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

4:02

once you are you were done leaving

4:04

the country whose whose choices surprised you

4:06

the most. So. The first thing

4:08

that I'll say adam is that look,

4:10

there's no more dramatic retirement or fire

4:13

and then leaving the Presidency of the

4:15

United States Him You go from having

4:17

more power than anybody else in the

4:19

world to living with a muzzle. On.

4:22

Your mouth and being constrained with a sense

4:24

that there's nothing left to to to achieve

4:27

so that that the question itself was very

4:29

interesting and as you mentioned all of us

4:31

at different stages of life for asking this

4:33

question of what's next. we ask it in

4:36

microwaves throughout the course of our life and

4:38

then we eventually get to this thing that

4:40

we call retirement which is really more of

4:43

a mirage and a transition I and a

4:45

milestone and that that net than anything else

4:47

and when I was struck by is very

4:49

few Presidents' of the United States after leaving

4:52

office. Had a good experience. In

4:54

quote the political afterlife for a

4:56

lot of them. They got stuck,

4:58

get bogged down in settling old

5:00

scores, and they were grumpy. Some

5:02

were alcoholics, one of them join

5:04

the Confederacy, one of them Via

5:06

was a Northerner who became a

5:09

Southern sympathizer during the Civil War.

5:11

But the combination of health, finances,

5:13

broken relationships, lack of purpose all

5:15

these things aggregate in the post

5:17

presidency to create conditions for a

5:19

pretty unpleasant life for a lot

5:21

of them. On so the question

5:23

is who's left standing as focus on

5:25

Thomas Jefferson and the founding of of

5:28

the University of Virginia, John Quincy Adams

5:30

who became the leader the Abolitionists in

5:32

the house of Representatives, Grover Cleveland to

5:34

mounted a successful come Back to the

5:36

Presidency William Howard Taft to finally got

5:38

his dream job of being Chief Justice

5:40

to the Supreme Court, Herbert Hoover who

5:42

was on a long pass to recover

5:44

a path to serving the world after

5:47

being broken by the Great Depression, Jimmy

5:49

Carter who found a way to create

5:51

a never ending presidency. As a former Presidents

5:53

and George W. Bush who found a way

5:55

to completely. Move. on p stood out

5:57

in the sense that his popularity has gone

5:59

and he's done less to invest in

6:02

it than any others. And that for me

6:04

was worthy of a study. But

6:06

what's interesting is there really were only seven that

6:08

I thought warranted 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

do represent seven different archetypes. And what

6:21

I find fascinating about that

6:23

is there's not a

6:25

perfect monolithic blueprint or playbook for

6:27

how when we are going through

6:29

transitions in our lives, whether it's

6:31

towards the end, in the

6:33

early stages of life, or the middle of life,

6:35

there's not a playbook or perfect blueprint

6:38

for how to do that right. I

6:40

think the one that I found most interesting in the

6:42

book was John Quincy Adams. What

6:44

was powerful for me about his story

6:46

was he had higher impact

6:48

from a lower seat. Talk to

6:50

me about what he did and what you took away from it.

6:53

Here's a man who began his career

6:55

appointed by George Washington to serve in

6:57

his administration. And then he dies

7:00

serving in the House of Representatives alongside

7:02

a freshman congressman from Illinois named Abraham

7:05

Lincoln. I mean, talk about a living

7:07

connection between the past and the future.

7:10

His presidency was the least eventful part

7:12

of his life. It was basically an

7:14

intermission between two of the greatest acts

7:16

in American history. The first act of

7:18

his life was a series of steps

7:20

and jobs that led him on the

7:22

path to be president. And that was

7:25

largely architected for him by his famous

7:27

parents, John and Abigail Adams. But his

7:29

presidency is a political stillborn and

7:31

cries of corrupt bargain basically

7:33

make it impossible for him to achieve

7:36

anything as president. And so then much

7:38

like his father, he's defeated for reelection

7:40

in 1828. And

7:42

he's completely distraught. I mean, I got really,

7:44

really deep into reading his diaries. And I

7:47

would say I sort of appropriated some of

7:49

his melancholy in the process. I mean, it's

7:51

hard to imagine a more self-loathing, self-pitying,

7:55

miserable human being than John

7:57

Quincy Adams after he's defeated.

8:00

Okay, you actually just explained why this is an

8:02

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 got in the way of what they wanted

14:02

to do. And the architecture

14:04

of the presidency ended up

14:07

hindering the areas where they

14:09

were most passionate, right? Jefferson his entire life

14:12

was very clear about what he wanted to

14:14

do. All he wanted to do was create

14:16

the very first arts and

14:18

sciences university, but he had

14:20

this founder's obligation where he had to keep coming

14:22

back and serving. He had to be vice president.

14:24

He had to be secretary of state. Then he

14:26

had to be president twice. And all that did

14:28

was cut years off his life and

14:31

delay what he actually wanted to do, which

14:33

was found a university. Herbert

14:35

Hoover, before he became president, was

14:37

one of the most revered men

14:40

in not just the United States, but the

14:42

world. He was the man who fed the

14:44

world after World War I. He was the

14:46

hero of the recovery after the Mississippi floods.

14:48

He was an orphan who rose to be

14:50

a self-made millionaire. He's a man who lived

14:52

90 years, and he's defined by three and

14:54

a half of the Great Depression.

14:58

I think his view is, one, democracy is

15:00

a harsh employer, something that he had said. But

15:02

I think that he would have been a

15:04

very happy man had he never had to be

15:06

president, because he would have been the great

15:08

humanitarian for his whole life. And

15:10

so at least for the

15:12

seven presidents, or six of the seven

15:14

that I focus on, I think what's

15:16

fascinating is once they move to life

15:19

after power, once they leave the presidency

15:21

behind, there's a period of time where

15:23

they work to kind of

15:25

rediscover who they were before

15:28

they were president. They almost have to

15:30

exercise out of them all of the

15:32

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 in

15:40

death tray. And it looked a little bit

15:43

different, and it evolved from the time from

15:45

before they were president. It's kind of a

15:47

tale of two types of power, the power

15:49

of the office, which is intoxicating for some,

15:51

but the power of purpose, which

15:54

I think defined a lot of these men that I write

15:56

about. It also makes

15:58

me think about the a classic triad

16:00

of implicit motives that David McClellan put

16:02

on the map in psychology. The idea

16:05

that some people are driven by achievement,

16:07

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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Thank you, Zbiotics, for sponsoring this episode

26:05

and our good times. I

26:10

want to do the lightning round through the

26:12

lens of your presidential history obsessions. Most

26:15

overrated president. John F. Kennedy.

26:18

Worst advice a president has ever given. I

26:21

would say the worst advice

26:23

a president has ever given is some

26:25

combination of the multiple

26:30

slave owning, civil

26:32

rights obstructing presidents

26:34

that through the platform

26:37

of the presidency have slowed social

26:39

and racial progress in this country. Best

26:42

advice a president has given. I

26:44

always love Theodore Roosevelt's advice to get in the

26:46

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

26:49

the presidential biography that most people

26:51

haven't read but should? Ooh, that's

26:53

a good one. There's a book

26:55

called Destiny of the Republic by

26:58

Candice Millard that is

27:00

like a thriller into how James

27:02

Garfield's doctors in an attempt to try

27:04

to save him from a non-lethal wound

27:06

ended up killing the president. Wow.

27:09

All right. Putting it at the top of my thriller list.

27:12

What's something you've rethought in your life

27:15

from studying presidents? I

27:17

think that there's this assumption that we

27:19

all have that you

27:22

can wait until later

27:24

on in life to figure out

27:26

the last chapter. I think what's striking

27:28

from each of these presidents is the

27:31

investments that make for a good final

27:33

chapter in life, they start at the

27:35

middle of life. The people

27:37

you have around you, the relationships, the family,

27:39

the hobbies, the intellectual

27:42

interests, the ability to detach from

27:44

the burdens of the past.

27:48

I think what I've learned is if you defer all

27:50

of that until later, it's too

27:52

much. What you really want towards the end of

27:54

life is to have something

27:56

purposeful that keeps you going, something

27:58

that you can ... keep learning and

28:01

people around you who love

28:03

you despite any of the things that you've achieved

28:05

in your life. What's

28:08

the question you have for me? Out

28:10

of all of the seven presidents

28:12

and all the

28:14

different paths that they've taken from

28:17

a behavioral psychology perspective,

28:20

what surprises you most? I

28:23

think for me the biggest surprise is that more of

28:25

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

28:28

a successful post-presidency is about doing something

28:30

bigger and more

28:32

meaningful and lasting. I guess

28:35

I expected them to be more grandiose and the

28:38

sort of walking out of the office

28:40

like you described it. You're giving

28:42

up some of your power, but you're also

28:44

free of all kinds of constraints. So

28:47

you have enormous status, you

28:49

have a world-class network, and

28:52

now you can pursue your vision. I guess

28:54

I'm surprised that not every one of them

28:56

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

28:58

build a great university and change the face

29:00

of education in America. Their ambitions were so

29:02

much more diffused

29:06

and kind of, I

29:08

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

29:13

I guess I'm curious Jared. I think you

29:15

know more heads of state than anyone in

29:17

our generation on Earth. You're

29:19

in frequent communication with many presidents and prime

29:21

ministers around the world. It

29:24

seems to me so narcissistic to

29:27

even think that you could be capable of doing

29:29

a job that complex. What do

29:31

you make of them? It's a

29:33

very lonely job and it's a very isolating

29:35

job and the longer you are in a

29:37

role, the more

29:39

isolated you become, the lonelier

29:41

you become. Trust becomes very

29:43

difficult. Information flow

29:46

changes. And so I think when

29:48

I'm struck by with a lot of these leaders, I get

29:50

to know them in a very personal way.

29:53

I spend big chunks of my

29:55

day joking around with them and sending

29:57

each other memes and engaging them

29:59

on a very very informal way, there's

30:01

plenty of substantive engagement as well.

30:04

But when you break down those

30:06

barriers of formality, I'm struck by

30:08

how little space they have for

30:11

just regular friendship and

30:13

emotion and the value

30:15

that they feel when they can let their

30:17

guard down and when they know they can

30:19

really trust somebody, right? So

30:22

things like trust and informality and

30:24

friendship become really, really sought after,

30:26

rarified things

30:29

and the walls and the barriers only

30:31

get higher as they accumulate more power.

30:34

And so what's interesting is when they

30:36

eventually leave office, and I found

30:38

this also with the presidents in my book, they

30:41

lose the power and they lose the platform, but

30:43

all those barriers are still up. And

30:46

the transition comes, they may be the

30:48

same person, but they're

30:50

psychologically discombobulated because the guardrails are

30:52

still up. And the presidents who

30:54

were able to break that down

30:56

end up, I think, being the

30:59

happiest. I love the

31:01

point you made earlier about how sometimes

31:04

it's a mistake to rush into finding your purpose,

31:07

that actually sitting in a transition

31:09

and sort of allowing

31:11

your peripheral vision to kick in can

31:14

prevent you from diving headfirst into something that

31:16

might not end up being aligned with your

31:18

values or interests. Are there

31:20

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

31:22

project that we should be aware of? Because

31:24

now would be the time to tell us. I

31:27

think whether you're a president of the United

31:29

States or a CEO, one

31:31

of the most important things to

31:34

do, and I would argue it's a

31:36

necessary step in order to be able

31:38

to have a successful life after power,

31:40

which is to unburden

31:43

yourself from what

31:46

your successor is doing. Whether it's

31:48

your chosen successor or successor

31:50

you don't want, you're going to

31:52

have to watch them dismantle some portion of

31:55

your legacy. You can completely detach

31:57

from it and move on. Here's

32:00

a lot of brush for you. You can say, you know what?

32:03

My thing is going to be that whether

32:06

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

32:08

going to be completely unchecked. And

32:10

that's the Carter principle, and it worked for

32:12

him. The problem is most people

32:15

end up in this in between, which is a bad

32:17

place to be, where you

32:20

say that you want to move on, but

32:23

you can't resist the urge to

32:25

settle scores of the past and

32:27

press rewind and undermine your successor.

32:29

And by the way, whether

32:32

you do that in public or private doesn't

32:34

matter, because the interesting thing with a lot

32:36

of the presidents that I write about, their

32:39

biggest obstacle is their own head, right?

32:42

They mentally just have a hard

32:44

time getting past what's happening to

32:46

things that they created and what's

32:48

happening to their reputation and what's

32:50

happening to their legacy.

32:52

And so that limbo or

32:54

that hybrid of intellectually

32:56

telling yourself you've moved on but

32:59

impulsively not moving on is,

33:01

I believe, the greatest obstacle that

33:04

prevents people from making a

33:06

proper transition. It's

33:08

obvious how that applies to job transitions. I

33:10

think anybody who's going through a transition at

33:13

work can make a commitment to giving up

33:15

the reins and actually moving on and not

33:17

interfering with the person who's filled their shoes.

33:20

I also think this applies generationally in

33:22

families, that it would

33:24

be really nice if parents stopped telling

33:26

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

33:28

version of the same mistake. I

33:30

remember saying to my mom at some point, if

33:33

you wanted me to learn this lesson, you should have taught it to

33:35

me when I was growing up. Your window

33:37

has passed. Now it's my job

33:39

to figure out how I want to raise my kids.

33:41

And I wonder if you think this

33:44

lesson applies to that kind of transition

33:46

too. Yeah, absolutely. On

33:48

the surface, it shouldn't seem like

33:51

learning about and reading about the lives of

33:53

seven presidents and their search for meaning and

33:55

purpose after the White House could

33:58

be applied to something like the... relationship

34:00

between a parent and a child

34:02

over how the next generation parents and

34:05

I think it's an extraordinary story that something

34:08

so kind of other stratosphere would have

34:10

so many prescriptions for something that in

34:12

some respects seems so relatively

34:14

mundane When compared to

34:16

like things we read about in the history books

34:19

and I think that's an amazing part of

34:21

behavioral psychology Which is look at the end

34:23

of the day, you know this better than

34:26

anyone else Adam There's only so many different

34:28

types of human beings or archetypes of human

34:30

beings and whether they're presidents or parents or

34:32

CEOs or Middle managers human beings are complicated

34:35

in only a certain number of ways and

34:37

the prescriptions for how they navigate Their

34:40

complicated brains and their complicated lives They

34:43

kind of transcend whether one is at the

34:45

pinnacle of power or whether one's

34:47

power is simply a matter of The

34:49

fact that this is my child mom and dad

34:51

not yours. So leave me alone well

34:54

put Jared as always this has

34:56

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

34:58

you Adam. I really enjoyed it This

35:03

conversation got me thinking about the arc of

35:05

success over the course of a lifetime It's

35:08

good to plan your path up a mountain But

35:11

it's also important to consider what you'll

35:13

do once you reach the summit and

35:16

who you want to become on the way back

35:18

down I Rethinking

35:24

is hosted by me Adam Grant This

35:27

show is part of the TED audio collective

35:29

in this episode was produced and mixed by

35:31

cosmic standard Our producers are

35:33

Hannah Kingsley Ma and Asia Simpson. Our

35:35

editor is Alejandro Salazar Our fact-checker is

35:38

Paul Durbin original music by Hahn feel

35:40

sue and Allison Layton Brown Our

35:43

team includes Eliza Smith Jacob Winnick

35:45

Tamiah Adams Michelle Quint Bamban Chang

35:48

Julia Dickerson and Whitney Pennington Rogers.

35:50

I Collect

35:56

locks of presidential hair which I'm

35:58

no longer shy about because if

36:00

you're a lock of hair collector, you

36:02

need to kind of own it and lean into

36:04

it. Somebody can ask me what the weather is,

36:06

and I could say it's so interesting. That reminds me

36:08

of when John Quincy Adams, you know, was defeated

36:10

for reelection and ended up serving nine terms in

36:12

the House of Representatives as an ex-president. When

36:15

my three daughters and my wife tell me

36:17

it's unhealthy, that's sort of the

36:19

vote of the majority, and I deem my obsession

36:21

unhealthy. That's fair. About once a week, our

36:23

10-year-old hears me talking about something and says, Dad,

36:26

stop nerd talking.