Meet A.J. Jacobs. Writer, Ted Talker, Human Guinea Pig

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A.J. Jacobs is a self-described human guinea pig. The New York Times-bestselling author’s curiosity has led him to write about some his wacky adventures, like reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica for his memoir The Know-It-All: One Man’s Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World and to thank everyone involved in making his cup of coffee for his newest book Thanks a Thousand. Despite the creativity in his ideas, he says about 98% of them are terrible — so how does he find a good one? This week, A.J. and I talk about the work that goes into a creative idea, how to write when you hate writing, and the importance of gratitude throughout your journey.

Here’s a transcript of our conversation.

Jon: A.J. Jacobs, welcome to Write about Now.

A.J.: It is a delight to be here. Thanks, Jonathan.

Jon: I’m a big fan of your writing. You are so good at what you do. I’ve followed your career really for a long time. I remember reading your byline when you were at Entertainment Weekly, back in the heyday  of magazines in the ’90s, and at Esquire Magazine.

A.J.: Yeah, I’m old. That is true, that is true.

Jon: [laughs] I guess if you’re old, that makes me really old.

A.J.: [laughs] By the way, just to return your thoughts, I’m a big fan of this podcast. It has inspired me to buy books. That is the ultimate compliment.

Jon: That’s terrific. Well, if any publishers are listening to this, this is why you should advertise on my show.

Let’s talk a little bit about your backstories. I actually don’t really know that much about how you got into writing and the arc of your career. I’d love to talk about that before we get into your books. My understanding is that, like me, you grew up in New York City.

A.J.: Right.

Jon: You stayed though, right? Where did you grow up? The Upper West Side?

A.J.: I was actually on the Upper East Side. Then I went to Brown and I majored in philosophy. That was not the best funnel.

Jon: What did Steve Martin say? He majored in philosophy and he learned just enough to screw him up for the rest of his life?

A.J.: [laughs] Exactly. I think that’s a pretty accurate assessment, although he didn’t turn out so bad.

Jon: No, he didn’t.

A.J.: But yeah, I didn’t get a job as a professional philosopher, as you might imagine. The only thing that I could sort of do was to put a sentence together, or a couple. So I began a career as a freelance writer. I know that you’ve been through that, and it is not a pleasant life.

Jon: No, it is not pleasant. It’s extremely stressful. The thing is, back when we were doing that, you actually could make a living doing that. Now I don’t even know if it’s possible. We’ve talked about this on the show; you just have to do it in a different way. It’s not like the old days where if you got an assignment from Esquire or something, you might get $2 a word. Doesn’t work like that anymore. Now it’s 5 cents a word, and you might be writing for the Dotcom. It’s just a different animal.

A.J.: I feel that I was ahead of the curve, because when I first started as a freelancer, I was getting about 5 cents a word. I always say it’s freelance with an emphasis on the “free.” [laughs] Yeah, that was not good.

So then I got a job at a small newspaper in California, a tiny newspaper. I was on the general assignment beat. I covered a lot of sewage disputes. That was big. PTA meetings. Just anything. Which I will say, the advantage of that is that it did make me a better reporter, and a faster writer. I’ve slowed down, but I used to have to write two or three articles a day, which is baffling to me right now because I barely can write one a month.

Jon: So true.

A.J.: But that was my trial by fire, and then I went on to work at Entertainment Weekly and Esquire.

Jon: Were you writing your whole life? When you were in high school, were you the guy that was writing stories for the local newspaper or whatever?

A.J.: I did write for my high school newspaper. I just never imagined I could make a living at it, so I’m continually pleasantly surprised. But yeah, I have some of my early work. I covered WrestleMania 2. I think that was probably my greatest accomplishment as a high school journalist.

Jon: Pinnacle. [laughs] At Entertainment Weekly, did you have a certain beat when you were at EW? Were you covering movies, were you covering general shows? What were you covering?

A.J.: I started as a TV writer and then I became an editor. I happened to coincide with the era of the boy bands, so I ended up editing a lot of articles about boy bands, which is not a topic I was passionate about. I know other people are, and more power to ’em, but it was just dreadful.

Jon: While you were doing that, I was working at Twist Magazine, which was a teen magazine, and we were covering a lot of boy bands. So I feel you on that one.

A.J.: Oh, we can have a whole other podcast about that.

Jon: Yeah, I think we should talk about that, because I learned more about boy bands than any person my age should ever have to know.

A.J.: Yes, your book-reading public and the boy band fans – it’s like a circle, Venn diagram.

Jon: People don’t realize that’s a real niche that I’ve cornered here. So you wrote about boy bands. That was a really great time for Entertainment Weekly, though. That was a real zeitgeist type magazine and a lot of people were reading it. It must’ve made your name go a little bit more high profile.

A.J.: Right. One of the articles that changed my career that I wrote for Entertainment Weekly was one of these first guinea pig experiments where I spent a day seeing what it was like to be a movie star. That came about because just coincidentally, I happened to look a lot like an actor. His name is Noah Taylor. He’s not particularly famous, but that year, many years ago – like 20 years ago, I don’t know – he was in a movie that was nominated for an Academy Award. It was called Shine. It was about a pianist.

Jon: Yeah, I remember that. Jeffrey…

A.J.: Yeah, Jeffrey Rush, exactly. My editors and I thought – it turned out he was not going to the Oscars, so we thought, what if I went as Noah Taylor, just to see what it’s like to be an actor at the Oscars? So I did. I actually never said, “Hey, I’m Noah Taylor.” I just went there. We had a ticket. People assumed that I was him because I was in a tux and I had my thick black glasses like him. It was fantastic, I’ve got to tell you.

Jon: That’s amazing.

A.J.: It was one of the greatest nights of my life because it was nonstop flattery. Everyone was telling me how brilliant I was. I knew deep down this was not directed at me, but when you’re getting that much positive feedback, like thousands of people telling you how great you are, it’s very hard to separate the reality. So I was delighted.

Jon: And at that moment you knew it wouldn’t be so bad to be famous.

A.J.: [laughs] That’s when I decided.

Jon: That’s when you decided “I’m going to become famous.”

A.J.: Of course, there are huge downsides to fame, and I have not experienced those because I’m not truly famous. But for one night, I definitely recommend it.

Jon: This idea of going undercover and testing stuff out – was that a thing that was happening? I remember that we had done a few stories like that. I was at Stuff Magazine around this time, and I remember we sent a guy to be a rodeo clown. I think I went and volunteered to be part of a roller derby team in Austin, Texas of all women. I dressed up as a woman. I don’t even know if that story would fly now. [laughs]

A.J.: Yeah, that’s interesting. How was that, by the way? Were you injured?

Jon: Oh, I still have a bad hip from that. They were so tough.

A.J.: Is that right?

Jon: Yeah, talk about fun. That was so fun. But they were really tough and they threw me around like a ragdoll. It was embarrassing. That’s a real sport. Anyway, the point is that I remember those kinds of stories being in fashion at one time. Is that your memory of it, too? How did you guys come up with this idea of putting you in that situation?

A.J.: I’d always loved the genre. First of all, I’m in awe of you because you did it in a more physical way. You were like George – I forget his name now. That’s embarrassing.

Jon: I am like George Costanza. [laughs]

A.J.: No. [laughs]

Jon: George Clooney?

A.J.: George Plimpton, who did a lot of this in the sports world. He joined a professional football team for a day and a professional baseball team. He got punched in the face by a heavyweight fighter. It sounds like you were more in the Plimpton genre. I preferred more psychological or social pain. That was my preference.

So I went in that direction and I did a little for Entertainment Weekly, I did a couple of articles for Esquire that got passed around a bit. I did one called “My Outsourced Life” where I hired a team of people in Bangalore, India and had them do everything for me. They answered my phones and my emails. They argued with my wife for me and they read bedtime stories to my son.

Jon: That’s incredible.

A.J.: That was a wonderful – that was a lovely experience.

Jon: Interestingly enough, that’s actually almost come to reality now because you can outsource so much of your life now to these virtual assistants, in the era of virtual assistants.

A.J.: Yeah. When I did it, it was super early on, but the same company I hired were only working for banks and law firms – they started a personal division after my article, and they continue to this day. It’s called GetFriday or Brickwork. They’ve got different names. It was remarkable to see this turn into – and that does seem to happen. Something that starts out as a lark or a joke turns into reality. It’s very hard in America today to come up with something so outrageous that it beats reality. Reality catches up.

Jon: Reality is always, they say, more interesting. So this became your calling card for a little while, right? Or forever, it became your calling card – still is your calling card – as the guy that will subject himself and make himself a human guinea pig and do different things. And like you said, not always getting physically abused, but just subjecting yourself to different scenarios. Is that how your first book came about?

A.J.: Yeah. I had written a couple of other books that were novelty books that you’d see at the counter or at an airport. One was America Offline, it was called. It was about this crazy world outside your computer where you could go to parties that were like chatrooms. Actually, that sold about four or five copies, but I think partly it was a little ahead of when it should’ve come out. It should’ve come out during quarantine because basically that’s what it was. [laughs]

Jon: Maybe they should bring it back.

A.J.: Yeah, maybe. So I did that, and I was friends with this editor and he wanted me to do something. I plundered my own life, because when I was a kid, my dad – he loves to learn and loves to read, and he decided to learn everything in the world by reading the Encyclopedia Britannica. But as I mention in the book, he did not quite finish. He made it up to the middle of the letter “B,” if that.

So I thought, this is a fun premise; what if I tried to remove that black mark from my family history and finish reading the Encyclopedia and see what I learn? What is the meaning of knowledge and too much knowledge and the difference between knowledge and wisdom and information? We live in the information age. It was all these themes. And I did it.

Jon: That’s a lot of work. How long did it take you to read the entire…?

A.J.: It took me about a year and a half, and I did read it. There was some skimming. Skimming has kind of a negative connotation. There was some efficient reading, I’ll say that. And some of it was painful, including for my family, because my wife started to penalize me one dollar for every irrelevant piece of information that I forced into conversation.

Jon: “Did you know…?”

A.J.: Yeah. I was definitely the ultimate – I mean, you’re old enough to know Cliff Clavin. I was Cliff Clavin from Cheers. But parts of it were wonderful, and there are takeaways from that experience that still affect me today.

Jon: Tell me some of them, because I’m thinking about reading some of the encyclopedia.

A.J.: [laughs] I think there are more efficient –

Jon: What did you take away that you remember, that you’ve taken with you to this day?

A.J.: One big lesson for me was just the good old days were not good. I read about the entire sweep of human history, and we have this misguided nostalgia for the good old days, but they were dangerous and very violent, sexist, homophobic, racist, smelly. I mean, you couldn’t believe how – I’m right now looking out on the streets of New York City, and I remember reading about what it was like in the 1800s, when they had horses.

Jon: All the horse manure, yeah.

A.J.: Yeah, the manure was – I don’t want to drag your podcast down so early, but yeah, the manure on the sides of the street was chest-high. So the good old days were terrible. We have a lot of work to do today, of course, but it does give me optimism that we have improved at least some parts of life and that it’s not all this nihilistic, “everything’s headed to hell.”

Jon: That’s so interesting. There was that book Perfume that came out about this guy who had a superpower nose, but it all takes place in the 1800s, like you’re saying. To go out in France and 1850 – he talks about all the disgusting smells that he has to encounter. You just don’t think about that. People’s body odor, people didn’t really bathe then. I think if we were to time travel into that period of time, that would be overwhelming for us.

A.J.: It would be shocking. Absolutely. And people wearing vinaigrettes around their neck, these herbs around their neck, because the body odor was so strong. Yeah, it’s really interesting because it’s hard to record smells. There’s no black-and-white footage of smells.

Jon: This style of writing, though – what do you think it is about it that appeals to you? You mentioned Plimpton. Did you read that kind of journalism when you were younger and always liked that new journalism that was coming out, like the different people who used to do that kind of journalism? What do you think it is about subjecting yourself to these situations or giving yourself these challenges that is so appealing to you?

A.J.: That’s a good question. I would say I did love to read the genre growing up. Like every genre, it’s got its good and bad. It’s got its upsides and downsides. The upsides are, one, for me, it’s fun. I get to learn and live – it’s like acting. Someone called it “method writing.” I get to live like a biblical person in modern Manhattan, which is partly humiliating and embarrassing and painful, but also fascinating. So there’s that. I think it’s an interesting way to explore a topic because you can bring the reader along on the journey, and you can be ignorant about the topic and be very open about that. Your goal is to learn, and you want to bring the reader along.

It does have downsides. First of all, imagine if political writers, all they did was pretend to be a congressman. That would not be good. We need some real writing, some journalism.

Jon: For a while, the New York Times wouldn’t even allow you to use “I,” right? They wouldn’t allow you to do the first person. Those days are over, but there was a time when reporters didn’t even use their – I was shocked to hear this. In the early 20th century, late 19th century, reporters weren’t even allowed to use their names. They didn’t even use bylines.

A.J.: Yeah, you look at old newspapers – like The Economist, I think they only recently – but yeah. The New York Times definitely has shifted. I’ve written several pieces for them in this genre. They had me do one where I took 50 MOOCs, massive online open courses. I did one where I 3D printed a dinner, meaning I 3D printed my food, but also the forks and the knives and the spoons and my outfit. So they’ve certainly done a 180.

Jon: These ideas that you come up with are so creative. Do you have a little notebook of “Here are things that I am going to try to do”? Because it seems like you have so many of these ideas; you must look at the world in a very specific way, where you’re like “That’s an interesting thing. What about if I did that? What about if I tried doing something that immersed myself in whatever that is that I’m investigating?” Is that the way your brain works?

A.J.: I think so. I do think that I come up with a lot of ideas. 98% of them are terrible, which I think is okay. I think that is part of creativity. It’s a numbers game. You’ve really got to generate ideas. So I’ve come up with lots of terrible ideas that I don’t pursue. I’ve had a lot of people give me suggestions.

One popular suggestion is that I try to be the world’s greatest lover and try all the positions in the Kama Sutra – which I did bring up to my wife, and she said, “That is not…”

Jon: That’s a better book to write when you’re not married.

A.J.: Totally.

Jon: That’s the single guy’s book to write.

A.J.: If there’s any young journalists out there who want to pursue that, more power to them. But that is not going to happen for me at my age.

Jon: That’s hilarious. Go ahead.

A.J.: Oh yeah, how do I know? Well, first of all, I don’t. This is interesting; I’m working on a book now that I am loving – I shouldn’t say loving writing. I hate writing.

Jon: Okay, we have to talk about this, but I want to hear more.

A.J.: I love the research and I love the topic, and I’m pretty much finished, so I love being almost finished.

Jon: That’s the best part of writing. Being done.

A.J.: Yeah. This one is about puzzles, which I am truly passionate about. I love puzzles of all kinds. It’s called The Puzzler: One Man’s Quest to Solve the Most Baffling Problems from Crosswords to Jigsaws to the Meaning of Life.

Jon: Wow.

A.J.: It’s all about how puzzles can change our point of view on the world. But I started writing – I spent three months starting another book that I still think is an interesting idea, but it turned out to be a disaster, and I abandoned it midway. My publisher was nice enough to let me write this one instead. That one, the idea was called Fact Checking My Life. It was all about the epistemic crisis we’re in now. How do we know what’s true? How do I know that the Earth is round? How do I know that my wife loves me? How do I know to believe the CDC? I would try to fact check every little aspect of my life. It was fascinating, but it was also such a monster.

Jon: It makes me tired – you just telling me that makes me physically get tired. It just seems so hard.

A.J.: [laughs] That’s the reaction you want from readers.

Jon: Right, “This makes me sleepy.” Most people read your books when they’re going to bed anyway. I think you were the one who said “I can’t read when I’m lying down,” and I’m the same way. Didn’t I hear you say that in some interview? That you could never read lying down?

A.J.: Certainly.

Jon: I tell people, if you want to read, don’t do it at night lying down because you will be asleep in five minutes and it’s not even worth it.

A.J.: Right. Which is a good thing.

Jon: Yeah, if you want to go to sleep, that’s fine. But if you actually want to learn about writing by reading – which I encourage highly – you might want to do it sitting up. Even in the middle of the day. If you want to be a writer, I think it’s perfectly okay – and this took me a long time to figure out – to take an hour out of the middle of your day and read a book.

A.J.: I love that. So true.

Jon: But for us, that would be like never in a million years. Especially when you had an office job. I remember this guy used to go into the breakroom at one of the magazine jobs I was at, and he would just read his book. I’d be like, “That guy’s crazy. He’s weird.” [laughs] That guy went on to be a bestselling novelist. No, I wish I could say that. But you know what I mean. I think sometimes we have to give ourselves permission to read in the middle of the day if you want to be a writer.

A.J.: Absolutely. A large part of my research is reading. I like to interview people and have experiences, so it’s not all reading, but yeah, I agree. And the same thing with brainstorming. I try to take 15 minutes a day to just come up with ideas. As I said, most of them are terrible, but there are a few that are workable.

I always think of an interview I heard with Barack Obama where he said, “It’s important to take time out of the day just to think.” That blew me away because I imagine as a president, you could fill 100 days in 1 day with all you have to do. So the discipline it requires to say, “I’m not going to take any meetings for the next hour; I just have to think” – but he’s right.

Jon: That’s interesting. I wonder how he thought. Like, did he meditate? I’ve heard that Bill Gates takes walks. That’s where he does most of his thinking. A lot of great minds are walkers. And I’ve become a walker with COVID and the quarantine. I became a big walker because there was nothing else to do. There was no other way to escape the house. Do you do that? How do you think?

A.J.: I do walk a lot. I wrote a book on trying to be the healthiest person alive, and one of the big takeaways that I still use is my treadmill desk. I do walk and write emails on my desk. I don’t do a lot of thinking. I’ll just clear everything off and make an appointment, “I’m going to do this for 15 minutes.” Usually I’ll take a topic or two and spin out on them. Just to give you an example, it could be something like a snowman, and then I’ll think, what can you do with snow? You could do a snowwoman. You could do a snow non-binary person. You could do a snowman with instead of a pipe, he’s vaping.

As I say, none of these are ever usable, but I do love them because (A) sometimes, just occasionally, you do get an idea that sparks something bigger, and (B) I do feel it’s like a mental gym. I do feel that it keeps my mind flexible. I don’t have a lot of randomized controlled trials to back me up, but I do really believe that our brains get into ruts and that you have to really go out of your way to keep it flexible and move in between different genres, or else you won’t be creative.

Jon: You get stuck, yeah. I think I heard you say, or maybe I read you saying, that your process of writing is that you just put it out there, do that vomit draft or whatever we call it. You just write, knowing that it might not be your best stuff the first half-hour, but you have to get past that. I think a lot of us get stuck in “I suck” within the first five minutes. You’re like, “This is the worst thing I’ve ever written. Why don’t I give this up? This is a terrible idea.” I’m very guilty as charged. I do this to myself all the time. I’m constantly self-editing myself.

So tell me a little bit about that process. You do these mental gymnastics before you even begin writing?

A.J.: Yeah. Sometimes it’s just the physical act of moving your fingers over the keyboard that’s important to build up momentum. I might start writing about just anything, like the pigeons on my windowsill or what I ate for breakfast. And like you said, I think it’s a very important mindset to say, “This is not going to be usable. I have to know that the first 10 minutes of writing is not going to be good,” but to be okay with that and to just keep writing and have confidence that eventually you will get in the groove. That is definitely part of my writing process. I know when I start out I’m rusty, every day.

Jon: I’m interested to know how you determine when to give up on a project. Like you, I have a lot of ideas for things all the time, like, “I’m going to write this novel. No, I’m going to write a nonfiction book. No, I’m going to do a podcast about this.” I think we probably have a similar mind in that way. You actually, though, embark on a lot of the things that I probably just think about. I don’t actually embark on it. So tell me when you know to give it up. You mentioned this thing with the fact checking. How much is too much time to give an idea where you’re like, “You know what? This is just not going to work”?

A.J.: I definitely became too attached to that idea and should’ve given it up earlier. By the way, that is one of my big takeaways from the puzzle book: don’t fall in love with your hypothesis. You have to have a very flexible mind to do puzzles.

But I would say I try to keep a couple of criteria in mind. One is, will I enjoy writing this book? Will people enjoy reading it? And will it make the world, in a tiny, tiny way, a bit of a better place? Those are criteria I think about.

The other thing is structure. If I can come up with a structure, then I know that the book has a really good chance of working. For instance, I wanted to write a book about health for many years, but I didn’t know how to structure it. Then I had this idea, what if I just did it body part by body part? I’ll have a chapter on my heart, a chapter on my stomach, a chapter on my hands and hand health. [laughs]

Jon: There’s a whole thing on hand health. I love that.

A.J.: Surprisingly, I realized recently that I did the whole thing without doing an appendix on the appendix. That was a big mistake.

Jon: Oh, you had that. Damn it, you just realized that.

A.J.: It was right there.

Jon: Yeah, it was right there for you.

A.J.: So that was one way. And the puzzle book, I structured it by different puzzle genres. I met with the best crossword puzzle solvers, the best Rubik’s cube solvers. So every chapter is a different kind. And for instance, with the book about fact checking my life, I couldn’t settle on a structure that worked. I had a lot of ideas, like every chapter would be a different fundamental belief I had, like the Earth is round. But it was just too overwhelming. There were too many fundamental beliefs for me to make it work. So to me, structure is everything.

Jon: Have you ever been in a situation where you’re six months into writing a book and you’re like, “I am so tired of this idea”? I can imagine maybe while you were reading the Encyclopedia Britannica or being biblical, there must’ve been a moment where you’re like “I don’t want to do this anymore.”

A.J.: I’d say those moments occur, yeah. At least once a week if not a day.

Jon: So what keeps you going?

A.J.: What keeps me going are a couple things. One, just fear of humiliation because I publicly announced that this is going to be what I do. But secondly, I have chosen topics that are so huge, it is hard to get bored of them. First of all, the encyclopedia, that is every subject under the sun, including the sun. Every subject there is was in the encyclopedia. It’s hard to get bored of that. The Bible covers every part of life – how you eat, how you breathe, how you think, how you talk. It’s such a huge part of our civilization. I would say that helps.

I also think that I have a higher than average curiosity. I don’t think I’m the smartest person or the best writer. I’m certainly not the most athletic. But I do think I am in the top 5% of most curious people in the world. I love curiosity. I think it’s one of the greatest virtues.

Jon: One of the greatest gifts that we’ve been given.

A.J.: Yeah.

Jon: It’s interesting; you were talking before we rolled about anxiety and how to beat anxiety. One of the things I’m learning is that curiosity is actually a real anecdote to anxiety because it trains your brain to focus on things other than being anxious. Being curious is something that your brain actually enjoys. Science is showing that your brain actually enjoys being curious. It doesn’t really enjoy being anxious. [laughs] Although it defaults. So it’s interesting that you mention curiosity. I think it’s a wonderful attribute.

I want to transition here to your latest book. I’m going to have to bring you on now for the puzzle book. I’m very excited about that.

A.J.: I would love to come, yeah.

Jon: But let’s talk about your book that came out a few years ago, Thanks A Thousand, in which you thank all the people responsible for making your cup of coffee, and it turns out there’s thousands of people responsible for that single cup of coffee. I’m interested in what sparked that idea, and then I want to talk a little bit about gratitude. But again, let’s talk about the genesis of your idea. Of all the ideas you come up with, that idea stuck with you so much that you decided you would devote a few years of your life to writing a book about it.

A.J.: Right. Again, it had a lot to do with structure. I had always intellectually known how important gratitude is to our mental health, even to our physical health, so I would try to do these little gratitude rituals before a meal with my family. I might say, “I’d like to thank the farmers who grew these tomatoes and the woman at the grocery store who sold them to me.” It was my son, who was I think 11 or 12 at the time, who said, “That’s fine, but it’s also kind of half-assed.” I don’t know if he used those words, but he said, “If you really cared, you would thank these people in person.”

I thought, that is a lovely idea. What if I went and thanked as many people as I could who had anything to do with – I settled on a cup of coffee. That is the way I could structure it: by thanking different types of people. And it turned out to be a lovely experience. A bit of a pain in the ass, because that’s a lot of people to thank. [laughs]

Jon: Right, because we’re talking about the people that we obviously think of, the people who grow your beans or the barista, but we’re talking about the people who built the road.

A.J.: Yeah, because the guy who drives the truck with the coffee beans couldn’t have done his job without the road, so I thanked the people who built the road, and then the people who painted the white lines in the middle of the road so the truck didn’t crash into oncoming traffic. Yeah, I kind of went as wide as possible and a little overboard. But that was the thesis of the book: that it’s all interconnected. Every little thing in the world takes hundreds, thousands of people to make happen.

Jon: Did these people think you were crazy for thanking them, some of these people?

A.J.: It was definitely a mixed reaction. I would cold call them on the phone or I would visit them in person and I would say, “I just want to thank you for making the ladder that my café used to get down the coffee.” Some of them said, “Is this a pyramid scheme? What are you trying to get out of me? What are you selling?” But I will say the majority were quite grateful to be thanked.

I remember, for instance, I thanked this woman who does the pest control at the warehouse where my coffee beans are stored. I called her and I said, “I know this sounds a little odd, but I just want to thank you for keeping the insects out of my coffee.” She acknowledged, “Yeah, that is odd, but thank you, because I get very little positive feedback in my job.” I do think that we under-thank as a society. So I got mostly positive feedback with a little bit of skepticism.

Jon: This idea of gratitude, you said you were thanking people at dinner before you even came up with this book idea. I think I remember you referring to gratitude in your book about a year of living biblically, in which you lived the rules of the Bible for a year. Gratitude was something I think that you became very aware of, was a big part of living biblically, right? Because you’re always giving thanks. In the Bible, it’s always giving thanks. Is that where this idea of gratitude first came to your attention?

A.J.: It is, actually. That experience had some wonderful parts and some terrible parts, but one of the good parts was this idea of the Bible says to be thankful for everything. So I tried to be as literal as possible, and I would press the elevator button and be thankful the elevator came down. I’d get in the elevator; I’d be thankful it didn’t plummet to the basement and break my collarbone. I was constantly thanking. It was a weird way to live in some respects, but it was also great because you did realize there are hundreds of things that go right every day that we totally take for granted, and we have this negative bias where we focus on the three or four that go wrong.

So yes, it was definitely inspired by the Bible. But as I say, I didn’t know how to write a book about gratitude, especially since there are so many books about gratitude. It wasn’t until my son had this –

Jon: I like your book because it makes it more accessible. I don’t even like the word “gratitude.” See, I’m so negative, I don’t even like that word. But that word is so charged with a kind of – and maybe this is just my background of being around a lot of spiritual hippie type people when I was younger, but the word “gratitude” is like the word “radiance.” There are certain words that are very New Age-y, and gratitude is one of them. Unfortunately, because it’s a wonderful meaning and word, but the actual connotation – for me, that word “gratitude” is not a great one.

A.J.: I am with you. I definitely am skeptical of the whole The Secret, where it’s like you’re a 5’5” accountant, but if you just visualize it, you can become a point guard in the NBA. Yeah, I lean towards the whole evidence-based side of life. But gratitude is interesting because it definitely has that evidence behind it, even if it’s been co-opted a bit by the New Age community.

Jon: What is the evidence? What does gratitude do to you both mentally and physically? Is there some science behind how it can really change you and change the world?

A.J.: There is. I’ve been following this whole replication crisis in social sciences, where a lot of these great studies turn out that they try to replicate them and it doesn’t work. So take these with a grain of salt, but I’d say there’s so much evidence that there is something there. You can find studies that it helps you recover more quickly from a cold, from disease, from surgery. It lowers the rates of depression. It makes you more likely to exercise.

One of my favorites is studies that say it makes you more likely to be pro-social, to give money or help others or think of others, because that to me is one danger of gratitude – you become complacent. You’re like, “Oh, everything’s wonderful. I don’t need to do anything or help anyone because the world is so wonderful.” Barbara Ehrenreich, who’s a writer I admire a lot, wrote an op-ed for the New York Times about the dark side of gratitude and how corporations can use it to say “You should be grateful you have a job. Don’t ask for $15. Just be happy you have a job.” So yeah, always being aware of the dark side, but the research I’ve seen indicates that gratitude actually helps you spark to action, makes you more pro-social.

Jon: Some people think it’s a passive act, but you disagree with that. A lot of people think being grateful means it gives you a pass from actually having to do anything. But with gratitude, you’ve found, comes action, right?

A.J.: Yeah. There’s certainly nothing wrong with writing a gratitude journal. I still do something like that.

Jon: I was going to ask you, what’s your practice with gratitude, other than just trying to be thankful? Do you have a ritual?

A.J.: One thing I love to do to go to sleep, if the reading doesn’t put me to sleep, is to go through the alphabet and be thankful for something in every letter. A could be the apple pancakes my son made over the weekend. B could be Barry, the show on HBO, which I hope comes back soon. So there’s that.

Oh, the action – I just want to circle back to that for one second because I do think there’s nothing wrong with just being thankful for yourself, but it is so much more powerful if you thank other people, especially if they don’t expect it, like calling people out of the blue. It can be awkward, but I recommend calling teachers or bosses from 20 years ago out of the blue, or emailing them – doesn’t have to be a call – and just expressing your thanks. That to me is a wonderful experience.

Jon: That is wonderful.

A.J.: Awkward, but wonderful.

Jon: Either that or they think you’re in a 12-step program.

A.J.: [laughs] Nothing wrong with that.

Jon: There’s nothing wrong with that. But I did do that. I went back and found a teacher who was probably the most influential teacher in my life, and I went and wrote a story about him many years later. I think he was just so blown away that I was that interested in him. It meant a lot to him, and it certainly meant a tremendous amount to me. That’s wonderful. So you did that. You went back and talked.

A.J.: I did. Who was your teacher?

Jon: Mr. Roberts from the Springhurst school in Dobbs Ferry, New York.

A.J.: Was he an English teacher?

Jon: No, he was a fourth grade teacher. He was like the beginning of project-based learning. Back then, we would just sit at desks in rows, but he didn’t do that. He had us sit around in circles, and he had this thing called the laugh game where one person would be in the middle of the circle and had to try to make everybody in the circle laugh.

He took me completely out of my shell and changed the way I thought about the world and the way I thought about school. I probably didn’t learn anything that year academically; I think I was behind a year because the next year I went to California to go to school and I was completely behind. But it didn’t matter because it was such a life-changing moment for me. So I just wanted to tell him how much I appreciated that. Mr. Roberts, if you’re listening. But did you have the same kinds of teachers growing up that changed everything for you?

A.J.: Yeah, absolutely. I remember my boss – I mentioned I worked at a tiny newspaper in California, and my editor there was one of the best editors I’ve ever had. I remember calling – no, I guess I emailed him to say how much he had taught me. He was sort of a stereotypically gruff newsman. I remember people would send him stories and it was an open office, and I would send him a story and I could see him open it up, and he would go, “Ugh.” He would audibly sigh whenever he opened a story, like, “Oh my God, there’s so much work I have to do on this.” [laughs] But it did definitely teach me a ton.

Jon: I know that sigh. I do that sigh. Oh my God, yeah, that’s a bad sigh. I remember being in those open offices and knowing that an editor was reading one of my stories and just looking over at him or her and watching the expression on their face and being devastated.

A.J.: [laughs] It’s terrible.

Jon: This gratitude thing fascinates me. You found some really interesting characters when you were researching the coffee book. One of the things that was interesting is the person who invented what’s called the zarf. Can you explain what that is?

A.J.: That is my favorite word I learned during that project. Z-A-R-F, and it means the sleeve that goes over a cup of hot liquid to keep your hands cool. Apparently it has a long history. I think it’s an Arabic word. I guess they used it for tea ceremonies in ancient Arabia and China. They had them made of gold and jade. But our modern zarf, the cardboard zarf that we all know, was invented I think in the ’80s. I tracked down the guy who invented it, he and his wife, and it was just a lovely little human story.

Jon: Entrepreneurial story.

A.J.: Yeah, made for TV, almost. He was picking up his daughter from school and he had a cup of coffee and it was too hot. It burned his fingers. He let go of the coffee and it spilled on his lap, and he was like, “This is terrible! I’m going to stop this from ever happening again,” and he started selling these cardboard sleeves out of the back of his car. Eventually it took off.

Jon: Is that man a wealthy man today? Did he patent that idea?

A.J.: I got the feeling – I looked into that. I don’t think he was able to patent it. He still makes them and still makes a good living, but yeah, I don’t think he’s going to buy a private island in the Caribbean.

Jon: You also met the guy – it might’ve been a woman too; I don’t mean a guy – but the person who makes the sleeve that goes on the top of your coffee. Apparently there’s a real science to that. You just think there needs to be a little hole, but no, there’s a reason it’s elevated and it’s aerodynamic in a certain way.

A.J.: Right. This is one of my favorite interviews for the project as well. It was revealing how much thought and passion and blood, sweat, and tears go into these tiny, tiny hidden masterpieces. This was the coffee lid, and this guy had invented one – I think Wired magazine called it the Tesla of lids because it was high tech. One thing is the aroma. A lid has to let the aroma out because that’s such a big part of drinking coffee. So he made the hole bigger. He made an indentation so your nose can really get in there in a certain way, a crescent-shaped hole for the coffee so it would spout in the right direction. It was just hilarious how much thought had gone into it. And it makes my life a little better. I will say I try to use reusable lids now, so I don’t use his product anymore. [laughs] But I do appreciate all of the thought that goes into these little things.

Jon: And of course, you know it’s a great invention when you don’t even notice. It’s such a natural part of your life that it’s like it’s always been there. But I can remember the days when Dunkin’ Donuts – not even Dunkin’ Donuts coffee, but like Bodega coffee would come with those lids and you had to peel off the little – but you could never peel it off. It had a little perforated thing. You could never peel it off right, and you’d peel it off too much and then all your coffee would spill out. It’d drive me absolutely crazy on my way to work.

A.J.: Absolutely. There is a whole taxonomy of coffee lids, like the 5 Ps. I don’t remember them all, but one was peel, one was punch, one was perforate. So yeah, the peel luckily has seen its day.

Jon: The other thing about being grateful and having gratitude – the other things you learned from that are just savoring moments. We talked about this a little bit, but talk to us about that. How does gratitude lend itself to understanding the importance of savoring a moment?

A.J.: That is a huge part. They’re very close cousins, the idea of savoring and gratitude. I interviewed another podcast – another one of my favorite podcasts is The Psychology Podcast with Scott Barry Kaufman.

Jon: I’ll have to check that out. I don’t know that one.

A.J.: Check it out. And he wrote books. You might want to have him as a guest. He’s a great writer too.

Jon: Good tip.

A.J.: He talks about how savoring means slowing down time, pausing, focusing on one thing – instead of multitasking, mono-tasking – and really just enjoying one thing and appreciating it. I definitely experienced that.

One of the people I interviewed was the guy who works at the coffee shop who goes around the world and samples coffees. He taught me how to professionally sample a coffee, which is a hilarious ritual. It’s blind, so you don’t know where the coffee’s from, and you have to take a big, loud slurp because the idea is to spray the coffee all over your mouth. He says we have taste buds in our cheeks and on the roof of our mouth. So slurp really noisily, and then just let it sit on your tongue and really focus – he did it for a minute; I could barely do it for five seconds. But he would be like, “Oh, I’m tasting overripe peach and a hint of maple and some pineapple.” I would say, “I’m tasting coffee. It tastes a lot like coffee.”

Jon: [laughs] Kind of a coffee taste to it, yeah.

A.J.: But eventually I started to be able to say, “I’m tasting the acidity a little and the sweetness and the complexion of it.” It really makes it a better experience. I do try to do that with other foods. I’m not a great eater, but it taught me that savoring makes – and it doesn’t have to be food; it can be anything. Just collecting these little moments, these sensations, and curating them, almost, so you have a whole collection in your mind.

Jon: You mentioned – and I can’t let this slip away – in the beginning of this interview that you hate writing. I appreciate your honesty. I’d like to thank you in the name of gratitude for your honesty there, because I feel the same way. I’ve written about this before. A lot of writers will admit that they hate writing too, and a lot of writers I’ve had on the show will admit they hate writing. They like saying that they’ve written, but they don’t actually like the writing part. I know you’re sort of kidding, but you’re not really. What do you hate about it? We can share notes on this one.

A.J.: I do want to hear what you hate as well, but I can tell you what I hate is it’s so solitary. And I consider myself an introvert, but even as an introvert, I get so depressed just being in a room alone. I’ve learned to love giving talks. I used to be terrified, but now I love them because the feedback is so immediate.

Jon: That’s the thing. It’s immediate.

A.J.: You can see it in their eyes, or they laugh. I write something and it’s not going to have an impact for like another year and a half. [laughs]

Jon: Right, you’re an audience of one.

A.J.: You’re an audience of one.

Jon: You can’t really send it to your editor right away or they’re going to think you’re crazy. And they might not even give you feedback. They might just go through and that’s it.

A.J.: What do you hate about it? Same thing?

Jon: I do hate the solitary nature of it. I just hate how hard it is to get started. I have some friends, God bless them, that are writers that wake up and that’s what they want to do. They just want to be writing all the time. That’s their happy place. That’s not really my happy place. I think maybe when I’m in the zone, that’s a good place to be. But getting to that zone is so challenging and so fleeting.

So I sort of hate the process of having to do it and constantly going through the voice in your head that’s telling you, “This sucks” or the kind of self-critic that is constantly at least in my head all the time, telling me “This is no good. God, you’ve got to rewrite this sentence. That’s a cliché,” whatever. So I hate the process of starting. It’s not something that I choose to do.

But I think you’re right; I think the solitary nature of it really drives me crazy. I think that’s probably why I picked up podcasting, because unless you’re a podcaster that podcasts to yourself, I’ve always got a guest on. You still have the problem of not hearing the instant feedback. I think the only time I’ve ever had – I tried acting in college, where you actually get the immediate feedback. Oftentimes for me it was booing, but whatever. At least it was feedback. I was feeding off an audience. I don’t like that.

I think it’s somewhat thankless, oftentimes. People sort of take it for granted that you know how to do it. They don’t respect it as being something that’s difficult to do. I think a lot of times people are like, “I’m a writer.” “Oh yeah? What have you written?”

A.J.: Can I just jump in on that point? One of the realizations I had was that writers are lucky in that they do get their name out there. This book, Thanks A Thousand, has my name on it, “by A.J. Jacobs.” But that is such a warping representation of what really happened, because it wasn’t just me. It’s not by just me. There are editors, fact checkers, designers, dozens of people.

Jon: There are all the people you spoke to.

A.J.: Right. I actually proposed this to my editor – she did not think it was a good idea, but to have a bunch of names, like a movie screen with credits in a movie, have that on the cover instead of just “by” one person. I think that’s a more realistic way.

Jon: Yeah, and have an award show where at least we can all gather in one place and celebrate each other. I watch the Emmys and I’m sort of jealous of the teamwork and camaraderie that these actors talk about or these directors and stuff, saying, “I loved working with this person.” It just seems so fun and collaborative and teamwork. So much of my life is like me. [laughs] Interacting with you today, but that’s it.

A.J.: We have to look at the grateful side as well.

Jon: Yes, let’s be grateful.

A.J.: The fact that I can write something and it sometimes will get changed, but mostly I’m able to get out my ideas – whereas if I worked on a TV show, I would be a lot of times one of 10 people at the table, and you’re pitching lines and you’re lucky if you get one or two lines in. So I’m going to put in a good word for writing.

Jon: I’m glad you’re doing that, because I realize that we’re probably sounding ungrateful – ingrateful? – because the fact that I get paid for writing – and writing is not the only thing I do now, but I do get paid for writing still – is still a miracle to me. I am grateful for that, because there could be a lot worse ways to make a living, and I know a lot of people who listen to this show would love to make a living writing.

A.J.: I feel incredibly lucky that I’m able to make a living like this.

Jon: But that doesn’t mean I have to like it. [laughs]

A.J.: No. [laughs] And I will say writing itself is only part of writing. I would say it’s much less than 50% of my time. I’d say 30%, because mine are so research-intensive, so I’m researching a lot. And I actually like – I didn’t like it at the beginning, but now I like the marketing and publicity and figuring out how to make it appeal to people. I try to reframe that. Instead of making it a chore, I try to reframe it as something creative and interesting. Like, what can I do that’s fun and creative in getting the word out about this book?

Jon: Yeah, tell me what you did. In the 21st century, that probably is different, that answer, than it was 20 years ago. What have been some of the more interesting things you’ve done to market say this book, or even books in the past that you’ve had come out? Because you’re out there. You’re very good at promoting your books. I see your name out there. You’re definitely well-represented in the podcast world. Tim Ferriss has had you on his show; that helps a lot because he’s got a lot listeners.

A.J.: Yeah. I would say just trying to come up with new ideas instead of the traditional – for the gratitude book, for instance, I did a little video where I said I would handwrite a thank you note to a thousand readers of my books. They had to send me their address and maybe some detail about them so I could personalize the letter. I regretted it almost immediately. [laughs] That’s a lot of letters, a thousand. But also it was wonderful, because I got these personal notes, and a lot of them were how my books had affected them, which was so thrilling. And a lot of them were delightfully weird, like “Please draw me a picture of a dog eating a taco.” I’m like, all right, I don’t know why, but I’ll do it. Or “Make this one out to my ex-wife.” I’m like, okay. So it was a wonderful experience even if it was a pain in the ass and the hand, I like to say.

Jon: Yeah, it was both things. Are you active on social media? Is that a big part of your marketing?

A.J.: A little. I try. I think unfortunately I grew up at a time when it doesn’t come naturally to me, but I know that it is an important part, so I do try. Facebook I do think almost ruined our democracy and may still, but it has some delightful aspects to it as well, like keeping in touch with people and readers. And I don’t always do it about my books.

Today, I wrote about my favorite holiday, which is in late September, September 27th. It is Petrov Day, which is to celebrate Stanislav Petrov, a man who literally saved the world. He was a Soviet Army officer in 1983, and he was working the radar and it said that six missiles had been launched from the U.S. If he had followed protocol, he would’ve told his superior, who most likely would’ve launched a retaliatory attack and it would’ve been a massive nuclear war. But he decided, “Let’s just wait and see. Maybe it’s a false alarm” – which it was. I didn’t know his name until a year ago when a friend told me about it, and then there was this movement to make Petrov Day a holiday, and I’m all for it. So I wrote about that, and it was fun. I got a lot of feedback, like “Oh, I’ve never heard of that.”

Jon: How do you find out about things like that? What do you read that you’re finding out about Petrov Day?

A.J.: That one came about because I’m involved in a community called Effective Altruism. This is a community –

Jon: Oh, I love that community. I’ve been trying to get MacAskill on my program. Maybe you can give me his email after.

A.J.: I’ll put in a good word for you.

Jon: Please do.

A.J.: He’s got a book coming out in about a year, so I bet he would come on for that.

Jon: I love his book. You can tell our listeners what that is, because I find it absolutely fascinating, and I’ve been already doing some of the things that are in the book.

A.J.: Oh yeah, he wrote a great book – I think it’s called How to Do Good Better. It’s a very non-controversial premise; it gets controversial when you get into the weeds of how to do it. But the premise is that we should be better at doing good. That when we give to charity, we should try to make sure the charities are effective and actually help people. And what is it that we can do, what actions can we take that will help the most people? Part of it is just developing nations, trying to help the health – mosquito nets, for example, are incredibly effective. But then there’s an aspect of it, too, about long-term keeping civilization from blowing itself up and long-term existential threats to humanity. So that’s where I learned about Petrov Day.

Jon: Wow, okay. Fascinating. A.J., this has been such a great interview. You’re really wonderful to talk to. When is your book coming out? Is it a year away? The puzzle book.

A.J.: It is not quite a year, but it’s April of 2022. Whenever you want me back, I would love to come back, because I had a great time.

Jon: Thank you. I’ve just started doing crossword puzzles for the first time in my life. I don’t know if it’s just because I’ve become an old Jewish man, but I feel like all of a sudden I really love doing crosswords. I find it very centering. It focuses me. I’m just curious – and I’ll bring you back to talk about this extensively, but what is it about puzzles? Your whole life, have you been a big puzzle guy?

A.J.: I have. It’s partly that curiosity. ABC, like I mention in the book: always be curious. Puzzles just fuel that curiosity. But for me, crosswords are my first love. Actually, I wrote about it – it’s an emotional experience for me. There’s optimism, there’s despair.

Jon: Frustration. [laughs]

A.J.: There’s nostalgia, like when you see a clue like “Nehi,” and I think back to the great Nehi soda. There’s realizing the massive – just the range of our world, from the small to the big to the absurd to the sublime. It’s all in there, all in this little – and that’s another thing I love about it. It’s so constrained, but I think creativity is sometimes best when you have really strict constraints and you have to be creative within them.

Jon: Yeah. I’m really looking forward to reading that. Maybe I’ll get past the New York Times Tuesday crossword puzzle. Wednesday is a little too hard for me. Baby steps for me. I’m new at this.

A.J.: There you go. [laughs]

Jon: A.J. Jacobs, thank you so much for joining us on the program. It’s been a pleasure.

A.J.: My pleasure. Thank you. Look forward to doing it again.