Speaker 1: Of course anger was present back in the day. They
Speaker 1: wouldn't have revolted against England if they weren't angry. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, they were really concerned about trying
Speaker 1: to regulate their anger because they knew that if we
Speaker 1: just give up, then we're going to be ruled by
Speaker 1: our passions. Whatever angry thought pops into our head.
Speaker 2: On this episode of the Psychology Podcast, I chat with
Speaker 2: my friend Aj Jacobs, a New York Times bestselling author
Speaker 2: and overall ments. The topic of our discussion is AJ's
Speaker 2: latest book, The Year of Living Constitutionally. In one sense,
Speaker 2: AJ's book is a crash course in how the Constitution
Speaker 2: affects our lives and how to interpret it properly. In
Speaker 2: another sense, his book is an investigation into what it
Speaker 2: means to live a good life and the best way
Speaker 2: to pursue happiness. Remarkably, ajs spent a full year adopting
Speaker 2: the tools and mindset of the Founding Fathers, Quills and Awe.
Speaker 2: It's really incredible what Aj does when he spends a
Speaker 2: year exploring something, which he's done over the course of
Speaker 2: multiple books, but he picks up something different each time.
Speaker 2: I love all of AJ's books and this one is
Speaker 2: particularly provocative and enlightening. So, without further ado, I bring
Speaker 2: you a J Jacobs.
Speaker 3: Hey, J.
Speaker 1: Scott, Barry Kaufman. I am so delighted to be here.
Speaker 2: Jay, Jay, It's so good. It's so good to have
Speaker 2: you back on this psychology podcast. You're always welcome on
Speaker 2: this show.
Speaker 1: Well, I am a huge fan not only of the
Speaker 1: show but also of you as a human being. You
Speaker 1: are one of my favorites on Planet Earth.
Speaker 2: Well, I really, I really appreciate that. And you've been
Speaker 2: and I've been a bigger fan of yours than you've
Speaker 2: been a fan of mine.
Speaker 1: Technically no longer. I wouldn't say bigger, but longer. You
Speaker 1: had read my books before are yours? But now I
Speaker 1: caught up.
Speaker 2: Well, I love these these year living dot dot dot books.
Speaker 2: I guess my question is, how how literal are you
Speaker 2: about that?
Speaker 3: Do you?
Speaker 2: Do you actually, like three hundred and sixty five days
Speaker 2: do it? Because like there's been times where I've like
Speaker 2: caught up with you within the year of things and
Speaker 2: you're not wearing your you know thing, and you know,
Speaker 2: so how does that work?
Speaker 1: Well, by the way I'm gonna put it, I know
Speaker 1: this is a podcast my trycorn hat just to get
Speaker 1: into care love it. Yeah, sometimes they're longer than a year.
Speaker 1: I did one called drop Dead Healthy, where I tried
Speaker 1: to be the healthiest personal live physically and mentally, and
Speaker 1: that was at least two and a half years because
Speaker 1: I needed a lot of work. It was it's hard
Speaker 1: to do in a year. This one actually turned out
Speaker 1: to be a year because I decided to start it.
Speaker 1: It's about the Constitution and politics, and I started it
Speaker 1: on election day and ended it on election day, so
Speaker 1: that seemed to work out well.
Speaker 2: But but how how much of your day do you
Speaker 2: really take it literally for that whole year? Like I
Speaker 2: really want to know your normal day when you're in
Speaker 2: character for this, Like are we talking like you go
Speaker 2: you get dressed up and go to the coffee shop
Speaker 2: to write like in your in your outfit, You're in
Speaker 2: your like seventeenth century or whatever outfit. Wait, explain this
Speaker 2: to me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, yes that is well, let me back
Speaker 1: up and explain the premise and then I'll tell you
Speaker 1: how much how much of my day was taken Yeah,
Speaker 1: which was all of it? So the premise is about
Speaker 1: the Constitution because I realized the Constitution affects every part
Speaker 1: of our lives, and I knew nothing about it. I
Speaker 1: had not read it top to bottom. I knew the
Speaker 1: preamble from Schoolhouse Rock, but I didn't know much about it.
Speaker 1: So I thought, one, let me try to understand it
Speaker 1: by adopting the mindset and the lifestyle of the founding fathers,
Speaker 1: and see what I could learn. So seek what I
Speaker 1: can learn about politics, and because that is of course
Speaker 1: extremely timely, but also what can I learn? What wisdom
Speaker 1: is there from our ancestors that I can learn that
Speaker 1: might make my life better, that might help in my
Speaker 1: pursuit of happiness, to use their phrase, And also what
Speaker 1: ignorance I should leave behind? Because it was a racist, sexist, homophobe.
Speaker 1: It was a terrible time in many ways. So I
Speaker 1: decided to go all in as I like to do,
Speaker 1: as you know, that's my mo. I did it with
Speaker 1: the Bible. I tried to live biblically, and I had
Speaker 1: the robe and the beard. So this time I had
Speaker 1: my tricorn hat I had. I lived by candlelight. I
Speaker 1: wrote with a quill pen, so I was literally an
Speaker 1: inkstained wretch because my fingers were instantly covered with black.
Speaker 3: If a good quill.
Speaker 2: And I've went down the rabbit hole on trying to
Speaker 2: find the best quill pen I could buy for my
Speaker 2: own purposes.
Speaker 3: And did you find one?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm just wondering which one you got
Speaker 2: that's nerd out on cold pen?
Speaker 1: Well I went, I went full on, which is the
Speaker 1: actual goose quill like there were there are ones with
Speaker 1: ballpole like that have the little metal part, but this
Speaker 1: is an actual goose quill. So and I bought the
Speaker 1: feathers and I made it myself because that's what they
Speaker 1: would have done. And then I made the ink out
Speaker 1: of like you know, wasped nests. So it was a
Speaker 1: big there was an element of d y and that
Speaker 1: was That is one thing that I think was a positive.
Speaker 1: There are a bunch of positive aspects of our our
Speaker 1: ancestors that we shaid and one of them is, yeah,
Speaker 1: being connected to the items around us. So I I
Speaker 1: knew exactly what was in my ink. I made my
Speaker 1: own pen uh, And it was in that sense that
Speaker 1: was that was quite lovely.
Speaker 2: That is so cool. You did well. You did a
Speaker 2: lot of things. You voted by voice I did.
Speaker 3: I did.
Speaker 1: That's how they voted. They there and there was no
Speaker 1: secret ballot, and or very very rare secret ballot in
Speaker 1: the in the seventeen and eighteen hundreds. People would just
Speaker 1: go in and you would announce your vote. So I
Speaker 1: thought I would try to vote that way. I don't
Speaker 1: recommend it.
Speaker 2: That's not when you tried.
Speaker 3: Well there.
Speaker 1: Well, I went into my polling station in New York
Speaker 1: City and I said I'd like to vote for I
Speaker 1: guess it was Governor Kathy Hokeel And they said, don't
Speaker 1: say it, don't say it. This is you are. Were
Speaker 1: not supposed to talk like that. And I said, yeah,
Speaker 1: but the founding, that's the way they did it in
Speaker 1: the seventeen nineties. I'm trying to recapture that. They said,
Speaker 1: don't We've moved on. We've moved on, which is a
Speaker 1: good lesson in some ways we have. I will say
Speaker 1: one thing about elections that is I think relevant to
Speaker 1: your listeners is about the joy of democracy. Back then,
Speaker 1: it was a new thing. The ability to choose your
Speaker 1: own leader, to have a participatory vote. That's an astounding
Speaker 1: fact that we just take for granted, and so many
Speaker 1: of us don't vote. So the idea of trying to
Speaker 1: recapture the joy of casting a vote, and it was
Speaker 1: like a festival. Then it was like a party, at
Speaker 1: least for the privileged few who could vote. So it
Speaker 1: was of course racist and sexist, but it also had
Speaker 1: an element of festivity. So there was a lot of rum,
Speaker 1: punch was served and election cakes. So I tried to
Speaker 1: revive the election cake because there was these cakes that
Speaker 1: you would come to the vote and you would talk
Speaker 1: with your friends about politics and you would and that
Speaker 1: I think is something we should recapture. So that's one
Speaker 1: of the many aspects of eighteenth century life that I
Speaker 1: feel are worthy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, no, I love it.
Speaker 1: And I got people in every state of the United
Speaker 1: States to bake election cakes and bring it to the polls.
Speaker 1: And it was one of the most meaningful experiences, I'm
Speaker 1: not joking of my life. It was because I was
Speaker 1: so depressed by our politics and the divisiveness and a
Speaker 1: feeling I couldn't do anything, and this one small gesture,
Speaker 1: and I know it was small, but I was able
Speaker 1: to connect with hundreds of people around the country. We
Speaker 1: felt like we were doing something active by baking this cake.
Speaker 1: And you know, even if it's just giving out sweets
Speaker 1: to people, it was a reminder that democra is sweet
Speaker 1: and we've got a fight to keep it.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I love it.
Speaker 2: There's like a lot of ways in which was better
Speaker 2: back then, obviously a lot of you know, not better
Speaker 2: for everyone, as you point out, with all those caveats,
Speaker 2: right like slaves weren't enjoying, weren't partying right, but no, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: but so all caveats aside. I mean, one thing that
Speaker 2: seemed to be better back then was the idea that
Speaker 2: that we that the political parties weren't as fractionated and
Speaker 2: divisive as they are now. That really really struck me
Speaker 2: when I read your book. So you think if they
Speaker 2: saw like the State of Union address with like Marjorie
Speaker 2: Taylor Green or whatever her name is, with the Trump
Speaker 2: hat and like with the the booing and the would
Speaker 2: you think that would they'd be like, what's what's what happened?
Speaker 1: I think George Washington would be horrified. He hated factions
Speaker 1: and parties, okay, and he tried to stop the They
Speaker 1: came around pretty quickly. And yeah, the Jefferson Adams election
Speaker 1: of eighteen hundred was quite ugly, but I would say
Speaker 1: that they weren't as right now what we have is
Speaker 1: a real rigidity of thinking, and it is really disturbing.
Speaker 1: As you know, this divisiveness. People are in one camp
Speaker 1: or the other, and you're supposed to adopt all of
Speaker 1: the beliefs of your tribe, even though there might be
Speaker 1: unrelated You know, what does gun control have to do
Speaker 1: with abortion? I have to do with not regulating companies.
Speaker 1: You know, they are different ideas. So so back then,
Speaker 1: I do think there was more of a open mindedness
Speaker 1: to changing your changing your mind, a flexibility of mind.
Speaker 1: And in fact, one of my favorite anecdotes is that
Speaker 1: James Addison, the father of the Constitution, his last words
Speaker 1: on Planet Earth were I changed my mind.
Speaker 3: He made a weird face.
Speaker 1: I know, we don't know what it was about what
Speaker 1: I mean. It could be like what kind of tea
Speaker 1: he likes. It could be the bi cameral legislature.
Speaker 3: And you just don't know.
Speaker 2: I feel like I know what it was.
Speaker 3: I oh, you know what, Come on, tell me.
Speaker 2: No, I think it's obvious that he was referring to
Speaker 2: his thoughts on religion.
Speaker 1: Oh interesting, Well that is possible, yeah, I mean, but
Speaker 1: but what I love is that he he was open
Speaker 1: to it, as was Ben Franklin. Ben Franklin my favorite
Speaker 1: Founding He really, I mean he had you guys really
Speaker 1: would have been friends. I feel that, I mean he was.
Speaker 1: He had his flaws, He had his flaws like everyone,
Speaker 1: but he was by far the most open minded. And
Speaker 1: at the Constitutional Convention he gave a speech at the
Speaker 1: end saying that the older he gets, the less sure
Speaker 1: he is of his opinions. Wow, and I love. I
Speaker 1: try to adopt that. I try to adopt that as
Speaker 1: I get older, because it's so easy to fall into.
Speaker 1: The older you get, the more sure you are of yourself,
Speaker 1: and you surround yourself with people who agree with you,
Speaker 1: so you become even more set in your ways. But
Speaker 1: not Ben Franklin. And I'm trying to do what Ben Franklin?
Speaker 3: Did? You know?
Speaker 2: Ben Franklin has this whole list of virtues that partly
Speaker 2: forms the basis for modern day the modern day science
Speaker 2: of character strengths partly, and he used the word he
Speaker 2: uses the word trifling a lot. Don't fall prey at trifling,
Speaker 2: you know, he uses that word a lot in his
Speaker 2: list of virtues you talk about just in general, with
Speaker 2: all the Founding fathers, they were really into virtue, it's
Speaker 2: particularly the idea of public mindedness. What would be a
Speaker 2: modern day understanding of that phrase public mindedness that they
Speaker 2: were so interested in.
Speaker 1: Well, yes, they really were, and with the caveats that
Speaker 1: they had a very small view of what the public was.
Speaker 1: They really believed that virtue meant doing good for others,
Speaker 1: thinking of others, first, sacrificing the marshmallow test, all that
Speaker 1: good stuff. And so virtue now I feel has a
Speaker 1: tainted it's virtue signaling. We use that word a lot
Speaker 1: to be like, show off how ethical you are, and ask,
Speaker 1: you know, how were the bees treated? Who made this?
Speaker 3: Honey?
Speaker 1: That's kind that you're serving me on my pancakes. But
Speaker 1: they saw virtue in a different way. They saw it
Speaker 1: as being concerned for your fellow human And I love
Speaker 1: that because we, I feel, are obsessed with the rights
Speaker 1: in the Constitution, which is great, which is great. We're
Speaker 1: all about our own personal right. We should be obsessed,
Speaker 1: we should be concerned with individual rights. But I think
Speaker 1: we have forgotten a lot about the responsibilities and the
Speaker 1: duty and what you owe to your community and to
Speaker 1: the world. And they didn't they wrote a bill of rights.
Speaker 1: They didn't write a bill of responsibilities because people understood
Speaker 1: the responsibilities. It was so obvious you didn't need to
Speaker 1: spell it out. But when I wrote a constitution for
Speaker 1: my for my family, I included a bill of responsibilities
Speaker 1: as well as a bill of.
Speaker 2: Rights, justice, equality, freedom, and liberty.
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: I mean they defined them slightly differently, but yes, they cared.
Speaker 1: I mean they were trying to create a better world.
Speaker 1: And they got some things right. They got somethings terribly wrong,
Speaker 1: but they were really trying. They were really trying, and
Speaker 1: really I respect them.
Speaker 2: What did they do to try for equality?
Speaker 1: Well, as you as you point out, they were not
Speaker 1: obsessed with equality. You know, they had a very blinkered
Speaker 1: view of equality because yeah, it did not include Native Americans,
Speaker 1: black people, and women. But they they rejected monarchy and
Speaker 1: the idea that the monarch an aristocracy was a higher
Speaker 1: was born with privileges, and they hated monarchy and aristocracy.
Speaker 1: And that is something that I wish that's another thing
Speaker 1: from that era that we should recapture, because for some reason,
Speaker 1: we're back to being obsessed with you know, Kate Middleton,
Speaker 1: We're back to being obsessed with you know, Prince William
Speaker 1: or whoever, and we and the imagery of royalty is everywhere,
Speaker 1: like the you know, the.
Speaker 3: Burger King.
Speaker 1: They are all these phrases, you know, king size mattress,
Speaker 1: Queen size mattress, the King of pop and I think
Speaker 1: they would have been appalled. They specifically changed the names
Speaker 1: of like King's College changed to Columbia College, which you
Speaker 1: taught at, and King's Street we're changed to Congress Street.
Speaker 1: King's minuet dance was changed to Congress. They hated the
Speaker 1: idea of aristocracy and this idea that you were born
Speaker 1: with some sort of advantage. So so in that sense
Speaker 1: it was revolutionary because every other country had this idea
Speaker 1: that there was a class who deserved to be higher.
Speaker 2: Right, so they did hate nobility and the whole concept
Speaker 2: of nobility. No, that's a really good exactly. Yeah. I
Speaker 2: want to talk about the most recent amendment, which is
Speaker 2: the result of a crusade by those, which is the
Speaker 2: result of a crusade by a college student who got
Speaker 2: a bad grade in his government paper. I didn't know
Speaker 2: about that.
Speaker 1: Yes, Oh, it is hilarious. It is hilarious. Well, I think,
Speaker 1: just to give you some background, I thought one of
Speaker 1: the conclusions I came away with was everything requires a village,
Speaker 1: not just a village. A world like this book that
Speaker 1: I wrote could not have been done without researchers and
Speaker 1: my editor and you know, the hundreds of people I
Speaker 1: talked to and wisdom like yours. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: there are cases where one human, one person can make
Speaker 1: a huge difference in the world. And I love that
Speaker 1: though those are both true, they both there a little paradoxical,
Speaker 1: but they're both true. And in this case, it was
Speaker 1: a man named Gregory Watson, and this was a few
Speaker 1: years ago, I think in the around nineteen ninety and
Speaker 1: he was a Texas University student and he got a
Speaker 1: bad grade on his essay and the essay was about
Speaker 1: a forgotten amendment that James Madison himself wrote in the
Speaker 1: seventeen eighties. And the amendment was that Congress should not
Speaker 1: be able to give itself pay raises that you have
Speaker 1: to the pay raises will only take effect at the
Speaker 1: next at the next Congress, which makes sense, like a
Speaker 1: totally rational but it only passed. It didn't pass the
Speaker 1: required number. You needed three quarters of the states to
Speaker 1: sign on, and there were only thirteen states at the time.
Speaker 1: But he didn't get to three quarters so Gregory Watson
Speaker 1: wrote a paper saying, I think we should revive this.
Speaker 1: You know, it makes sense, and it's still alive. It's
Speaker 1: like a zombie, a zombie amendment. It never going away.
Speaker 1: No one ever said no, So let's try to get
Speaker 1: it through. Let's get the other states. You know, now
Speaker 1: you need whatever it was, thirty more states. And his
Speaker 1: teacher said that it's an idiotic idea, and he was
Speaker 1: maybe I don't recommend like revenge being a motivator for good,
Speaker 1: but in this case it worked out. He said, I
Speaker 1: am going to get this passed. And he spent ten
Speaker 1: years sending letters because it was letters at the time,
Speaker 1: to state senators all across the country, and eventually it passed.
Speaker 1: And that is the last amendment, the twenty seventh Amendment.
Speaker 1: And I'm very worried that we're not going to have
Speaker 1: a twenty eighth amendment because our country is so divided
Speaker 1: and you need some unanimity to get an amendment passed.
Speaker 1: And I think it's a big problem. I think the
Speaker 1: founders did not want the Constitution to be so hard
Speaker 1: to amend. They did not foresee the divisiveness that would
Speaker 1: make it so hard to amend. Because they were again,
Speaker 1: they were Enlightenment thinkers. They knew that we make mistakes
Speaker 1: and they knew we would need to to revise. So
Speaker 1: they they were they were much more flexible and open
Speaker 1: in some ways than we are now.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Well, let's see what other wisdom we can
Speaker 2: learn from the Founding fathers. And there's also ignorance that
Speaker 2: that we don't replicate.
Speaker 3: Ritch we've talked about.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, but let's let's really focus some of the wisdom.
Speaker 2: Tell me more about their thoughts on slowing down because
Speaker 2: that seems so relevant to our culture today.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, I loved this was one of the biggest
Speaker 1: lessons of my experience is we need more cold takes
Speaker 1: and fewer hot takes. We are a hot take culture
Speaker 1: and it is terrible.
Speaker 3: I mean.
Speaker 1: And one way that I experienced this because, as you know,
Speaker 1: I was wearing my tricorn hat, I was living by candlelight,
Speaker 1: and I wrote instead of on my computer or on
Speaker 1: my iPhone, I would write with my quill pen.
Speaker 3: And writing with.
Speaker 1: A quill pen actually changed the way I thought because
Speaker 1: it slowed me down. So instead of thumb texting something
Speaker 1: you know, and sending it off immediately, you had to
Speaker 1: sit down, you had to get out the ink, You
Speaker 1: get out the quill, and then you write your thoughts.
Speaker 1: You're able to think about it. It's a longer format,
Speaker 1: you are and before you send it you have to
Speaker 1: you know, I would put wax on it. So it
Speaker 1: was like a waiting period for my thoughts, which is
Speaker 1: great because I think thoughts need a waiting period, they
Speaker 1: need to to slow down instead of just spewing out.
Speaker 1: The first thing that comes into your mind, which is
Speaker 1: causing so much of the conflict that we have today,
Speaker 1: is that we're not able to use some self control.
Speaker 1: They were very into self control and governing your passions. Stoicism.
Speaker 1: They were very they were very yeah influenced by stoic thoughts.
Speaker 1: So I think that is something we need to recapture.
Speaker 1: And I don't recommend that we all go back to
Speaker 1: quill pens, but I do recommend maybe try writing by
Speaker 1: longhand or don't send your send, give a waiting period
Speaker 1: for your emails or texts, you know, type them up
Speaker 1: and then wait a couple of minutes before you send them.
Speaker 1: It just is so important. And I do think they
Speaker 1: they thought more deeply then, and they you know, the
Speaker 1: it was.
Speaker 3: It was weird.
Speaker 1: Do you if you politicians today, you don't hear them
Speaker 1: talking about political philosophy and ethical philosophy like they did
Speaker 1: back then. They were really remarkable in that way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it just really struck me reading your book the
Speaker 2: benefits of not living in such a digital age. You've
Speaker 2: already mentioned some of the benefits, but I think about
Speaker 2: others like you. You talk in your book about the
Speaker 2: value they placed on assembling in person, you know, face
Speaker 2: to face to hash out ideas. I mean, it's just
Speaker 2: that's just you don't see that. It's like Twitter, Twitter,
Speaker 2: Twitter discourse would probably be very very confusing to them
Speaker 2: and frustrating.
Speaker 1: Would you agree, Oh, they would have been appalled by Twitter.
Speaker 3: Yeah. But the how uh?
Speaker 1: And and yes, absolutely, one of the rights in the Constitution,
Speaker 1: in the first Amendment, is the rights to assemble. So
Speaker 1: I tried to express my right to assemble by I
Speaker 1: have had an eighteenth century dinner party or two where
Speaker 1: I would cook eighteenth century food, like you know, beef
Speaker 1: stew and rice pudding, and we'd have madeira and grog
Speaker 1: and all this. But I invited people from all over
Speaker 1: the political spectrum, and they're like twelve of us, and
Speaker 1: we sat down and we had a civil discussion about
Speaker 1: what we like about the constitute, what we like about
Speaker 1: America and democracy, and what needs to be changed. And
Speaker 1: of course there were disagreements, but no one was yelling
Speaker 1: or throwing alcoholicy. You know, it was really remarkable, and
Speaker 1: everyone emailed me after what a meaningful experience it was, because,
Speaker 1: like you say, if they had done it over Twitter,
Speaker 1: it would have just been you know, disaster capital letters,
Speaker 1: and yeah, it would have been a disaster. So there's that.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and also another digital danger I feel is the
Speaker 1: news that is piped into our brains eighteen hours a day.
Speaker 1: And the news is already has a negative bias, because
Speaker 1: who wants to read about all the fires that were prevented.
Speaker 1: You want to read about the one fire that burned.
Speaker 3: A house down.
Speaker 1: So it's very I found it extremely troubling for my
Speaker 1: own mental health to have this news have negativity in
Speaker 1: my face all the time. They would get the newspaper
Speaker 1: two to three times a week and that was it,
Speaker 1: and the news was much less bias towards the negative.
Speaker 1: I remember I spent my time reading newspapers from the
Speaker 1: seventeen eighties because it was fascinating. I loved this article
Speaker 1: where they talked about.
Speaker 3: This amazing new.
Speaker 1: Innovation of numbers on houses. So instead of saying like
Speaker 1: it's the it's the house near the big manure pile,
Speaker 1: past the windmill. Yeah, and just the jew just that
Speaker 1: mad mates realize how much we take for granted too,
Speaker 1: which is another like profound lesson for me, is I
Speaker 1: take so much for house numbers. I take socks for granted.
Speaker 1: I would wear these. I tried to dress like them,
Speaker 1: so I had my tricorn hat and I would wear
Speaker 1: these socks. But they were knitted socks, wooll knitted socks
Speaker 1: that went up to my knees, and they didn't have elastic.
Speaker 1: And when you don't have elastic, the socks sort of
Speaker 1: slide down and form a puddle around your ankles. So
Speaker 1: every day you have to put on not garters. They're
Speaker 1: sort of like garters, but they're not even as sophistic.
Speaker 1: They're little belts. They look like belts for tiny people,
Speaker 1: and you have to put a belt around on your
Speaker 1: sock so it doesn't slide down your leg. And that
Speaker 1: took a lot of time. So I will never take
Speaker 1: elastic for granted. Again an order the dishwasher, the amount
Speaker 1: of time that you've spent trying I mean, think about
Speaker 1: trying to wash dishes like they did. It's not just
Speaker 1: in the sink. They didn't have water in their kitchen.
Speaker 1: They would have to go out to the well, get
Speaker 1: a bunch of water, bring it back or bring the
Speaker 1: dishes there, and to use things like vinegar and sand
Speaker 1: to try to clean it off. I mean it was
Speaker 1: they were working on every part of life, required steps
Speaker 1: and preparation that we can't even imagine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean there's a lot of profound things there
Speaker 2: about the things we take for granted, which really dovetails
Speaker 2: nicely with your prior book on gratitude.
Speaker 3: I think that quit.
Speaker 1: Oh sorry, I was going to say, which quotes one
Speaker 1: of my favorite psychologists and philosopher, Scott Barry Kaufman, who Yeah,
Speaker 1: you you had some great things to say about savoring
Speaker 1: and slowing down time in the Gratitude book. So I
Speaker 1: am grateful for you.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm very grateful that you solicited a quote in
Speaker 2: the first place, So thank you.
Speaker 1: And you're in my puzzle book. I quoted you in
Speaker 1: my puzzle book, So yeah, well you were you weren't
Speaker 1: you didn't make this one. I'm sorry. I am sorry
Speaker 1: if you would No, it's okay. If you were from
Speaker 1: the eighteenth century, I would have.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it wasn't as relevant. But I know
Speaker 2: I have a lot. I have a lot of gratude
Speaker 2: that you considered me a worthy source.
Speaker 3: Yeah, of course this one.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of little quirky things in this one,
Speaker 2: as as you are. And like the Pillory, you know,
Speaker 2: like you bought a wooden pillary off Etsy, they actually
Speaker 2: sell it.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that was a bizarre one. And this was
Speaker 1: because one of the goals of the book was to
Speaker 1: try to express my rights the way they were expressed
Speaker 1: in the seventeen eighties. So when I instead for my
Speaker 1: first amendment, freedom of speech, I wrote with a quill.
Speaker 1: I wrote pamphlets and handed of them out on the
Speaker 1: street instead of writing tweets. Now, the eighth Amendment of
Speaker 1: the Constitution says that there should be no cruel and
Speaker 1: unusual punishments. And at the time, in seventeen eighty nine,
Speaker 1: what they considered cruel and unusual was very different from
Speaker 1: what we consider cruel and unusual. So something like the
Speaker 1: Pillory was considered just fine. So it made me realize
Speaker 1: how much we have evolved morally, Like there is a
Speaker 1: lot of pessimism out there. But so yeah, And a pillary,
Speaker 1: as you might know, or is a wooden contraption where
Speaker 1: you put your arms and head in and you would
Speaker 1: be in the town square. And it was awful. It
Speaker 1: was just I mean, it's not like where you go
Speaker 1: to Williamsburg and take a photo. It was people were
Speaker 1: throwing rocks at you, they were throwing dung in your face,
Speaker 1: they were hitting you, and it was you know, it
Speaker 1: was truly And I do not like shame based punishment.
Speaker 1: I think it is a terrible thing. I think that's
Speaker 1: another problem with digital culture, is brought back shame based punishment,
Speaker 1: like on the Internet book by John Ronson. Yeah, it's terrible.
Speaker 1: So we have a digital pillary now at least we
Speaker 1: don't have a physical one. But anyway, I just sort
Speaker 1: of on a lark, I bought a pillary from a
Speaker 1: place that sold it. They sold more like. It wasn't
Speaker 1: a punishment. It was more for adult dungeons of you know,
Speaker 1: people who enjoyed pleasure.
Speaker 2: Pleasure you consider, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Exactly, it was for pleasure. And I so I bought
Speaker 1: it and they sent it to me. One irony is
Speaker 1: that they they said, do you want a neoprene padding
Speaker 1: around the neck hole to make it more comfortable? And
Speaker 1: I said, well, that kind of defeats the purpose of
Speaker 1: the pillory.
Speaker 3: Right I.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't put it on anyone but myself, I because
Speaker 1: it would just feel weird to me. But I did
Speaker 1: put myself and my wife lock me in the pillary
Speaker 1: for a few minutes, just to try to get a
Speaker 1: sense of what it might feel like.
Speaker 3: And it was.
Speaker 1: You know, at first I was giggling. It was so
Speaker 1: silly and absurd, and then I started to feel like
Speaker 1: a little bit unnerved by my lack of ability to move.
Speaker 1: And yeah, so she let me out. I'm I had
Speaker 1: to promise to fold my sweaters. So she used it
Speaker 1: as a bargaining chip, but it was I guess the
Speaker 1: lessons were again, how far we've come in punishment and
Speaker 1: we still have a long way to go. And also, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm glad that you can buy this on
Speaker 1: the internet for people who like it, but I'm glad
Speaker 1: that it's not used as something at least in our country.
Speaker 1: I know that there are parts of the world where
Speaker 1: things like that are still used, and that is something
Speaker 1: we need.
Speaker 3: To work on.
Speaker 2: But you didn't go out in public and do public shaming.
Speaker 1: Not with that, I mean, originally I thought about it,
Speaker 1: but I thought that's enough. I mean, I did a
Speaker 1: lot of other things in public that were crazy, and yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I well, I bore a musket.
Speaker 3: That was one of them.
Speaker 1: Because the Constitution talks about the right to bear arms,
Speaker 1: and at the time, in seventeen eighty nine, arms were
Speaker 1: mostly muskets. They also had some others. But so I thought, well,
Speaker 1: what did what would it feel like to walk around
Speaker 1: New York City's Upper West Side bearing a musket?
Speaker 3: And it was weird. It was weird. It was I was.
Speaker 1: I got a lot of people who steered away, who like,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'll give you one. One advantage is I
Speaker 1: went into my coffee shop and I was waiting in line,
Speaker 1: and the guy in front of me said, you go first.
Speaker 1: I don't want to. I don't want to hold you up.
Speaker 1: I don't want to hold up a guy with a musket.
Speaker 3: You go first. So it did did he say that?
Speaker 2: He said that? Oh?
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, he was like, you go first, man. I
Speaker 1: not with that thing I do not want to be
Speaker 1: in front of you. So that was that was nice,
Speaker 1: But the bigger point was how how should we think
Speaker 1: about the Second Amendment. I don't have any concrete answers,
Speaker 1: but it gave me some perspective. And the question is
Speaker 1: how it is such a different weapon than a semi
Speaker 1: automatic on nowadays. So at what point does it become
Speaker 1: so different that the laws don't apply in the same way.
Speaker 1: It's like if you write a law for a bicycle
Speaker 1: and then we invent a, you know, a massive truck,
Speaker 1: at what point does do we need a different law?
Speaker 1: So that was what and I actually with the musket,
Speaker 1: I used it. I went out a few times. First
Speaker 1: I joined a Revolutionary War re enactment group, which was
Speaker 1: fascinating and wonderful, and I went and I fought in
Speaker 1: the Battle of Monmouth in New Jersey the reenactment. I
Speaker 1: died for our country. I was shot by British troops,
Speaker 1: but I died in the shade, and I was like
Speaker 1: kind of RESTful, so it wasn't so bad. But I
Speaker 1: also went to a shooting range with my regiment of reenactors,
Speaker 1: and shooting a musket is fascinating because it is fifteen
Speaker 1: eighteen steps. You have to bite off the top of
Speaker 1: a piece of paper and poured the gunpowder down. You
Speaker 1: have to pull back the all sorts of gadgets is
Speaker 1: a It is not something you can do. It took
Speaker 1: me many minutes. In the Revolutionary War, soldiers could actually
Speaker 1: do three or four shots a minute, which is remarkable.
Speaker 1: But that's still quite different from today's guns, where you
Speaker 1: can shoot dozens of rounds per minute. So it was anyway,
Speaker 1: the whole thing was fascinating, and and I tried to
Speaker 1: present a balanced view of of gun rights. I mean,
Speaker 1: I am a sort of a default liberal, so I
Speaker 1: do believe in more restriction and more regulation, I guess
Speaker 1: I should say, but I wanted to. I didn't want
Speaker 1: to just preach to the choir. I wanted to explore
Speaker 1: these issues in a way that people on both sides
Speaker 1: would stop and think and slow down, like we said,
Speaker 1: and slow down and try to come to a solution
Speaker 1: that would that that is workable and that will make
Speaker 1: the world better.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, I love that, Oh, I love that.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 2: Any kind of last ideas regarding what you've learned from
Speaker 2: about human psychology, you know, wisdom on how to live
Speaker 2: your best life.
Speaker 1: Well one, I'm I mean just to stress that helping
Speaker 1: others was such a huge part of the way they
Speaker 1: saw life, the idea of sacrifice and regulating your emotions.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think I think that anger it's complicated
Speaker 1: because of course anger was present back in the day.
Speaker 1: They wouldn't have revolted against England if they weren't angry.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, they were really concerned about
Speaker 1: trying to regulate their anger because like they would regulate
Speaker 1: the government, they wanted to control their passions. And they
Speaker 1: knew that humans are if we just give up, then
Speaker 1: we're going to be ruled by our passions, whatever angry
Speaker 1: thought pops into our head. And George Washington is famous
Speaker 1: for us because he was born with a temper, that guy,
Speaker 1: but he spent all of his life to control his temper.
Speaker 1: And there's one story which I think is true. It's
Speaker 1: not like one of the apocryphal chopping down the cherry
Speaker 1: tree stories. This one, according to historians, actually happened where
Speaker 1: it was very early in his political life and one
Speaker 1: of his opponents hit him physically with a stick with
Speaker 1: a hickory stick, and the next day Washington challenge asked
Speaker 1: the guy to meet him at a tavern. The other
Speaker 1: politician figured they were going to have a fight, a
Speaker 1: real knockdown, drag out fight, but instead Washington extended his
Speaker 1: hand in friendship and said, let's forgive and forget and
Speaker 1: take the high road. And that is just amazing. I mean,
Speaker 1: that is something that.
Speaker 3: I love that.
Speaker 2: How would you rank the top three of all of
Speaker 2: the living a year? Things like? Where does this one
Speaker 2: rank in all of them? Was this one of your favorites?
Speaker 1: Yeah, this was one of my favorites, just because I
Speaker 1: got to learn so much be it was so relevant
Speaker 1: because every day there's another news story about the Constitution
Speaker 1: that's gonna change our lives and change the pile. So
Speaker 1: I loved I loved some of the you know, writing
Speaker 1: by candlelight. Candles are lovely, candles are underestimate. We should
Speaker 1: do more of that. So I would put it in
Speaker 1: the top three. Certainly the Bible one. I spent a
Speaker 1: year trying to live by all the rules of the Bible,
Speaker 1: and some of that was horrible. Like, you know, I
Speaker 1: had a very itchy, scratchy beard practically down to my navel.
Speaker 1: I had to you know, it was I couldn't touch
Speaker 1: my wife during certain times and from the month, so
Speaker 1: it had its huge downsides, but at the same time
Speaker 1: I learned a lot about gratitude and humility from that
Speaker 1: project and ritual, the joy of ritual. And then I
Speaker 1: guess the third of my favorite was the Gratitude Book
Speaker 1: featuring Scott Barry Kaufman.
Speaker 3: I loved that.
Speaker 1: Just because that, you know, I still work every day
Speaker 1: at trying to be grateful for all the hundreds of
Speaker 1: small things that happen instead of focusing on the three
Speaker 1: or four that go wrong, all the small things that
Speaker 1: go right, I mean, instead of the three or four
Speaker 1: that go wrong. And it's a daily struggle, but it
Speaker 1: really improves my life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's an exercise and positive coology three good things
Speaker 2: before you go to bed that you write down. Well,
Speaker 2: hey man, this is really another elucidating conversation. Do you
Speaker 2: know what your next year living a year is going
Speaker 2: to be?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 3: I don't I need a break?
Speaker 1: I need to Yeah, I need a little I'm doing
Speaker 1: as you know, the Puzzler, which which is a podcast
Speaker 1: and which was a wonderful guest on so listen to that,
Speaker 1: and so yeah, that keeps that's a daily podcast, so
Speaker 1: that keeps me busy.
Speaker 2: You are such a good friend, Ajay, you really are
Speaker 2: such a good friend. Really really really appreciate you well,
Speaker 2: all the best on this book tour. Really enjoyed this
Speaker 2: book as I enjoy all your books, quite frankly, and
Speaker 2: I wish you all the all the best with it.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Scott, you too.