Speaker 1: You're listening to part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope
Speaker 1: and iHeartRadio. Guess what Will?
Speaker 2: What's that mango?
Speaker 1: So? I was reading this book The Year of Living
Speaker 1: Constitutionally by AJ Jacobs, and in it he talks about
Speaker 1: how voting used to be this really festive thing, like
Speaker 1: people celebrate democracy with election cakes and by guzzling Martha
Speaker 1: Washington's rum punch. And in fact, according to AJ, when
Speaker 1: George Washington ran for the Virginia Legislature in seventeen fifty eight,
Speaker 1: he provided voters with twenty eight gallons of rum, fifty
Speaker 1: gallons of rum punch, thirty four gallons of wine, forty
Speaker 1: six gallons of ye, and two gallons of hard cider.
Speaker 1: And also he won the election with more than three
Speaker 1: hundred well lubricated votes.
Speaker 2: God, that is a lot of liquor. But you know,
Speaker 2: I feel like getting people that drunk doesn't seem like
Speaker 2: that great of idea, especially if it's a contentious selection.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, apparently it's something they did a whole lot
Speaker 1: in the seventeen and eighteen hundreds, and I guess democracy
Speaker 1: seems to have survived just fine. But those aren't the
Speaker 1: only traditions AJ is trying to bring back. For the
Speaker 1: last year, AJ has been studying the Constitution and hanging
Speaker 1: out with scholars, but also writing his book By Quill
Speaker 1: and Candlelight. He's been carrying a musket around everywhere he goes.
Speaker 1: He's been asking soldiers to stay over at his place
Speaker 1: because he sees it as a patriotic duty. And he's
Speaker 1: been trying to get new amendments passed to the Constitution.
Speaker 1: And of course he's been baking lots of election cakes too.
Speaker 1: And I just thought it'd be super fun to have
Speaker 1: him on the show to talk about what he's learned
Speaker 1: over the last year.
Speaker 2: I love any excuse to have Aj Jacobs on. He
Speaker 2: is just the best, the smartest, the quirkiest. Everything about
Speaker 2: him is so great. So I can't wait to hear
Speaker 2: this interview. Let's dive in.
Speaker 1: Aja. I'm so thrilled to have you back on the show.
Speaker 1: It's been a very, very long time.
Speaker 3: I am delighted to be here. Goodmorrow. Of course, I
Speaker 3: am so thrilled to be talking about this with you.
Speaker 1: So the new book is the Year of Living Constitutionally.
Speaker 1: And I see you're wearing a tricorn hat. Here can
Speaker 1: you tell me a little bit about that.
Speaker 3: Well, sure, I should have brawled for you. I realized
Speaker 3: that was rude, that was weird.
Speaker 1: I feel underdressed for the occag.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and also it's a little bit interfering with my headphones.
Speaker 3: They didn't have headphones back in the eighteenth century.
Speaker 1: But yes, this is a.
Speaker 3: Tricorn hat that I had handmade for this project, the
Speaker 3: Year of Living Constitutionally, because the premise was I'm going
Speaker 3: to try to understand the Constitution by getting into the
Speaker 3: minds of the founding fathers and not just the mindset,
Speaker 3: the clothes and the technology, and I just went all in,
Speaker 3: as is my mo.
Speaker 1: But it has even a little bit more of a
Speaker 1: story than that, right, because the original hat you got
Speaker 1: was less soft.
Speaker 3: Than this one.
Speaker 1: Is that correct?
Speaker 3: Well, yes, actually this is a third hatanks third thank
Speaker 3: you for being on top of my hat. Yes, this
Speaker 3: is not just something you order off of Amazon dot
Speaker 3: com for Halloween. This one was made by a hatter
Speaker 3: and it took a long time. And that's one thing
Speaker 3: I've learned. People who try to reenact the eighteenth century,
Speaker 3: they are serious, they are not messing around. So they
Speaker 3: do it by candlelight and they count the number of
Speaker 3: stitches in each shirt to make sure that it's proper
Speaker 3: and authentic. So this is a not from the eighteenth century.
Speaker 3: It's not two hundred years old. But I think if
Speaker 3: someone from the eighteenth century came back and put this on,
Speaker 3: they would be like, Okay, I feel comfortable.
Speaker 1: Well, I want to get into reenactments in just a bit,
Speaker 1: but to begin with, let's just get to the premise
Speaker 1: of the book. Tell me how you actually came up
Speaker 1: with this idea for the project.
Speaker 3: Sure, well, I actually knew very little about the Constitution.
Speaker 3: I had seen a statistic that sixty percent of Americans
Speaker 3: have never read the Constitution, and I was in that
Speaker 3: sixty percent. And yet every day I would see in
Speaker 3: the news some story about how influential the Constitution is
Speaker 3: in our lives and how it affects everything, what we
Speaker 3: can say, and where we go to school, women's health.
Speaker 3: So it is just a massively influential document, and I
Speaker 3: wanted to try to understand it. And the way I
Speaker 3: like to understand things is to live them, to actually
Speaker 3: get inside. And just to give you some quick background,
Speaker 3: I several years ago, many years ago, wrote a book
Speaker 3: called A Year of Living biblically, and this one the
Speaker 3: premise I knew nothing about religion. I grew up in
Speaker 3: a very secular home. Maybe I should try to understand
Speaker 3: religion because I had a new born son. And one
Speaker 3: way to learn about it would be to walk in
Speaker 3: the sandal steps of our four bears. And so I did.
Speaker 3: I tried to follow all the rules of Bible. And
Speaker 3: we're talking of favous ones like the Ten Commandments, when
Speaker 3: also the ones like you cannot shave the corners of
Speaker 3: your beard. I didn't know where the corners were. Just
Speaker 3: let the whole thing grow. And I looked like Gandalf.
Speaker 3: I looked insane. I didn't wear clothes made of two
Speaker 3: different kinds of fabrics, which is forbidden by Leviticus. And
Speaker 3: it was a fascinating It was a bizarre year. It
Speaker 3: was silly at times, but also profound because I really
Speaker 3: did gain some insight into the Bible. And I always
Speaker 3: thought I could do a sequel with the Constitution.
Speaker 1: You've been thinking about that since that time?
Speaker 3: Since that time, Wow, since that time, because many of
Speaker 3: the same issues apply now literally, should we take this text?
Speaker 3: How much should it evolve over time? And I decided
Speaker 3: a couple of years ago. Now is the time because
Speaker 3: the Constitution has always been influential, But about two years ago,
Speaker 3: the majority of the Supreme Court at that time became
Speaker 3: what they called originalist, meaning that the most important way
Speaker 3: to interpret the Constitution is what did the words mean
Speaker 3: in seventeen eighty nine when it was ratified? And that
Speaker 3: has affected how we live in so many ways. And
Speaker 3: I thought, okay, well, let me try to be the
Speaker 3: ultimate originalist and actually try to get into the mindset
Speaker 3: of those who wrote the Constitution and see what did
Speaker 3: it really mean?
Speaker 1: Then?
Speaker 3: What should it mean now? How much should it evolve?
Speaker 1: I love the Year of Living Biblically so much because
Speaker 1: you deal with the topic in such a sweet and
Speaker 1: approachable way. But it gets these really difficult issues. But
Speaker 1: one of the other difficulties I think is just how
Speaker 1: your family adjusts to you living biblically. And in this
Speaker 1: book you're bringing your family into so much of it.
Speaker 1: I see your wife participating in your field trips and
Speaker 1: giving you an advice on playing a fife to wake
Speaker 1: up someone in your apartment. But how did this book
Speaker 1: affect your family?
Speaker 3: Yes, as you say, my family has mixed reactions to
Speaker 3: these experiments that I go on. So I lived biblically,
Speaker 3: but my wife did not kiss me for seven months
Speaker 3: because I had this huge beard. And in this one,
Speaker 3: again it was a mix. I was trying to not
Speaker 3: use electric lights, so I burned candles, but they were
Speaker 3: these old style beef fat candles, so they smelled like meatloaf.
Speaker 3: She didn't love that. She didn't love that I was
Speaker 3: writing in ink with a quill, which meant it was
Speaker 3: splattering everywhere. And she didn't love that I was walking
Speaker 3: around with a must get on the upper west side,
Speaker 3: as is my second Amendment.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: She's like, you are You're going to get beat up,
Speaker 3: which I didn't. I got very lucky, and I will say,
Speaker 3: we're not lucky.
Speaker 1: You have a musket with you.
Speaker 3: Well that's true, but if I actually had to defend
Speaker 3: myself with a musket, I'd be screwed. Because it takes
Speaker 3: five minutes to load. I'd be like, hold that thought,
Speaker 3: don't beat me up yet. I have to take out
Speaker 3: the ramrod and pour in the gunpowder. So it is
Speaker 3: not a particularly practical weapon, which is fine. I didn't
Speaker 3: want to hurt anyone. I just wanted to explore what
Speaker 3: did the Second Amendment.
Speaker 1: Mean, and how about your kids, how'd they get involved
Speaker 1: or not involved?
Speaker 3: I mean, I wore my tricorn hat and I would
Speaker 3: when I did go to restaurants, I would try to
Speaker 3: sign the check with my goosequill pen, and they were
Speaker 3: two of them were extremely embarrassed. They wouldn't walk within
Speaker 3: fifty yards of me. One of them, my oldest jasper,
Speaker 3: kind of got into it. His favorite comedian is Eric Andre.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, whose sort of a performance are this and
Speaker 3: does these ridiculous things. So he thought of me as
Speaker 3: sort of a tamer and not as good version of
Speaker 3: Uric Dry. So he came along with me on some
Speaker 3: of my adventures when we went to Times Square trying
Speaker 3: to find soldiers to quarter in the house, things like that.
Speaker 1: And one of the things I loved so much was
Speaker 1: the scene where you and your family were watching reenactment
Speaker 1: battle and just how slow the processes. There's like a
Speaker 1: group that seems to be shooting from one side and
Speaker 1: then there's a pause as they're loading their muskets and
Speaker 1: shooting from the other side. Tell me about your first
Speaker 1: impressions being at this reenactment, and then how is it
Speaker 1: that you start participating in this experience.
Speaker 3: Right, Well, there are no constitutional convention reenactors. I think
Speaker 3: there should be, But people seem to like guns and
Speaker 3: smoke better than pens and compromises. So I joined the
Speaker 3: New Jersey third Regimen of reenactors, and I went and
Speaker 3: fought in the Battle of Monmouth in New Jersey. Of course,
Speaker 3: it was nothing like being an actual soldier in the
Speaker 3: Revolutionary War. However, even reenacting it is difficult. It was
Speaker 3: super hot. I was wearing my wool regimental coat, and
Speaker 3: as you say, it takes a while to load the musket,
Speaker 3: even just getting dressed. There are so many layers, so
Speaker 3: many buttons. This project may be grateful for many modern conveniences,
Speaker 3: including elastic socks. I'll never take democracy for granted again,
Speaker 3: and I'll never take elastic socks because I will never
Speaker 3: get back the hours I spend putting sockfelts on every morning.
Speaker 3: But it was not an easy life. It was a
Speaker 3: hard life. It was racist, it was sexist. But I
Speaker 3: think it's emblematic of how difficult life was, and that
Speaker 3: we don't want to go back to living like that,
Speaker 3: and that evolution of morals and evolution of technology can
Speaker 3: be a good thing.
Speaker 1: Well, talk about the musket a little bit, because you
Speaker 1: take it to a shooting range and there's a difference
Speaker 1: between the muskets that people are using in the reenactments
Speaker 1: than the original ones, and so can you talk me
Speaker 1: through that a little bit?
Speaker 3: Absolutely. Since I was trying to follow the Constitution as
Speaker 3: it was written, using the technology of the time to
Speaker 3: try to understand it, I was like, for the second Amendment,
Speaker 3: I am going to bare the arms from that time,
Speaker 3: which were mostly not all, but mostly muskets. So I
Speaker 3: went on the old Internet and I got an actual
Speaker 3: musket from the eighteenth century which is super heavy, ten
Speaker 3: pounds and it's a work of craftsmanship. It's really remarkable.
Speaker 3: And this one was used not in the Revolutionary Ward
Speaker 3: but the War of eighteen twelve. Oh wow, Now it
Speaker 3: turns out you cannot fire this because it would blow
Speaker 3: up in your face. But I got another musket, which
Speaker 3: my wife was doubly unhappy about, and this one was
Speaker 3: a replica that was made recently, and you can fire it.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 3: I don't spend a lot of time at the shooting range,
Speaker 3: but I've shot guns and it's not that hard you
Speaker 3: pull the trigger. This one It is literally fifteen steps
Speaker 3: to shoot a musket. You have to take out a
Speaker 3: little cartridge of gunpowder. You got to pour the gunpowder
Speaker 3: down the barrel, pour it in the pan, take out
Speaker 3: the ram rod, shove down the lead ball in the paper,
Speaker 3: put the ramrod back. It's like building a desk from Ikea.
Speaker 3: Just fire one shot. So it is a vastly different machine.
Speaker 3: And that was part of the point. At what point
Speaker 3: does something like a gun become so different than what
Speaker 3: it was in seventeen eighty nine, Then we have to
Speaker 3: evolve the laws. So I talked to gun rights activists
Speaker 3: who said, it says gun and that's what it means.
Speaker 3: The First Amendment doesn't just apply to Ben Franklin's printing press.
Speaker 3: It also applies to the internet. On the other side,
Speaker 3: our gun control advocates who say, now this is such
Speaker 3: a different tool, you can apply the same laws to it.
Speaker 3: It's almost a coincidence that they're both called guns. So
Speaker 3: we have to be able to evolve, and that is
Speaker 3: the crux of many of these debates that are going
Speaker 3: on today that affect every part of our life.
Speaker 1: I think it's a fascinating way into looking at the
Speaker 1: second Amendment, and you see this with various points that
Speaker 1: you tackle in the book.
Speaker 3: One thing I also enjoyed was I changed my news
Speaker 3: consumption because in the seventeen hundreds, Ben Franklin's newspaper came
Speaker 3: out twice a week and it was like sixteen pages,
Speaker 3: so that was your news. And I tried to replicate
Speaker 3: that I would read newspapers from the seventeen hundreds, and
Speaker 3: that was wonderful because I realized this twenty four hour
Speaker 3: news cycle is terrible for my mental health. It gives
Speaker 3: you no time to digest and give context and gus,
Speaker 3: it is just a fire hose.
Speaker 1: Tell me about actually reading these gazettes. We've always heard
Speaker 1: that Ben Franklin's papers were much livelier than the competitors
Speaker 1: and much more exciting, but there are also revelations that
Speaker 1: you can see in the various advertising and things like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, it was a very mixed experience because I
Speaker 3: think you saw the best of the times and then
Speaker 3: you saw the worst of the times. I loved reading
Speaker 3: about these marvelous new inventions that I totally took for granted.
Speaker 3: There was an article in Ben Franklin's newspaper about they
Speaker 3: had decided to put numbers on the houses, so when
Speaker 3: you were going to z Owne's house, so you could
Speaker 3: say go to eighty nine Elm Street instead of go
Speaker 3: to that yellow house by the minor pile. So it
Speaker 3: made you realize these things. It just happened. People came
Speaker 3: up with these ideas. On the other hand, there were
Speaker 3: parts that were so disturbing and nauseating, including almost every
Speaker 3: issue had advertisements for runaway slaves. And it is really
Speaker 3: disturbing to see someone who I think is as thoughtful
Speaker 3: as Ben Franklin would allow this to happen. At the
Speaker 3: end of his life he did become quite a strident abolitionist,
Speaker 3: thankfully and formed one of the first abolitionist societies. But
Speaker 3: still the fact that during his life he did have
Speaker 3: at least one enslaved person is just super disturbing.
Speaker 1: It really pulls apart that idea of these demigods, or
Speaker 1: this idea that the Constitution was dictated by some deity
Speaker 1: to human hands. It makes you rethink who the founding
Speaker 1: fathers were.
Speaker 3: These men, in some ways were incredible and the document
Speaker 3: thing produced really is remarkable, and in some ways it's
Speaker 3: a huge step for the big bang of democracy as
Speaker 3: akil Amar says he's a Yale's college, exactly a Yale school.
Speaker 3: But in other ways they were incredibly flawed, and they
Speaker 3: knew that this document they made was flawed. George Washington
Speaker 3: said to his nephew and a few weeks after the convention,
Speaker 3: he said, this is a flawed document. It's up to
Speaker 3: you to try to make it better. And it's so
Speaker 3: flawed even in the smallest of ways. There are typos,
Speaker 3: they're not I don't know what you would call them quillows.
Speaker 3: There are mistakes. The word Pennsylvania is spelled two different
Speaker 3: ways in the Constitution in four pages pe n Sylvania
Speaker 3: and pe n Sylvania. So this was not a perfect document.
Speaker 3: It's an outline, a road map, and we have to
Speaker 3: try to make it more perfect.
Speaker 1: I know there's that one scene that you talk about
Speaker 1: where Ben Franklin looks at the chair that Washington is
Speaker 1: in and it has a half a sun on it.
Speaker 1: Could you talk about that story?
Speaker 3: Oh? Yes, I love this story. Ben Franklin at the
Speaker 3: Constitutional Convention spent a lot of time staring at George
Speaker 3: Washington's chair. George Washington was sitting in the front this
Speaker 3: big wooden chair and on the back of the chair
Speaker 3: was a carving of the sun, but it wasn't the
Speaker 3: whole sun. It was half the sun, so you could
Speaker 3: only see the top half and the other was cut
Speaker 3: off by the horizon, so you don't know is it
Speaker 3: rising is it setting? And at the end of the convention,
Speaker 3: when against all odds, they had come to this agreement
Speaker 3: on this document, Ben Franklin said, at that point I
Speaker 3: knew it was a rising sun. The sun is rising
Speaker 3: on America. And a lot of the motivation for me
Speaker 3: writing this book was is the sun still rising on America?
Speaker 3: Because you read the news or you talk to people,
Speaker 3: and there's so much pessimism and nihilism and despair, and
Speaker 3: I wanted to try to see can I still find optimism?
Speaker 3: And I do think I did. I found some optimism.
Speaker 3: We've got a lot of work to do, but I
Speaker 3: don't think we should throw up our hands quite yet.
Speaker 3: I think we can save democracy.
Speaker 1: I like hearing that, so we'll hear more about how
Speaker 1: to save democracy right after the break on.
Speaker 3: It's a cliffhanger.
Speaker 1: Sure, So welcome back to Part Time Genius. I'm here
Speaker 1: with my good friend, the author AJ Jacobs. So Aj
Speaker 1: we were just talking about the Constitution and democracy and
Speaker 1: whether it can be saved. One of the things I
Speaker 1: found really fascinating was in the book there's this phrase
Speaker 1: about how to read the Constitution, and someone said, you
Speaker 1: can read the black parts of it writing, or you
Speaker 1: can read the white parts of it. And this idea
Speaker 1: that the Constitution is this unfinished work. Can you talk
Speaker 1: about the various viewpoints on the Constitution and how you
Speaker 1: came to understand them.
Speaker 3: It is a really hard issue because on the one hand,
Speaker 3: you can view the Constitution, as Akuila Reedam r Does,
Speaker 3: as the big bang of democracy. Amazing, for the first
Speaker 3: time in thousands of years, you have this document where
Speaker 3: people can choose who represents them instead of having a
Speaker 3: king or a queen thrust upon them. On the other hand,
Speaker 3: this was written by fifty five white men, some of
Speaker 3: them owned human beings, So how do you reconcile that?
Speaker 3: And you have people on both sides. You'll have people
Speaker 3: who say this is a sacred document that nothing should
Speaker 3: be changed, and then you have people who say it's
Speaker 3: an elitist document, a perpetuation of slave oocracy. One person
Speaker 3: I find super inspiring in this debate is Frederick Douglas
Speaker 3: a great orator and thinker and writer from the Civil
Speaker 3: War era. Now just quickly before the Civil War, there
Speaker 3: is the same debate. And one of the other great abolitionists,
Speaker 3: William Lloyd Garrison. He was a white man. He took
Speaker 3: the position that the Constitution was a packed with the devil.
Speaker 3: That's what he called it, a contract with the devil.
Speaker 3: It deserved to be burned, and he'd burned it. He
Speaker 3: was a showman. He would go on stage and burn
Speaker 3: the copy of the Constitution. Originally, Frederick Douglas agreed with him,
Speaker 3: but sometime in the eighteen fifties, Frederick Douglas decided to
Speaker 3: change his mind and reframe the way he saw the Constitution,
Speaker 3: and he started to say, the Constitution not a pact
Speaker 3: with the devil. It's a promisory note because it promises
Speaker 3: these ideals like liberty and equality and these wonderful notions.
Speaker 3: But look at America. America is so far from living
Speaker 3: up to these ideals, and we have to fight to
Speaker 3: make it live up to the ideals that it says.
Speaker 3: And this framing has been super influential. It's the same
Speaker 3: words that Martin Luther King Junior use. So I love
Speaker 3: that framing.
Speaker 1: Well, you also talk about how maybe the way to
Speaker 1: look at the founding Fathers isn't so narrow as just
Speaker 1: this group of men in a Philadelphia courthouse, but rather
Speaker 1: to expand the view of what founding fathers or founding
Speaker 1: people of America can be right, And you.
Speaker 3: Can expand it two ways. You can expand it in
Speaker 3: time and say that the founding continues, it didn't end
Speaker 3: with the signing of the constitutions, and people like Frederick
Speaker 3: Douglas you could consider founders. And you can also expand
Speaker 3: it to have a more broad cultural view and include
Speaker 3: people at the time of the Constitution, like women who
Speaker 3: raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to help the troops.
Speaker 1: Or Yeah, there's a woman I'd never heard of who
Speaker 1: went door to door and collected something like three hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars to get to the troops.
Speaker 3: It's stunning, stunning, And there were people who were black
Speaker 3: who were patriots. So yeah, expanding it both in time
Speaker 3: and in who we see as a founder.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's really important and really fascinating. Also,
Speaker 1: there are bits from the reenactment that I didn't realize
Speaker 1: as well, that there were wives who followed the soldiers
Speaker 1: onto the battlefield and would set up camp a few
Speaker 1: miles behind or a few paces behind. I didn't realize
Speaker 1: exactly what the contributions of women were at this point
Speaker 1: and how strong they were.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, no, the women would be with George Washington's army.
Speaker 3: They were kept behind the lines. And actually my wife
Speaker 3: Julie did join the third Regiment and had to stay
Speaker 3: behind the lines, so she didn't love some of the
Speaker 3: more progressive regiments. You can, even if you're a woman
Speaker 3: or another gender, you can put on the regimental coat
Speaker 3: and musket. But the fact is, yeah, we could not
Speaker 3: have won the war without these women who were repairing clothes,
Speaker 3: They were doing the laundry, making the food, They were
Speaker 3: quite possibly repairing some of the equipment. I think it's
Speaker 3: a problem in all of history. We forget nothing thing
Speaker 3: in the history happens without thousands of people helping.
Speaker 1: So tell me about election cakes. Because we're friends on Facebook.
Speaker 1: I saw a bunch of posts about election cakes. But
Speaker 1: I wasn't fully bought in at the time, and now
Speaker 1: I feel like I missed out.
Speaker 3: Yes, I love this because at the time of our founding,
Speaker 3: elections were very different in a bad way. Women were
Speaker 3: not allowed to vote, and black and Indigenous people were
Speaker 3: not allowed to vote. For those who were privileged enough
Speaker 3: to vote, there was one good part, which was it
Speaker 3: was not a chore. It was a celebration. It was
Speaker 3: this new right that they couldn't believe they had, so
Speaker 3: it was something regarded with joy. There was election parades,
Speaker 3: there were election music, election rum punch, a lot of
Speaker 3: rum punch, and election cakes. People would bake these cakes,
Speaker 3: sometimes huge cakes. One recipe calls for fourteen pounds of
Speaker 3: sugar and they would bring them to the polls to celebrate.
Speaker 3: And I thought, what a lovely idea. Let's try to
Speaker 3: bring that back. So I got people in all fifty states.
Speaker 3: I used Facebook for this, which is not age century item,
Speaker 3: but it is one of the older, one of the
Speaker 3: older platforms, and I got people in all saifty states
Speaker 3: to bake. This was a year ago, in the November
Speaker 3: twenty three elections, and they would bring him to the
Speaker 3: polls or to their family. And some would use the
Speaker 3: original recipe, which is sort of like shags and cloves
Speaker 3: spice cake, not everyone's taste. Some would just use modern recipes,
Speaker 3: but they all decorated them with these wonderful, creative ideas
Speaker 3: of either red, white, and blue, or it says vote
Speaker 3: or something for their state. Mark Georgia Baker had the
Speaker 3: peach cake. So it was just this little ray of
Speaker 3: positivity in what is otherwise a very stressful political time.
Speaker 3: And I don't think election cake is going to solve democracy.
Speaker 3: It's not going to save it. But it's a good
Speaker 3: little first step. I call it a gateway car. It's
Speaker 3: a gateway car. Let's get people back interested in civics
Speaker 3: and participating, and then we can address some of the
Speaker 3: real issues like gerrymandering, like voter suppression.
Speaker 1: One of the things that seems to come up a
Speaker 1: lot in your book is the joy of congregating, Like
Speaker 1: you talk about these pipes that are communal at pubs,
Speaker 1: the election cakes. When people go to hotels, all these
Speaker 1: people crammed in and men sleeping in the same bed
Speaker 1: without any question or worry about this, and there was
Speaker 1: a sense of community that was constantly driving people's thought
Speaker 1: that maybe we're distanced from now.
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't particularly like the idea of sharing
Speaker 3: a bed at a hotel with a stranger. On the
Speaker 3: other hand, there are elements of this that I find
Speaker 3: very appealing. In the First Amendment, one of the rights
Speaker 3: is the right to assemble peaceably, and it was very important.
Speaker 3: That's how people They went to taverns, they went to
Speaker 3: coffee hops, they talked about these issues. And we've lost that.
Speaker 3: You know, there's the whole famous book Bowling Alone. Communities
Speaker 3: as institutions are really crumbling, and I think that that
Speaker 3: is very important. We need to balance these two important
Speaker 3: parts of society, the individual and the individual rights and
Speaker 3: the community and your responsibility to the greater good. Back then,
Speaker 3: that balance was very explicit. You really thought about your
Speaker 3: responsibility to society. You were on the bucket brigade, so
Speaker 3: you would take buckets to put out fires. You'd have
Speaker 3: a line on marked houses. Now which houses it pick
Speaker 3: on fire? Where one number? No, we don't have numbers. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but now I do think we have gone too far
Speaker 3: in the direction of individual rights. I am a huge
Speaker 3: fan of individual rights, but I think they need to
Speaker 3: be balanced by responsibilities and the sense of duty because
Speaker 3: otherwise there's no glue that will hold community together. And
Speaker 3: so rituals like the election cake is just one small
Speaker 3: way to build up the sense of community.
Speaker 1: So when you actually start reading or going through the
Speaker 1: Constitution for the reader. In this wonderful book, you talk
Speaker 1: about the First Amendment and what a mish mash of
Speaker 1: ideas it is. They're like six or seven ideas just
Speaker 1: thrown into this thing and stitch together and call the
Speaker 1: First Amendment. But particularly what was interesting to me the
Speaker 1: idea of the freedom of the press and what that
Speaker 1: meant at the time versus what it means now. Can
Speaker 1: you talk a little bit about that.
Speaker 3: Well, that was one of the most surprising parts of this.
Speaker 3: It was just how different the past was. I mean,
Speaker 3: it is genuinely a different country. And yes, I love
Speaker 3: the First Amendment as a journalist, but I love I
Speaker 3: realized modern First Amendment free speech, not seventeen eighty nine
Speaker 3: free speech, because they had a very different conception when
Speaker 3: they talk about freedom of the press. What they were
Speaker 3: talking about was you don't need to get permission before
Speaker 3: printing a book or pamphlet like you used to in England.
Speaker 3: You had to check with the king is it okay
Speaker 3: if I print this? Now you could just print it,
Speaker 3: but once it was out there, you could be punished
Speaker 3: if it was going to threaten this infant republic. You
Speaker 3: could get in a lot of trouble. So there were
Speaker 3: laws on the books that were much more restrictive than
Speaker 3: we can even imagine today. It wasn't quite Stalinist Russia,
Speaker 3: but it was very restrictive. So you had state laws,
Speaker 3: especially that said blasphemy was forbidden in a crime. There
Speaker 3: were sedition laws. John Adams he believed that it was
Speaker 3: perfectly constitutional to have these laws where you couldn't criticize
Speaker 3: the president. And only in the twentieth century, in like
Speaker 3: the nineteen forties and fifties, did this idea of being
Speaker 3: able to express freely your ideas without consequence. Only then
Speaker 3: did that come to me what the First Amendment means. Now.
Speaker 1: It's also interesting to me that at the time there
Speaker 1: were different camps of how many amendments should be enumerated
Speaker 1: for people. Right, there were people who were saying, we
Speaker 1: don't need to list everything out, and then people who
Speaker 1: are saying, no, no, we need to list all the ideas out.
Speaker 1: There really was a lot of friction in that room.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, Well, the anti federalists, who were the people
Speaker 3: who were against the Constitution were very powerful and it
Speaker 3: could have gone either way, and one of their complaints
Speaker 3: was that the federal government was too powerful and was
Speaker 3: infringing on the states, and that's why they said we
Speaker 3: need this Bill of Rights. It was partly about individual rights,
Speaker 3: but mostly about state rights. So they were insistent that
Speaker 3: we have this list that the federal government cannot restrict
Speaker 3: free speech or gun ownership. And initially James Madison, the
Speaker 3: Father of the Constitution as they call him, was opposed.
Speaker 3: He's like, this is bad because if we list some
Speaker 3: then people are going to say, well, they didn't list this,
Speaker 3: so this this is not an actual right. But he
Speaker 3: came around and he ended up writing the Bill of Rights.
Speaker 3: But the meaning of the Bill of Rights, as we
Speaker 3: just discussed, has changed so significantly, and that, to me
Speaker 3: is one of the big takeaways of this book is
Speaker 3: how different our interpretation of the Constitution now is from
Speaker 3: that original vision. Sometimes for better. Sometimes it's great because
Speaker 3: now the Fourteenth Amendment applies to women in gay marriage,
Speaker 3: which I'm in favor of both of them, but sometimes
Speaker 3: for the worse. For instance, the Supreme Court in the
Speaker 3: vision of the founders was so much less powerful, so constrained,
Speaker 3: it was almost the runt of the litter Congress was
Speaker 3: most powerful than the than the Supreme Court, and now
Speaker 3: we have this Imperial Presidency and Imperial Supreme Court, and
Speaker 3: I think it's a huge problem.
Speaker 1: You document the court continues to grab power along the way,
Speaker 1: and how it evolves, it's really fascinating.
Speaker 3: That was one of the big surprises of the book
Speaker 3: to me was just how not powerful the Supreme Court
Speaker 3: was at the beginning, and not even prestigious. We were like,
Speaker 3: I don't know, so I should go on to the
Speaker 3: Supreme Court. One guy left to go onto the South
Speaker 3: Carolina Supreme Court, which is considered more prestigious by some.
Speaker 3: But yeah, it has over the years become more and
Speaker 3: more powerful, and.
Speaker 1: The architecture has been applied to make sure that people
Speaker 1: see it as powerful, which I thought was fascinating.
Speaker 3: Right, It didn't start out that way. The Supreme courts.
Speaker 3: The very first one was like on the second floor
Speaker 3: of a building near a market, so you could hear
Speaker 3: the squeals of the pigs from the butcher. And then
Speaker 3: it was in the Capitol along with Congress, and then
Speaker 3: William Howard Taft, who became Chief Justice after he was president.
Speaker 3: He said, I want this to be as magnificent as
Speaker 3: the White House. I wanted the Supreme Court's rival, the presidency,
Speaker 3: and he built this marvel palace in the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 3: which many people are this is ridiculous and pompous, but
Speaker 3: there remains and the power has come along with it.
Speaker 3: And again I think that is a huge problem because
Speaker 3: at the founding, most of the founders would not have thought,
Speaker 3: and this is all from a great scholar named Jonathan
Speaker 3: Gannappitt Stanford, most of the founders did not think that
Speaker 3: the Supreme Court was the final and ultimate say on
Speaker 3: what is and what is not constitutional. They thought instead
Speaker 3: it should be all three branches way in and it
Speaker 3: was a little messy, which is possibly why the Supreme
Speaker 3: Court was able to say, no, it's us, We're the
Speaker 3: ones who decide. But that has made them more and
Speaker 3: more powerful. To now, these nine unelected people have such
Speaker 3: vast influence on our everyday lives.
Speaker 1: So talk to me a little bit about the originalist
Speaker 1: interpretation and what living constitutionally means to you right now.
Speaker 3: I think to oversimplify. There are two ways to interpret
Speaker 3: the Constitution. One is called originalism, which is this idea
Speaker 3: you have to focus on what those words meant back
Speaker 3: when they were ratified in the seventeen eighties or whenever
Speaker 3: the amendment was passed. The other side is sometimes called
Speaker 3: living constitutionalism, sometimes called pluralism or pragmatism, and that says, yes,
Speaker 3: consider what the words meant at the time, but also
Speaker 3: consider what are the effects now, how has the world changed?
Speaker 3: And these yield very different interpretations of the Constitution. So,
Speaker 3: for instance, if you are a hardcore originalist, you will
Speaker 3: look at the fourteenth Amendment, which promises equal protection under
Speaker 3: the law for everyone. You will say, well, what did
Speaker 3: it mean back then? Back then it was right after
Speaker 3: the Civil War. It meant trying to protect black people
Speaker 3: from white supremacy. They were not thinking about women, they
Speaker 3: were not thinking so only about gay people or trans people.
Speaker 3: So if you are like Clarence Thomas, you think that's
Speaker 3: what the fourteenth Amendment should focus on. It should not
Speaker 3: have anything to say about gender or sexuality. That should
Speaker 3: be left to the state. On the other hand, a
Speaker 3: living constitutionalist might say, no, we live in a different time,
Speaker 3: our morals have changed. We've got to take those words
Speaker 3: about equality and apply them in a much larger way.
Speaker 3: And so I try to present both sides. It's a
Speaker 3: complicated issue. But I tend to think that pragmatism is
Speaker 3: a better way to go because it is so hard
Speaker 3: to get new amendments through the Constitution. The founders would
Speaker 3: have been shocked by how hard it is. So we
Speaker 3: can't change it that way. We have to change it
Speaker 3: some other way. And the way to change it is
Speaker 3: by changing the interpretation to make it a little wider
Speaker 3: and more applicable to our modern more race.
Speaker 1: You found someone who did actually get a new amendment, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3: There hasn't been a new one since nineteen ninety two,
Speaker 3: and that one only came about because of this character
Speaker 3: I interviewed for the book named Gregory Watson, and what
Speaker 3: happened was in nineteen eighty two. He was a student
Speaker 3: of the University of Texas, Austin, and he wrote a
Speaker 3: paper on this little known failed amendment. James Madison said,
Speaker 3: we should have a cap on the salary of congressman.
Speaker 3: You can't give yourself an immediate race. If you vote
Speaker 3: for a raise, then only takes effect the next Congress.
Speaker 3: Seems reasonable. It never passed enough states. You need three
Speaker 3: quarters of the states to sign off for a constitutional
Speaker 3: amendment to take place. This student said, well, it's not dead.
Speaker 3: We didn't get enough states, but it's still kind of
Speaker 3: a zombie amendment. If we get three quarters of the
Speaker 3: states now, then it will become part of the constitution.
Speaker 3: His teacher said, that's wrong, you're an idiot. She gave
Speaker 3: him a seat he was, So he decided then and
Speaker 3: there he said, I'm going to get this passed. And
Speaker 3: he spent ten years writing hundreds of letters to state
Speaker 3: congress people to get them to vote for this twenty
Speaker 3: seventh Amendment, and finally, ten years later, he got three
Speaker 3: quarters of the states. And that is the last amendment
Speaker 3: that has been added to the Constitution. And it's all
Speaker 3: because of this one guy, Gregory Watson. But when I
Speaker 3: interviewed him, I said, well, what's the next one? And
Speaker 3: he said, oh, it's such a divided country, so polarized.
Speaker 3: We can't get two thirds or three quarters of the
Speaker 3: states to agree on the color of green peppers. It
Speaker 3: is going to be very hard to get another amendment through.
Speaker 3: And that's a problem, and I think the founders made
Speaker 3: it too hard. They didn't realize we would be so polarized,
Speaker 3: so they made it harder than they meant to. So
Speaker 3: talk about the Third Amendment do love the Third Amendment
Speaker 3: because it says that you, as a citizen, do not
Speaker 3: have to quarter a soldier against your will, and not
Speaker 3: quarter as in chopping force. Just to clarify for it,
Speaker 3: it meant you don't have to put a soldier up
Speaker 3: in your apartment and feed them. Because this was a
Speaker 3: huge problem that the colonists have. The British would turn
Speaker 3: their houses into sort of forced airbnbs for the soldiers
Speaker 3: who were rude and ate them out of house and home.
Speaker 3: And so they said never again, and they put this in.
Speaker 3: And what's fascinating is some scholars says the most successful amendment.
Speaker 3: No one ever talks about it or questions it. It's like, sure, yeah,
Speaker 3: don't don't have these people coming. I thought, since I'm
Speaker 3: doing this originalist experiment, I got to at least address it.
Speaker 3: So I thought, well, it says you don't have to,
Speaker 3: but also that implies you can if you want to.
Speaker 3: So I decided to find a soldier and ask him
Speaker 3: or her to quarter in our apartment. I went out
Speaker 3: to Times Square during fleet with the Navy with my
Speaker 3: son to ask a bunch of sailors to come stay
Speaker 3: at our apartment. They were reluctant, got some looks. But
Speaker 3: I found a friend of a friend who stayed over
Speaker 3: for about three days. And I could have kicked him
Speaker 3: out because that is my third amendment, right, But I
Speaker 3: didn't because he was just so polite and such a
Speaker 3: lovely man, and I learned so much from him. So
Speaker 3: I do recommend quartering soldiers if people are interested.
Speaker 1: So it's a little used, right, So tell me about
Speaker 1: the amendment that you're trying to make happen, or that
Speaker 1: you've tried to make happen.
Speaker 3: Yes. Well, one of the most fascinating parts of reading
Speaker 3: the history of the Constitution is how fluid the ideas were.
Speaker 3: They are all these ideas being thrown around, and if
Speaker 3: a few people had voted differently, our country would look unrecognizable.
Speaker 3: And one of those was the president, the idea of
Speaker 3: the president. When one of the delegates said, well, I
Speaker 3: guess we should have a single person as president, a
Speaker 3: lot of the other delegates said, are you jesting? What
Speaker 3: a terrible idea. We just bought a war to get
Speaker 3: rid of a monarch, and now you want to elect
Speaker 3: a monarch. That's the fetus of monarchies, one of them
Speaker 3: called it. But the debate lasted weeks, and in the
Speaker 3: end they decided, yeah, all right, we'll do one president.
Speaker 3: But many of the others said, no, we should have
Speaker 3: had a council of presidents, three presidents. Ben Franklin at
Speaker 3: one point talked about twelve presidents. Yeah, twelve. I mean
Speaker 3: that's a lot of Air Force one through twelve. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I was like, this is interesting because that fear
Speaker 3: that the president would become a monarch seems to be
Speaker 3: on its way to be coming true. The president has
Speaker 3: so much more power than he used to. And just
Speaker 3: to give you one quick statistic, George Washington issued eight
Speaker 3: executive orders in his eight years. Obama and Trump both
Speaker 3: issued over two hundred, so it is a vast different office.
Speaker 3: So I was like, maybe we should revisit this three
Speaker 3: president's idea. So my first Amendment, right to petition government,
Speaker 3: I said, well, just think about it, just bring it
Speaker 3: up in Congress, and I got hundreds of people to
Speaker 3: sign it. Now, I will say, in all seriousness, I'm
Speaker 3: not sure that's the solution because I don't think, you know,
Speaker 3: having Kamala and Trump and Title Star like sitting side
Speaker 3: by side in the Oval office not a great idea.
Speaker 3: But I do think we have to figure out some
Speaker 3: way to restrain the presidency, and there are ways to
Speaker 3: do it, like empowering Congress. More so, that was sort
Speaker 3: of the idea of my amendment.
Speaker 1: So tell me about the letters of mark and how
Speaker 1: you went about trying to get one.
Speaker 3: Well, this was fascinating to me because there's there is
Speaker 3: stuff in the Constitution that just seems eternal, like you know,
Speaker 3: the idea of the blessings of liberty and equal protection.
Speaker 3: But then there are parts that you're like, what this
Speaker 3: is from another century, because it is. And one of
Speaker 3: those is Article one, Section eight. Congress has the right
Speaker 3: to grant letters of market reprisal, which basically means that you,
Speaker 3: as a citizen, have a constitutional right to try to
Speaker 3: become a pirate, a government sanctioned pirate. Meaning you can say,
Speaker 3: I want to take my boat, my fishing boat, and
Speaker 3: put some cannons on it and go out and try
Speaker 3: to capture enemy ships, and I get to keep the booty.
Speaker 3: I got to keep the food and the gold and
Speaker 3: the sherry whatever it is in there, and it's still
Speaker 3: in the Constitution.
Speaker 1: But it was also very useful, right, like actually helped
Speaker 1: those win a War.
Speaker 3: At the time it made sense. It was just like
Speaker 3: the housing British soldiers in the Revolutionary War. We had
Speaker 3: just a tiny navy, so we outsourced it. We said
Speaker 3: to these fishermen and whalers, you go out and do it.
Speaker 3: And they were immensely successful. These privateers is the official word,
Speaker 3: not pirates. These privateers captured about two thousand British ships
Speaker 3: and we probably would not have a country without them.
Speaker 3: So it is fascinating and incredibly important historically, but it
Speaker 3: hasn't been used since eighteen fifteen. But I thought, well
Speaker 3: it's still in there. I'm trying to do this project.
Speaker 3: So I actually got a meeting with a congressman wrote
Speaker 3: Conna from California, and he's like, what can I do
Speaker 3: for you? And I said I would like a letter
Speaker 3: of mark and reprisal. And at first he was like, great,
Speaker 3: that sounds good, and then he's like, wait, what is
Speaker 3: this And then I told him it was about being
Speaker 3: a pirate and he was like, well, that does sound
Speaker 3: a little more complicated than you know. He said he
Speaker 3: would bring it up with his colleagues, which was very nice,
Speaker 3: and his age still emails me as Captain Jacobs, which
Speaker 3: I love. So that's the closest I've come so far.
Speaker 1: So what surprised you most during this year of living
Speaker 1: constitutionally and do you feel like it did inspire you
Speaker 1: to get more involved in government?
Speaker 3: Well? The second part absolutely that story we talked about
Speaker 3: with Ben Franklin saying is the sun still rising on America?
Speaker 3: And my conclusion is, I don't think it's like the
Speaker 3: actual sun. Where's it's gravity that makes it. It's us.
Speaker 3: We are the gravity. We have to be the ones
Speaker 3: who roll off our sleeves and become civically engaged. It's
Speaker 3: about society, It's about people. How do people live together?
Speaker 3: How can we make it so people live together in
Speaker 3: the flourishing way possible? So yes, and I guess one
Speaker 3: of the big surprises was just how different life was then.
Speaker 3: It was racist and sexist and smelly, and you had
Speaker 3: the tobacco enima. But there were parts as well that
Speaker 3: are I think worth re evaluating and bringing back. Like
Speaker 3: we talk about the sense of community, this sense of
Speaker 3: responsibility and getting together in person. We would not have
Speaker 3: a country if people had not had the right to
Speaker 3: assemble and meet and talk in coffee shops and work
Speaker 3: out these hard issues, and that was one of my
Speaker 3: favorite parts. I had an eighteenth century style dinner where
Speaker 3: I had people from all over the political spectrum over
Speaker 3: and my son cooked some beef stew. We talked about
Speaker 3: all sorts of issues. We sang Yankee Doodle, which has
Speaker 3: a very disturbing verse that they leave out for the kids.
Speaker 3: We talked about what do we like about America and
Speaker 3: what would we change. Not everyone agreed, but the one
Speaker 3: thing we agreed on was that we need more of this.
Speaker 3: We need more face to face discussions in good faith,
Speaker 3: assuming the other person is a good person and that
Speaker 3: they want the best for our country, because if not,
Speaker 3: we're just going to continue to polarize and divide and
Speaker 3: we are not going to have a single country. We're
Speaker 3: going to have two countries.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I feel like over the last few years, I've
Speaker 1: just fallen more in love with the idea of community
Speaker 1: and seeing the types of people that are drawn to
Speaker 1: like a community garden to make a space beautiful, or
Speaker 1: the ways people form around interests which allow them to
Speaker 1: talk about politics in ways that aren't disputatious, I guess,
Speaker 1: and so like, I think there's something really wonderful about
Speaker 1: this idea of more people assembling and less people being siloed.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, and even something like being part of the reenactors.
Speaker 3: There were people who were liberals and conservatives, and one
Speaker 3: of the reenactors said to me he loved it because
Speaker 3: you go to an office party and you talk about
Speaker 3: the weather or sports. Here you talk about philosophy and
Speaker 3: history and how can we move forward? And so I'm
Speaker 3: with you. I think community really is the answer.
Speaker 1: So one of the things I love most about your
Speaker 1: writing is that it forces me, or encourages me, rather
Speaker 1: to take a look at things I'm sort of naturally
Speaker 1: afraid to. Like I don't want to delve too deep
Speaker 1: in religion because I'm worried about the effects or what
Speaker 1: I'll think of others. And same with the Constitution. It's
Speaker 1: this real divide, And in a moment of sincere political anxiety,
Speaker 1: I feel like somehow this book was comforting and so
Speaker 1: lovely and just a wonderful way to tackle issues of
Speaker 1: government and constitution and the Supreme Court. And I just
Speaker 1: want to thank you for it.
Speaker 3: Oh my goodness, what a wonderful compliment.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 3: I mean, our country has been through a lot, these
Speaker 3: are very tough times, but first of all that we
Speaker 3: have a country is quite astonishing. I mean, we were
Speaker 3: underdogs against the greatest military might in the world of
Speaker 3: British and then we had half the country wanted to secede,
Speaker 3: and so we have been through tough times. So I
Speaker 3: am cautiously optimistic that we can improve our country. And
Speaker 3: I love that that was your experience too well.
Speaker 1: Aja, thank you so much for being here. I can't
Speaker 1: wait to try some election cake and check out this
Speaker 1: musket of yours.
Speaker 3: Oh live too, So come on over and we'll go
Speaker 3: marching around.
Speaker 1: Part Time Genius is the production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: This show is hosted by Will Pearson and me Mongais
Speaker 1: Chatikler and research by our good pal Mary Philip Sandy.
Speaker 1: Today's episode was engineered and produced by the wonderful Dylan
Speaker 1: Fagan with support from Tyler Klang. The show is executive
Speaker 1: produced for iHeart by Katrina Norvell and Ali Perry, with
Speaker 1: social media support from Sasha Gay, trustee Dara Potts and
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