The Human Guinea Pig: A Conversation With A.J. Jacobs

You know all those people that we’re subjected to on reality television, ordinary people who put themselves in extraordinary situations so we can enjoy the chaos that ensues? Sissies – the entire lot of them.

A.J. Jacobs, Editor-at-Large for Esquire magazine and New York Times bestselling author, puts all these rookies to shame. This is a man who read through the entire Encyclopedia Britannica in his debut book The Know-It-All because he felt his IQ slipping. In his next book, The Year of Living Biblically, he decided to obey EVERY rule in the Bible for twelve months. And his latest best seller, The Guinea Pig Diaries, A.J. spends time outsourcing his life, denouncing multitasking, and posing nude.

We were lucky enough to have a chat with this brave and brilliant soul last week as he was sitting in an airport waiting to fly to Florida for a literacy benefit…

A.J. Jacobs:    Hey Erick – it’s AJ.

Circle Six Magazine: Hey AJ how did security go? Probably a lot easier without the beard these days.

AJ:      That’s true.  If that had been a couple of years ago, I probably would have still been in there.  Excellent point.

C6M:  I shouldn’t keep you for too long, I definitely appreciate the time with talking to us.

AJ:      Sure my pleasure, thanks for your interest. I enjoy your magazine.  I looked at it online.

C6M:  Well thank you! I read  The Year of Living Biblically a few months ago and it just absolutely blew me away with what you did there.

AJ:      Oh, you make me commit the sin of pride, thank you Erick.

C6M:  Well it’s likely you’re not doing the radical honesty thing anymore so you don’t have to tell anyone.

AJ:      (laughing) Ah great, good.

C6M:  Now I read that you started out as a philosophy major in college?

AJ:      That is true. Yes, I was shocked to find there were no major corporation looking to hire philosophers so I had to do something else.

C6M:  What precipitated the jump from philosophy to writing?

AJ:      Well really it was that I didn’t have any other skills when I graduated except being able to half form a sentence.  And so that is why I kind of drifted into writing and I started out at a tiny newspaper in California. I was the general science reporter, I wrote a lot about sewage for some reason.  They had me on the sewage beat and you know, church bingo games…anything. I would do anything that they told me to do.

C6M:  So how did you go from sewage guy to diving into being a guinea pig?

AJ:      Yeah you’re right, the sewage is probably not the area you want to be the guinea pig in.  I actually did a couple of guinea pig things at that tiny newspaper. I was a Salvation Army Santa guy for a while but I think it really began when I was at Entertainment Weekly, which is a couple of years after that. I looked remarkably like this actor who has his fifteen minutes of fame a few years ago, this guy named Noah Taylor and he was in a movie called Shine and we looked exactly alike so they sent me to the Academy Awards disguised as him.  And so I was sort of like, undercover – like what’s it like to be a movie star for a night and it was the best night of my life.  Because people were telling me how brilliant I was, you know, I never had so much positive feedback. So I think that was when I first, started to realize, “Hey this is a pretty good way to make a living!”  If you can do it.

C6M:  That was an interesting part in your latest book, The Guinea Pig Diaries.  Now that actor, he contacted you right?  He seemed to be okay with the whole situation.

AJ:      Exactly.  I was a little worried he would be offended but no he was okay with it.  Because I guess he’s shy, he doesn’t like the publicity but you know, as a non-Hollywood star, it’s great for a night.

C6M:  I imagine.  Now given what you do now, being this guy that dives into experiments wholeheartedly, was there someone that influenced that part?

AJ:      Oh sure, I always loved George Plimpton, who would join football teams, he would get hit in the face by boxers. I’m not that athletic – so mine are slightly different.  In high school, I was a huge Hunter S. Thompson fan so I like him.  But I don’t take a huge amount of drugs you know.  I don’t load my car with a salt shaker half filled with whatever he had in there. So I’m sort of a drug free person who’s gotten into journalism.

C6M:  Well, your ending will hopefully be a lot better than his too.

AJ:      Yes, God willing, God willing.

C6M:  Now you’ve commented that your first book was kind of finishing what your dad started.  He tried to read through the encyclopedia but if I remember correctly you said he only got to letter B.

AJ:      Right, around boomerang, Borneo, somewhere in the BOs I believe.

C6M:  Now how did he respond to your quest when you set out to read through the entire encyclopedia?

AJ:      Well I think he was very supportive, it was part of a one-sided rivalry, you know, I was trying to compete with him and he was just happy that I was reading instead of robbing a convenience store or shooting heroin.

C6M:  And moving on to The Year of Living Biblically, you know obviously an amazing challenge to read the Bible and try to live it for a year.  And I was noticing in Borders it’s already spawned some copycats too.  But what I think that sets you apart and impressed me the most is that you approached it very seriously.  Even though you know, you wrote that you don’t consider yourself a religious person.  Now given how you dive into experiments, where do you think you would end up at the end of that year?

AJ:      Well yeah you’re right, I’m glad you think that, because I did take it very seriously and I wanted to be entertaining but I wanted to really tackle these issues as seriously as I could.  I didn’t expect it would change me that much. I knew it would be interesting but I didn’t expect it to have a profound change on my world view which is what it ended up doing.  I think you’ll find that as you do anything for a year, you know, if you really take it seriously then it’s going to start to sink in.

(At this point the airport overlord on the PA started yelling excitedly)

C6M:  They’re looking for someone aren’t they?

AJ:      Someone’s needs to go to door number five right now.

C6M:  You still ah, consider yourself a reverent agnostic?

AJ:      Mm, definitely.  I love that phrase.  I think someone started a Facebook page called “Reverent Agnostic” and I enjoy it.  So I haven’t checked it in a while, it might just be me and him.  But I love the idea of it and I have had people come up and tell me that they like it too.  People are also like devout Atheists, I’ve heard and there are a couple of others.  But yeah, reverent agnostic that kind of resonates with me.

C6M:  It was perfect terminology.  Now seeing as how you started out in philosophy it seems like you’re now sort of a sociology expert.  There’s a big human element to your books.  And you seem to pull really good intentions out of people that for better or worse could be called misguided like when you went to the Creationism museum.  It would have been very easy you know to rip them apart but I was impressed that you were able to pull the heart of what they were trying to do out of it.

AJ:      Well thanks that was nice to hear.  Yeah.  I think it would have been, as you stated, it’s too easy to mock them without at least looking at their side of the argument and as P.J. O’Rourke said it, it would be sort of like shooting cows with a machine gun you know?  It’s just too easy. And I still totally disagree with 98 or 99 percent of what they say but I wanted to find at least one thing from their point of view that maybe had some wisdom.  And I think I was able to do that – sort of this idea that we’re all part of the family of humanity.  And so I did try. I wanted to go in with this open mind and a “leave your ax at the door” type of strategy. Because I just think it’s more interesting. It’s more interesting to me and it’s more interesting, hopefully, to the reader.

C6M:  Was it surprising that a lot of these folks turned out to be genuinely good people?

AJ:      I think it was surprising. It was also surprising that they were so open with me. I mean I was shocked – I went to go visit with the Amish and I thought that they would, you know, shut the door.  But they were very welcoming, they took me in and this guy spent a night telling Amish jokes.  And I’ve heard a lot of Amish jokes but I had never heard of an Amish joke from an Amish person so it was very exciting.

C6M:  Did you meet anyone that you just couldn’t stand in the whole religious realm of things?

AJ:      Ah let’s see.  Well, that is a good question. I never met them but the people like the guy that wants to go back to Old Testament theocracy where you execute homosexuals….Ah you know he and I would not jive, probably would not hang out, having a chai latte together. He was such an anti-Semite, a racist, and misogynist – I just didn’t even call – I could tell that like you know, there’s some people who are so far beyond…

C6M:  Yeah that probably would have ended poorly.

AJ:      (laughing) I would have probably been executed by the end of that one.

C6M:  Have you talked to Gil since the book came out?

AJ:      I have talked to Gil, he is quite a character.  I was very curious how he’d find it because he is a complicated character and he’s not portrayed in a totally flattering way.  But he loved it and I think he just wants publicity.  The man is a publicity whore.

C6M:  Oh I’m sure.

AJ:      He loves switching religions and he loves getting publicity so he was just fine with it.

C6M:  Now my favorite part of the book is when you’re in the park and you decide to stone an adulterer.

AJ:      Oh thank you, yeah it was very stressful.

C6M:  How close did you come to being knocked out by that guy?

AJ:      (laughing) He was, I felt, violent. I felt the air was sort of crackling with potential violence and even though he was in his seventies, he still looked like he could have at least inflicted some damage. So it would have been ugly, yes.  I’m thankful that he just brushed by. And then I would have had the dilemma you know, do I follow the Old Testament, the eye for an eye and hit him back or do I follow the New Testament and turn the other cheek you know, it was a real dilemma.

C6M:  Well either way you lose because you don’t really win when you beat up a 70 year old.

AJ:      That’s true.  That would not have looked good.  It would not have looked good in the book and it would not look good on the police record.

C6M:  Now I also read that the book is being developed by Paramount Pictures, what exactly does a film version of your living Biblically look like?

AJ:      Well it’s still being written, they wrote one version of the screenplay then decided to write a whole different version.  And I mean, it will be interesting because the guy – if you’ve ever seen a picture of me – the guy who is attached to playing me is not exactly my identical twin.  His name is Marlon Wayans.

C6M:  Oh you’ve got to be kidding me.

AJ:      Nope.  (laughing) I am serious as a heart attack.  So it would obviously be a slightly different story.  He did play a white chick, he was extremely good at it but I don’t think he was going to go the way of Jewish Upper West Sider.

C6M:  Well he’s certainly branching out.

AJ:      Yeah.  It was kind of funny. I had the opportunity to meet him and it was fascinating.  He’s a really interesting guy.  I mean, his family grew up in the projects in New York and they were all Jehovah’s Witness so he really has an interest in religion and the material.  So I’m delighted.  Who knows if it will ever make it to the screen. You know these things are very – I find at least, from my experience, very iffy.

C6M:  Well he’s got some pull.  It probably would have been a bad sign if they had decided to cast Gary Coleman.

AJ:      (laughing) Excellent point.

C6M:  Now The Guinea Pig Diaries, moving on to your book out now, it’s a collection of shorter experiments.  What brought the idea of putting these all together in one collection.

AJ:      Well some of them I had written – about half of them I had already written for Esquire Magazine and I just figured that it might be nice to put them together both for me, since half of it was written, and hopefully the readers because I get a lot of comments from people who say that they appreciate my book because they are a lot of short sections so it can be read, you know, ah – in these times when we don’t have a lot of leisure time, you can read it in short little spurts.  And I have heard people who enjoy reading it in the bathroom, which I take as a compliment, I’m not ah, I’m not ashamed.  And so, I thought well maybe it would be a good idea to just take a quick break from the one year experiment. Let’s try a several one month experiments.

C6M:  Was there one of those that you thought was going to be easy but turned out to be really difficult?

AJ:      Probably multi-tasking or unitasking to be precise. This is when I tried to give up all multitasking for a month and it’s just so ingrained in our culture. It’s awesome to try to do it.  I think it’s changed the way I thought and I think it made me happier because I don’t think our brains are built to do multitasking.  I think it makes it go crazy.

C6M:  I keep trying to tell my wife that but she doesn’t believe me.

AJ:      (laughs) She’s a multitasker and you’re not.

C6M:  Oh yeah, she’s the multitasker, if I have two things on my plate it starts to turn ugly.

AJ:      Excellent.  Yes.  Well I am.  I don’t think I’m officially multitasking just because I’m at the airport, I’m only talking to you even though I am sitting in an airport.  But I’m not – I didn’t call you back until after I’d gone through security.

C6M:  Were there any of the experiments that surprised you and turned out to be a lot easier than you thought?

AJ:      Ah let’s see.  Hold on, let me think what there were.  Well, I did one where I posed nude for Esquire Magazine and it was humiliating but, at the same time, I survived it.  And, I’m still married.  That’s a positive.

C6M:  And your wife, you call her a saint in almost every interview that I’ve ever read of you.  Now are you still being an obedient husband? (A reference to the final experiment from The Guinea Pig Diaries)

AJ:      (Laughs) That’s a good question. I honestly do believe she’s an extremely patient woman.  As you might have read in The Year Of Living Biblically, she gets back at me you know, like when the Bible says you cannot touch women during their menstrual period and you cannot sit on a seat where a menstruating woman has sat since its impure so she got revenge by sitting on every seat in our apartment while she was in her time of month.  So that kind of thing, she gets back at me, so it’s not like she’s a passive participant.  She’s out there.

C6M:  In regards to her sitting all over, and here’s probably a more crass question; what if she sat on the toilet?  Could you use that?

AJ:      You know that is a great question.  I bet that I have sat on an impure toilet.

C6M:  I have caught you publically. Your credibility is destroyed, AJ.

AJ:      Oh man this is terrible.  I will never go to the bathroom again.

C6M:  I like way that you always mention your family; I have three kids as well.  I have three little girls.

AJ:      Oh yeah? Ah, three little girls, how old are they?

C6M:  6, 4, and 2.

AJ:      Ah wow, that’s very similar to me.  That’s funny. That’s awesome!

C6M:  You know – I’ll be giving you a dowry of cows for the future.  We’ll see what we can do here.  Now I like that it’s a big theme in your book that you include your family in all that you do.  What’s their role in all these experiments?

AJ:      Well partly I think, my wife is the foil you know, she’s sort of the voice of reason and she sort of represents the reader like, “what the hell are you doing?”  So there’s that, but then also there are times when my experiments actually give me insight and make our lives better.  So it’s nice to see – she’s not totally negative, there are things about the experiments that she adopts which I love.  This whole idea of gratitude from The Year of Living Biblically, I think she’s become more grateful and then there was the experiment in the new book where, you mentioned it earlier, where I basically was whipped for a month. I just did everything she said.  So that one she loved.  And that one actually has changed our marriage, I think permanently, for better or worse. I think for the better, probably the worse for me, but for the better for our marriage.

C6M:  Your future – now you’re working on The Healthiest Human Being in the World?

AJ:      That’s true, exactly.

C6M:  A little bit of what that’s about.

AJ:      That one I’m changing my exercise routine, I’m changing my food, my diet completely and I’m meeting with fascinating people. I just met the head of The Caveman Movement in New York City who believe we should be eating more raw meat, we should not go to the gym, we should be tossing big boulders around. I’m doing a little of that although I’m not a big raw meat person, not a big meat person in general. And then I try different workouts, I just did the pole dancing workout last week. And if you’re a single man this is an excellent class to take.  Because I was just 50 women and me.

C6M:  I think you need to put up some videos of that. AJ Jacobs on the pole will sell a lot of books.

AJ:      Oh man, (laughs).

C6M:  I put a status up on Facebook to ask some of my friends if they had anything to ask you, one of the best questions was what do you think is the most boring letter in the encyclopedia?

AJ:      Well, I know that the “S” was a killer just because it was so long – it was like over a 1000 pages.  And it was like a the Heartbreak Hill in the Boston Marathon…it’s like, you can feel you were close to the end and then you just hit this “S” – this mountain.  So that was probably would be my least favorite letter.

C6M:  And finally, tell me something that you never talk about interviews, and it can be funny or serious.

AJ:      Let’s see, I never talk about – well, I just switched my computer desktop to an analog clock instead of a digital clock and it’s made my life better because you’re not watching seconds tick by and it feels that you’re a little less aware of time.  But I don’t know how interesting that is, probably not at all, but I have never talked about it. Or how about this one – this one might be a little more interesting maybe.  I have a Memento Mori on my computer desktop; it’s sort of the medieval idea of having a reminder of death around at all times so that you’re more likely to enjoy life and appreciate life, and they always have paintings of skulls and crossbones and little statues.  So I have a  little design of a skull and cross bones. It’s actually a very bright and colorful skull and crossbones because I didn’t want to be too stressed.  But at the same time, it reminds me that the chance is always there and I have to enjoy my life and not stress too much.

C6M:  Good words.  That’s all I have AJ, I really appreciate you taking this half hour to talk to me.

AJ:      Oh my pleasure, yes.  Good luck with your family and thank you.  And good luck with continued success with the magazine, it looks great.

C6M:  Thank you! Hey can’t wait to pick up The Healthiest Human Being in The World. When does that come out?

AJ:      2011.  I’m not sure when in 2011.

C6M:  Well we’ll be waiting and hopefully we’ll talk to you again once that drops.

AJ:      Great, thank you so much, Erick.  Have a great day.

Many props to A.J. for a great conversation and putting up with airport loudspeakers and two dropped calls. He couldn’t have a more warm and friendly person. Be sure to visit ajjacobs.com and pick up his latest (and all his books, really) release, The Guinea Pig Diaries now in stores everywhere!

by Erick Bieger