The Guinea Pig Diaries by A. J. Jacobs Read Free Book Online

marriage.
    Asha meanwhile sends me Christmas cards and digital photos of her cute two-year-old son. Honey wrote an “Ask Honey” column for
Esquire
for a couple of months after the article came out. She’s now getting her MBA in India.
    One of the calls I got in the wake of the article was from a young man named Tim Ferriss. He said he was a first-time author trying to write a business book. Something about how tomake money running an herbal supplement company while not working so hard. And he wondered if he could reprint large chunks of my article on outsourcing. I said, sure. Why be a jerk and say no? Why charge him? He’ll probably sell a hundred copies. Cut to: Six months later.
The 4-Hour Workweek
by Tim Ferriss hits number one on the
New York Times
best-seller list, and Tim (whom I love) becomes a massive celebrity.
    In short, I need to outsource my business decisions.

    B RAD B LANTON
The founder of Radical Honesty, Brad Blanton.

Chapter Three
I Think You’re Fat
    Here’s the truth about why I’m writing this piece:
    I want to fulfill my contract with my publisher. I want to avoid getting fired. I want all the attractive women I knew in high school and college to read it. I want them to be amazed and impressed and feel a vague regret over their decision not to have sex with me, and maybe if I get divorced or become a widower, I can have sex with them someday at a reunion. I want Hollywood to buy this piece and turn it into a movie, even though they kind of already made the movie ten years ago with Jim Carrey. I want to get congratulatory e-mails and job offers that I can politely decline. Or accept if they’re really good. Then get a generous counteroffer from my boss.
    To be totally honest, I was sorry I mentioned this idea to my editor about three seconds after I opened my mouth. Because I knew the experiment would be a pain in the butt to pull off. Dammit. But I didn’t want to seem lazy, so here I am.
    What I mentioned to my editor was this: a movement called Radical Honesty.
    The movement was founded by a sixty-eight-year-old Virginia-based psychotherapist named Brad Blanton. He says everybody would be happier if we just stopped lying. Tell thetruth, all the time. This would be radical enough—a world without fibs—but Blanton goes further. He says we should toss out the filters between our brains and our mouths. If you think it, say it. Confess to your boss your secret plans to start your own company. If you’re having fantasies about your wife’s sister, Blanton says to tell your wife and tell her sister. It’s the only path to authentic relationships. It’s the only way to smash through modernity’s soul-deadening alienation. Oversharing? No such thing.
    Yes. I know. One of the most idiotic ideas ever, right up there with Crystal Pepsi and spa retreats for AIG executives. Deceit makes our world go round. Without lies, marriages would crumble, workers would be fired, egos would be shattered, governments would collapse.
    And yet . . . maybe there’s something to it. Especially for me. I have a lying problem. Mine aren’t big lies. They aren’t lies like “I cannot recall that crucial meeting from two months ago, Senator.” Mine are little lies. White lies. Half-truths. The kind we all tell. But I tell dozens of them every day. “Yes, let’s definitely get together soon.” “I’d love to, but I have a touch of the stomach flu.” “No, we can’t buy a toy today—the toy store is closed.” It’s bad. Maybe a couple of weeks of truth-immersion therapy would do me good.
    I e-mail Blanton to ask if I can come down to Virginia and get some pointers before embarking on my Radical Honesty experiment. He writes back: “ I appreciate you for apparently having a real interest and hope you’re not just doing a cutesy little superficial dipshit job like most journalists .”
    I’m already nervous. I better start off with a clean slate. I confess I lied to him in my first e-mail—that I