0:01

Ted Audio Collective. Hey

0:09

everyone, it's Adam Grant. Welcome back to

0:11

Rethinking, my podcast on the science of

0:13

what makes us tick with the Ted

0:15

Audio Collective. I'm an organizational

0:17

psychologist and I'm taking you inside the

0:19

minds of fascinating people to explore new

0:21

thoughts and new ways of thinking. My

0:26

guest today is Jared Cohen. He was

0:28

a Rhodes Scholar and has been named one of Time's

0:31

100 Most Influential People. He

0:33

worked in the State Department under both

0:35

Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton, then

0:38

fought extremism as founder and CEO of

0:40

Jigsaw at Google. Today

0:42

he leads global affairs and innovation at Goldman

0:44

Sachs. In his spare time,

0:47

Jared is a history buff, and his

0:49

new book, Life After Power, is a

0:51

riveting look at who seven American presidents

0:53

became after they left the Oval Office. It's

0:56

brimming with insights for anyone who's

0:58

ever wondered, what's next? Hey

1:08

Jared Cohen. Adam Grant. I

1:10

want to talk to you about a lot of things, but I

1:13

have to start it. When did you become

1:15

obsessed with American presidents? Because you've been into

1:17

them as long as I've known you, and

1:19

I know a lot longer than that. So

1:22

look, my career has spanned

1:25

foreign policy, technology, and

1:27

now finance, and the only thing that's

1:29

consistent in my life is an unhealthy

1:31

obsession with the US presidency. I

1:34

suppose it started when I was eight years old. My

1:37

parents bought me this children's book called

1:39

The Buckstops Here, and it had rhymes that

1:41

went with each president. So I

1:43

remember, you know, 10 and 7 Johnson A, they almost

1:45

took his job away, and it was kind of very

1:48

catchy for a precocious young kid. And

1:50

presidents, you know, when I was growing up, they were the most famous people in the world. My

1:53

early memories are of, you know, George

1:56

H.W. Bush going on TV announcing the

1:58

war in Panama. Desert

2:00

storm and so for me these were the

2:02

most visible figures that I remember and I

2:04

just Developed an obsession with it

2:06

One of the big interests that I had

2:08

was what happens when presidents die in office

2:10

and these abrupt Transfers of power

2:13

and how they changed the course of history

2:15

and my last book accidental presidents kind of

2:17

captured that and When that

2:19

book was done, I asked myself the question What else

2:21

am I interested in and I got

2:23

really consumed by this question of okay? I

2:25

focused on what happens when presidents die in

2:27

office but what happens when they survive the

2:30

office and they come down from

2:32

the stratosphere and There's years

2:34

and sometimes decades that they still have

2:36

to live and exist in a world

2:38

where they're constrained in a much lower

2:40

station It's it's such a fascinating

2:42

topic I think not just for heads of state but

2:45

for all of us because there comes a point in

2:47

our career in our lives when We

2:49

decide we're gonna step back from our positions

2:51

of greatest influence and the question is Now

2:54

what and I want to talk about what you learned about

2:56

the now what but before we do that I'm

2:59

struck by the fact that you said unhealthy obsession

3:02

How have you suffered from being interested in

3:04

in presidents? I would describe

3:07

the unhealthy part of my interest

3:09

in presidents as manifesting itself in

3:11

Strange ways somebody can ask

3:13

me about anything and I can take it

3:16

on a tangent into some seriously obscure geeky

3:18

Presidential history that people may or may not be

3:21

interested in I collect presidential oddities

3:24

As well, I like owning these

3:26

pieces of history that make

3:28

you feel like you exist in the past

3:30

So I have the vial of poison that

3:33

Charles Gattow's sister sent to him when he

3:35

was in prison after he murdered President

3:38

Garfield You know, I have

3:40

the one of the few surviving Champagne

3:43

glasses from the John Adams White House,

3:45

you know It's these artifacts are these

3:47

things owned by presidents or that touch

3:49

different parts of presidential history You picked

3:51

a series of presidents you obviously weren't going to write a

3:53

book about all of them But I think one of the

3:55

things you did was you chose presidents

3:58

who were archetypes for different choices that

4:00

you can make about what to do once

4:02

you were done leading the country. Whose

4:05

choice has surprised you the most? The

4:08

first thing that I'll say, Adam, is

4:10

that there's no more dramatic retirement or

4:12

firing than leaving the presidency

4:14

of the United States. You go from

4:16

having more power than anybody else in

4:18

the world to living with

4:21

a muzzle on your

4:23

mouth and being constrained with a sense

4:25

that there's nothing left to achieve.

4:28

The question itself was

4:30

very interesting. As you mentioned, all of us at

4:32

different stages of life are asking this question of

4:34

what's next. We ask it in

4:36

microwaves throughout the course of our life, and then

4:38

we eventually get to this thing that we call

4:40

retirement, which is really more of a mirage and

4:43

a transition and a milestone

4:45

than anything else. What I was struck

4:47

by is very

4:49

few presidents of the United States

4:51

after leaving office had a good

4:53

experience in, quote, the political afterlife. For

4:56

a lot of them, they got stuck

4:58

and bogged down in settling old scores,

5:00

and they were grumpy. Some were alcoholics.

5:02

One of them joined the Confederacy. One

5:05

of them was a Northerner who became

5:07

a Southern sympathizer during the Civil War.

5:10

But the combination of health, finances,

5:12

broken relationships, lack of purpose, all

5:15

these things aggregate in the post-presidency

5:17

to create conditions for a pretty

5:19

unpleasant life for a lot of

5:21

them. The question

5:23

is, who's left standing? I focus

5:26

on Thomas Jefferson and the founding of

5:28

the University of Virginia, John Quincy Adams,

5:30

who became the leader of the abolitionists

5:32

in the House of Representatives, Grover Cleveland,

5:34

who mounted a successful comeback to the

5:36

presidency, William Howard Taft, who finally got

5:38

his dream job of being Chief Justice

5:40

of the Supreme Court, Herbert Hoover, who

5:43

was on a long path to recover

5:45

a path to serving the world after

5:47

being broken by the Great Depression, Jimmy

5:50

Carter, who found a way to create a never-ending

5:52

presidency as a former president, and George W. Bush,

5:54

who found a way to completely move on.

5:57

He stood out in the sense that his popularity

5:59

has gone. What? We've. Done much to

6:01

invest in it. Than. Any other than

6:03

that for me, was worthy other of

6:05

a study. But what's interesting is there

6:07

really were only seven that I thought

6:09

warranted and at a deeper look. And

6:11

they had some things in common, but

6:13

each of them pursued life after power.

6:16

In a very different way. And they

6:18

they do represent seven different archetypes. In

6:21

and when I find fascinating about that

6:23

is there's not a perfect monolithic blueprint

6:25

or playbook for how when we're going

6:27

through transitions in our lives. Whether it's

6:29

towards the and in the early stages

6:32

of life. for the middle of like

6:34

there's not a play, Bucher Herb are

6:36

perfect. Add blueprint for how to do

6:38

that right. I. Think the one

6:41

that I found most interesting in the

6:43

back was was John Quincy Adams. What

6:45

was powerful and for me about his

6:47

story was he had higher impact from

6:49

a lower seats. Touch. Me about what

6:51

he did and and what you took away from it. Here's.

6:53

A man who began his career appointed

6:56

by George Washington to serve in his

6:58

administration. And. Then he dies, serving

7:00

in the House of Representatives alongside a

7:02

freshman congressman from Illinois named Abraham Lincoln.

7:05

And in Talk About a Living Connection

7:07

between the past, as and and the

7:09

future. His presidency. With the least

7:11

eventful part of his life. it was

7:13

basically an intermission between to the greatest

7:16

acts in American history. The first act

7:18

of his life was a series of

7:20

steps and jobs that led him on

7:22

the path to be President, and that

7:24

was largely architected for him by his

7:26

famous parents, John and Abigail Adams. But

7:29

his presidency. Is a political stillborn and

7:31

cries of corrupt bargain. You're basically make

7:33

it impossible to for him to achieve

7:35

anything as President and said. And much

7:38

like his father, he's defeated for reelection

7:40

and eighteen Twenty eight and he's completely

7:42

distraught. And then I got really, really

7:45

deep into reading his diaries and I

7:47

would say I sort of appropriated some

7:49

of his melancholy in the process of

7:52

in there that it's hard to imagine

7:54

a more self loathing, self pitying, miserable

7:56

human big men. John Quincy Adams after

7:59

his defeated. Okay, you actually just

8:01

explained why this is an unhealthy obsession. You

8:04

went into the depths of somebody

8:06

else's despair. His writings and his

8:08

diary, they describe a man just

8:10

completely destroyed. And so he

8:12

goes back home to Quincy, Massachusetts, and

8:15

he annoys his wife, he's annoying his

8:17

kids, he's annoying his friends, he's spending

8:19

all of his time fighting with people

8:21

who wronged him at every stage of

8:23

his life. And finally, everybody sort of

8:26

gravitates around this idea just get back

8:29

into service so you stop annoying the

8:31

rest of us. And the only thing

8:33

that John Quincy Adams knew was

8:35

a life of service. And he'd already been

8:37

Secretary of State, he'd been president, he served

8:39

in the US Senate, he'd been an ambassador

8:41

to multiple countries. And the

8:43

only thing left was the lowest

8:46

station of all, which is a

8:48

mere representative in the House of

8:50

Representatives. And he basically agrees to

8:52

run, he's elected, and he

8:54

ends up as this sort of ex-presidential

8:56

novelty and sort of a joke

8:58

in the lowest station he's ever had in

9:00

his career. For his first year and a

9:02

half, he does what a member of

9:04

the House does in the late 1820s, early 1830s, which

9:08

is you get petitions and you read them. And

9:10

what happens is some of these

9:12

petitions are petitions to abolish the

9:14

slave trade in DC, petitions to

9:16

emancipate the slaves. And then

9:18

the reaction from the slaveocracy in

9:21

the House of Representatives really astonishes him. And

9:23

he realizes, wait a minute, they

9:25

don't want me to read these petitions, that's

9:27

an abomination to the right to petition. So

9:30

then he starts reading more of them. And as

9:32

he reads more of them, the slaveocracy gets increasingly

9:34

agitated and they end up gagging him. And

9:37

so then it's the right to petition is curbed,

9:39

then the right to speech is curbed. And

9:42

it all sort of culminates when he fights

9:44

to rescind the gag order and

9:46

defends the Amistad slaves before the Supreme

9:49

Court. And what he realizes

9:51

is that without searching for it, the

9:54

cause of abolition found him and in

9:56

a much lower station, he found a

9:58

much greater calling. stumbled

10:00

into this mission that frankly he

10:02

had never championed at any other

10:05

stage in his life. And

10:07

he gets elected to nine terms in

10:09

the House of Representatives. And before John

10:11

Quincy Adams, the abolitionist cause was viewed

10:13

largely as a fringe movement or a

10:15

radical movement. And we know that Abraham

10:17

Lincoln was inspired by what he saw

10:20

from John Quincy Adams and that the

10:22

intellectual architecture around the need for a

10:24

constitutional amendment to get to emancipation inspired

10:26

that young congressman who would go on

10:28

to become one of the great presidents

10:30

of the United States. That's an

10:32

extreme example of not just bouncing back

10:34

but bouncing forward. To

10:36

go from complete despair, an unsuccessful

10:39

presidency, to helping to plant

10:41

the seeds of the

10:44

emancipation proclamation, pretty extraordinary.

10:47

His story tells you that if you're patient

10:50

and you just kind of let things

10:52

play out, you may actually find

10:54

the greatest cause of your life. I

10:56

wouldn't describe him as an open-minded person.

10:58

I would describe him as an impatient

11:00

person. He was meandering

11:03

at the right moment. But

11:05

had he leaned into some sort

11:07

of deliberate cause, he may never

11:09

have become the champion for the

11:11

abolitionist movement that changed the course of history. It's

11:14

a strong case for patience. It also

11:16

makes me think about something that

11:18

developmental psychologists have been interested in

11:21

ever since Eric Erickson first coined,

11:23

the distinction between generativity and stagnation.

11:27

The question that I think all of us face

11:29

around, am I going to contribute to the next

11:31

generation? Or am I going

11:33

to basically let my knowledge kind of

11:35

ossify and not share it

11:37

with others? And it

11:40

seems to me that in some ways

11:42

John Quincy Adams confronted the tension

11:45

between happiness and meaning. He could have

11:47

done lots of things that were personally

11:49

pleasurable and enjoyable, but a little bit

11:51

devoid of purpose. And through

11:53

seeking something that was more meaningful, he

11:56

found what might have been a little

11:58

bit less fun work. but

12:00

ultimately more enjoyable contributions

12:03

to make. I think that's right.

12:05

There's something else about John Quincy Adams that's worth

12:08

calling out, and this won't be relatable to everybody, but

12:11

he had a fighting spirit. He loves

12:13

fighting with people and quarreling with people and

12:16

intellectually out-foxing people.

12:18

And he shows up in the House

12:20

of Representatives and he just thinks these

12:22

members are just the epitome of mediocrity.

12:25

His success in the House was a

12:27

combination of being motivated by this cause

12:29

but it was gradual. What keeps him

12:32

going is just the day-to-day, play-by-play of

12:34

winning and outsmarting,

12:41

and it's what drives him. At the

12:43

end of the day, he's a political and an

12:45

intellectual animal. There's so many sayings

12:47

about how power affects people, right? So

12:49

we think about Lord Acton, power corrupts.

12:51

I've found that to be oversimplified, and

12:53

I feel like a lot of the

12:56

research in psychology says actually power doesn't

12:58

corrupt so much as reveal. It

13:00

amplifies the values and traits that you

13:03

might have hidden when you were on your

13:05

way up the ladder, but once you've gained

13:08

enough influence and status and authority, you feel

13:10

like now you can kind of show your

13:12

true colors without major risk. I'm interested in

13:14

how these dynamics play out when people lose

13:17

power. So I guess the

13:19

question for you, Jared, is does losing

13:21

power uncorrupt people or

13:23

does it also have a way of

13:25

revealing or concealing who they really are?

13:27

Jared Polin If I reflect on the

13:29

seven presidents that I write about, the

13:32

only one that I think really enjoyed being

13:35

president and reveled in the power

13:37

of the office was Jimmy

13:39

Carter. And I think

13:41

therefore it's fitting that what Jimmy Carter did

13:43

that's different from any of the others is

13:46

he was the first one to

13:48

really build infrastructure around being a

13:50

former president. He basically built a former presidential

13:53

administration, but I Think

13:55

for the rest of them, the power of the

13:58

presidency and a lot of respects. It.

14:00

Actually gotten the way of of what

14:02

they wanted to do and the architecture?

14:04

The presidency. Ended up. Hindering

14:07

the areas where they were most passionate,

14:09

right? Jefferson his entire life was very

14:11

clear about what he wanted to do.

14:14

All he wanted to do was create

14:16

the very first. Arts. And Sciences

14:18

University by he had this founders obligation

14:20

where he have had to keep coming

14:22

back and serving get to vice president

14:24

he had to be Secretary of State's

14:26

that he had to be president twice

14:28

and all that did was cut years

14:30

off his life and delay what he

14:32

actually wanted to do with the found

14:34

a university. Herbert Hoover. Before. He

14:36

became president was one of most revered.

14:39

Men: In not just the United

14:41

States, but the World. he was the man

14:43

who said the world After World War One,

14:45

he was the hero of the recovery after

14:47

the Mississippi floods. He was an orphan. Heroes

14:49

to be a self made millionaire is a

14:51

man who lived ninety years and is defined

14:53

by three and a half of the great.

14:56

Depression. I think

14:58

his view is one democracies a harsh

15:00

employer say something that that the he

15:02

had said but I think that he

15:04

would have been a very happy man

15:06

had he never had to be president

15:08

because he would have been the great

15:10

humanitarian for for his whole life and

15:12

so at least for the seven presidents

15:14

or six to the seven that I

15:16

focus on. I think what's fascinating is

15:19

once they moved his life after power.

15:21

Once they leave the presidency behind, there's

15:23

a period of time where they work

15:25

to kind of rediscover who they were.

15:27

Before. They were president. They almost have

15:29

to exercise out of them all of

15:32

that sort of poison. Of the

15:34

Office and the politics and the baggage of

15:36

the presidency. and each of them got to

15:38

that pretty quickly and rediscovered their race and

15:40

death ray. And it looks a little bit

15:43

different and it evolves from the time from

15:45

before they were president. It's have a tale

15:47

of two types of power. the power of

15:49

the office which is intoxicating for some but

15:51

the power of Purpose I was I think

15:54

defined a lot of these men that I

15:56

write about. it it also

15:58

makes me think about that the a classic

16:00

triad of implicit motives that David McClellan

16:02

put on the map in psychology. The

16:04

idea that some people are driven by

16:06

achievement, they want to succeed. Others

16:09

are primarily guided by a desire for power, they

16:11

want to have influence and control. And

16:14

then some are drawn to affiliation, they want to

16:16

connect and belong. As I hear you talk about

16:18

the six that were not that happy

16:20

as presidents, they sound like they follow

16:22

the arc that David Winter has captured

16:25

in some of his research where it's

16:27

almost misplaced ambition. You're

16:29

an achievement motivated person and the

16:31

highest form of success is to become president.

16:33

But then the process of having to campaign

16:35

and also to govern is not

16:38

about achievement, it's about power. And

16:40

if you're not somebody who's power motivated,

16:42

it's extremely frustrating to be blocked from

16:44

achieving your goals, to be

16:46

constantly having to wheel and deal the

16:48

amount of smoothing that's required. It's really

16:50

counterproductive and annoying for an achievement motivated

16:53

person. And then you

16:55

leave the office and you

16:57

have to recalibrate, you're freed from having

16:59

to accumulate and exercise power, but

17:02

your achievements seem really small or

17:04

what you're capable of achieving seems really small.

17:07

And so then trying to figure out how do

17:09

you express that motivation, it's a bit of an

17:11

adjustment at some level. What

17:13

do you make of all that? With each of the presidents

17:15

that I write about, each of them

17:18

either enters the post-presidency

17:20

or discovers something in the

17:22

post-presidency that they become dogmatic

17:25

about in terms of some kind of

17:27

cause or motivation. And

17:30

whether they realize it at the

17:32

beginning of their post-presidency or later

17:34

in their post-presidency, they come to

17:36

discover that unshackled from

17:38

the office and all the politics

17:40

and constraints, they're better positioned to

17:42

do something about it than they

17:44

were in office. Look,

17:47

even Jimmy Carter, who loved the

17:49

presidency more than anything, over time

17:52

he came to appreciate the fact that, wait a minute,

17:54

what I care about is human rights, free

17:56

and fair elections, curing disease,

17:59

and the post-presidency. and being a

18:01

former president that's willing to criticize

18:03

my Democratic and Republican successors, means

18:06

that I can basically do all the things with the presidency

18:08

that I loved, and I don't have to deal with any

18:10

of the garbage that bogged me down. We

18:12

all know people, they got offered the dream job

18:14

that they wanted, and the timing wasn't right. Maybe

18:16

they had a challenge with one of their kids,

18:18

or they didn't want to move somewhere, and they

18:21

had to turn down something that they really lusted

18:23

after. That was William Howard Taft,

18:25

except it's because he chose to basically

18:27

be subservient to his wife and his

18:29

three brothers and his mentor Theodore Roosevelt,

18:31

and he basically turned down the court

18:34

multiple times because everybody else wanted him

18:36

to be president. But he never lost

18:39

this sort of desire or this sense of

18:41

purpose to one day serve on the court.

18:44

And William Howard Taft, his final 10

18:47

years of life were the happiest years

18:49

of his life because he served as Chief Justice of

18:52

the Supreme Court. Each of these presidents,

18:54

what's fascinating is as they get older, as

18:56

their legs give out, as

18:59

their health fails, as all their friends start dying,

19:01

they actually accelerate their activities. Herbert Hoover was the

19:03

most busy from the ages of 80 to 90.

19:06

William Howard Taft was most busy in his

19:08

last 10 years. And

19:10

I have a theory on this that

19:12

because those first years out of office

19:15

are such a challenging transition, and

19:17

because they reflect back on the presidency

19:19

sometimes as lost years, which is

19:21

interesting, that towards the end of

19:24

life, they become conscious of their own mortality,

19:26

and they accelerate their activities because they feel like

19:29

they have to make up for lost time. And

19:32

that brings us to your presidential outlier,

19:34

George W. Bush, who you

19:36

spend a lot of time with and who

19:40

is just a complete enigma to me.

19:42

When I think about the motive profiles, the

19:45

research I've read scores him low in

19:47

both achievement and power compared to

19:50

affiliation. And I guess that

19:52

sheds some light on his choices, but it's just

19:54

so hard for me to fathom going from the

19:57

enormous station of...

20:00

president and also the complicated legacy, the

20:02

guilt of an Iraq war that didn't

20:04

need to be fought to saying, I'm

20:07

just going to paint. I

20:09

can't imagine it. Can you help make sense of this? If

20:12

you look at the active post presidents,

20:15

Bush's popularity has gone up more than any

20:17

of them. And so among

20:19

the living ex presidents or

20:22

the active living ex presidents, he's

20:24

the outlier. It's also true that

20:26

he has probably done less to

20:28

proactively invest in his legacy than

20:31

any of the other active living presidents.

20:33

So I think we can all agree that

20:35

that's worthy of a study. A journey into

20:37

George W. Bush's brain is like a psychological

20:39

thriller into things that for most of us

20:42

are impossible to understand. Right. When I sat

20:44

down with him, the first thing that he

20:46

said, he said, look, when it, when it's

20:48

over, it's over. I

20:51

don't miss it. He lives his life in

20:53

chapters. Right. So once the political chapter was

20:55

over, he just completely moved

20:57

on. That's one aspect that I think

20:59

just makes him unique to the other

21:02

presidents. He's just able to do that. So

21:04

that's point one. Yeah, I would I would

21:06

maybe add low tolerance for ambiguity to that

21:08

puzzle. Very, very low tolerance for ambiguity. And

21:11

he didn't just sort of stop being an ambitious person. So

21:13

the question is, where does all of that go? So the

21:16

way Bush ends up painting is after he

21:18

raises money for the Bush Center and has

21:21

this nervous energy just by happenstance, he's

21:23

meeting with historian John Lewis Gaddis. And

21:26

Gaddis basically says to him, you seem kind

21:28

of bored. You should paint Churchill painted. And

21:30

the way Bush describes it is he got

21:32

sort of historically competitive that if Churchill could

21:34

paint, he could paint also. He

21:37

didn't embark on painting for any esoteric, deep reason.

21:39

It was just like, oh, I'll try this. And

21:41

the more he did it, the more he realized,

21:44

you know what, this is giving him an endless

21:46

learning experience. It's something that

21:48

he will never master. Through painting,

21:51

he can actually embrace a post

21:53

presidential voice around things

21:55

that he cares about and categories of people

21:57

that he cares about and push

21:59

an agenda. without undermining his successor.

22:02

And that's what it's become. It did not start that way. And

22:05

he has a very quarrelsome view about

22:07

legacy. I mean, he said over and

22:10

over again that this idea of spending

22:12

the present, investing in when you're dead,

22:15

it just doesn't make any sense to him, right? His

22:17

view is that they're still writing books about George Washington.

22:19

By the time they get to him, he's gonna be

22:21

long dead. And so he really

22:23

just has this adversarial view of spending any

22:25

time investing in legacy. And

22:28

yet he's conscious of, and sort of amused

22:30

by the fact that by basically

22:32

not doing that, the

22:34

joke's sort of on everybody else because his legacy seems to

22:36

be the one that's actually gone up. I

22:39

was gonna ask you, and you've shifted already my thinking

22:41

about the answer, about does

22:43

he not care about his legacy? But I

22:45

think what you're saying is he's not indifferent

22:48

to it. He just knows it's mostly out

22:50

of his control. I asked him

22:52

if he paints out of guilt. I said a lot

22:54

of people think you paint out of guilt. And there's

22:56

no evidence of deviation from the decisions that

22:58

he made other than that he acknowledges they

23:00

were controversial. And he just has this view

23:02

that decisions are made, and

23:05

it takes decades upon decades to

23:07

understand whether those decisions were

23:09

worth it. And he thinks that legacy is

23:11

something that gets written about in the history

23:14

books, and life is meant to be lived.

23:16

He's invested so much in

23:18

his faith and in his family. I mean, the one

23:21

thing that I'll say about him, a lot of

23:23

these presidents that I write about, they

23:25

leave the presidency with their family just

23:27

in complete tatters. He is

23:29

authentically close to his family, authentically close.

23:32

It's something that he did

23:34

before he was president, invested in when he was

23:36

president, and as soon as he had more

23:38

time at his disposal, he made sure

23:40

that he doubled down on that. And

23:42

I think that that's also a pretty

23:45

important set of things that

23:47

kind of keep him grounded, because his view

23:49

is like the history books will write about

23:51

me as president, but when I'm kind of

23:53

old and frail, it's a question

23:55

of like, do my daughters love me? Does my

23:58

family love me? Do they wanna be around? me,

24:00

the ambition that takes one to be governor

24:03

and president not once but twice doesn't

24:05

lend itself towards somebody who can live in

24:08

the present. And yet he's like totally at peace.

24:11

And he doesn't think about the future.

24:13

He doesn't think about the past. And

24:15

this is bothersome to people who want

24:17

him to kind of have a reckoning

24:19

about his legacy and, you

24:21

know, decisions that they disagree with.

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25:05

I want to do the lightning round through

25:07

the lens of your presidential history obsessions. Most

25:10

overrated president. John F. Kennedy.

25:13

Worst advice a president has ever given. I

25:16

would say the worst advice

25:19

a president has ever given

25:21

is some combination of the

25:25

multiple slave owning civil

25:28

rights obstructing presidents that

25:30

through the platform of the

25:32

presidency have slowed social

25:35

and racial progress in this country. Best

25:38

advice a president has given. I

25:40

always love Theodore Roosevelt's advice to get in the

25:42

arena. Hard to argue with that one. What's

25:45

the presidential biography that most people haven't

25:47

read but should? Ooh, that's

25:49

a good one. There's a book called

25:51

Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard

25:54

that is like a

25:56

thriller into how James Garfield's

25:58

doctors in a attempt to try

26:00

to save him from a non-lethal wound ended up

26:03

killing the president. Wow. All

26:05

right. Putting it at the top

26:07

of my thriller list. What's something you've rethought

26:09

in your life from studying presidents? I

26:13

think that there's this assumption that we

26:15

all have that you

26:17

can wait until later

26:19

on in life to figure out

26:22

the last chapter. And I think what's

26:24

striking from each of these presidents is

26:26

the investments that make for a good

26:28

final chapter in life. They start at

26:30

the middle of life. The

26:32

people you have around you, the relationships,

26:34

the family, the hobbies,

26:37

the intellectual interests, the ability

26:39

to detach from the burdens

26:41

of the past. I

26:44

think what I've learned is if you defer

26:46

all of that until later, it's too much. And

26:48

what you really want towards the end of life

26:50

is to have something purposeful

26:52

that keeps you going, something that

26:54

you can keep learning, and people

26:56

around you who love you despite

26:59

any of the things that you've achieved in your

27:01

life. What's

27:04

the question you have for me? Out of

27:06

all of the seven presidents

27:09

and all the different paths that they've

27:11

taken from a

27:13

behavioral psychology perspective, what

27:16

surprises you most? I

27:18

think for me, the biggest surprise is that more of

27:20

them aren't like Jefferson. I really would have thought that

27:23

a successful post-presidency is about doing something

27:26

bigger and more

27:28

meaningful and lasting. I

27:31

guess I expected them to be

27:33

more grandiose. And the walking

27:35

out of the office, like you described it,

27:37

you're giving up some of your power but

27:39

you're also free of all kinds of constraints.

27:42

So you have enormous status. You

27:44

have a world-class network. And

27:47

now you can pursue your vision. I guess

27:50

I'm surprised that not every one of them

27:52

sat down and said, okay, I'm going to

27:54

build a great university and change the face

27:56

of education in America. And that

27:58

their ambitions were... were so much more

28:01

diffuse and kind of, I

28:04

don't know, I don't want to say pedestrian, but ordinary.

28:07

I guess I'm curious Jared, I think

28:10

you know more heads of state than

28:12

anyone in our generation on Earth. You're

28:15

in frequent communication with many presidents and prime

28:17

ministers around the world. It

28:20

seems to me so narcissistic to

28:22

even think that you could be capable of doing

28:24

a job that complex. What do you

28:26

make of them? It's a

28:29

very lonely job and it's a very isolating

28:31

job and the longer you are in a

28:33

role, the more isolated

28:35

you become, the lonelier you

28:37

become, trust becomes very difficult,

28:40

information flow changes. And

28:42

so I think when I'm struck by with a

28:44

lot of these leaders, I get to know them

28:46

in a very personal way. I spend

28:49

big chunks of my day joking around

28:52

with them and sending each other memes

28:54

and engaging them on a very informal

28:56

way. There's plenty of substantive engagement as

28:58

well. But when you break

29:01

down those barriers of formality, I'm

29:03

struck by how little space they have for

29:06

just regular friendship and

29:09

emotion and the value

29:11

that they feel when they can let

29:13

their guard down and when they know they can really trust

29:16

somebody. So things like trust

29:18

and informality and friendship become

29:20

really, really sought after, rarified

29:24

things and the walls and the barriers

29:26

only get higher as they accumulate more

29:29

power. And so what's interesting

29:31

is when they eventually leave office, and

29:33

I found this also with the presidents in my book,

29:36

they lose the power and they lose the platform, but

29:39

all those barriers are still up. And

29:41

the transition comes, they may be the

29:43

same person, but they're

29:46

psychologically discombobulated because the guardrails are

29:48

still up and the presidents who

29:50

were able to break that down

29:53

end up, I think, being the

29:55

happiest. I love the

29:57

point you made earlier about how sometimes

30:00

a mistake to rush into finding your purpose, that

30:03

actually sitting in a transition and allowing

30:06

your peripheral vision to kick in can

30:09

prevent you from diving headfirst into something that

30:12

might not end up being aligned with your

30:14

values or interests. Are there

30:16

any other life lessons that you've taken away from this

30:18

project that we should be aware of? Because now would

30:20

be the time to tell us. I

30:22

think whether you're a president of the United

30:24

States or a CEO, one

30:27

of the most important things to

30:29

do, and I would argue it's a

30:32

necessary step in order to be able

30:34

to have a successful life after power,

30:36

which is to unburden

30:38

yourself from what

30:41

your successor is doing. Whether it's your

30:43

chosen successor or a successor

30:45

you don't want, you're going to

30:48

have to watch them dismantle some portion of

30:50

your legacy. You can completely detach

30:53

from it and move on, and that clears a

30:55

lot of brush for you. You can say,

30:57

you know what, my

30:59

thing is going to be that whether

31:02

it's this successor or another successor, I'm

31:04

going to be completely unchecked. And that's

31:06

the Carter principle, and it worked for

31:08

him. The problem is most people

31:10

end up in this in between, which is a bad

31:12

place to be, where you

31:16

say that you want to move on, but

31:19

you can't resist the urge to

31:21

settle scores of the past and

31:23

press rewind and undermine your successor.

31:25

And by the way, whether

31:28

you do that in public or private doesn't

31:30

matter, because the interesting thing with a lot

31:32

of the presidents that I write about, their

31:34

biggest obstacle is their own head. They

31:37

mentally just have a hard time

31:40

getting past what's happening to things

31:42

that they created and what's happening

31:44

to their reputation and what's happening

31:46

to their legacy. And

31:48

so that limbo or that

31:50

hybrid of intellectually telling

31:52

yourself you've moved on but impulsively

31:55

not moving on is, I

31:57

believe, the greatest obstacle that prevents.

32:00

prevents people from making a proper

32:02

transition. It's obvious how

32:04

that applies to job transitions. I think anybody

32:06

who's going through a transition at work can

32:08

make a commitment to giving up

32:10

the reins and actually moving on and not

32:12

interfering with the person who's filled their shoes.

32:16

I also think this applies generationally in

32:18

families, that it would

32:20

be really nice if parents

32:22

stopped telling their kids how to parent, right? It's a version

32:24

of the same mistake. I remember saying to

32:27

my mom at some point, if you wanted me

32:29

to learn this lesson, you should have taught it to me when I was

32:31

growing up. Your window has passed. Now

32:34

it's my job to figure out how I want

32:36

to raise my kids. And I

32:38

wonder if you think this lesson applies to that

32:40

kind of transition too. Yeah,

32:43

absolutely. On the surface, it shouldn't

32:45

seem like learning about

32:47

and reading about the lives of seven presidents

32:49

and their search for meaning and purpose after

32:51

the White House could

32:53

be applied to something like the relationship

32:55

between a parent and a child

32:58

over how the next generation parents. And

33:00

I think it's an extraordinary story that something

33:03

so kind of other stratosphere would

33:05

have so many prescriptions for something

33:08

that in some respects seems so

33:10

relatively mundane when compared to

33:12

like things we read about in the history books.

33:14

And I think that's an amazing part of

33:17

behavioral psychology, which is look, at the end

33:19

of the day, you know this better than

33:21

anyone else, Adam. There's only so many different

33:23

types of human beings or archetypes of human

33:25

beings. And whether they're presidents or parents or

33:27

CEOs or middle managers, human

33:29

beings are complicated in only a certain

33:32

number of ways. And the prescriptions for

33:34

how they navigate their complicated brains and

33:36

their complicated lives, they kind of transcend

33:38

whether one is at the pinnacle of

33:41

power or whether one's power

33:43

is simply a matter of the fact that

33:45

this is my child, mom and dad, not

33:47

yours. So leave me alone. Well

33:50

put. Jared, as always, this has

33:52

been a lot of fun. I've learned a lot. Thank

33:54

you, Adam. I really enjoyed it. This

33:59

conversation. got me thinking about the arc of

34:01

success over the course of a lifetime. It's

34:04

good to plan your path up a mountain, but

34:07

it's also important to consider what you'll

34:09

do once you reach the summit and

34:11

who you want to become on the way back

34:13

down. Rethinking

34:20

is hosted by me, Adam Grant. This

34:22

show is part of the TED Audio Collective,

34:24

and this episode was produced and mixed by

34:27

Cosmic Standard. Our producers are Hannah

34:29

Kingsley Ma and Asia Simpson. Our

34:31

editor is Alejandro Salazar. Our fact checker

34:33

is Paul Durbin, original music by Hontdale

34:36

Stu and Alison Leighton Brown. Our

34:38

team includes Eliza Smith, Jacob

34:41

Winnick, Tamiah Adams, Michelle Quint,

34:43

Banban Chang, Julia Dickerson, and

34:45

Whitney Pennington-Rogers. I

34:51

collect locks of presidential hair, which I'm

34:53

no longer shy about because if you're

34:56

a lock of hair collector, you

34:58

need to kind of own it and lean into it.

35:00

Somebody can ask me what the weather is, and I

35:03

can say it's so interesting. That reminds me of when

35:05

John Quincy Adams, you know, was defeated for reelection and

35:07

ended up serving nine terms in the House of Representatives

35:09

as an ex-president. When my three

35:11

daughters and my wife tell me it's unhealthy,

35:13

that's sort of the vote of the majority,

35:16

and I deem my obsession unhealthy. That's fair

35:18

that once a week, our 10-year-old hears me

35:20

talking about something and says, Dad, stop nerd

35:22

talking. Do you ever

35:24

feel like your laptop just keeps going,

35:27

that you are completely drained?

35:29

I think a lot of us don't

35:31

realize how much pain we live in

35:33

because of our interactions with computing. NPR's

35:36

Body Electric, a special interactive

35:38

series investigating how to fix

35:41

the relationship between our tech

35:43

and our health. Listen

35:46

in the TED Radio Hour feed wherever you

35:48

get your podcasts. PRX.