Living with the Constitution (with A.J. Jacobs)

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4.7 • 4.3K Ratings

🗓️ 6 May 2024

⏱️ 69 minutes

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Summary

What does it mean to live Constitutionally in the year 2024? For a start, it means getting off social media. It also means swapping a quill pen for your keyboard, and candlelight for electricity. And don't forget the tricorn hat and musket--though maybe skip the boiled mutton. Join author A.J. Jacobs as he deep-dives with EconTalk's Russ Roberts into the centuries-old principles of the U.S. Constitution and tries to apply them to the current day. Topics include the original conceptions of our most cherished amendments, the office of the President, and the Supreme Court, and an explanation of how one can be an originalist and still believe in gender equity. Jacobs also shares his family's experience writing its own constitution, and explains why his research made him more optimistic about the future of American democracy.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, Conversations for the Curious, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty.
0:07.8	I'm your host Russ Roberts of Shalem College in Jerusalem and Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Go to Econ Talk. in to today's conversation. You'll also find our archives with every episode we've done
0:24.5	going back to 2006. Our email address is mail at econ talk.org we'd love to hear from you. Today's April 16, 2024, and my guest is author A.J. Jacobs, this is A.J.'s third appearance on Econ Talk. He was last
0:45.6	here in June of 2022 talking about all kinds of puzzles. Our topic for today is his
0:51.6	latest book, The Year of Living Constitutionally,
0:55.0	One Man's humble quest to follow the Constitution's original meaning.
1:00.0	A.J, welcome back to Econ Talk.
1:02.0	Delighted to be here.
1:03.0	Thank you, Russ.
1:04.8	This is a seemingly silly book,
1:07.4	but it's actually delightful and thought-provoking
1:11.0	and wonderful and not silly at all. But the premise is a little bit unusual.
1:16.0	So tell us what you were trying to do in the time that you prepared this book,
1:22.0	and how did you do what you tried to do?
1:25.0	Absolutely. Well, thank you.
1:27.0	Yeah, I feel it's a little bit silly but also I tried to be not silly
1:31.0	so I don't mind that Appalachian. This partly is a sequel to a book I wrote many
1:38.5	years ago that we've talked about on the show called The Year of Living
1:41.6	biblical where I try to understand I grew up in a very secular
1:45.8	home and I tried to understand the Bible by getting in the sandals walking in the
1:52.2	sandals of our forefathers and actually following the rules from the 10 Commandments to growing my beard because Leviticus says I should grow a beer and I found that an amazing experience and I realized I had a bit of a similar feeling about the Constitution. I was shockingly
2:16.9	ignorant of it. I had never read the Constitution from start to finish. Have you
	...

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