What Do We Call The President? w/ A.J. Jacobs

This Day

Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia

History

4.6 • 982 Ratings

🗓️ 9 May 2024

⏱️ 20 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Jody, Niki, and Kellie are joined by author A.J. Jacobs, whose new book "The Year of Living Constitutionally" dives into the weird world of our founding document. They discuss the debate over what to call the new leader of the executive branch, and what that signaled about the direction of the new country.

A.J.'s new book is out now! And be sure to check out The Puzzler too!

The book A.J. mentioned is called "For Fear Of An Elective King"

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from radiotopia.
0:07.0	My name is Jody Avergan.
0:09.0	This day, May 9th, 1789, just weeks after the start of a new government with a freshly
0:16.6	ratified US Constitution under its belt, the first Congress is already embroiled in a debate
0:22.0	about what to call the chief executive.
0:24.2	You know, the guy who heads that executive branch, is he the president?
0:27.7	Your Excellency, your highness?
0:29.7	Surely not your majesty, right?
0:31.5	They were trying to get away from that kind of stuff well let's go to
0:34.4	that debate which was actually about much more than just a title it was about
0:38.1	executive power and how to interpret the document of the Constitution itself.
0:43.0	And our special guest for this episode is friend of the show A.J. Jacobs, writer and
0:47.1	podcaster.
0:48.1	He has written books like Drop Dead Healthy and The Year of Living Biblical
0:51.6	in which he tries to live his life entirely according to the
0:54.7	precepts of the Bible and now he has done the same with that other great prescriptive text.
1:00.4	The Constitution.
1:01.4	The new book is the year of living constitutionally. The Constitutionally and yes AJ Warrior try corner hat I've seen it he wrote with a
1:08.4	quill pen for much of this alongside lots of other fascinating insight into what is actually in that document of ours,
1:15.1	which not that many people have read, but Aia you have actually read it and he's wearing the
1:18.9	Tricorna hat right now.
1:20.5	I just put it on.
	...

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