Russ Roberts: It’s a seemingly silly book, but it’s actually delightful and thought-provoking and wonderful, and not silly at all. But the principle is a bit unusual. So tell us what you were trying to do when you were putting this book together, and how did you accomplish what you tried to do?
AJ Jacobs: Absolutely. Thanks very much. Yeah, I think it’s a bit silly, but I’ve also tried not to be silly, so I don’t mind the appellation.
It’s partly a sequel to a book I wrote many years ago that we talked about on the show called The year of biblical life, where I’m trying to understand… I grew up in a very secular household and I tried to understand the Bible by putting on the sandals, walking in the sandals of our ancestors and following the rules of the Ten Commandments, to develop my knowledge. beard because Leviticus says I should grow a beard. And I found it an incredible experience.
And I realized I had a somewhat similar feeling about the Constitution. I was terribly ignorant of it. I had never read the Constitution from start to finish. Have you read it? I hadn’t read it from the beginning…
Russ Roberts: Such an embarrassing question. Not only have I not read it, I haven’t even thought about reading it.
AJ Jacobs: Okay, I withdraw the question. I withdraw the question. But every day I read another news story about how this 230-year-old document has had a huge impact on my life and millions of other lives. So I thought: Well, one way to understand this would be to do what I love to do, to immerse myself and walk, talk, carry the musket, write with the quill pen , to push aside a soldier, to eat porridge. mutton. And it was–it was incredible; I had ideas. And I hoped that it would be entertaining, but that it would also teach me how to look at the Constitution, how to interpret it, and hopefully I would be more optimistic at the end about our democracy, because it’s been difficult. years, just with the fire hose of negative news from all sides. So, and that’s what happened. I feel more optimistic and more empowered. But it was an incredible experience.
Russ Roberts: We’re going to talk about some of the things you mentioned, but first I just want to check: You’re still married, right?
AJ Jacobs: I am. Since this morning.
Russ Roberts: All right.
AJ Jacobs: But yes, I gave him the message with the biblical book. She is really very patient. Patience of Job. She wouldn’t kiss me – I had a huge beard and she wouldn’t kiss me for months. And this one also presented some challenges, whether it was having a soldier stationed in our apartment in New York, having muskets in our apartment, the smell of candles, etc.
Russ Roberts: Let’s start with: One of my favorite things is a feather. And I want to know – you could also describe the candles – what role has this feather played in your life over the past year?
AJ Jacobs: Well, I think part of my goal was to express my constitutional rights using the mindset And technology from the moment it was ratified. So, I said to myself, “I’m going to give up social media as much as I can, and I’m going to write with an old-fashioned quill and ink on parchment if I can, or just cotton rag paper.” » So, I did it. I wrote brochures. I handed them out in Times Square. It was my social networks.
But what was remarkable was how writing with a quill—the experience itself—felt profound to me because it made me think differently. It slowed down my thoughts. I couldn’t just type an acronym and hit send. I had to take out the pen, and it was like a waiting period for my thoughts. And there was no noise or ping to distract me. I think there’s – I don’t think we should all go back to pens, but writing by hand or just completely cutting yourself off from the Internet while writing will impact our thoughts, make them more nuanced, will make it deeper. . Yeah, so I’m a big fan.
And I didn’t write the entire book with a quill pen, but I wrote large parts of it and found it wonderful.
Russ Roberts: And you sometimes signed a credit card receipt with it, as you recount – much to the horror of your family.
AJ Jacobs: Yes. It was quite embarrassing for them. I took it on the road because they had… actually, the 18th century laptop was a desk, a sort of slanted desk that you could carry anywhere. That’s what Hamilton had. So I would take it as my take-home laptop, and I would take out my pen and sign checks. And I got people to sign a petition. This is one of my rights that I have expressed, and that is the right to petition Congress for redress of grievances.
Russ Roberts: It’s a quill, it’s a feather, for those of you who haven’t seen it. Did you have to sharpen it from time to time?
AJ Jacobs: I did it. Absolutely. I mean, I bought pre-sharpened nibs, but there are a lot…
Russ Roberts: Ugh.
AJ Jacobs: Exactly. THANKS.
Russ Roberts: Shame on you, AJ
AJ Jacobs: But I learned, through Ye Olde YouTube, how to sharpen my own nib, and that’s actually one of the… it’s not a major theme, but a minor theme is DIY (do the yourself) from the 18th century. . There are many things that we don’t do it I want to come back to 18: it was sexist, racist, stinking, dangerous, anti-Semitic. But there are certain virtues that I think we should revive. And one of them was this DIY thing: just being able to make your own ink and make your own quill. It just connected you to the physical world in a lovely way.
Russ Roberts: I’m pretty sure the feather is a link between The year of biblical life And The year of constitutional lifebecause I think that the scroll of a Torah must be written by pen and hand…
Russ Roberts: and it is a certain style of calligraphy. And it’s actually very beautiful. But the idea of taking a quill pen and using it to create this incredible human the linguistic experience – the written language of Hebrew dating back thousands of years ago – is quite astonishing. And of course, the quill was still popular in the late 18th century.
AJ Jacobs: RIGHT. And in fact, in this context, I went to visit the only place that still makes parchment, real parchment, which is made with animal skin, and it is on this basis that the Constitution was developed. So their activity now consists partly of writing the Torah, of writing scrolls.
Russ Roberts: Yes, it is a bizarre and fascinating thing to me that one is not allowed to use technology more advanced than quill and parchment to write the Torah. But as you point out, for beautiful documents, like the Constitution, this was the custom 230 years ago.
And of course, you visited the Constitution at the National Archives, the piece of parchment itself. And it’s under protective lighting, right?
Russ Roberts: But it’s okay, isn’t it, on this parchment with the ink?
AJ Jacobs: Yeah, no, he survived. It’s amazing. Going to the Archives was one of my favorite adventures because, as you say, it’s like a cathedral. So it’s very dark and it’s in this titanium case with argon gas.
And on the bright side, as you know, I like to see the pros and cons of everything. So the good thing is we still have this amazing document that built America, and it inspires people when they go see it, and they think, “Oh, I should get more involved in politics.” . I should learn civics. So, he’s the pro.
The downside – and this is what several of my advisors told me – was that it sort of turned it into this sacred, static piece of parchment that is frozen in time, unlike the way the founding fathers considered the Constitution as something… -a process. And it was about people; it wasn’t just about the parchment.
Russ Roberts: There’s an argument that it should be more like the Stanley Cup, which…
AJ Jacobs: Pass around.
Russ Roberts: Hockey players treat it like it’s a beer tumbler, a mug of beer. You take it, you show it to your friends, it goes on tour.
You’re right: we’re sort of hiding the Constitution as this precious artifact when maybe it would be better to meddle with it: let it come down from Mount Sinai and mingle with the people a little more.
AJ Jacobs: RIGHT. Well, first of all: I’m not sure we want to have him when people are too drunk in Madeira to treat him properly. But I love the idea.
And I was also fascinated by James Madison’s view because the way we have it now is: you have the Constitution, and then people add the amendments at the end. It’s like ps, pps, ppps, but the way he what I wanted is that every time you modify the Constitution, you rewrite he. So it looked more like a Google document than what we have now. And that, again, has pros and cons. First, it would perhaps show that it is a more fluid document; but some argue that including the horrible parts of the Constitution—the parts about slaves—reminds us of how far we have come. So, like everything, it has its pros and cons.
Russ Roberts: Yeah, I want to talk about that. But two quick things. At the end of your chapters, you have what you call “Huzzahs,” which is an 18th century word for “Whoopee,” or you-go-girl, and “Grievances,” which is a very constitutional word.
Russ Roberts: I like this.
AJ Jacobs: And, by the way, I learned that “huzzah” is probably pronounced “huzzay”, but I’ll stick with huzzah.
But yes, as you say, there were pros and cons to living. So, on the one hand, you had the pen and the joy of thoughtful reflection away from the noise. On the other hand, I dressed the part. I mean, I put on my tricorn hat and stockings; and I have never been more grateful for elastic. You take these things for granted. We’ve talked about taking things for granted before, but the fact that these stockings I had were the authentic style, didn’t have elastic, they just saggy down to the ankles. We had to put on little belts every morning. The time I spent putting on sock belts was extraordinary.
So you realize that you are grateful for some of our advances. (More to come, 1:32 p.m.)
