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Hey listeners, Ann and Francis here.

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We want to share with you a podcast

2:19

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2:21

with Adam Grant. Adam is an

2:23

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2:26

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2:28

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2:30

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2:32

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2:34

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2:36

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2:38

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2:40

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2:42

presidents and their perceptions of

2:44

meaning, purpose, and legacy. Jared

2:47

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2:49

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2:52

we think this conversation has a lot

2:54

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2:56

enjoy this episode, you can find more

2:58

episodes of Rethinking with Adam Grant wherever

3:00

you get your podcasts. Now,

3:02

on to the show. Hey

3:05

everyone, it's

3:07

Adam Grant. Welcome back to Rethinking, my

3:09

podcast on the science of what makes

3:11

us tick with the TED Audio Collective. I'm

3:14

an organizational psychologist and I'm taking

3:16

you inside the minds of fascinating people

3:18

to explore new thoughts and new

3:20

ways of thinking. My

3:24

guest today is Jared Cohen. He

3:26

was a Rhodes Scholar and has been

3:28

named one of Time's 100 Most Influential People.

3:31

He worked in the State Department under

3:33

both Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton, then

3:35

fought extremism as founder and CEO

3:37

Jigsaw at Google. Today,

3:40

he leads global affairs and innovation

3:42

at Goldman Sachs. In his spare

3:44

time, Jared is a history buff, and

3:46

his new book, Life After Power,

3:48

is a riveting look at who seven

3:50

American presidents became after they left

3:52

the Oval Office. It's brimming

3:54

with insights for anyone who's ever wondered,

3:57

what's next? Hey,

4:05

Jared Cohen. Hello, Adam Grant. I

4:08

want to talk to you about a lot

4:10

of things, but I have to start at

4:12

when did you become obsessed with American presidents?

4:14

Because you've been into them as long as

4:16

I've known you, and I know a lot

4:18

longer than that. So look,

4:20

my career has spanned

4:22

foreign policy, technology, and

4:24

now finance. And the only

4:26

thing that's consistent in my life

4:29

is an unhealthy obsession with the US

4:31

presidency. I suppose it started when

4:33

I was eight years old. My parents

4:35

bought me this children's book called The Buck

4:37

Stops Here. And it had rhymes that

4:39

went with each president. So I remember, you

4:41

know, Ten and Seven, Johnson A. They

4:43

almost took his job away. And it was

4:45

kind of very catchy for a precocious

4:47

young kid. And presidents, you know, when I

4:49

was growing up, they were the most

4:51

famous people in the world. My early memories

4:53

are, you know, George H .W. Bush. going

4:55

on TV, announcing the war, and Panama, Desert

4:58

Storm. And so for me, these were

5:00

the most visible figures that I remember. And

5:02

I just developed an obsession with it.

5:04

One of the big interests that I had

5:06

was what happens when presidents die in

5:08

office and these abrupt transfers of power and

5:10

how they change the course of history.

5:13

And my last book, Accidental Presidents, kind of

5:15

captured that. And when that

5:17

book was done, I asked myself the

5:19

question, what else am I interested in?

5:21

And I got really consumed by this

5:23

question of, okay, I focused on what

5:25

happens when presidents die in office, but

5:27

what happens when they survive the office

5:29

and they come down from the stratosphere

5:31

and there's years and sometimes decades that

5:33

they still have to live and exist

5:35

in a world where they're constrained and

5:37

in a much lower station. It's

5:39

such a fascinating topic, I think not just

5:41

for heads of state, but for all of

5:43

us, because there comes a point in our

5:45

career and our lives when we decide we're

5:48

going to step back from our positions of

5:50

greatest influence. And the question is, now

5:52

what? And I want to talk about what you

5:54

learned about the now what. But before we do

5:56

that, I'm struck by the fact that you said

5:58

unhealthy obsession. How have

6:00

you suffered from being interested in

6:02

presidents? I would describe

6:04

the unhealthy part. of my interest

6:07

in presidents as manifesting itself

6:09

in strange ways. Somebody can

6:11

ask me about anything and I

6:13

can take it on a tangent into

6:15

some seriously obscure geeky presidential history

6:17

that people may or may not be

6:19

interested in. I collect presidential oddities

6:21

as well. I like owning these pieces

6:24

of history. that make you

6:26

feel like you exist in the

6:28

past. So I have the vial

6:30

of poison that Charles Gato's sister

6:32

sent to him when he was

6:34

in prison after he murdered President

6:36

Garfield. You know,

6:38

I have the one of the few surviving

6:40

champagne glasses from the John Adams White

6:42

House. You know, it's these artifacts or these

6:44

things owned by presidents or that touch

6:46

different parts of presidential history. You picked a

6:48

series of presidents. You obviously weren't going

6:50

to write a book about all of them.

6:52

But I think one of the things

6:54

you did was you chose presidents who were

6:56

archetypes for different choices that you can

6:58

make about what to do once you were

7:00

done leading the country. Whose

7:02

choice has surprised you the most? So

7:04

the first thing that I'll say

7:07

Adam is that look there's no more

7:09

dramatic retirement or firing than leaving

7:11

the presidency of the United States I

7:13

mean you go from having more

7:15

power than anybody else in the world

7:17

to living with a muzzle on

7:20

your mouth and being constrained with

7:22

a sense that there's nothing left to

7:24

achieve. So the question itself was

7:26

very interesting. And as you mentioned, all

7:28

of us at different stages of

7:30

life are asking this question of what's

7:33

next. We ask it in micro

7:35

ways throughout the course of our life.

7:37

And then we eventually get to

7:39

this thing that we call retirement, which

7:41

is really more of a mirage

7:43

and a transition and a milestone than

7:45

anything else. And what I was

7:47

struck by is very few presidents of

7:50

the United States after leaving office

7:52

had a good experience in quote the

7:54

political afterlife for a lot of

7:56

them they got stuck and bogged down

7:58

in settling old scores and they

8:00

were grumpy somewhere alcoholics one of them

8:02

joined the Confederacy one of them,

8:05

you know was a northerner who became

8:07

a southern sympathizer during the civil

8:09

war But the combination of health finances

8:11

broken relationships lack of purpose all

8:13

these things aggregate in the post presidency

8:15

to create conditions for a pretty

8:17

unpleasant life for a lot of them.

8:20

So the question is, who's left standing? I

8:23

focus on Thomas Jefferson and the founding

8:25

of the University of Virginia, John Quincy

8:27

Adams, who became the leader of the

8:29

abolitionists in the House of Representatives, Grover

8:31

Cleveland, who mounted a successful comeback to

8:34

the presidency, William Howard Taft,

8:36

who finally got his dream job of

8:38

being Chief Justice of the Supreme Court,

8:40

Herbert Hoover, who was on a long

8:42

path to recover a path to serving

8:44

the world after being broken by the

8:46

Great Depression, Jimmy Carter, who found

8:48

a way to create a never -ending presidency

8:50

as a former president, and George W. Bush,

8:52

who found a way to completely move on.

8:54

He stood out in the sense that his

8:56

popularity has gone up, and he's done less

8:58

to invest in it than any others.

9:00

And that, for me, was worthy of a

9:03

study. But what's interesting is there

9:05

really were only seven that I thought

9:07

warranted a deeper look. And

9:09

they had some things in common,

9:11

but each of them pursued life

9:13

after power in a very different

9:15

way. And they do represent seven

9:17

different archetypes. And what I find...

9:19

Fascinating about that is there's not

9:21

a perfect monolithic blueprint or playbook

9:23

for how when we are going

9:25

through transitions in our lives, whether

9:27

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9:29

early stages of life or the

9:31

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9:33

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9:35

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think the one that I found most interesting in

11:57

the book was John Quincy Adams. What

11:59

was for me about his

12:01

story was he had higher impact

12:03

from a lower seat. Talk

12:05

to me about what he did and what you took away

12:08

from it. serving

12:16

in the House of Representatives alongside

12:18

a freshman congressman from Illinois named Abraham

12:20

Lincoln. I mean, talk about a

12:22

living connection between the past and the

12:24

future. His presidency was the least

12:26

eventful part of his life. It was

12:29

basically an intermission between two of

12:31

the greatest acts in American history. The

12:33

first act of his life was

12:35

a series of steps and jobs that

12:37

led him on the path to

12:39

be president. And that was largely architected

12:42

for him by his famous parents,

12:44

John and Abigail Adams. But his presidency

12:46

is a political stillborn and cries

12:48

of corrupt bargain, you know, basically make

12:50

it impossible for him to achieve

12:52

anything as president. And so then much

12:54

like his father, he's defeated. for

12:57

reelection in 1828, and he's completely distraught.

12:59

I mean, I got really, really

13:01

deep into reading his diaries, and I

13:03

would say I sort of appropriated

13:05

some of his melancholy in the process.

13:07

I mean, it's hard to imagine

13:10

a more self -loathing, self -pitying, miserable human

13:12

being than John Quincy Adams after

13:14

he's defeated. Okay, you actually just explained

13:16

why this is an unhealthy obsession,

13:18

because you went into the depths of

13:20

somebody else's despair. his writings and

13:23

his diary, they describe a

13:25

man just completely destroyed. And

13:27

so he goes back home to Quincy, Massachusetts,

13:30

and he annoys his wife. He's annoying

13:32

his kids. He's annoying his friends. He's

13:34

spending all of his time fighting with

13:36

people who wronged him at every stage

13:38

of his life. And finally, everybody

13:40

sort of gravitates around this idea that,

13:42

like, just get back into service so

13:44

you stop. Annoying the rest of us

13:46

and the only thing that John Quincy

13:48

Adams knew was a life of service

13:51

and he'd already been secretary of state

13:53

He'd been president. He served in the

13:55

US Senate. He'd been an ambassador to

13:57

multiple countries and the

13:59

only thing left was like the lowest

14:01

station of all which is a

14:03

mere Representative in the House of Representatives

14:05

and he basically agrees to run

14:07

He's elected and he ends up as

14:09

this sort of ex -presidential novelty and

14:11

sort of a joke in the

14:13

lowest station He's ever had in his

14:15

career for his first year and

14:18

a half He does what a

14:20

member of the House does in the late 1820s,

14:22

early 1830s, which is you get petitions and

14:24

you read them. And what happens

14:26

is some of these petitions are petitions

14:28

to abolish the slave trade in

14:30

DC, petitions to emancipate the slaves, and

14:32

then the reaction from the slaveocracy

14:34

in the House of Representatives really astonishes

14:36

him. And he realizes, wait a

14:38

minute, they don't want me to read

14:40

these petitions. That's an abomination to

14:42

the right to petition. So then he

14:44

starts reading more of them. And

14:46

as he reads more of them, the

14:48

slaveocracy gets increasingly agitated and they

14:50

end up gagging him. And

14:52

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

14:54

then the right to speech is curbed. And,

14:57

you know, it all sort of

14:59

culminates when he fights to rescind

15:01

the gag order and defends the

15:03

Amistad slaves before the Supreme Court.

15:05

And what he realizes is that

15:07

without searching for it, the cause

15:09

of abolition found him and in

15:11

a much lower station he found

15:13

a much greater calling and he

15:15

stumbled into this mission that

15:17

frankly he had never championed at any

15:20

other stage in his life and he

15:22

gets elected to nine terms in the

15:24

House of Representatives and before John

15:26

Quincy Adams the abolitionist cause was viewed

15:28

largely as a fringe movement or a

15:30

radical movement and we know that Abraham

15:32

Lincoln was inspired by what he

15:34

saw from John Quincy Adams and that

15:36

the intellectual architecture around the need for

15:38

a constitutional amendment to get to emancipation

15:40

inspired that young congressman who would

15:42

go on to become one of the

15:45

great presidents of the United States. That's

15:47

an extreme example of

15:49

not just bouncing back, but

15:51

bouncing forward to go

15:53

from complete despair, an unsuccessful

15:55

presidency to helping to

15:57

plant the seeds of the

15:59

emancipation proclamation. Pretty extraordinary.

16:02

His story tells you that if you're

16:04

patient and you just kind of

16:06

let things play out, you may actually

16:08

find the greatest cause of your

16:11

life. I wouldn't describe him as an

16:13

open -minded, person. I would describe him

16:15

as an impatient person. He

16:17

was meandering at the right moment,

16:19

but had he leaned into some

16:21

sort of deliberate cause, he may

16:23

never have become the champion for

16:25

the abolitionist movement that changed the

16:27

course of history. It's

16:29

a strong case for patients. It

16:31

also makes me think about

16:34

something that developmental psychologists have been

16:36

interested in ever since Eric

16:38

Erickson first coined the distinction between

16:40

generativity and stagnation. The

16:42

question that I think all of us face

16:44

around, am I going to

16:46

contribute to the next generation? Or

16:48

am I going to basically let

16:50

my knowledge kind of ossify and

16:52

not share it with others? And

16:55

it seems to me that in

16:57

some ways John Quincy Adams confronted the

16:59

the tension between happiness and meaning.

17:01

He could have done lots of things

17:03

that were personally pleasurable and enjoyable, but

17:06

a little bit devoid of purpose. And

17:08

through seeking something that was more meaningful,

17:11

he found what might have

17:13

been a little bit less

17:15

fun work, but ultimately more

17:17

enjoyable contributions to make. I

17:20

think that's right. And there's something

17:22

else about John Quincy Adams that's worth

17:24

calling out. And this won't be

17:26

relatable to everybody, but he had a

17:28

fighting spirit. He loved fighting with

17:30

people and quarreling with people and intellectually

17:32

outfoxing people. And, you know, he

17:34

shows up in the House of Representatives

17:36

and he just thinks these members

17:38

are just the epitome of mediocrity. His

17:41

success in the House was

17:43

a combination of being motivated

17:45

by this cause, but it

17:47

was gradual. What keeps him

17:49

going is just the day

17:51

-to -day play -by -play of winning.

17:54

And... outsmarting and

17:56

it's what drives him. At the end

17:58

of the day, he's a political and

18:00

an intellectual animal. There's so many sayings

18:02

about how power affects people, right? So

18:04

we think about Lord Act and power

18:07

corrupts. I found that to be oversimplified,

18:09

and I feel like a lot of

18:11

the research in psychology says, actually, power

18:13

doesn't corrupt so much as reveal. It

18:15

amplifies the values and traits that

18:17

you might have hidden when you were

18:19

on your way up the ladder,

18:21

but once you've gained enough influence and

18:23

status and authority, you feel

18:25

like now you can kind of show your

18:28

true colors without major risk. I'm interested

18:30

in how these dynamics play out when people

18:32

lose power. So I guess

18:34

the question for you, Jared, is, does

18:36

losing power uncorrupt people? Or

18:38

does it also have a way of

18:40

revealing or concealing who they really

18:42

are? If I reflect on

18:44

the seven presidents that I write

18:47

about, the only one that I

18:49

think really enjoyed being president and

18:51

reveled in the power of the

18:53

office was Jimmy Carter. And

18:56

I think therefore it's fitting that

18:58

what Jimmy Carter did that's different

19:00

from any of the others is

19:02

he was the first one to

19:04

really build infrastructure around being a

19:06

former president. He basically built a

19:08

former presidential administration. But

19:10

I think for the rest of

19:12

them, the power of the presidency

19:14

in a lot of respects, it

19:17

actually got in the way of

19:19

what they wanted to do. And

19:21

the architecture of the presidency ended

19:23

up hindering the areas where they

19:25

were most passionate, right? Jefferson,

19:27

his entire life, was very clear about what

19:29

he wanted to do. All he wanted to

19:31

do was create the very first arts and

19:33

sciences university, but he had this founder's obligation

19:35

where he had to keep coming back and

19:38

serving. He had to be vice president. He

19:40

had to be secretary of state. Then he

19:42

had to be president twice. And all that

19:44

did was cut years off his life and

19:46

delay what he actually wanted to do, which

19:48

was found a university. Herbert Hoover,

19:50

before he became president, was one of

19:52

the most revered man in not just

19:54

the United States, but the world. He

19:56

was the man who fed the world

19:58

after World War I. He was the

20:00

hero of the recovery after the Mississippi

20:02

floods. He was an orphan who rose

20:05

to be a self -made millionaire. He's

20:07

a man who lived 90 years and

20:09

he's defined by three and a half

20:11

of the Great Depression. I

20:13

think his view is one, democracy's

20:15

a harsh employer, something that he had

20:17

said, but I think that he

20:19

would have been a very happy man

20:21

had he never had to be.

20:23

President because he would have been the

20:25

great humanitarian for his whole life

20:27

and so at least for the seven

20:29

presidents or six of the seven

20:31

that I focus on I think what's

20:33

fascinating is once they move to

20:35

life after power once they leave the

20:37

presidency behind There's a period of

20:39

time where they work to kind of

20:41

rediscover who they were Before they

20:43

were president. They almost have to exercise

20:45

out of them all of the

20:47

sort of poison of the

20:49

office and the politics and the

20:51

baggage of the presidency. And

20:53

each of them got to that pretty quickly

20:55

and rediscovered their race and detre and it

20:57

looked a little bit different and it evolved

21:00

from the time from before they were president.

21:02

It's kind of a tale of two types

21:04

of power. The power of the office, which

21:06

is intoxicating for some, but the power of

21:08

purpose, which I think defined a lot of

21:10

these men that I write about. It

21:12

also makes me think about the

21:14

classic triad of implicit motives that

21:16

David McClellan put on the map

21:18

in psychology. The idea that

21:21

some people are driven by achievement, they

21:23

want to succeed. Others are primarily

21:25

guided by a desire for power. They

21:27

want to have influence and control, and then

21:29

some are drawn to affiliation. They want

21:31

to connect and belong. As I hear you

21:33

talk about the six that were not

21:35

that happy as presidents, they sound

21:37

like they follow the arc that David

21:39

Winter has captured in some of his

21:41

research, where it's almost misplaced ambition. You're

21:44

an achievement -motivated person, and the highest

21:46

form of success is to become

21:48

president. But then the process of having

21:50

to campaign and also to govern

21:52

is not about achievement. It's about power.

21:55

And if you're not somebody whose power

21:57

motivated, it's extremely frustrating to be blocked

21:59

from achieving your goals, to be

22:01

constantly having to wheel and deal.

22:03

The amount of schmoozing that's required

22:05

is really counterproductive and annoying for

22:08

an achievement motivated person. And then

22:10

you leave the office and you

22:12

have to recalibrate. You're freed from

22:14

having to accumulate and exercise power.

22:17

but your achievement seemed really small or

22:19

what you're capable of achieving seems really

22:21

small. And so then trying to figure

22:23

out how do you express that motivation?

22:25

It's a bit of an adjustment at

22:27

some level. What do you make of all that? With

22:30

each of the presidents that

22:32

I write about, each of them

22:34

either enters the post presidency

22:36

or discover something in the post

22:38

presidency that they become dogmatic

22:40

about in terms of some kind

22:42

of cause or motivation. And

22:45

whether they realize it at the beginning

22:47

of their post presidency or later in

22:49

their post presidency, they come

22:51

to discover that unshackled from

22:53

the office and all the politics

22:55

and constraints, they're better positioned

22:57

to do something about it than

22:59

they were in office. Look,

23:02

even Jimmy Carter, who loved

23:04

the presidency more than anything, over

23:06

time, he came to appreciate the

23:08

fact that, wait a minute, what I care

23:10

about is human rights. free and fair elections,

23:13

curing disease, and the

23:15

post -presidency and being a former

23:17

president that's willing to criticize my

23:19

Democratic and Republican successors. means

23:21

that I can basically do all the things

23:23

with the presidency that I loved and

23:25

I don't have to deal with any of

23:27

the garbage that bogged me down. We

23:29

all know people, they got offered the dream

23:31

job that they wanted and the timing

23:33

wasn't right. Maybe they had a challenge with

23:36

one of their kids or they didn't

23:38

want to move somewhere and they had to

23:40

turn down something that they really lusted

23:42

after. That was William Howard Taft except it's

23:44

because he chose to basically be subservient

23:46

to his wife and his three brothers and

23:48

his mentor Theodore Roosevelt and he basically

23:50

turned down the court multiple times because everybody

23:52

else wanted him to be president. But

23:54

he never lost this sort of desire or

23:56

this sense of purpose to one day

23:58

serve on the court. And

24:00

William Howard Taft, his final 10 years

24:02

of life were the happiest years of

24:04

his life because he served as Chief

24:06

Justice. of the Supreme Court. Each

24:08

of these presidents, what's fascinating

24:10

is as they get older, as their legs

24:13

give out, as their health fails, as

24:15

all their friends start dying, they actually accelerate

24:17

their activities. Herbert Hoover was the most

24:19

busy from the ages of 80 to 90.

24:21

William Howard Taft was most busy in

24:23

his last, you know, 10 years. And

24:25

I have a theory on this

24:27

that because those first years out of

24:30

office are such a challenging transition

24:32

and because they reflect back on the

24:34

presidency sometimes as lost years, which

24:36

is interesting, that towards the end of

24:38

life, they become conscious of their

24:40

own mortality and they accelerate their activities

24:42

because they feel like they have

24:44

to make up for lost time. And

24:47

that brings us to your

24:49

presidential outlier, George W. Bush, who

24:51

you spent a lot of time

24:53

with and who is just a

24:56

complete enigma to me. When

24:58

I think about the motive profiles, the

25:00

research I've read scores him

25:02

low in both achievement and power

25:04

compared to affiliation. And

25:06

I guess that sheds some light

25:08

on his choices, but it's just

25:10

so hard for me to fathom

25:13

going from the enormous station of

25:15

president and also the complicated legacy,

25:17

the guilt of an Iraq war

25:19

that didn't need to be fought

25:21

to saying, I'm just gonna paint. I

25:24

can't imagine it. Can you help

25:26

make sense of this? If you look

25:28

at the active post presidents, Bush's

25:31

popularity has gone up more than

25:33

any of them. And so among

25:35

the living ex -presidents or the

25:37

active living ex -presidents, he's the outlier.

25:40

It's also true that he has probably

25:42

done less to proactively invest in

25:44

his legacy. than any of the other

25:46

active living presidents. So I think

25:48

we can all agree that that's worthy

25:50

of a study. A journey into

25:52

George W. Bush's brain is like a

25:54

psychological thriller into things that for

25:56

most of us are impossible to understand,

25:58

right? When I sat down with

26:00

him, the first thing that he said,

26:02

he said, look, when it's over,

26:04

it's over. I don't

26:06

miss it. He lives his life in

26:08

chapters, right? So once the political chapter

26:10

was over, he just completely

26:12

moved on. That's one aspect

26:14

that I think just makes him unique

26:16

to the other presidents. He's just able to

26:19

do that. So that's point one. Yeah.

26:21

I would, I would maybe add low tolerance

26:23

for ambiguity to that puzzle. Very, very

26:25

low tolerance for ambiguity. And he didn't just

26:27

sort of stop being an ambitious person.

26:29

So the question is, where does all of

26:31

that go? So the way Bush ends

26:33

up painting is after he raises money for

26:35

the Bush Center and has this nervous

26:37

energy, just by happenstance, he's meeting with historian

26:39

John Lewis Gaddis. And Gadas basically

26:41

says to him, you seem kind of

26:43

bored. You should paint Churchill painted. And

26:46

the way Bush describes it is he got

26:48

sort of historically competitive that if Churchill could

26:50

paint, he could paint also. He

26:52

didn't embark on painting for any esoteric

26:54

deep reason. It was just like, oh, I'll

26:56

try this. And the more he did

26:58

it, the more he realized, you know, this

27:01

is giving him an endless learning experience.

27:03

It's something that he will never master through

27:05

painting. He can, you know,

27:07

actually embrace a post -presidential voice.

27:09

around things that he cares about and

27:11

categories of people that he cares about

27:13

and push an agenda without undermining his

27:16

successor. And that's what it's become. It

27:18

did not start that way. And he

27:20

has a very quarrelsome view about legacy.

27:22

I mean, he said over and over

27:24

again that this idea of spending the

27:26

present, investing in when you're dead. it

27:28

just doesn't make any sense to him,

27:30

right? His view is that they're still

27:32

writing books about George Washington. By the

27:34

time they get to him, he's going

27:36

to be long dead. And so

27:38

he really just has this adversarial view

27:40

of spending any time investing in legacy. And

27:42

yet he's conscious of and sort of

27:44

amused by the fact that by basically not

27:46

doing that, you know, the joke sort

27:49

of on everybody else, because his legacy seems

27:51

to be the one that's actually gone

27:53

up. I was gonna ask you

27:55

and you've shifted already my thinking about

27:57

the answer about does he not care

27:59

about his legacy? But I think what

28:01

you're saying is he's not indifferent to

28:03

it. He just knows it's mostly out

28:05

of his control. I asked him if

28:07

he paints out of guilt I said

28:09

a lot of people think you paint

28:11

out of guilt and there's no evidence

28:13

of deviation from the decisions that he

28:15

made other than that he acknowledges they

28:17

were controversial and he just has this

28:19

view that decisions are made and it

28:21

takes decades upon decades to understand whether

28:24

those decisions were worth it. And he

28:26

thinks that legacy is something that gets

28:28

written about in the history books and

28:30

life is meant to be lived. He's

28:32

invested so much in his faith and

28:34

in his family. I mean, the one

28:36

thing that I'll say about him, a

28:38

lot of these presidents that I write

28:40

about, they leave the presidency with their

28:42

family just in complete tatters. He

28:44

is authentically close to his family, authentically

28:47

close. It's something that he did before

28:49

he was president, invested in when he was

28:51

president. And as soon as he had

28:53

more time at his disposal, he made sure

28:55

that he doubled down on that. And

28:57

I think that that's also a pretty important

29:00

set of things that kind of keep

29:02

him grounded because his view is like the

29:04

history books will write about me as

29:06

president. But when I'm kind of old and,

29:08

you know, frail, it's a question of

29:10

like, do my daughters love me? Does my

29:12

family love me? Do they want to

29:14

be around me? The ambition that takes one

29:16

to be governor. and president

29:19

not once but twice doesn't lend itself

29:21

towards somebody who can live in

29:23

the present and yet he's like totally

29:25

at peace and he doesn't think

29:27

about the future he doesn't think about

29:29

the past and this is bothersome

29:31

to people who want him to

29:34

kind of have a reckoning about his

29:36

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32:00

I want to do the lightning round

32:02

through the lens of your presidential history

32:04

obsessions. Most overrated

32:06

president. John F. Kennedy. Worst

32:09

advice a president has

32:11

ever given. I would

32:13

say the worst advice

32:15

a president has ever

32:18

given is some combination

32:20

of the multiple slave

32:22

owning civil rights obstructing

32:24

presidents that through the

32:26

platform of the presidency

32:28

have slowed social

32:30

and racial progress in this country. Best

32:33

advice a president has given. I always

32:35

love Theodore Roosevelt's advice to get in

32:37

the arena. Hard to argue with that

32:39

one. What's the presidential biography

32:41

that most people haven't read but

32:43

should? Ooh, that's a good one.

32:45

There's a book called Destiny of

32:47

the Republic by Candice Millard that

32:49

is like a thriller into how

32:51

James Garfield's doctors in an attempt

32:54

to try to save him from

32:56

a non -lethal wound ended up killing

32:58

the president. Wow. All right, putting

33:00

it at the top of my

33:02

thriller list. What's something

33:04

you've rethought in your life from

33:06

studying presidents? I

33:08

think that there's this assumption that

33:10

we all have that you can

33:12

wait until later on in life

33:14

to figure out the last chapter.

33:17

And I think what's striking from

33:19

each of these presidents is the

33:21

investments that make for a good

33:23

final chapter in life, they start

33:25

at the middle of life. the

33:27

people you have around you, the

33:30

relationships, the family, the

33:32

hobbies, the intellectual interests,

33:34

the ability to detach from

33:36

the burdens of the

33:38

past. I think what

33:40

I've learned is if you defer all

33:42

of that until later, it's too

33:44

much. And what you really want towards

33:46

the end of life is to

33:48

have something purposeful that keeps you going,

33:50

something that you can keep learning,

33:52

and people around you who love you

33:54

despite... of the things that you've

33:56

achieved in your life. What's

33:59

a question you have for me? Out

34:01

of all of the

34:03

seven presidents and all the

34:05

different paths that they've

34:08

taken from a behavioral psychology

34:10

perspective, what surprises

34:12

you most? I think

34:14

for me, the biggest surprise is that more

34:16

of them aren't like Jefferson. I really would

34:18

have thought that a successful post presidency is

34:20

about doing something bigger. and

34:23

more meaningful and lasting.

34:25

And I guess I expected them to

34:27

be more grandiose. And the sort

34:30

of walking out of the office, like

34:32

you described it, you're giving up

34:34

some of your power, but you're also

34:36

free of all kinds of constraints.

34:38

So you have enormous status. You

34:40

have a world -class network. And

34:43

now you can pursue your vision. And so

34:45

I guess I'm surprised that not every one

34:47

of them sat down and said, okay, I'm

34:49

going to build a great university and change

34:51

the face of education in America. And

34:53

that their ambitions were so

34:55

much more diffuse and kind

34:57

of, I don't know, I

34:59

don't want to say pedestrian,

35:01

but ordinary. I guess

35:03

I'm curious, Jared. I think you

35:06

know more heads of state than anyone

35:08

in our generation on earth. You're

35:10

in frequent communication with many presidents and

35:12

prime ministers around the world. It

35:15

seems to me so narcissistic to

35:17

even think that you could be capable

35:19

of doing a job that complex. What

35:22

do you make of them? It's a

35:24

very lonely job and it's a very

35:26

isolating job and the longer you are

35:28

in a role, the more isolated

35:31

you become, the lonelier you

35:33

become, trust becomes very

35:35

difficult, information flow

35:37

changes. And

35:39

so I think what I'm struck

35:41

by with a lot of these

35:43

leaders, I get to know them

35:45

in a very personal way. I

35:47

spend big chunks of my day

35:50

joking around with them and sending

35:52

each other memes and engaging them

35:54

on a very informal way. There's

35:56

plenty of substantive engagement as well.

35:58

But when you break down those

36:00

barriers of formality, I'm struck by

36:02

how little space they have for

36:05

just regular friendship and emotion and

36:07

the value that they feel when

36:09

they can let their guard down

36:11

and when they know they can

36:13

really trust somebody, right? So things

36:15

like trust and informality and friendship

36:17

become really, really sought after, rarefied

36:20

things and the walls and the

36:22

barriers only get higher as they

36:24

accumulate more. power. And so

36:26

what's interesting is when they eventually leave

36:28

office, and I found this also with the

36:30

presidents in my book, they lose the

36:32

power and they lose the platform, but all

36:34

those barriers are still up. And

36:37

the transition comes, they may

36:39

be the same person, but they're

36:41

psychologically discombobulated because the guardrails

36:43

are still up. And the presidents

36:45

who were able to break

36:47

that down end up, I think,

36:50

being the happiest. I

36:52

love the point you made earlier about

36:54

how sometimes it's a mistake to rush

36:56

into finding your purpose, that

36:58

actually sitting in a transition and

37:00

sort of allowing your peripheral vision

37:02

to kick in can prevent you

37:04

from diving headfirst into something that

37:07

might not end up being aligned

37:09

with your values or interests. Are

37:11

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

37:13

this project that we should be aware of? Because

37:15

now would be the time to tell us. I

37:18

think whether you're a president of the

37:20

United States or a CEO, One

37:22

of the most important things

37:24

to do, and I would

37:26

argue it's a necessary step

37:28

in order to be able

37:30

to have a successful life

37:32

after power, which is to

37:34

unburden yourself from what your

37:36

successor is doing. Whether it's

37:38

your chosen successor or successor

37:40

you don't want, you're going

37:42

to have to watch them

37:44

dismantle some portion of your

37:46

legacy. You can completely detach from

37:48

it and move on and that clears a

37:50

lot of brush for you. You can say,

37:52

you know what? My

37:55

thing is going to be that whether

37:57

it's this successor or another successor,

37:59

I'm going to be completely unchecked. And

38:01

that's the Carter principle and it

38:03

worked for him. The problem

38:05

is most people end up in

38:07

this in between, which is a bad

38:09

place to be where you say

38:11

that you want to move on. But

38:14

you can't resist the urge

38:16

to settle scores of the past

38:18

and press rewind and undermine

38:20

your successor and by the way

38:22

It's whether you do that

38:24

in public or private doesn't matter

38:27

because the interesting thing with

38:29

a lot of the presidents that

38:31

I write about Their biggest

38:33

obstacle is their own head, right?

38:35

They mentally just have a

38:37

hard time getting past what's happening

38:39

to things that they created

38:41

and what's happening to their reputation

38:43

and what's happening to their

38:45

legacy and so that limbo or

38:47

that hybrid of intellectually telling

38:50

yourself you've moved on but impulsively

38:52

not moving on is I

38:54

believe the greatest obstacle that prevents

38:56

people from making a proper

38:58

transition. It's obvious how that

39:00

applies to job transitions. I

39:02

think anybody who's going through a transition at

39:04

work can make a commitment to giving up

39:06

the reins and actually moving on and not

39:08

interfering with the person who's filled their shoes. I

39:11

also think this applies generationally in

39:13

families, that it would be

39:15

really nice if parents stopped telling their

39:17

kids how to parent, right? It's a

39:20

version of the same mistake. I

39:22

remember saying to my mom at some point, if

39:24

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

39:26

to me when I was growing up. Your

39:28

window is passed. Now it's my job

39:30

to figure out how I want to

39:32

raise my kids. And I wonder if

39:34

you think this lesson applies to that

39:36

kind of transition too. Yeah,

39:38

absolutely. On the surface, it shouldn't

39:40

seem like learning about and reading

39:42

about the lives of seven presidents

39:44

and their search for meaning and

39:46

purpose after the White House could

39:49

be applied to something like the

39:51

relationship between a parent and a

39:53

child over how the next generation

39:55

parents. And I think

39:57

it's an extraordinary story that something

39:59

so kind of other stratosphere would

40:01

have so many prescriptions for something

40:03

that in some respects seems so

40:06

relatively mundane. when compared to

40:08

like things we read about in the

40:10

history books. And I think that's an

40:12

amazing part of behavioral psychology, which is,

40:14

look, at the end of the day,

40:16

you know this better than anyone else

40:18

at it. And there's only so many

40:20

different types of human beings or archetypes

40:22

of human beings. And whether they're presidents

40:24

or parents or CEOs or middle managers,

40:26

human beings are complicated in only a

40:28

certain number of ways. And the prescriptions

40:30

for how they navigate their complicated brains

40:32

and their complicated lives, they kind of

40:35

transcend whether one is at the pinnacle

40:37

of power, or whether one's power is

40:39

simply a matter of the fact that

40:41

this is my child, mom and dad, not

40:43

yours, so leave me alone. Well

40:45

put. Jared, as always, this

40:47

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

40:49

lot. Thank you, Adam. I really enjoyed it. This

40:54

conversation got me thinking about the arc

40:56

of success over the course of a lifetime.

40:59

It's good to plan your path up a

41:01

mountain. But it's also important to

41:03

consider what you'll do once you

41:05

reach the summit, and who you want

41:07

to become on the way back

41:09

down. Rethinking

41:15

is hosted by me, Adam Grant. This

41:18

show is part of the TED Audio

41:20

Collective, and this episode was produced and mixed

41:22

by Cosmic Standard. Our producers

41:24

are Hannah Kingsley Ma and Asia Simpson. Our

41:27

editor is Alejandro Salazar. Our fact

41:29

-checker is Paul Durbin. Original music

41:31

by Hansel Stu and Allison Layton

41:33

Brown. Our team includes

41:35

Eliza Smith, Jacob Winnick, Samaya

41:37

Adams, Michelle Quint, Banban Chang,

41:39

Julia Dickerson, and Whitney Pennington

41:41

Rogers. I

41:46

collect locks of presidential hair, which I'm

41:48

no longer shy about because if you're a...

41:50

Lock of hair collector you need to

41:52

kind of own it and lean into it

41:54

Somebody can ask me what the weather

41:56

is and I could say it's so interesting

41:58

that reminds me of when John Quincy

42:00

Adams You know was defeated for reelection and

42:02

ended up serving nine terms in the

42:04

House of Representatives as an ex -president When

42:06

my three daughters and my wife tell me

42:08

it's unhealthy That's sort of the vote

42:10

of the majority and I deem my obsession

42:12

unhealthy That's fair about once a week

42:15

our ten -year -old hears me talking about something

42:17

and says dad stop nerd talking Are

42:22

you still quoting 30 year old

42:24

movies? Have you said cool beans in

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