It's the Brian Laird show on W.N. Y.C. good

It's the Brian Laird Show on WNYC. Good morning everyone and happy Independence Day.

For this holiday we've put together some recent segments from the show covering some of our history and culture and our middle names and what a holiday treat

will start here with AJ Jacobs and his latest adventure as a true

originalist enjoy so let's say you're Samuel Alito or Clarence Thomas or Amy Coney Barrett your job is

Supreme Court originalist as you try to apply the values of 1789 when the United States Constitution was written and

ratified to every controversy that comes your way in 2024, plus the strictest interpretation of the 27 amendments that followed.

You're not always a strict constructionist, like when Colorado finds that Donald Trump is

disqualified from the election there because he violated the insurrection clause of the Constitution,

then maybe you say, oh, Colorado, don't take it so literally, but usually you're a strict

constructionist, that's your job.

Well, our friend A.J. Jacobs went those justices, one better.

He decided to live strictly according to the US Constitution

in his personal life for one full year.

The result is AJ's latest book, The Year of Living Constitutionally,

one man's humble quest to follow the Constitution's original meaning.

Now some of you know that AJ has done this kind of thing before.

One of his previous books was the Year of Living Biblically.

Another was, it's all relative in which he set out to build the ultimate family tree

showing how every person on earth is related to one another. I think he established

that he and I are 49th cousins or something.

But now it's the year of living constitutionally.

...