You guys I think I've talked a few times about the AOC family. I like that idea that family doesn't have to be strictly your mom and dad it can be wider.

Welcome to the art of charm. I'm Jordan Harbinger. I'm here with producer Jason to fill up on this episode will be talking with my friend AJ Jacobs. This guy is super interesting Jason you read more than just this book from AJ.

Oh yeah I think I've read all of his books he's one of my favorite writers is books are just so light and fun and they do make you think yeah they make you think he does these extreme personal experiments one was a year of living biblically so he filed the Bible literally will you ask him about that this one he research is DNA genetics family and he sort of takes it to his usual AJ Jacobs extremes the book is called it's all relative adventures up and down the world's family tree and it's a heartfelt quest that's quite funny and he's a funny writer the way to tell stories is funny

so we're going to explore a little bit of the family of humankind here and today will discover how we're all related just really related and why this matters in terms of everything from the structure of society to how we treat one another on a daily basis and will also explore some concrete strategies on how to cultivate deeper big picture thinking better brainstorming and construct some of AJ's famous extreme personal experiments if we decide to do that as well and this is a fun conversation with a brilliant guy so enjoy.

When people look at reality TV shows and things like that and I look at your record here though year of living biblically I kind of on its face at first glance somebody might say look at this attention seeking punk here to live like the Bible for your tell us about what that was I know we talked about it years ago but I'm not convinced everybody who's listening to this just listen to our episode from five years ago right beforehand.

It started this was a few years ago and I grew up with no religion at all as I say in the book I'm Jewish but I'm Jewish in the same way the olive garden is Italian you too right I mean even less so I didn't even know about it until I was 13 really here's I found out that I was a Jewish ancestry I'd come home one day from school and I said something like did you hear about this guy named Hitler and my mom's like yeah I think I read something about that and I said something like yeah it's so terrible all the things and it wouldn't happen to us.

Because we're not Jewish and she said that's funny because you know you look a little bit Jewish and I said and she showed me pictures of all these people who we were related to and I said yeah but these people aren't you she said yeah they are I said well wait a second if grandma's Jewish in her grandma and her mom was Jewish and then yet side of the Jewish and then that would I don't understand she said yeah you're like one 16th you know on your mom's side and my mom's sides since it's maternal technically you know I fall into it so when acidic people find out about that they just go crazy.

But for me I had Christmas growing up because my parents thought it was easier my mom was non-practicing and my grandma grew up in a Polish neighborhood in Detroit where you didn't say happy Hanukkah to your neighbors because they would egg your house or something like that and everybody was Catholic so they just want to screw it and they just kind of didn't do anything so I didn't know about it and then in college I kind of went to a couple of those like Jewish dinners and stuff and I was like okay I'm done with this I'm good on I'm all set down.

Thanks. We're done exploring this. So you didn't do a year of looking like Moses because that's the other way to go if you don't know anything about it.

Right. Yeah I know nothing about it so I thought one way to learn about the Bible might be to actually live it and dive in and sort of follow in the footsteps of our forefathers.

I got a board of spiritual advisors I had rabbis and ministers and scholars and then I wrote down every single rule in the Bible and there are hundreds and I wanted to follow the famous ones like the Ten Commandments and love your neighbor but also the weird forgotten rules like don't shave the corners of your beard.

I didn't know where the corners were so I just let the whole thing grow and I had this to be area on my chin and I spent a lot of time at airport security that's what I looked like.

The Bible says to stone adulterers so I went ahead and did that I used pebbles because I didn't want to spend my life in jail that was the premise and it was partly to explore what am I missing by not having any of these rituals.

It was partly sort of a way to take on fundamentalism because there are all these millions of people who say oh we live the Bible literally and I was like really he lived the Bible literally but what about avoiding clothes made of mixed fibers.

Do you do that? I mean do you have a biblical slave these are all things that they did in the Bible.

So I wanted to show that fundamentalists are actually very selective their cherry picking.

That's interesting because most people who just want to point out that fundamentalists are being selective just say hey you're being pretty selective look at all these things you didn't follow and they write an article about it from medium and that's the end they don't spend a year growing out the edges of their beard.

I remember one story you were on a park bench and someone said they were an adulterer just to see what you would do and you threw a pebble at him and then like gunned it away from him because he got angry.

That's exactly right you remember correctly I don't often mention this but he was like 82 years old so I probably didn't need to gun it quite as fast.

I thought this was a very simple way to show that fundamentalism is flawed I mean you can write an article but this is a visual like you can see the craziness you can see how crazy I look.

What did your wife and family think about this because I assume there were lots of things that were massively massively inconvenient for them.

Well I think it depends there were pros and cons my wife actually liked some parts of it because I was trying to be better you know the Bible says don't lie don't covet don't gossip and I live in New York City and I'm a journalist so that was like most of my day.

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