A.J. Jacobs: Self-Experimenter Extraordinaire

Becoming the Best Version of You What I Learned in 2016

A.J. Jacobs: Self-Experimenter Extraordinaire

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“Calling it an experiment gives you permission to fail.”

– A.J. Jacobs

A.J. Jacobs (@ajjacobs) is a kindred guinea pig of self-experimentation who chronicles his shenanigans in books that seem to keep winding up as New York Times best sellers. The Know-It-All was about his quest to learn everything in the world. In The Year of Living Biblically, he tried to follow all the rules of the Bible as literally as possible. Drop Dead Healthy followed his well- (and ill-) advised experiments to become the healthiest person alive. My Life as an Experiment is about exactly what it sounds like, and It’s All Relative — which will be out in 2017 — will aim to connect all of humanity in one family tree.

A.J. is also the host of the new podcast Twice Removed, which takes a celebrity guest and introduces them to a surprise cousin they didn’t know they had. It could be one of their heroes, an old friend, a teacher, etc.

In this episode, we talk about:

What A.J.’s learned from his experiments
His creative process
Tipping points in his life
How he learned to love marketing
And much, much more.

I think you’ll have a blast with this one — I know I did. Please enjoy!

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Listen to it on iTunes.
Stream by clicking here.
Download as an MP3 by right-clicking here and choosing “save as.”

Want to hear another podcast with a human guinea pig? — Listen to my conversation with Morgan Spurlock. In this episode, we discuss how Morgan made his own luck, builds rapport with people and gets them to open up, gets people to care about important issues, and much more (stream below or right-click here to download):

This podcast is brought to you by Wealthfront. Wealthfront is a massively disruptive (in a good way) set-it-and-forget-it investing service, led by technologists from places like Apple and world-famous investors. It has exploded in popularity in the last 2 years and now has more than $2.5B under management. In fact, some of my good investor friends in Silicon Valley have millions of their own money in Wealthfront. Why? Because you can get services previously limited to the ultra-wealthy and only pay pennies on the dollar for them, and it’s all through smarter software instead of retail locations and bloated sales teams.

Check out wealthfront.com/tim, take their risk assessment quiz, which only takes 2-5 minutes, and they’ll show you for free exactly the portfolio they’d put you in. If you want to just take their advice and do it yourself, you can. Or, as I would, you can set it and forget it. Well worth a few minutes: wealthfront.com/tim.

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QUESTION(S) OF THE DAY: What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.

Scroll below for links and show notes…

Selected Links from the Episode

Connect with A.J. Jacobs:

Website | Twitter | Facebook | Twice Removed