AJ Jacobs: The Constitution Comes Alive

0:00:12 I’m Guy Kawasaki and this is Remarkable People.
0:00:15 We are on a mission to make you remarkable.
0:00:19 And today we have a second mission, which is to make you laugh.
0:00:24 Because helping me in this episode is AJ Jacobs.
0:00:30 He is an author and journalist known for his, shall I say, immersive experiments.
0:00:36 As well as his New York Times bestselling books, his first book, The Know It All, chronicled
0:00:40 his quest to read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica.
0:00:46 Another New York Times bestseller, The Year of Living Biblically, detailed his experience
0:00:49 following the Bible’s rules for a year.
0:00:57 AJ’s other books include Drop Dead Healthy, My Life as an Experiment, and It’s All Relative.
0:01:00 But today we’re talking about his very latest book.
0:01:07 It’s called The Year of Living Constitutionally, which means, and I’m not making this up,
0:01:13 that he tried to live one year within the context of the Constitution’s original meaning.
0:01:20 By the way, he did not take any private plane rides because that wasn’t in the original
0:01:21 Constitution.
0:01:26 But let’s just say that it gets very interesting when he carries around a musket.
0:01:29 You don’t want to miss this episode.
0:01:36 And when I heard the story of AJ Jacobs, it was so strange and so funny.
0:01:43 I had to talk to his wife because, oh my God, I wanted to hear what she says about living
0:01:46 constitutionally and biblically.
0:01:51 And then I suggested that he take one year and live magally, but I don’t think he’s
0:01:53 gonna take me up on that challenge.
0:01:56 So I’m Guy Kawasaki.
0:01:58 This is Remarkable People.
0:02:07 And now here’s the remarkable and extremely funny, AJ Jacobs.
0:02:11 Do you still have the pillory?
0:02:12 I do.
0:02:13 I do.
0:02:17 It is under my bed, and it is very well crafted.
0:02:23 It’s made of wood, and you are welcome to borrow it anytime you want.
0:02:27 For those of you listening who don’t know what a pillory is, because I didn’t until
0:02:33 I read AJ’s book, this is the stockade thing, where you put your head in and you put your
0:02:36 arms in and you’re locked in the stockade.
0:02:37 Exactly.
0:02:41 They have gone out of style in the United States, thankfully.
0:02:47 But since I was writing a book about trying to live like they lived in the 18th century,
0:02:50 I figured I should try to get one.
0:02:53 And you can still buy them on Etsy.
0:02:59 They are handmade, and I thought I would try one out, and it’s not my favorite.
0:03:00 It’s not my thing.
0:03:08 I’m not gonna continue using it, which is why I offer it to you, Guy.
0:03:13 But this may seem like a dumb question, but why would you keep something like that?
0:03:24 Well, it is very well crafted, and it is funny because it was sold on Etsy for adult entertainment
0:03:30 purposes, so it’s not really a punishment device, or at least in the traditional sense.
0:03:34 When I commit to a project, I commit.
0:03:38 As my son says, I commit to the bit, so I had everything.
0:03:41 As you can see, I’m wearing my tricorn hat.
0:03:47 I carried a musket around New York City because that’s my second amendment, right?
0:03:55 So the whole idea was to live by the Constitution as it was originally written in 1789.
0:04:03 And part of that is to explore punishment, and so I did end up buying one off of Etsy.
0:04:06 But I do use my quill.
0:04:11 I’m holding it right here for you, and it is well used.
0:04:17 I love writing with a quill because it changed the way I thought.
0:04:24 I honestly believe it made me a more subtle thinker because when I’m on the Internet,
0:04:29 I’ve gotten all these dings and chimes, and it’s very hard to concentrate.
0:04:35 It’s much better for cold takes versus hot takes, and you don’t have to go with a quill,
0:04:41 just a pen or a pencil or even a computer that’s cut off from the Internet.
0:04:44 So that was one of the takeaways of my project.
0:04:49 Madison and I both have fountain pens, and I feel the same way about fountain pens.
0:04:50 Oh, yes.
0:04:52 I have a suggestion for your pillory.
0:04:57 I think you could send it to Lauren Boebert and say, “The next time you go to a Broadway
0:05:03 musical, take this, and then you will be safer from video,” and other kinds of criticism
0:05:05 on CNN.
0:05:10 If you use this at the next time, you go to a play.
0:05:13 A brilliant idea.
0:05:22 If you have her address, then I will send it off.
0:05:27 Okay, now, this is a semi-serious thing, and I think we can have a breakthrough here,
0:05:28 right?
0:05:31 I read, because of your book, The Preamble, and it says, “We, the people of the United
0:05:39 States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility.”
0:05:48 Okay, the OCD Grammarian in me says, insure, I-N-S-U-R-E, is the wrong word unless they
0:05:52 were referring to state farm and all states.
0:05:56 Shouldn’t it be insure, not insure domestic tranquility?
0:06:03 Well, that is a fascinating question, and I actually ran the Constitution through the
0:06:11 Grammarly software, and it found over 600 mistakes, including that the words Pennsylvania,
0:06:16 the state Pennsylvania, spelled two different ways, P-E-N-N and P-E-N.
0:06:23 Now, I say this because I think the Constitution is an amazing document, and it does contain
0:06:30 greatness, and it planted the seeds of equality and our nation, but it was also written by
0:06:35 human beings, and it had flaws, and they knew it had flaws.
0:06:42 So one of the messages of my book is that they wanted us to improve on the Constitution.
0:06:46 They did not think it was a static document for all time.
0:06:52 I can tell you that probably if there are any originalists listening to this podcast,
0:06:59 they’re now saying, no, the letter of the preamble is insure, so that means that we cannot regulate
0:07:02 all state and state farm and GEICO.
0:07:06 It would be unconstitutional to regulate insurance companies.
0:07:13 Guy, I know you went to at least a year of law school, so I think you have got an excellent
0:07:14 point.
0:07:16 I’m not going to argue with you.
0:07:21 I hate to brush your bubble, but it was two weeks, not a year, but okay.
0:07:23 You’ve forgotten that.
0:07:26 Okay, you must have learned something in those two weeks.
0:07:29 I learned that I hate law, yeah, I learned something.
0:07:36 Okay, so listen, you have a checkered past, you’ve lived both biblically and constitutionally,
0:07:37 so which was harder?
0:07:39 Oh, that’s a good question.
0:07:46 They were both incredibly challenging and both incredibly rewarding because I do these
0:07:52 immersive projects where I live like someone for a year, and it’s not only because it’s
0:07:58 weird and strange and delightful, which it is, but also my hope is that I get something
0:08:04 out of it that improves my life and improves the reader’s life.
0:08:08 Each of them had their wonderful parts and their terrible parts, so the wonderful parts
0:08:14 of the Bible where I really learned a lot about gratitude because that’s a big part
0:08:20 of the Bible, the less wonderful parts where I had a huge beard because the Bible says
0:08:22 you cannot shave the corners of your beard.
0:08:29 So I looked like Gandalf or ZZ Top, you’re old enough to remember ZZ Top, and my wife
0:08:33 would not kiss me for seven months, so it was a balance.
0:08:34 Same with the Constitution.
0:08:36 I think there were amazing parts.
0:08:44 I learned a lot about virtue and self-sacrifice and cold takes writing with a quill pen, but
0:08:50 on the other hand, I had to carry a musket around New York, which got some strange looks.
0:08:57 I will say, it did come in handy once when I arrived at a coffee shop with my musket
0:09:03 at the same time as another customer, and he said, “You go first, I’m not cutting you
0:09:04 in line.”
0:09:05 That was helpful.
0:09:09 You mentioned it, but listen, if you were black and carrying a musket, you would have
0:09:12 had a very different experience, right?
0:09:14 Absolutely, yes.
0:09:20 I was nervous about the reaction, but as you say, and as I say in the book, if I had been
0:09:24 black, then who knows what would have happened?
0:09:30 And that is a big part of American history, and a big part of my book is, how does the
0:09:32 Constitution deal with race?
0:09:35 And it is a fascinating and complicated issue.
0:09:43 Listen, if all of a sudden, people of color were out and buying 30-shot clips and buying
0:09:49 automatic weapons, it would be interesting to see what the GOP thought of the Second
0:09:58 Amendment, or there must be some doing backflips because Hunter Biden’s ability to bear arms
0:10:03 is being restricted because he filled out the application inaccurately.
0:10:09 So what if Donald Trump’s son went and tried to buy a gun and had a drug problem, would
0:10:15 they be saying, oh, no, the Second Amendment trumps any restriction on people with drug
0:10:20 problems buying guns, or yeah, no, the restriction is top priority?
0:10:24 I don’t know what they would say to that, that would be very interesting.
0:10:29 It is a fascinating issue to read about the history of the Second Amendment because it
0:10:38 is very different than what I thought, and it was, at the time, some of the great work
0:10:45 on this was done by Saul Cornell, a historian, and he argues both the left and the right
0:10:52 get the Second Amendment wrong, or at least the original meaning of it, because the idea
0:10:59 was that it was your civic duty to have a musket in case you needed to defend your state
0:11:01 or your country.
0:11:09 And so the left would not like the fact that it was such a pro-gun society, but the right
0:11:14 would be apoplectic because it was very highly regulated.
0:11:19 They had government people would come to your home and make sure that your gun was working
0:11:22 properly because you needed to defend it.
0:11:26 So it was not one or the other.
0:11:30 And that’s why I think when it comes to the Second Amendment, we should not be looking
0:11:31 to the past.
0:11:39 We should be looking to what’s going on now and what is best for society now, as opposed
0:11:45 to trying to figure out what was the correct thing to do in 1789.
0:11:51 So you actually bought a musket with your buddies in the reenactment stage, and you
0:11:57 say something like, if you really got good at it, you could fire a musket three or four
0:12:04 times a minute, which is let’s just say a little slower than a automatic weapon today.
0:12:05 That is true.
0:12:13 And yes, I bought an actual musket off the old internet, and it is from the 1790s.
0:12:18 And then I bought another replica because the old one is hard to shoot.
0:12:19 But I went to a range.
0:12:25 I had joined the New Jersey Third Regiment of Revolutionary War reenactors.
0:12:26 Wonderful people.
0:12:29 Great time fighting some battles.
0:12:32 And we went to a range to shoot a musket.
0:12:37 And like you said, it was a vastly different experience than shooting a modern gun, which
0:12:41 I’ve also done because it’s so many steps.
0:12:42 It’s like 15 steps.
0:12:44 You have to take out the ramrod.
0:12:49 You’ve got to take out the gunpowder, pour the gunpowder in, pour the gunpowder there.
0:12:51 And it’s like 15 steps.
0:12:54 It’s like building a desk from Ikea.
0:12:56 So it is not easy.
0:13:01 And it took me several minutes to fire one lead ball.
0:13:07 But the real sharpshooters in the war could fire three per minute.
0:13:14 But even that, as you say, is much slower than current semi-automatic guns, which can
0:13:15 fire.
0:13:22 So the big question is, and I’ll present both sides, because I do like to steal man.
0:13:26 You know that phrase, steal man, as opposed to straw man.
0:13:32 So you try to present the strongest argument from both sides, which I think is a very good
0:13:33 thing.
0:13:38 And that is something I think the founders did right, is that they were much more open-minded
0:13:41 where we are very intransigent.
0:13:49 So anyway, the one side would say that this law of the Second Amendment was from 1789
0:13:54 with muskets– totally different machine than what we have now.
0:14:00 So imagine if you had a law written in 1800 that said, on this quiet country lane, it’s
0:14:03 OK to have wheeled vehicles.
0:14:07 Because wheeled vehicles meant a wheelbarrow or a bicycle.
0:14:10 Now we have 18-wheeled trucks.
0:14:14 So is the same law– does it need to be revised?
0:14:16 Progressives would say yes.
0:14:25 On the other hand, the gun rights folks would say, no, the right to bear arms is for all
0:14:26 arms.
0:14:27 It’s about self-defense.
0:14:32 And it would be like if you said, the First Amendment of free speech and free press only
0:14:37 applied to Ben Franklin’s wooden printing press.
0:14:39 It should apply to everything.
0:14:47 Now as you might imagine, I lean more towards the former argument that it is a very, very
0:14:54 different machine and that because it’s so different, we do need different regulations.
0:14:58 Can you tell us about the people in this New Jersey Regiment?
0:15:05 If you didn’t know that they do this reenactment and you just met them, would it be like screaming
0:15:09 to you that, wow, these people are like a little bit nuts?
0:15:12 They’re like reenacting the Revolutionary War.
0:15:13 They’re shooting muskets.
0:15:15 They’re wearing hats like you’re wearing.
0:15:17 Or would you just say, huh, nice guy.
0:15:18 We got along just great.
0:15:21 I mean, you would have a beer with them.
0:15:25 More than a beer, I would have Madeira and some ale.
0:15:33 And I will say, and I feel you have this too, that you try to go through life with an openness
0:15:36 and a curiosity and try not to prejudge.
0:15:39 So they will admit it’s a weird hobby.
0:15:42 And some of them are excessive.
0:15:48 There are some that they call stitch counters because they are so obsessed with having exactly
0:15:54 the way it was, the correct number of stitches on each pair of pants.
0:16:02 One guy in my regiment lost a toe to Frostbite because he walked barefoot in Valley Forage
0:16:06 in the snow because that’s what they did in the Revolutionary War.
0:16:10 So sometimes, yes, they can be a little overly committed.
0:16:14 But I will say, I became friendly with a lot of them.
0:16:16 They were thoughtful.
0:16:25 They were interested in honoring these people who had made sacrifices in the fight for democracy.
0:16:30 And I do think it’s an interesting question because one of the big questions of the book
0:16:34 is what is the glue that holds America together?
0:16:37 I love America, but I’m very worried about it.
0:16:39 It is not doing very well.
0:16:41 We are fraying.
0:16:42 So what is the glue?
0:16:45 And there can be several different glues.
0:16:53 One way countries hold together is through nationalism, that they all have the same ethnicity.
0:16:56 I think that’s a bad way to hold a country together.
0:17:00 That leads to all sorts of horrible things like Nazism.
0:17:03 So no, I say no to that.
0:17:05 Another way is through a founding myth.
0:17:11 So this is the way that they’re trying to do it, the founding myth of the documents
0:17:14 and the fight against monarchy.
0:17:19 Of course, that is a complicated one because many of the founders were incredibly flawed
0:17:21 and some of them were slave owners.
0:17:24 So some people object to the founding myth.
0:17:30 One way to rectify that is to make it a little broader, to be more inclusive in the founding
0:17:35 myth and include people like Frederick Douglass in the founding myth, which I love.
0:17:41 And another way to bind us together is through culture, maybe Thanksgiving, maybe the Superbowl,
0:17:44 maybe these are what can keep America together.
0:17:48 I don’t have the answer, but I explore all these things.
0:17:49 What is your thought?
0:17:50 I’d be interested.
0:17:51 You’re a wise person.
0:17:57 How can we keep America, assuming you do think America is worth keeping together?
0:18:01 How are some strategies that can help us make that real?
0:18:05 We had a guest, I can’t remember who.
0:18:11 Maybe it was Leon Panetta, but one of our guests told us in the old days, all the members
0:18:13 of Congress lived in the same area.
0:18:19 So you may be across the aisle during the day, but on the weekends, your kids played
0:18:24 on the same little league teams and you were sitting in the same stands and all that.
0:18:29 And so it was a lot more civil and there was a lot more crossing the aisle, but now everybody
0:18:31 lives separately.
0:18:38 And so you develop these little kind of conclaves of self-reinforcing beliefs and that has created
0:18:39 a lot of problems.
0:18:44 So I agree with you that the third solution is the only way to go.
0:18:50 And like you, I am very worried that beginning on November 6th, it may be the end of America.
0:18:52 We don’t need to go that deep right now.
0:18:59 I was just going to say, I think that is such an important point that we need to get out
0:19:03 of our little echo chambers and our little bubbles.
0:19:11 And I think one way to do it is back in the 1700s, in addition to individual rights, you
0:19:17 had responsibilities, whether it was the bucket brigade and you were putting out fires or
0:19:19 you were in the militia.
0:19:23 So I don’t want to return to the days of the militia where everyone had to be.
0:19:29 But I like the idea of national service for everyone trying AmeriCorps even for a month.
0:19:32 Or I love that my kids are going to college.
0:19:36 But I’m worried because when I went to college, it was a lottery.
0:19:42 You got stuck in a room with people maybe of completely different backgrounds.
0:19:48 Now you can go on Instagram and find someone who’s like you and then room with them.
0:19:54 So that is just one symptom of the problem of we’re not mixing together like we used
0:19:55 to.
0:20:03 We are really separating like oil and water.
0:20:09 I have to say that I think and I am willing to bet a lot of money that I am hardly the
0:20:15 first person to say this, but I just want to add one more voice that you definitely
0:20:22 have to do a book about a year of living MAGA like just go MAGA for a year.
0:20:27 I think that would be just fantastic.
0:20:32 You know, I have not had that many people say that I’ve had a few, but not that many.
0:20:34 That would be interesting.
0:20:38 We’d be bigger than the guy who ate at McDonald’s for 30 days.
0:20:43 You got to do this by your Ford 150 start going to NASCAR and like going on all the
0:20:44 rallies.
0:20:45 I would pay.
0:20:51 Listen, it is not a bad idea because I do think it is important.
0:20:57 Some people say we are so far gone that you can’t even communicate with the other side.
0:20:58 And maybe that’s true.
0:20:59 Maybe that’s true.
0:21:06 But I actually love trying to talk to people of completely different backgrounds.
0:21:09 And I think that is something we need to try to do.
0:21:16 And actually speaking of my book, I think that the founders were better at that because
0:21:23 they did have vast disagreements, but they had a lot more epistemic humility.
0:21:26 So my favorite is Ben Franklin.
0:21:32 And during the convention, he said, the older I get, the less certain I am of my own opinions.
0:21:33 And then he told this story.
0:21:40 He said, there was a French lady who said to her sister, why is it that I’m the only
0:21:45 person I’ve ever met who is right on every single issue?
0:21:47 And his point was, we’re all the French lady.
0:21:53 The mag of people are the French lady, but so are a lot of us on the left are the French
0:21:54 lady.
0:21:56 We think we are absolutely right.
0:22:05 And we need to be open to changing our mind, not willy nilly, not based on a cultist changing
0:22:06 your mind.
0:22:12 But you’ve got to change your mind by looking at the evidence and having a civil discussion.
0:22:16 So anyway, that is to say, maybe you’re on to something.
0:22:17 Maybe I should try it.
0:22:25 Listen, AJ, if I could see Jordan Klepper interviewing you, doing your year of being
0:22:32 MAGA, that would be, we’re talking Pula to prize level, that would be freaking amazing.
0:22:36 But I don’t know if my wife would go for it.
0:22:37 We’ll see.
0:22:40 I’ll bring it up to her since you brought it up.
0:22:46 I was going to ask you at the end, but from time to time on this podcast, we have brought
0:22:49 in cameo appearances.
0:22:53 And so we had Sal Khan’s niece.
0:22:56 She was the genesis of Khan Academy.
0:22:59 So we had her on for about 60 seconds.
0:23:05 And then I had Josh Peck, who mother talked about what it was like for him to be a childhood
0:23:06 actor.
0:23:11 So I’m leading up to this request that could you just consider if I could get your wife
0:23:18 on the phone for about 60 seconds and say, Julie, do you think your husband is absolutely
0:23:19 nuts?
0:23:20 He’s got the pillory.
0:23:21 He’s got the hat.
0:23:22 He’s got the musket.
0:23:24 He wanted to buy a second musket.
0:23:26 Julie, tell me, I mean.
0:23:27 Oh, okay.
0:23:28 Absolutely.
0:23:29 Of course.
0:23:36 No, she gets a lot of emails from readers saying that she is the most patient woman
0:23:37 in the world.
0:23:42 And I appreciate that because that allow me to do my subjects.
0:23:45 On a more serious note, listen, I’m from Silicon Valley.
0:23:52 I’ve been around many Foundings of many companies and I was at Apple and at Google and Wikipedia
0:23:53 and all that.
0:23:55 So I scratch my head.
0:24:02 I mean, I just cannot conceive of an organization that writes a business plan.
0:24:08 And then 250 years later, the people who work for that organization are saying 250 years
0:24:12 ago, Steve Jobs said, all mice have to have one button.
0:24:13 So we need to have one button.
0:24:16 I’m an originalist of the Apple business plan.
0:24:19 We cannot have a multiple button mouse.
0:24:20 We cannot have a trackpad.
0:24:22 It has to be a one button mouse.
0:24:27 So can you just explain to me like what goes through their brains when they think that
0:24:31 something that’s 250 years old should be applied to modern society?
0:24:36 Well, that is a fascinating analogy about the Silicon Valley.
0:24:38 I would say a couple of things.
0:24:43 First of all, the founders, I do believe were very entrepreneurial.
0:24:50 They were like some of the brilliant people in Silicon Valley now, and that they would
0:24:54 not want the Constitution to be stuck in time.
0:25:01 And they made it an amendment process, which was a real big breakthrough because they said,
0:25:06 we know this is an imperfect document and we know that times evolve.
0:25:11 So you have this way to change the founding document.
0:25:14 The problem is they made it too hard to change.
0:25:18 They didn’t think that they were making it that hard.
0:25:19 They didn’t want it to be easy.
0:25:22 They don’t want to be able to change every day.
0:25:28 But you need two thirds of Congress to make an amendment.
0:25:30 Back then it was possible.
0:25:35 Now we have two rigid parties split down the middle.
0:25:38 The founders did not see that coming.
0:25:39 They would be appalled.
0:25:46 We have not had an amendment since 1992, and I don’t see one coming for several decades.
0:25:50 And this would be very disturbing to the founders.
0:25:52 So that’s the first point.
0:25:59 The second point is, as I say, I do like to steal man both sides because I think that’s
0:26:05 the way progress is made, is if you do understand the other side and then are able to have a
0:26:06 civil discussion.
0:26:10 So let me try to steal man originalism for you.
0:26:17 Originalism, which is an incredibly powerful movement right now in how to interpret the
0:26:19 Constitution.
0:26:24 And the majority of the Supreme Court are originalists, and a lot of the decisions
0:26:31 like dobs about abortion and brewing about guns are originalist decisions.
0:26:40 So the theory is that the most important thing when interpreting the Constitution is that
0:26:45 meaning from the original public meaning from when it was ratified.
0:26:49 And you can say, yeah, that’s crazy, it was 230 years ago.
0:26:51 But think about this.
0:26:57 If you sign a contract, you’re a businessman, you sign a contract, say you hire a contractor
0:27:01 for your home and say, can you please install a new sink?
0:27:06 And the contractor comes back a month later and says, okay, put in the sink, but I also
0:27:13 put in a chandelier and I did a couch and a little water fountain for you.
0:27:15 And I didn’t ask for that.
0:27:17 And he says, yeah, but it’s a living contract.
0:27:19 And I thought that would be helpful for you.
0:27:20 So I did it.
0:27:25 So their argument is we need to have stability.
0:27:28 It’s built on stability and rule of law.
0:27:32 And you can’t be willy-nilly changing it.
0:27:38 Now I understand that argument, but like I said, it’s too hard to change the document.
0:27:42 So something has to change as society changes.
0:27:48 So that is where living constitutionalism, which is the opposite of originalism, that
0:27:54 comes in and says, well, no, we have to change the interpretation as the times change.
0:28:00 And both of them have their pros and cons, these approaches, because living constitutionalism,
0:28:01 that’s not perfect.
0:28:07 You’re giving so much power to the Supreme Court, which as we’ve seen is not a great
0:28:08 thing.
0:28:11 So I am not fully on board with the idea.
0:28:15 I think the Supreme Court is way too powerful.
0:28:17 And the founders would have been appalled at that.
0:28:19 They did not see it coming.
0:28:22 So it’s a complicated issue, is what I’m saying.
0:28:29 But to me, the important part when interpreting the Constitution or when making any decision
0:28:32 is to look at it through many lenses.
0:28:36 So you look at it through the original meaning, that’s a wonderful lens.
0:28:40 But also look at it, how will it affect our descendants?
0:28:43 How will it affect society now?
0:28:49 How will it affect the reputation of the Supreme Court or the government as an institution?
0:28:54 I’m sure you’ve heard of the Fox and the Hedgehog, where the Fox sees the world through
0:29:00 many lenses, and the Hedgehog sees the world through one lens.
0:29:03 It’s a fable from Greek times.
0:29:05 I am a Fox.
0:29:10 I love seeing the world through many lenses, and I think that makes the world a better place.
0:29:14 But that’s why I am not an originalist.
0:29:20 In the spirit of helping me become more of a Fox, can you just give me some examples
0:29:25 where liberals have embraced originalism?
0:29:30 Like I know many examples of conservatives embracing originalism, but can you give us
0:29:38 some of liberals embracing originalism that just makes you smack your head?
0:29:39 That’s a great question.
0:29:45 I think one of the challenges of originalism is you’ve got two challenges.
0:29:50 You’ve got people trying to figure out what was in the minds of the founding generation.
0:29:53 So there’s a big debate over that.
0:29:55 People are like, no, they said this, no, they said that.
0:29:57 So that’s one question.
0:30:02 And then once you have the answer to that, the other question is, is this information
0:30:04 what we should be using?
0:30:11 So I’ll give you what I think is a fascinating point that these wonderful scholars at Stanford,
0:30:17 Jud Campbell is one of them, and they went into the history of the First Amendment.
0:30:19 Now I’m a journalist and a writer.
0:30:22 I love the First Amendment, my favorite amendment.
0:30:24 I love free speech.
0:30:33 But I realized through research, I love 20th century free speech or 21st century.
0:30:39 The free speech was expanded significantly in the last 50 years.
0:30:44 The free speech at the founding was very different.
0:30:47 It was much more constricted.
0:30:52 Some founders were more pro free speech than others, but none of them were as free speech
0:30:54 as we are now.
0:31:00 Back then it was considered constitutional to have state laws against blasphemy.
0:31:06 I couldn’t believe it, but there were state laws against blasphemy in New York.
0:31:14 If you said a curse or blasphemed the Lord, 37 and a half cent fine, which is about $20.
0:31:19 Since I was living constitutionally, I tried to impose that on my house because I have
0:31:23 sons who are teens, and I was like, this is great.
0:31:27 I can get them to stop cursing 37 and a half cents every time they cursed.
0:31:31 They were very lawyerly and said, I don’t have a half cent, therefore I’m not paying.
0:31:34 Anyway, it didn’t always work.
0:31:40 But then Connecticut had laws against jugglers and magicians and acrobats, and these were
0:31:47 considered constitutional because back then you had your natural rights, but once you
0:31:53 entered society, then your rights were balanced against the greater good.
0:32:00 Your rights were mediated by the fact that there are others, so you can’t just go around
0:32:03 saying anything you want.
0:32:09 It wasn’t quite Stalinist Russia back in the 1790s, but it was nothing like what we have
0:32:10 now.
0:32:15 So no one should want to go back to the original First Amendment.
0:32:19 The original First Amendment was very narrow.
0:32:28 I wouldn’t like it because every late night comedian would be in jail for sedition if
0:32:34 this was in the 1790s, but conservatives would not like it either because the argument that
0:32:40 the First Amendment covers political donations from corporations would shock the founders.
0:32:42 They would say, what?
0:32:47 They were very concerned about corruption in politics, so they would not believe that
0:32:50 the First Amendment covers that.
0:32:55 So that is an example of why I think it’s good to look at the history.
0:32:59 It’s fascinating, but we cannot rely on that alone.
0:33:04 So when push comes to shove and bottom line, what do you think is more surprising?
0:33:10 How inadequate the Constitution is today or that it has worked as well as it works?
0:33:12 Oh, that’s a great question.
0:33:14 That is a great question.
0:33:16 Can I answer both?
0:33:18 I think that is the proper answer.
0:33:20 I believe in the First Amendment.
0:33:21 Thank you.
0:33:23 The new First Amendment.
0:33:25 That’s right.
0:33:30 What I love about the Constitution is that it does contain multitudes.
0:33:34 And let me give you a quick little story that I have in the section on race and the Constitution
0:33:36 in the book.
0:33:40 And that is, right before the Civil War, you had two great abolitionists.
0:33:46 You had William Lloyd Garrison, a white man, and Frederick Douglass, a former enslaveman.
0:33:53 William Lloyd Garrison, he said, “The Constitution is a pact with the devil because it condones
0:33:54 slavery.”
0:33:57 He says, “It deserves to be burned.”
0:33:58 And he burned it.
0:34:01 He literally burned it on stage in front of hundreds of people.
0:34:03 He was like a showman.
0:34:06 At first, Frederick Douglass agreed with him.
0:34:11 But at some point in the 1850s, Frederick Douglass changed his mind, which, as you know, I love
0:34:13 people who change their mind.
0:34:15 And he said, “I think it’d be more productive.
0:34:18 Let’s reframe the Constitution.
0:34:19 It’s not a pact with the devil.
0:34:21 It is a promise or a note.
0:34:25 The Constitution promises liberty.
0:34:27 It promises equality.
0:34:29 And those are not happening in our country.
0:34:30 We have enslaved people.
0:34:33 We have racism, sexism.”
0:34:38 And he said, “The idea is, let’s make America live up to the promise or a note that is the
0:34:40 Constitution.”
0:34:44 And that is such a powerful theme.
0:34:47 Martin Luther King used that same language.
0:34:48 That’s a promise or a note.
0:34:55 Obama talked about how the problems within the Constitution are solved by the Constitution
0:34:56 itself.
0:34:58 The seeds of freedom are in there.
0:35:00 We just have to make them grow.
0:35:04 And we have to struggle to make it live up to its best ideals.
0:35:06 So that is my answer.
0:35:10 In some ways, it’s a very troubling document.
0:35:13 But in other ways, it’s wonderful and amazing.
0:35:16 And let’s try to make it live up to those great parts.
0:35:20 And what if somebody wanted to pin you to the wall and say, “Yeah, but we the people
0:35:25 really referred historically to ‘we the white males’?”
0:35:28 Well, I think that that’s hard to argue with.
0:35:33 I think, “Yes, that was ‘we the people’ back then meant ‘we the white male people’.”
0:35:35 That’s who could vote.
0:35:37 That’s who they wrote it for.
0:35:41 But what’s wonderful is they used that phrase, “we the people.”
0:35:43 They didn’t say, “we the white male people.”
0:35:44 They used the phrase, “we the people.”
0:35:52 And that has left open the door for Americans to struggle and expand the rights of marginalized
0:35:53 people.
0:35:57 And you can see that in the Constitution itself, in the amendments.
0:35:59 You can see women got the vote.
0:36:05 With the 19th Amendment, black people got the vote, indigenous people got the vote.
0:36:10 And we the people, we are very lucky to have that phrase.
0:36:17 Because originally, the original version of the Constitution said, “we the people of Pennsylvania,
0:36:20 New York, Rhode Island, etc., etc.”
0:36:24 And if that had been the case, it would have been a different message.
0:36:27 It would have been, “this is all about the states.”
0:36:31 Governor Morris was one of the founders, and he struck out the states, and he said, “no,
0:36:37 it’s ‘we the people,'” and that has made a huge difference because then that has allowed
0:36:40 us to expand the rights.
0:36:42 Up next, unremarkable people.
0:36:49 I’ve gotten liberals from the left to say, “thank you for showing me how crazy originalism
0:36:50 is.”
0:36:55 On the conservative side, I get lots of thank you for showing that the founders did have
0:37:01 virtues and this idea of self-sacrifice, and that we do need to get back to some of this.
0:37:06 So yeah, people are just very good at seeing what they want, and so I don’t think it’s
0:37:07 a big con.
0:37:12 I really don’t.
0:37:14 Thank you to all our regular podcast listeners.
0:37:17 It’s our pleasure and honor to make the show for you.
0:37:23 If you find our show valuable, please do us a favor and subscribe, rate and review it.
0:37:30 Even better, forward it to a friend, a big mahalo to you for doing this.
0:37:34 You’re listening to Remarkable People with Guy Kawasaki.
0:37:42 What do you think the impact would be of actually amending the Constitution, the exact places,
0:37:48 as opposed to sticking everything as addendums that may have internal conflicts if you didn’t
0:37:52 actually amend the main part of the Constitution?
0:37:53 Right.
0:37:58 I love that question because James Madison, the father of the Constitution he’s called,
0:37:59 that’s what he wanted.
0:38:05 He wanted when the Constitution was amended, he’s like, you got to rewrite the whole thing
0:38:12 and put the new language in, more like a Google doc where you rewrite it completely over or
0:38:14 a Wikipedia page.
0:38:16 But he was overruled.
0:38:19 Some of the other founders said, no, we’ll just stick it at the end.
0:38:25 We’ll put the amendments at the end like a PS, PS, oh yeah, we forgot.
0:38:28 You should have the right to free speech.
0:38:31 I think there are advantages to both.
0:38:37 One of my advisors, because I talked to dozens of great constitutional scholars, one said
0:38:45 that it’s good to have this startlingly horrible language in the Constitution about, they don’t
0:38:52 use the words slavery, they use euphemisms like servitude, but it’s good to have that
0:38:59 to remind us we have made progress because you read the news today and it’s 16 hours
0:39:05 of negativity and it’s very easy to think we’ve made zero progress and we’re worse
0:39:06 than ever.
0:39:10 That is the way I feel sometimes at the end of a day, but that’s wrong.
0:39:15 We have made progress and we can continue to make progress.
0:39:21 Yeah, I think that nostalgia is vastly overrated and when people say they want to go back to
0:39:27 the 50s and the 60s because as families we all ate around a common dinner table and then
0:39:31 we talked amongst themselves, not looked at our phones and then after we went and played
0:39:35 board games like this great family, like what family was that?
0:39:42 I don’t know any families like that and I was alive in the 50s.
0:39:47 I love that you say that because that is one of the big themes of the books is some parts
0:39:50 of the 1700s were wonderful.
0:39:54 There were parts like we talked about the virtue of writing with a quill pen.
0:39:56 You don’t have 16 hours of negative news.
0:39:59 You have newspaper comes twice a week.
0:40:03 So you’re not depressed from the moment you wake up and turn on the internet.
0:40:08 On the other hand, like you said, the good old days were not good.
0:40:09 They sucked.
0:40:17 They were racist, sexist, smelly, cutting edge medicine was the tobacco smoke enema
0:40:21 where they literally would blow smoke up your ass.
0:40:27 They’d put a two a hose up your ass and blow smoke up it because it was considered good
0:40:29 for your stomach.
0:40:31 So we don’t want that.
0:40:36 And the look it up tobacco smoke enema is very popular.
0:40:41 Bloodletting is also more well known, but you’re making me suck her up.
0:40:42 I’m sorry.
0:40:46 My point is to make you feel better, not to feel worse.
0:40:51 You don’t have to do the tobacco and let me give you two very small examples because
0:40:53 I was trying to live it.
0:40:59 So I never did blow smoke up my ass, but even just wearing the even wearing the not even
0:41:03 Mike Johnson has done that to you.
0:41:04 It’s funny.
0:41:07 I quote him as saying we should go back to the 18th century.
0:41:08 Exactly.
0:41:09 You want that, Mike?
0:41:11 I’m not sure you do.
0:41:17 But I would put on my clothes every morning and I would put on my my 18th century style
0:41:22 socks, these big stockings, and they had no elastic.
0:41:24 So they fall down to your ankles.
0:41:29 So I had to put on these little sock belts every morning, not even garters.
0:41:31 Garters are too sophisticated.
0:41:33 Just little belts around the sock.
0:41:39 And the amount of combined time, I must have spent like six hours putting on sock belts.
0:41:41 I’ll never get that back.
0:41:48 So I am so grateful for democracy, but I’m also grateful for elastic socks.
0:41:50 So I agree with you.
0:41:55 Nostalgia is as vastly overrated.
0:41:56 Oh my God.
0:42:01 So can we just talk about the Supreme Court for a moment here?
0:42:04 Because the Supreme Court is just basically politically aligned.
0:42:07 Why do we even have a Supreme Court at this point?
0:42:08 There’s no checks and balances.
0:42:09 No.
0:42:12 Do you think that’s a blip or do you think that’s permanent?
0:42:13 Oh God, I hope it’s not permanent.
0:42:22 I think it’s both sides would benefit from term limits, 18 years, I’d be happy with
0:42:23 less.
0:42:30 But I will tell you, from a founder’s perspective, if they came back, they would be appalled
0:42:33 by the Supreme Court right now.
0:42:37 Because they would say, this was not meant to be so powerful.
0:42:44 If you look at the Constitution, the first article is about Congress, and it is by far
0:42:45 the longest.
0:42:51 It is two and a half times the size of the president’s section, which is article two.
0:42:56 And then article three is the Supreme Court, very short.
0:43:02 I wouldn’t say it’s an afterthought, but it is not the main event.
0:43:10 Congress was first among equals back then, because that’s who was elected by the people.
0:43:16 Supreme Court was there, and it was supposed to weigh in on constitutional issues.
0:43:19 But it wasn’t supposed to be the final say.
0:43:26 Most founders wanted it to be a joint decision between the president, Congress, and the Supreme
0:43:29 Court on what is and is not constitutional.
0:43:35 And you can look at Jonathan Gnep from Stanford, who’s done some amazing work on this.
0:43:41 So they would look at the Supreme Court now and say, wait, these are nine unelected people,
0:43:44 and they are determining the fates of millions of Americans?
0:43:46 This is not what we designed.
0:43:47 This is insane.
0:43:52 I am not a fan of the way the Supreme Court is structured now.
0:43:56 I would be very happy if they had much less power.
0:43:58 And likewise, the president.
0:44:01 The president has way too much power.
0:44:04 The founders would be shocked by that.
0:44:09 They wanted the president to have some power, but again, it was the Congress who was number
0:44:10 one.
0:44:14 And over the years, the president has gained crazy power.
0:44:18 George Washington had eight executive orders in eight years.
0:44:24 Obama and Trump both had over 200 executive orders.
0:44:29 It is a vastly different system, which is why, because as you know, my book, I was trying
0:44:34 to express all of my rights, there’s a right to petition in the First Amendment.
0:44:41 And so I decided to start a petition to try to limit the power of the president, both Democrat
0:44:47 and Republican, I think need to be limited and give Congress back some power.
0:44:53 I went back to an idea by my favorite founder, Ben Franklin.
0:44:57 Ben Franklin and others thought, one president is a terrible idea.
0:45:01 We just fought a war to get rid of a monarch.
0:45:07 So several of the delegates wanted three presidents, three co-presidents at the same
0:45:08 time.
0:45:13 Ben Franklin wanted, at one point he proposed a council of 12 presidents, but it’s funny
0:45:21 to think about Biden, Trump, and RFK Jr. sitting next to each other at a wee work in the Oval
0:45:22 Office.
0:45:28 I’m not sure it’s a great idea, honestly, but I do think that they were right to be
0:45:31 worried about one person having that much power.
0:45:37 So I was able to get hundreds of signatures with my quill pen and bring it to a sitting
0:45:43 senator to talk about, let’s reign in the president so that we don’t have another monarch
0:45:46 like the founders were afraid of.
0:45:52 We may be about to find out about a monarchy, but anyway, why do you say Supreme Court is
0:45:53 powerful?
0:45:58 I’m being a little bit of a devil’s advocate because if the Supreme Court makes a ruling
0:46:03 and people refuse to implement it, what are they going to do?
0:46:06 They can’t call up the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
0:46:12 That is actually what Alexander Hamilton said is that they do not have the power of the
0:46:16 sword, so they are the least threatening and dangerous branch.
0:46:25 But if you believe in the rule of law, which I do, then when they do make a decision, then
0:46:29 the president, presumably, and Congress will enforce it.
0:46:35 They don’t have to, as you say, and Andrew Jackson did say that he made that very point.
0:46:39 I forget what the actual ruling was, but he said, “I’m not going to enforce it and let
0:46:41 them try to make me.”
0:46:48 But we want to have a country that is run by rule of law because I do believe that that’s
0:46:55 better than chaos and authoritarians and tyranny.
0:47:01 I don’t think Alito and Kagan are going to go out there with their arms and try to make
0:47:02 the Congress follow it.
0:47:09 But luckily, Congress does follow their rulings, even though I disagree with many of their
0:47:10 rulings.
0:47:17 Yeah, but I would make the case that in today’s environment, if the Supreme Court was controlled
0:47:23 by liberals and they made rulings that the Republican Congress didn’t like, the Republican
0:47:26 Congress would not listen to the Supreme Court.
0:47:27 That’s interesting.
0:47:33 It’s hard to predict, but I will say that is how we got originalism in the first place,
0:47:40 is that in the 1960s, you had a very liberal Supreme Court, the Warren Court, and they
0:47:47 made a lot of decisions such as desegregating schools, the rights of those who were arrested
0:47:55 like Miranda rights and the bans on intermarriage, abortion, contraception, all of these things
0:47:58 that conservatives thought, this is too much.
0:48:02 These unelected people have too much power.
0:48:09 They started originalism with the idea of going back to the text and saying, let’s make
0:48:15 it very narrow so judges don’t have all of this control over our lives.
0:48:22 The instinct was good because even though I agree with the liberal Supreme Court’s decisions,
0:48:24 I don’t think it should have come from the Supreme Court.
0:48:27 I think it should have come from Congress.
0:48:34 And now, because we have now a conservative Supreme Court, even though originalism was
0:48:37 supposed to constrain judges, it’s not at all.
0:48:44 You look at decisions like Dobbs as having massive effects on millions of lives.
0:48:50 To me, one of the big solutions is make the Supreme Court less powerful for both liberals
0:48:52 and conservatives.
0:48:59 Do you think that Ruth Bader Ginsburg, if she were alive and she could do it over again,
0:49:05 do you think she would retire in time for a replacement to be confirmed?
0:49:07 That is such an interesting question.
0:49:08 I don’t know.
0:49:14 I can’t be in her mind, but I think that it’s interesting because reading the history of
0:49:24 Ruth Bader Ginsburg made me in awe of what she did and how brilliant she was using men’s
0:49:27 rights to advance women’s rights.
0:49:33 She was able to sue based on this discrimination against a man, and that opened the door to
0:49:34 women’s rights.
0:49:41 But I do think she made a blunder in not retiring, but people are complicated.
0:49:46 I’m not going to criticize her because she’s much smarter than I will ever be.
0:49:49 But I guess the bigger point is the same with the founders.
0:49:57 The founders had some amazing qualities, and they had some terrible qualities.
0:50:04 So the response would be to completely reject them and say, we shouldn’t listen to anything
0:50:05 they say.
0:50:10 But I think a more measured response is to say, everyone is flawed.
0:50:18 And in 200 years, I’m glad I won’t be around for people to judge what I did.
0:50:24 You went on a vacation to Portugal and took a flight knowing that it would affect the
0:50:31 environment and make the lives of your great-great-grandchildren horrible.
0:50:36 And I’d say, I know, but I love Portugal.
0:50:38 People are complicated.
0:50:43 And I think instead of glorifying people, let’s maybe glorify ideas.
0:50:50 So the ideas, some of their best ideas of equality or entrepreneurship, all these things.
0:50:56 Instead of saying, these are perfect heroes, which nobody is.
0:50:58 Take me into the mind of an originalist.
0:51:06 Do you think that they truly do believe in the concept of originalism, or they just use
0:51:10 it for justification of what they want to do?
0:51:12 That’s a great question.
0:51:19 My belief is that they truly believe it just as I believe the left truly believes what they
0:51:23 believe and that they’re not using confirmation bias.
0:51:28 To me, we are such good rationalizers.
0:51:31 That is one of our greatest skills as human beings.
0:51:36 We are just so good at seeing the world with the way we want.
0:51:42 And that is why I love Ben Franklin for being aware of his biases.
0:51:45 He was like Daniel Kahneman 230 years ago.
0:51:48 And I’ve seen this even in the reaction to my books.
0:51:54 I wrote a book about the Bible that we talked about, and my point was that there are good
0:51:57 parts to religion and bad parts to religion.
0:52:02 I don’t think we should take the Bible literally, but the reactions were fascinating because
0:52:06 it was confirmation bias to the nth degree.
0:52:11 I would get hundreds of emails from secular people, atheists.
0:52:15 Thank you for showing how insane religion is.
0:52:18 I would get hundreds, same number of emails from religious people.
0:52:23 Thank you for reaffirming my faith and showing the good parts of religion.
0:52:28 So there’s a quote from a poet, I forget which one, maybe it was Blake.
0:52:33 We both read the Bible day and night, you read black and I read white.
0:52:39 And I’ve seen this too in the reaction to this book on the year of living constitutionally.
0:52:46 I’ve gotten liberals from the left to say thank you for showing me how crazy originalism
0:52:47 is.
0:52:52 But on the conservative side, I get lots of thank you for showing that the founders did
0:52:57 have virtues and this idea of self-sacrifice and that we do need to get back to some of
0:52:58 this.
0:53:02 So yeah, people are just very good at seeing what they want.
0:53:04 And so I don’t think it’s a big con.
0:53:06 I really don’t.
0:53:07 Do you?
0:53:08 What’s your opinion?
0:53:13 I gotta tell you, I scratch my head every day when I read what some of these Ivy League
0:53:19 graduates are saying that up is down and down is up and the world is flat and global climate
0:53:24 change isn’t happening or it is and I just…
0:53:29 As I’ve progressed with this podcast, we’ve had dozens and dozens of Ivy League graduates
0:53:35 and I gotta tell you that maybe it’s self-selection, but it’s not the people I interviewed, but
0:53:41 the investigation and discussion we’ve had about Ivy League graduates, I have a very
0:53:44 low opinion of Ivy League graduate at this point in my life.
0:53:50 I think you have to overcome your Ivy League education and I cite as examples people like
0:53:51 Ted Cruz.
0:53:57 If he could overcome his Ivy League education, maybe he would see how wrong he is, but let’s
0:53:58 not.
0:54:01 I don’t want to go down into that cesspool here.
0:54:10 I think the big point is you can be incredibly smart, but still be incredibly wrong and yet
0:54:20 for my Bible book, I talked to some creationists who believe the world is 5,000 years old and
0:54:26 I am an evolution believer and I think the vast majority of evidence, but these people
0:54:31 were not bumpkins and some of them had PhDs.
0:54:39 They were just really good at doing the mental gymnastics to convince themselves that reality
0:54:45 conformed to their preconceived beliefs and they would come up with the most brilliant
0:54:57 ways to justify creationism like they acknowledged that the universe was several billion light
0:54:59 years big.
0:55:04 How could it be that it’s only 5,000 years old and they would show me these complicated
0:55:11 mathematical equations that were way over my head to prove to me it’s still 5,000 years
0:55:16 old even though it’s vastly this huge giant billions of light years long.
0:55:23 So, yeah, people’s intelligence I don’t think is very highly correlated with how correct
0:55:28 they are in terms of view of reality.
0:55:34 When the framers were defining something like cruel and unusual punishment, was it cruel
0:55:42 and unusual punishment at the time they were living and if something becomes redefined
0:55:49 as cruel and unusual, then you should interpret the constitution as you cannot have cruel
0:55:53 and unusual punishment at the time you are living.
0:56:00 For example, so if you’re an originalist you say cruel and unusual punishment was flogging
0:56:07 but now that’s off the table and times have changed so flogging is not acceptable anymore.
0:56:16 That gets back to our first topic of the pillory because the pillory at the time of the founding
0:56:17 was fine.
0:56:22 John Jay, one of the founders, he sentenced to someone in the pillory and the pillory
0:56:24 by the way, it wasn’t cute.
0:56:31 It was horrible. People were in there and there was rocks being thrown at them, mud,
0:56:35 feces, dead animals, so it was not fun.
0:56:39 When I originally bought the pillory by the way, I was like, “Maybe I could try it out
0:56:41 on my kids if they are.”
0:56:44 I bet that went over big.
0:56:46 It did not go over.
0:56:48 I eventually was like, “No, I can’t even do it.”
0:56:52 I was going to give them the choice like no screens for a day or five minutes in the
0:56:58 pillory but the only person I put in the pillory was myself and it did not go well because
0:57:02 my wife as you can imagine, I was like, “Okay, I’m ready to get out.”
0:57:06 She’s like, “Well, do you promise to fold your sweaters instead of just rolling them
0:57:07 into a ball?”
0:57:13 Yeah, I don’t recommend it but it’s a great question and it’s one that originalists have
0:57:15 struggled with.
0:57:23 Most originalists today would say that the concept of cruel and unusual punishment is
0:57:28 allowed to evolve and they have complicated reasons why.
0:57:34 But Antonin Scalia, who’s one of the founders of originalism, gave a famous speech where
0:57:42 he said, “If you are a true originalist, not a faint-hearted originalist, a true originalist,
0:57:50 you have to accept that flogging, branding, and the pillory are constitutional because
0:57:52 they were constitutional at the time.
0:57:55 They were not cruel or unusual.”
0:57:58 He makes that point.
0:58:05 More modern originalists say, “No, he was wrong,” but I think it’s a very profound criticism
0:58:06 of originalism.
0:58:12 I think it proves that originalists, they do evolve the meaning.
0:58:16 It’s just they evolve it in some ways, but they are stingy in other ways.
0:58:21 They don’t evolve the meaning of equal protection to cover gay marriage, for instance.
0:58:25 It’s sort of a picking and choosing of what has evolved.
0:58:31 I wonder if Clarence Thomas lets the Mrs. vote, I mean.
0:58:32 There you go.
0:58:35 That was when I was living constitutionally.
0:58:42 Back then, the legal system for women was called Coverture, and it was sexist.
0:58:50 It was basically women were treated like children, and they didn’t have right to vote or to sign
0:58:51 contracts.
0:58:52 Married women couldn’t sign contracts.
0:58:58 My wife owns a company, an event company, Watson Adventures, and she signs contracts
0:58:59 every day.
0:59:05 So I said, “Well, I am trying to do this project, so maybe I should be the one signing
0:59:08 all your contracts for this year.”
0:59:12 And at first, she’s like, “Great, I hate signing contracts.
0:59:17 The paperwork is boring, but I did such a terrible job.
0:59:22 I messed up so badly she fired me after an hour.”
0:59:27 So I don’t recommend Coverture at all, but yeah, that is another problem.
0:59:33 Thank God for the 19th Amendment, all of the women and men who fought for it, but we did
0:59:35 not want to go back.
0:59:39 And does she check with you about what kind of flags and how she can hang them outside
0:59:42 your house?
0:59:47 The only flag I hung was a 13-starred flag.
0:59:51 I don’t think I will get in trouble with that, and I’m not going to throw her under
0:59:52 the bus.
0:59:54 I throw myself under the bus.
1:00:00 Oh my God, you have got to ask her if I can interview her.
1:00:03 She will say yes, because she believes in free speech.
1:00:04 She wants her voice heard.
1:00:13 So my absolute last question, have you truly decided whether the sun was rising or falling
1:00:14 on the chair?
1:00:17 Oh, I love that question.
1:00:19 Was it George Washington or Ben Franklin?
1:00:20 It was.
1:00:21 Which chair was it?
1:00:26 Yes, for the listeners who haven’t read the section of the book, during the Constitutional
1:00:31 Convention in 1787, George Washington sat at the front in a big wooden chair.
1:00:37 And on that chair was a wood carving of the sun, but it was only half the sun.
1:00:38 You could only see the top half.
1:00:40 The bottom was cut off by the horizon.
1:00:41 So you didn’t know.
1:00:44 Was it rising sun or is it a setting sun?
1:00:49 And Ben Franklin, at the end of the convention, when they had this Constitution against all
1:00:55 odds, Ben Franklin said, I have now decided it is a rising sun.
1:00:57 The sun is rising on America.
1:01:01 The sun is rising on our republic on our democracy.
1:01:06 So one of the motivations for my book was, is the sun still rising on America?
1:01:13 Because you read the newspaper and the internet, I guess, and it’s just 16 hours of negative
1:01:14 news.
1:01:18 And so it made me think, maybe the sun is setting.
1:01:19 This is it.
1:01:20 This is the end.
1:01:23 And I wanted to find some optimism.
1:01:24 And I’ll say two things.
1:01:27 One, I did find optimism.
1:01:35 And one of my favorite parts of the book was the election cake, because in the 1780s, elections
1:01:41 were seen as a festival, at least for the privileged ones who could vote.
1:01:46 It was parades, music, and rum, lot of rum, and cakes.
1:01:48 People would make election cakes.
1:01:51 So I decided to revive that tradition.
1:01:55 And I used Facebook, which I know is not very 18th century.
1:01:57 But it is as one of the older platforms.
1:01:59 So I thought at least it’s closer.
1:02:05 And I got hundreds of people in all 50 states to bake election cakes last November and bring
1:02:13 into the polls to remind us that democracy, as flawed as it is right now, is we are lucky
1:02:14 to have it.
1:02:18 Democracy is sweet, that was our catchphrase, and we’ve got a fight to keep it.
1:02:21 So I loved that part, and I’m doing it again.
1:02:24 If anyone wants to bake election cakes, it’s just a joy.
1:02:27 We share the pictures on Instagram.
1:02:29 Is it legal in Georgia?
1:02:32 It’s a great question, I hope so.
1:02:34 You cannot bring it too close to the polls.
1:02:36 I had to be 50 feet away.
1:02:38 But I certainly hope so.
1:02:40 So that gave me some hope.
1:02:44 But I guess one of my points at the end, I had 10 takeaways.
1:02:51 And one of the takeaways was that the real sun rises and falls according to gravity.
1:02:52 That’s natural laws.
1:02:55 We don’t have any control.
1:02:58 This son of democracy is not like that.
1:03:00 It’s not a natural process.
1:03:01 It’s up to us.
1:03:04 We are the ones who built it, and it is fragile.
1:03:09 So if we do want to keep it, we have to be the ones who make it rise or set.
1:03:11 And so we have to go in there and fight.
1:03:12 There are a lot of reforms we can make.
1:03:14 Gerrymandering is just one.
1:03:15 So let’s go in there.
1:03:22 Let’s have our cake, and let’s fight for democracy and keep the sun rising on America.
1:03:25 And that is how we’re going to end this podcast.
1:03:28 That is a great last question.
1:03:30 It was that or the smoke anima.
1:03:34 One of those two ways to end it.
1:03:35 Both important.
1:03:36 Both important.
1:03:38 Thank you so much for doing this.
1:03:40 Oh, my pleasure.
1:03:43 Guy, you are an inspiration.
1:03:44 I really believe that.
1:03:52 I love your philosophy of life and your open-mindedness and all of the points you make in here.
1:03:55 I think we have very similar worldviews.
1:04:04 I, well, I don’t have a pillory under my bed, but yeah, other than that.
1:04:12 If you think this hasn’t been funny enough, stay tuned because now here is my phone conversation
1:04:16 with Julie Jacobs, his wife.
1:04:29 And I have to say, she may be as funny as he is, if not more.
1:04:32 First of all, thank you very much for doing this.
1:04:33 Of course.
1:04:34 My pleasure.
1:04:40 I don’t always get asked, so I feel honored.
1:04:41 Must be a slow day.
1:04:42 All right.
1:04:54 Obviously, we interviewed your darling husband and I have to tell you that was a very entertaining
1:04:55 interview.
1:05:02 My first question is, which way is it harder to live, biblically or constitutionally?
1:05:03 Oh, definitely biblically.
1:05:10 Maybe it’s just a sheer amount of time, things do get better as time goes by.
1:05:15 The constitution wasn’t great to women, but nothing’s like the Bible.
1:05:17 We were barely anything.
1:05:20 We’re second class all the way.
1:05:27 And when he picked up the Bible book and he decided to do the year of living biblically,
1:05:33 he thought that this was going to work great for me because I felt that I appreciated religion
1:05:34 more than he did.
1:05:42 He wasn’t really understanding why traditions were important to me, but I didn’t think about
1:05:49 the fact that the rules of the Bible are just not so great for women, shall we say.
1:05:55 So the constitution book, I think it was also well prepared, having done living biblically.
1:06:02 I was ready to go, I knew going in that women can’t get the vote until the 20th century.
1:06:06 So I knew that it was going to be a little bit easier.
1:06:13 I bet you must be looking forward to America becoming more of a Christian nation and going
1:06:15 back to traditional Christian values.
1:06:16 Yeah, really.
1:06:23 And you know, that’s the thing about this book that was so fascinating was as he was
1:06:24 writing it.
1:06:29 I remember any book he’s ever done like this, where every day I was reading something in
1:06:37 The Times or on the internet that was applicable to what he was working on and something was
1:06:40 changing, mostly Supreme Court related.
1:06:41 It was just fascinating.
1:06:45 Then I’d be like, “Oh my gosh, you have to work that in, now you have to talk about
1:06:46 that.”
1:06:47 And it continues.
1:06:53 Like now the books come out and it’s just, gosh, it’s just absolutely nuts.
1:07:02 The Constitution clearly did not anticipate billionaires giving people rides on private
1:07:03 jets.
1:07:05 So that’s going to need an amendment sometime.
1:07:09 There was a few things that they just could not imagine.
1:07:13 I actually was listening to your episode with Peter Sagle, who I don’t know if you know
1:07:20 I grew up with, and he was talking about how they just made assumptions that you weren’t
1:07:23 basically going to be a good person.
1:07:29 That was just assumed that you would never do certain things, which is fascinating.
1:07:35 There were plenty of horrible people back then, too, but they had such hope for humanity.
1:07:38 I don’t think they saw a lot of this coming.
1:07:43 Being on Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me was one of the high points of my life, and then interviewing
1:07:46 Peter Sagle was truly one of the high points.
1:07:48 I love that.
1:07:49 He’s a funny guy.
1:07:50 He is a funny guy.
1:07:51 He has been.
1:07:52 Yeah.
1:07:54 It surely sounds like you’re a good sport.
1:07:58 How do you even deal with your spouse coming home and says, “Oh, we’re going to live bivocally.
1:08:00 Oh, we’re going to live constitutionally.”
1:08:02 Are you just that much of a good sport?
1:08:08 The thing I have learned about myself being married to AJ is I am truly an optimist, and
1:08:17 that is what we can call, I think, “Oh, this project is going to be so good for him, us,
1:08:23 our relationship, him getting to know something, and then now I’m at the point that I realize,
1:08:27 okay, settle down, there’s going to be all sorts of wackiness.”
1:08:32 The Drop Dead Healthy book, I think was the best example of that, because I really felt
1:08:36 like he needed to get in better shape, and I thought, “Oh, this is so good.
1:08:43 He’s going to understand why it’s so important,” but then he finds all these interesting, I
1:08:49 would almost say cult-like groups that do whatever it is the subject’s about, and that
1:08:57 one, it was the people who basically follow the habits of cavemen and hunter and gatherers,
1:09:02 and so he was crawling around Central Park, he found the minimalist eaters who have a
1:09:08 blueberry for dinner, so he always finds these people that I don’t even know about that
1:09:14 and then sends him into a very extreme category that I never see coming.
1:09:19 I’ve learned over 20 years that it’s never going to be as rosy as I initially think it’s
1:09:26 going to be, and I have to prepare myself for that, but I have to say, I maybe is just
1:09:33 getting used to it, but this book, I felt like I saw coming what was coming, and I really
1:09:39 did enjoy it because I loved the reenactment, I loved history, and it was fascinating to
1:09:42 get into the mind of the founding fathers.
1:09:47 All of that, I really stuck, I was really into it, and the other big thing that’s happening
1:09:53 as our years are going by is our kids are getting older, and they’re able to participate
1:09:58 more, so it’s not like when we did the year of living biblically, and I was pregnant,
1:10:04 and we had a toddler at the time, it’s much more enjoyable when you have more free time
1:10:08 and your kids are able to participate.
1:10:14 Did he tell you that I suggested that his next book should be A Year of Living Maggily?
1:10:24 Oh god, I don’t think of that one I would enjoy, I don’t know, I don’t think so.
1:10:27 I have one last question for you.
1:10:33 Do your parents ever call up and say, “Oh so, what’s our son-in-law doing now?”
1:10:38 And what do you say when you ask, “Oh yeah, we’re living biblically, we’re living constitutionally,
1:10:41 we’re living maggily, what do you tell your parents?”
1:10:49 So my father’s passed away and he got a huge kick out of A&J, my father was very quirky
1:10:55 and loved all, he just, yeah, he thought it was hilarious, he didn’t have to live it,
1:11:00 so what did he care, and my mother, she thinks our lives are very interesting, and I think
1:11:05 she really appreciates that, and because, again, she doesn’t have to live it, she’s
1:11:08 a side character, I think she enjoys it.
1:11:13 It’s my brothers who I think have had the hardest time because they think A&J rights
1:11:17 me as a saint, that they’re like, “That’s not my sister, what are you talking about,
1:11:23 she’s not always so patient” or whatever, and they have provided a lot of interesting
1:11:26 contrast to his experiments over the years.
1:11:27 Oh my God.
1:11:31 They’re like a little like, “What’s he doing next, they get a kick out of it, but they’re
1:11:35 like, “Hmm, you know, how are we going to be involved kind of thing?”
1:11:40 Julie, you are truly a great sport, and it sounds like your parents were great sports
1:11:45 too, you are a remarkable sport, Julie, what can I say?
1:11:51 It’s only because I do get final say, so when there is a project that I’m like, “That is
1:11:56 just going to do nothing for me,” I either say, “How do you do that for a week, a day,
1:12:03 a month, or until a year of it,” or I try and divert him to another subject, so that
1:12:07 is the secret to my success, is the final cut.
1:12:08 Okay.
1:12:12 Julie, thank you so much for spending this time with me.
1:12:15 Oh my God.
1:12:19 You guys just, you bring such a smile to my face.
1:12:21 Thank you so much.
1:12:23 Thank you guys.
1:12:35 All I can say is, oh my God, OMG, R-O-T-F-L-O-L.
1:12:42 What a funny couple, AJ Jacobs and Julie Jacobs.
1:12:49 The year of living constitutionally, I would pay to read the year of living magally.
1:12:51 I hope you enjoyed this episode.
1:12:56 I hope you learned a few things about the Constitution, and let us all work together
1:12:58 to preserve democracy.
1:13:00 My name is Guy Kawasaki.
1:13:06 This is Remarkable People, and I’m backed up by a remarkable team, that is Jeff C. and
1:13:13 Shannon Hernandez on Sound Design, Tessa Nizmer on Research, Madison Nizmer, Producer,
1:13:17 and co-author with me of the book, Think Remarkable.
1:13:21 And then there’s Louise Magana, Fallon Yates, and Alexis Nishimura.
1:13:27 This is the Remarkable People team, and we are on a mission to make you remarkable and
1:13:29 crack you up.
1:13:36 Until next time, mahalo and aloha.
1:13:37 This is Remarkable People.