Hello and welcome to the psychology podcast with Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman where we give you insights into the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.

Each episode will feature a new guest who will stimulate your mind and give you a greater understanding of yourself, others, and the world we live in.

Hopefully we'll also provide a glimpse into human possibility.

Thanks for listening and enjoy the podcast. Today I'm really excited to have A.J. Jacobs on the show. A.J. is a journalist, lecturer, human guinea pig, and author of four New York Times

Best Hours that combine memoir, science, humor, and a dash of self-help.

He's also editor at large at Esquire magazine, a commentator on NPR, and a columnist for Mental

Phloss magazine. He is currently helping to build a family tree of the entire world and holding

the biggest family reunion ever. Have you held that biggest family reunion ever.

Have you held that biggest family union ever yet?

Yes, that was in June and you were invited.

You were absolutely and because you are my cousin.

Did I miss the Facebook event invite maybe it was out there it was out there but it was fine. We'll have you next time we had 4,000 of your other cousins there so it was it was a lovely event.

But you could literally you know be my brother here I mean we don't look

fundamentally diss somewhere. Oh no no I mean the thesis of my new project is that we're all related, but I have a feeling I'm Jewish, you're Jewish, so we're probably our brothers or like, you know, fourth cousins. I was referring to the model looks aspect as well as a

similarity but I'll go with the Jewish thing

Either what they're kind of related.

I like that.

So we have so much we could talk about.

A common theme uniting a lot of things you do is that you kind of treat your life as an experiment

or at least you did for a certain chunk of your life.

Do you still view that as an ongoing thing?

I do.

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