker 1: up with a lot. But I do contend I put
Speaker 1: myself through these crazy things and her. But in the end,
Speaker 1: I hope I'm a better person and we have a
Speaker 1: better It's worth it, that's the hope. Yes, who will
Speaker 1: have to ask her if that's true? But yeah, I
Speaker 1: feel that when you're writing long hand, you don't have
Speaker 1: to write with a quill, but writing long hand provides
Speaker 1: a different experience. First of all, you don't have all
Speaker 1: the pings and dings and the lure of the internet,
Speaker 1: so you can focus more fully. And you also, when
Speaker 1: you're writing long hand, you can't just press send. You
Speaker 1: can't write a couple of acronyms and then press send.
Speaker 1: I would actually send letters, so I would have to
Speaker 1: fold them, put them in an envelope, and it gives
Speaker 1: you a way period for your thoughts. Sometimes I would
Speaker 1: write an angry letter and then that send it. But
Speaker 1: I felt better. I felt, I felt better, I got
Speaker 1: my sort of my point out, and I'm like, I
Speaker 1: don't really need to send this. I think that it
Speaker 1: leads to a less impulsive, more profound style of thinking,
Speaker 1: and that is something I would love to recover.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm a big fan of the angry letter that
Speaker 3: never gets sent. It's a useful tool, you know, for
Speaker 3: me if I realize, like anything I say is not
Speaker 3: going to make this situation better. Sometimes when you're angry,
Speaker 3: it makes sense in a reasonable way to address the
Speaker 3: issue right, right, because to not address it as sort
Speaker 3: of avoidance, right, But there are times that it just
Speaker 3: shouldn't be addressed at all. Right, But I'm still angry, right,
Speaker 3: you know, And so I would just find writing really
Speaker 3: angry letters would be great. Now I just tear them up.
Speaker 3: I also used to have a rule that I could
Speaker 3: not send any email about anything important after five pm.
Speaker 3: Interesting because I realized as the day went on, I'm
Speaker 3: sort of now I'm rushing, right, and so it can
Speaker 3: be like four fifty five or whatever, five minutes before
Speaker 3: I'm going to knock off for the day, whether it's
Speaker 3: five pm or seven pm, and I'm rushing, and I'm
Speaker 3: addressing something important and I'm rushing to do it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And I'm like, I just set myself a rule like
Speaker 3: don't send it.
Speaker 1: Im back in the.
Speaker 3: Morning and see, And many, many, many times I would
Speaker 3: come back in the morning and be like, either the
Speaker 3: way I'm responding to this is I'm overly angry, I'm
Speaker 3: overly frustrated, or I'm not responding with enough care in
Speaker 3: the way that I'm like, I'm just sort of being
Speaker 3: terse when this calls for something different than terse because
Speaker 3: I'm not rushing. So I kind of agree with you.
Speaker 3: I don't know if I'm going to go to again.
Speaker 3: My writing is so bad. The computer saved me, Like
Speaker 3: you know, it's so bad.
Speaker 1: Yes, I don't think we should fully return to quill pens.
Speaker 1: And I certainly the computer during the years, because I
Speaker 1: ordered these quill pens over a computer. I ordered my
Speaker 1: candles over a computer. But whenever possible, I would try
Speaker 1: to see what are some of the advantages. And I
Speaker 1: love what you say about having that time. And a
Speaker 1: lot of times back then, if they were writing a
Speaker 1: letter overseas, the boats would go out maybe once every
Speaker 1: two weeks, so you would have two weeks to write
Speaker 1: a letter and then yeah, if you wrote something crazy,
Speaker 1: you could bear it back.
Speaker 3: I recently started a pen pow relationship with a former
Speaker 3: guest of the show where we write each other actual letters,
Speaker 3: and I'm always like, why am I doing this? Like
Speaker 3: I would do this far more easily. I would not
Speaker 3: lag so long between letters if I actually could just
Speaker 3: do it on my computer. And then I get a
Speaker 3: letter and I'm like, I love it, right, Like I
Speaker 3: just love opening a letter and reading the thing, and
Speaker 3: so I'm glad we're doing it that way.
Speaker 1: Do you feel that you think and write differently when
Speaker 1: you're writing the letter or not necessarily.
Speaker 3: A little bit. What I would like to get away
Speaker 3: from is the feeling like I have to get it
Speaker 3: done quickly, got it That mentality that is embedded in
Speaker 3: modern day culture follows itself into that process. I would
Speaker 3: like to wall it off in some way, right right,
Speaker 3: you know, I mean we're both of an age where
Speaker 3: letters were how you communicated. Yeah, you know, I used
Speaker 3: to love writing letters with my friends and getting letters
Speaker 3: in the mail, and like it was just a it's
Speaker 3: a different world.
Speaker 1: I was just thinking they did write letters, but they
Speaker 1: they did have their own acronyms like we have on
Speaker 1: textos so y hos is how you would end a
Speaker 1: letter your humble and obedient servant A J. Jacobs so
Speaker 1: so yeah. They had their shortcuts, but overall it was
Speaker 1: a much more appropriate.
Speaker 3: Would you say that to like a friend, like who
Speaker 3: are you saying?
Speaker 1: Oh? Yeah? And it's it is a little odd, but
Speaker 1: I do like the stress on humility, that is, you
Speaker 1: know what we were talking about, being able to say
Speaker 1: I don't know. And that was a big virtue. That
Speaker 1: was one of Franklin's thirteen virtues was humility.
Speaker 3: Highly stressed in twelve step programs.
Speaker 1: There you go. The other sort of the parallel to
Speaker 1: writing by hand, I feel is meeting face to face,
Speaker 1: and that is something I tried to do a lot,
Speaker 1: because that is our right peaceably to assemble is right
Speaker 1: there in the first Amendment. And I felt that I
Speaker 1: shouldn't peaceably assemble over zoom, I should peaceably assemble have people.
Speaker 1: And one of the most meaningful experiences was I threw
Speaker 1: an eighteenth century dinner party where we had eighteenth century
Speaker 1: food like beef stew, and we didn't do turtle soup,
Speaker 1: even though that was a popular meal. I decided that
Speaker 1: was hard to source. We had beef stew and we
Speaker 1: had people from all different ideological backgrounds, ethnic and geographical
Speaker 1: backgrounds come together and we had a lovely discussion. We
Speaker 1: disagreed about a lot, but it was a lovely, civil
Speaker 1: and productive discussion. And actually, one thing that it reminds
Speaker 1: me of because I was just listening to your lovely
Speaker 1: episode with Chris about your friendship and how you loved
Speaker 1: to play guitar together. Yes, and that was very eighteenth
Speaker 1: century because there was no stereo. If you wanted music,
Speaker 1: you played music, and that was how they entertained themselves.
Speaker 1: It was very much you were active. You were an
Speaker 1: active participant. You weren't sitting back watching a show. You
Speaker 1: were singing, you were dancing, you were having a discussion.
Speaker 3: I wish there was more of that for me, more
Speaker 3: of like playing music versus listening to it. I mean,
Speaker 3: I love listening to music, don't get me wrong, with
Speaker 3: one of my great joys in life. Sure the balance
Speaker 3: is a little off currently agree exactly.
Speaker 1: And they didn't have a choice. I mean, yeah, it
Speaker 1: is amazing we can listen to That's another thing. Just
Speaker 1: we should not take for granted that we can hear
Speaker 1: the greatest musicians of all playing in our house. I
Speaker 1: mean that was not true for ninety nine percent of
Speaker 1: human history.
Speaker 3: So listener, consider this. You're halfway through the episode Integration reminder.
Speaker 3: Remember knowledge is power, but only if combined with action
Speaker 3: and integration. It can be transformative to take a minute
Speaker 3: to synthesize information rather than just ingesting it in a
Speaker 3: detached way. So let's collectively take a moment to pause
Speaker 3: and reflect. What's your one big insight so far and
Speaker 3: how can you put it into practice in your life. Seriously,
Speaker 3: just take a second, pause the audio and reflect. It
Speaker 3: can be so powerful to have these reminders to stop
Speaker 3: and be present, can't it. If you want to keep
Speaker 3: this momentum going that you built with this little exercise,
Speaker 3: I'd encourage you to get on our Good Wolf Reminders
Speaker 3: SMS list. I'll shoot you two texts a week with
Speaker 3: insightful little prompts and wisdom from guests. They are a
Speaker 3: nice little nudge to stop and be present in your life,
Speaker 3: and they're a helpful way to not get lost in
Speaker 3: the busyness and forget what is important. You can join
Speaker 3: at oneufeed dot net, slash sms and if you don't
Speaker 3: like them, you can get off a list really easily.
Speaker 3: So far there are over one and seventy two others
Speaker 3: from the one you Feed community on the list, and
Speaker 3: we'd love to welcome you as well. So head on
Speaker 3: over to oneufeed dot net slash sms and let's feed
Speaker 3: our good wolves together. Early on, you began to go
Speaker 3: to reenactment battles as a way of immersing yourself more
Speaker 3: fully in what it was like to be there. But
Speaker 3: one of the very first experiences you went to a
Speaker 3: battle that wasn't really exactly a battle, the Battle of
Speaker 3: Fort Lee, right. Share some about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So to really get into the mindset of the
Speaker 1: founding fathers, I decided to join the New Jersey Third
Speaker 1: Regiment of Revolutionary War re Enactors. I would have preferred
Speaker 1: to join a reenactment group that reenacted the Constitutional Convention,
Speaker 1: but that doesn't really exist. People prefer the muskets and the.
Speaker 3: Form a constitutional reenactment group. I don't know how many
Speaker 3: people would come, but you could give it a shot.
Speaker 1: I might be the only delegate, that's true, But yes,
Speaker 1: I loved these people meeting them, and one thing that
Speaker 1: was actually quite moving I had always seen reenactments is
Speaker 1: kind of silly and something, you know that was funny
Speaker 1: to watch on The Simpsons, but I would never do
Speaker 1: it myself. After talking to them, I saw why it
Speaker 1: was meaningful for them. One man said he became a
Speaker 1: reenactor after reading this amazing book which I read. It
Speaker 1: was the diary of a Revolutionary War soldier from Connecticut,
Speaker 1: and it was basically just how difficult life was as
Speaker 1: a revolutionary, how cold you were, hungry you were. I
Speaker 1: remember he even talked about how he couldn't sleep because
Speaker 1: the whipper wheels were tweeting all night and it was
Speaker 1: keeping him up. So they had no shoes in the snow.
Speaker 1: And this man said, I just feel that I should
Speaker 1: honor them somehow for their sacrifice, and this is the
Speaker 1: way I'm going to try to honor them, to try
Speaker 1: to keep this alive. Another one of the reenactors said,
Speaker 1: what I love about it is that when I go
Speaker 1: to a work party, what do we talk about, you know,
Speaker 1: the baseball game or the weather. Here we do actually
Speaker 1: talk about history and philosophy, and they debate the issues.
Speaker 1: And they realized these founders were flawed people. You know,
Speaker 1: we don't want to worship them, but they did have
Speaker 1: some virtues in addition to their flaws. And I found
Speaker 1: it quite moving. And my wife, my long suffering wife,
Speaker 1: actually got into it and she put on the dress
Speaker 1: and the bonnet, and she actually it was not a
Speaker 1: great time for women because one of the many problems
Speaker 1: was a corset. She had to wear a corset so
Speaker 1: which is not comfortable, and she hated the corset. And
Speaker 1: she said, that makes me more grateful for my life.
Speaker 1: It is another way to become more grateful for modern life.
Speaker 1: We have a lot of problems now, and I don't
Speaker 1: want to downplay that. But at the same time, we
Speaker 1: should not think the good old days were good, because
Speaker 1: they were not. The good old days were dangerous, smelly, racist, sexist, homophobic. Well,
Speaker 1: let's not have this nostalgia for some past that didn't exist.
Speaker 3: I agree. I think you do a nice job of
Speaker 3: balancing that in the book about sort of pointing out
Speaker 3: some things that maybe in the past were useful that
Speaker 3: maybe we think about carrying forward, and then all the
Speaker 3: things that clearly were not. And I think we've talked
Speaker 3: about this before, this idea that misplaced nostalgia. You could
Speaker 3: go back to nearly any year in the past. You know,
Speaker 3: if you were like, throw me in a time machine,
Speaker 3: it would be a bad time to show up generally,
Speaker 3: you know, and even as a white male, but as
Speaker 3: a white male, it would even be better for me
Speaker 3: in most time frames than the other person, right, than
Speaker 3: the other people. And so you're trying to balance in
Speaker 3: the book this aspects of the Constitution that feel valuable
Speaker 3: and the parts of it that feel like they are wrong,
Speaker 3: just plain wrong, right, right, you know, racism, slavery, sexism, right,
Speaker 3: And you talk about two figures in history who were
Speaker 3: fighting for the end of slavery and they took radically
Speaker 3: different approaches to using the Constitution. Yeah, can you share that?
Speaker 1: Absolutely? And it's a fascinating story because it's about framing,
Speaker 1: which is something that we have talked about before and
Speaker 1: I love when you talk about it on the show.
Speaker 1: And the two figures are William Lloyd Garrison, who was
Speaker 1: an abolitionist and Frederick Douglass, who was a former enslaved
Speaker 1: man who then got free and became one of the
Speaker 1: great orators of all time. And William Lloyd Garrison, who
Speaker 1: was white, said the Constitution is a packed with the devil.
Speaker 1: He said, this is so far gone, it's so evil
Speaker 1: because it endorses slavery or allows slavery, that he burned it.
Speaker 1: He literally burned it in front of a crowd, and
Speaker 1: he would denounce it. At first, Frederick Douglas was on
Speaker 1: his side. He was an ally. But at some point
Speaker 1: in the eighteen fifties Frederick Douglas took a totally different tack.
Speaker 1: He changed. He said, you know what, it would probably
Speaker 1: be more productive if instead of burning the Constitution, we
Speaker 1: saw it as a promissory note. That's the phrase he used,
Speaker 1: because it does promise equality and liberty for all, and
Speaker 1: obviously at the time and still today, is not true.
Speaker 1: So his thought was, let's try to make America live
Speaker 1: up to those words in the Constitution. So the founding
Speaker 1: followers had flaws, but what they wrote was better than
Speaker 1: how they acted. Sometimes these are the seeds in the Constitution.
Speaker 1: It contains the seeds of freedom equality. Let's build on that.
Speaker 1: It's a very influential way of looking at the world
Speaker 1: and the Constitution. That's what Martin Luther King used that phrase.
Speaker 1: The Independent Declaration and the Constitution are promisory notes. Obama
Speaker 1: gave a famous speech on race where He had the
Speaker 1: same thing that the solution to the problems of racism
Speaker 1: were in the Constitution itself. You just have to make
Speaker 1: the Constitution live up to its ideals, and I found
Speaker 1: that very inspiring. I like the idea of framing it
Speaker 1: as a promissory note. It's an ideal. You're always trying
Speaker 1: to make it more perfect. That's in the preamble more perfect.
Speaker 1: Are never going to be perfect. But I mean, you
Speaker 1: look at the Constitution. When it was ratified, it was
Speaker 1: white men were the ones who could vote, and then
Speaker 1: over the years people have had to fight so that
Speaker 1: black men can vote, black women, women, indigenous people. That
Speaker 1: kind of makes me more optimistic. Also, it's very easy
Speaker 1: to be pessimistic when you read but seeing the grand
Speaker 1: arc of American history and that we have had progress
Speaker 1: and maybe not enough, of course, but women can vote
Speaker 1: and that is something they had to fight for, So
Speaker 1: it makes me optimistic that we can get through these
Speaker 1: difficult times.
Speaker 3: I think it's very useful to be able to look
Speaker 3: at progress. It's sort of what you're trying to do
Speaker 3: with the Constitution. It's like to be able to look
Speaker 3: at the way things have really changed for the better,
Speaker 3: right and to say we still need to continue moving right,
Speaker 3: And it's both those things, But I feel like if
Speaker 3: you embrace either one of those only, yeah, it's problematic.
Speaker 3: I know a lot of people who embrace You know,
Speaker 3: people have more rights than they used to. They should
Speaker 3: just be happy with what they have. And that's short sighted, right,
Speaker 3: It's missing the fact that we're not equal yet. Right,
Speaker 3: there's lots of ways in which we're not right. But
Speaker 3: on the other hand, to only see the current problems
Speaker 3: without recognizing how far we've come, to me, makes me
Speaker 3: lose hope. It makes me not want to do anything.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm referencing another conversation, but we were talking
Speaker 3: about gay rights and this person, you know, live through
Speaker 3: the AIDS crisis. Right, I've been fighting for gay rights forever,
Speaker 3: and we sort of having the same discussion about how
Speaker 3: far things have come. Right. You know, how different the
Speaker 3: world is than nineteen eighty four, Right, and we still
Speaker 3: need to continue to work on that equality package. But
Speaker 3: it's both to me.
Speaker 1: I love that you say that, Amen, is all I
Speaker 1: can say. It is inspiring to see the progress that's
Speaker 1: been made. If you deny that there has been any progress, then,
Speaker 1: like you say, you lose hope. It's like, what's the point.
Speaker 1: But seeing that we are able to change for the better,
Speaker 1: then I feel is like, Okay, that's good, let's keep going.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean again, burn it all down again. Gay rights,
Speaker 3: I think, is an interesting one to look at because
Speaker 3: it's probably the one that has changed the most in
Speaker 3: my lifetime. Right it's the one I've had the sort
Speaker 3: of front row seat to to some degree. And there
Speaker 3: are still some gay kid being bullied somewhere at this
Speaker 3: very second, right, so you know, for that person, this
Speaker 3: is a very real and still present and prominent problem.
Speaker 3: But I think about like I watched TV now and
Speaker 3: I'm like, there are gay couples, there are inter racial
Speaker 3: gay couples featured in mainstream commercials, and I love it
Speaker 3: because it makes me go, that was unthinkable right twenty
Speaker 3: years ago, Right Like, if you told me that would happen,
Speaker 3: I would have been like you, no, it's not like
Speaker 3: even being optimistic, that's it. We're not going to get there, right,
Speaker 3: And yet we.
Speaker 1: Have, and it happens so fast, I mean not fast enough.
Speaker 1: But the change from there's no way gay marriage will
Speaker 1: ever be legal, to gay marriage the majority of Americans
Speaker 1: being in favor of gay marriage. Yeah, was remarkably fast.
Speaker 3: Ye. And so I just I really love that because
Speaker 3: it shows me the areas I feel like we're doomed, right,
Speaker 3: Like the one for me is climate primarily these days,
Speaker 3: where I'm just like, we're never going to get it
Speaker 3: together enough to make a difference, and yet we could.
Speaker 1: Yeah. There's a great documentary about the ozone layer, which
Speaker 1: we have not fully solved, but mostly solved through international cooperation.
Speaker 1: And it was during the Reagan era that we did it,
Speaker 1: that we were able to stop people from using those
Speaker 1: fluorocarbons or whatever. And Reagan was actually the one who
Speaker 1: did it. He is like, in some senses, an environmentalist
Speaker 1: hero because he was the one who pushed forward on this,
Speaker 1: let's make the ozone hole, let's get an agreement, an
Speaker 1: international agreement. You watch that and you're like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: we can solve worldwide problems. It is possible. It's not crazy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would love to see that. I think that
Speaker 3: would be inspiring. Reagan does not make me think environmental
Speaker 3: hero at first at first glance, right, you know. And
Speaker 3: one of the things I thought was interesting in the book.
Speaker 3: I mean, I just I feel like I could just
Speaker 3: talk about the funny parts for our entire interview, but
Speaker 3: that's not the whole point. But you are in Central
Speaker 3: Park fishing water of a pond. Right, because if you
Speaker 3: follow a strict interpretation of the Constitution, agencies like the
Speaker 3: FDA would be unconstitutional. Right because the Constitution says only
Speaker 3: Congress should make laws, and now we have all these
Speaker 3: regulatory agencies making laws, which I would in general say
Speaker 3: I'm very in favor of right. But first, it cracks
Speaker 3: me up that you actually tried to do that. I
Speaker 3: don't think that experiment lasted very long, but it made
Speaker 3: me see like, oh, okay, you know there is a
Speaker 3: constitutional argument that makes sense that maybe there is overreach here.
Speaker 1: Right. You're a very careful reader. I am very impressed.
Speaker 1: Thank you for that. Yes, this is a huge debate
Speaker 1: that I didn't really see both sides of it is
Speaker 1: one that's going to become more and more important. It's
Speaker 1: how much regulation should there be. One side basically sees
Speaker 1: red tape, the bureaucracy, the regulations as saving our lives.
Speaker 1: You know, otherwise we could drink water and it could
Speaker 1: be filled with lead. The other sides the red tape
Speaker 1: as strangling us, strangling small business. How can you start
Speaker 1: a small business when you have to hire someone to
Speaker 1: design a website that's for colorblind people as well as
Speaker 1: other sited people. There's too many regulations. So those are
Speaker 1: the two sides. I think it was instructive because it's
Speaker 1: not like one side is greedy or one side is stupid.
Speaker 1: They just have these different world views. It's whether you
Speaker 1: think partly if people act without regulation, will that be
Speaker 1: beneficial for society or do we need some sort of
Speaker 1: governance so that we don't say, destroy the environment.
Speaker 3: And it's got a little of the old Hobbes Rousseau
Speaker 3: exisiting to it. And I hate to say that I,
Speaker 3: being a generally optimistic person and believing the best in people,
Speaker 3: fall on the side of we need regulation or people
Speaker 3: will do awful things, you know, Like I just think
Speaker 3: that's been shown kind of again and again. If we
Speaker 3: don't fight for workers' rights or clean water or you know,
Speaker 3: you can't dump your waist in the public sewer, that
Speaker 3: people will take the expedient, cheapest path. But I don't
Speaker 3: like that. I think that because I want to think
Speaker 3: the best of people.
Speaker 1: I totally agree. I relate it to myself because I
Speaker 1: feel I have very little willpower. You know, if I
Speaker 1: have the candy right at eye level in my pantry,
Speaker 1: I'm going to eat it. Yeah, And I think that's
Speaker 1: most humans. We don't have great willpower. So you have
Speaker 1: to set up structures so that you have to plan ahead,
Speaker 1: so put the candy out of sight, and that, as
Speaker 1: you've talked about on the show, the Odysseus strategy, because
Speaker 1: in the Odyssey, Odysseus was on a ship and he
Speaker 1: was going to be going through the sirens who would
Speaker 1: sing these beautiful women, and he would be tempted to
Speaker 1: dive in and then he would die. He would drown,
Speaker 1: so he bound himself to the mask. He had his
Speaker 1: sailors tie himself to the mask, put wax in his
Speaker 1: ears so he couldn't hear the sirens. And that to
Speaker 1: me is what I have to do on a personal level,
Speaker 1: so that I don't just eat the worst food and
Speaker 1: do no exercise. I have to set up these structures
Speaker 1: so that I act in a better way than I am.
Speaker 1: And I feel that that is partly what government is about,
Speaker 1: and that's the founding fathers too. They talked a lot
Speaker 1: about the importance of self governance. You can't have a
Speaker 1: good government of the nation unless the citizens are able
Speaker 1: to govern themselves and govern their worst passions and their
Speaker 1: most base anger, and able to rise above that. And
Speaker 1: the founders were actually I know that you are also
Speaker 1: a fan of the Stoics and Marcus Aurelius and writers
Speaker 1: like that. They were very much passionate. Well, that's ironic passionate.
Speaker 3: About as you were saying that, it made me think, well,
Speaker 3: Odyssey's the strategy did work, and he was at the
Speaker 3: same time bound right, like he wasn't able to do
Speaker 3: very much. He wasn't going to respond to another situation,
Speaker 3: And that points to the balance that we're trying to do.
Speaker 3: As a small business owner, I get the frustrations with
Speaker 3: some of the laws, how complicated the tax code is,
Speaker 3: and I mean, you know, there are things I'm like,
Speaker 3: this is just preposterous, right, And I'm really glad that
Speaker 3: I don't have to think too much about my drinking water. Right,
Speaker 3: I'm really glad that I don't have to think too
Speaker 3: much about the food that I eat, and I don't
Speaker 3: have to worry that this laptop is going to catch
Speaker 3: on fire. Right, you know, I mean, there's lots of
Speaker 3: things that I do. I'm really glad that there is
Speaker 3: the regulation for well.
Speaker 1: I think it's what we were talking about before, which
Speaker 1: is a very founding Follower's idea, the idea of balance.
Speaker 1: They were obsessed with balance in every part of their lives.
Speaker 1: So there is the balance of powers, which is why
Speaker 1: we have the President, the Congress, and Supreme Court. Because
Speaker 1: they didn't want one to become all powerful and the
Speaker 1: same in their lives. They tried to balance reason and passion.
Speaker 1: And the way they thought about health was the balance
Speaker 1: of bodily humors. That turned out not to be scientifically valid,
Speaker 1: but there is an homeostasis is still a very important
Speaker 1: idea in modern health. So I am a fan of balance.
Speaker 1: I try to have balance in my life and my
Speaker 1: family life, so you know, work life balance, that's a
Speaker 1: big thing. So yeah, balance, I think is an underrated virtue.
Speaker 3: One of my favorites. Yeah, I'm a huge believer in
Speaker 3: the middle way. Right as an addict, I don't follow
Speaker 3: the middle way because I couldn't, so I am in
Speaker 3: that way. I'm an all or nothing thing. But I
Speaker 3: think in general, any opportunity, the best solution often lies
Speaker 3: in some sort of balance.
Speaker 1: Right, right, although there is the I think it's the
Speaker 1: Oscar Wild quote, which is you should be moderate and
Speaker 1: everything including moderations. So absolutely, sometimes you want to have
Speaker 1: that Thanksgiving meal where you just like Gorge and.
Speaker 3: Like Chris and I at ten thirty last night after
Speaker 3: a magnetic Field show, walked to a carry out and
Speaker 3: got two pints of ice cream and took it back
Speaker 3: to the hotel, and we're like, screw it, let's just
Speaker 3: let's tie ice cream. I had chocolate chip cookie dough.
Speaker 3: He had regular chocolate. I think I made the better choice.
Speaker 1: I'm living.
Speaker 3: Yes, it was. It was a moment of in moderation,
Speaker 3: but again once in a while, right, I would be
Speaker 3: remiss if I did not bring up the one you
Speaker 3: feed's very own Nicole Zefino, who is prominently featured in
Speaker 3: your book. Why why is she in your book?
Speaker 1: She is a great American hero. I am a huge
Speaker 1: fan of Nicole. Hello, Nicole, if you're listening. We talked
Speaker 1: about some things from the eighteenth century that are worth reviving,
Speaker 1: and one of them is the idea that we should
Speaker 1: celebrate elections. Elections should be a festive. Back then, they
Speaker 1: were as big as Thanksgiving. Election Day was something to
Speaker 1: celebrate this new idea of democracy. Now it's very constrained
Speaker 1: democracy because only white men folks, but it was still
Speaker 1: the idea that you could choose your leader and they
Speaker 1: would have it was like a music festival that you
Speaker 1: would have farmers market, you would.
Speaker 3: Have lots of booze.
Speaker 1: It was a little. Yes, it went way too hard
Speaker 1: on the booze.
Speaker 3: It was the era.
Speaker 1: They were the Ta day drinkers. But they also in
Speaker 1: a more wholesome way. They had election cakes and some
Speaker 1: of them were huge. Some of them were the whole town.
Speaker 1: You would have seventy pound election cakes, bigger than a human.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: And they were made with cloves and fig So maybe
Speaker 1: not the kind of cakes we love today, but the
Speaker 1: idea of a cake at election, where you bake it
Speaker 1: at home, you bring it into the community, you share,
Speaker 1: you share in the sweetness of democracy. I was like,
Speaker 1: this is a great idea that we need to revive.
Speaker 1: So I started on Facebook, which I know is not
Speaker 1: very eighteenth century, but I put out the word I
Speaker 1: want to revive this and have someone in all fifty states,
Speaker 1: at least one person in every state make an election
Speaker 1: cake and bring it to the polls and people responded.
Speaker 1: It was my favorite part of the whole. It was
Speaker 1: so heartening and inspiring because people were so hungry. No
Speaker 1: pun intended for some positivity, something you could actually do.
Speaker 1: And people would make these cakes that were themed to
Speaker 1: the state, so you would have peach cake in Georgia
Speaker 1: and you would pray. And the very first cake I
Speaker 1: received was from Nicole because she had to leave the
Speaker 1: country during election day, so she sent it in early.
Speaker 1: She didn't send me the cake. I asked for photos,
Speaker 1: so I got these photos and it's a gorgeous cake.
Speaker 1: She lives in Illinois, and it had a Lincoln silhouette
Speaker 1: and it had stars and stripes. She did a magnificent job.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, she's a character in the book because
Speaker 1: she was the first to send in photos for the
Speaker 1: election cake project and we did get to all fifty
Speaker 1: states thanks to Nicole and other bakers like her.
Speaker 3: That's amazing. I'm going to have to ask her whether
Speaker 3: she used figs and clothes in it. But I think
Speaker 3: in general, I think that kind of circles us all
Speaker 3: the way back to kind of where we started, which
Speaker 3: is not taking certain things for granted, right, and celebrating
Speaker 3: the fact that, even though our system has many flaws,
Speaker 3: it is a system. You know, what's the old saying
Speaker 3: about democracy. It's the best of the worst solutions. That's
Speaker 3: not it.
Speaker 1: But what is the right I know what you're saying.
Speaker 3: It was basically it's like, it's democracy is terrible, but
Speaker 3: it's better than all the alternatives, something to that extent. Right,
Speaker 3: But I love that idea of celebrating something that we
Speaker 3: do now take for granted.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, And yeah, I almost see voting, or I have
Speaker 1: seen voting as a sort of pain in the butt, like, oh,
Speaker 1: I have to wait in line. But really it is
Speaker 1: something to celebrate, and it's fragile. It is not something
Speaker 1: that is guaranteed to survive. Most of human history has
Speaker 1: not been a democracy of any kind, even a flawed
Speaker 1: democracy like the world has now. So yeah, fighting for
Speaker 1: that and making sure we keep it you, whether it's
Speaker 1: with cakes or with other bigger structural changes like gerrymandering.
Speaker 1: And then I found that inspiring and it was a
Speaker 1: great way to end because it was a positive. So,
Speaker 1: like we were talking about before, it's so easy to complain,
Speaker 1: so easy to find faults, but let's look for solutions.
Speaker 1: Let's look for how we can make this better.
Speaker 3: So listener and thinking about all that and the other
Speaker 3: great wisdom from today's episode. If you were going to
Speaker 3: isolate just one top insight that you're taking away, what
Speaker 3: would not your top ten, not the top five? Just one?
Speaker 2: What is it?
Speaker 3: Think about it? Got it?
Speaker 1: Now?
Speaker 3: I ask you, what's one tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny little
Speaker 3: thing you can do today to put it in practice?
Speaker 3: Or maybe just take a baby step towards it. Remember,
Speaker 3: little by little, a little becomes a lot. Profound change
Speaker 3: happens as a result of aggregated tiny actions, not massive
Speaker 3: heroic effort. If you're not already on our Good Wolf
Speaker 3: Reminder SMS list, I'd highly recommend it as a tool
Speaker 3: you can leverage to remind you to take those vital
Speaker 3: baby steps forward. You can get on there at oneufeed
Speaker 3: dot net slash SMS. It's totally free, and once you're
Speaker 3: on there, I'll send you a couple text messages a
Speaker 3: week with little reminders and nudges. Here's what I recently
Speaker 3: shared to give you an idea of the type of
Speaker 3: stuff I send. Keep practicing even if it seems hopeless.
Speaker 3: Don't strive for perfection. Aim for consistency and no matter what,
Speaker 3: keep showing up for yourself. That was a great gem
Speaker 3: from recent guests Light Watkins. And if you're on the
Speaker 3: fence about joining, remember it's totally free and easy to unsubscribe.
Speaker 3: If you want to get in, I'd love to have
Speaker 3: you there. Just go to oneufeed dot net slash SMS.
Speaker 3: All right, back to it. You and I are going
Speaker 3: to continue in the post show conversation. We might talk
Speaker 3: about some eighteenth century toasts. Maybe we'll do one together
Speaker 3: we should have done in the main interview, but we
Speaker 3: will also talk about whether you actually were authorized by
Speaker 3: the US Congress to become a pirate or not. That's
Speaker 3: not exactly accurate, but it's close. It's club listeners. If
Speaker 3: you'd like access to this fun post show conversation AD
Speaker 3: free episodes and you want to become part of what
Speaker 3: we're doing here and support something that I think is
Speaker 3: valuable and I hope you do too, you can go
Speaker 3: to oneufeed dot net slash join and become part of
Speaker 3: the community. AJ thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 3: It's always a blast.
Speaker 1: Oh thank you for wearing the tricorn at which you
Speaker 1: look spectacular in and for drinking out of the pewter tankards.
Speaker 3: We'll have to take a picture of the try corn
Speaker 3: hats for the huzza huzza.
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