Some things A.J. Jacobs, a.k.a the Human Guinea Pig, refused to do:
- Go to Guantanamo Bay, the detention centre, for a year.
- Become a eunuch. (His brother-in-law suggested it. "It was more of a lifetime commitment," Mr. Jacobs deadpans. "Very hard to come back from." )
- Try adultery. ("My marriage definitely limits my writing career," he jokes.)
- Indulge in sexual deviance.
- Get a sex change.
- Give up his kids for a week. ("No thanks, not doing that," he recalls responding to the suggestion.)
Some of the "lifestyle experiments" he has done:
Read the Encyclopedia Britannica, all 32 volumes (and more than 33,000 pages) of the 2002 edition. His book about the experience, The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World, was published in 2004.
Live according to every rule in the Bible, as literally as possible, for a year. It involved not trimming his beard, stoning adulterers (he threw a few pebbles) and painting lamb's blood on his apartment door. His second book, The Year of Living Biblically, made him famous.
Impersonate a woman on a dating site, one of the experiences documented in his latest book, The Guinea Pig Diaries: My Life as an Experiment.
Impersonate someone famous (Noah Taylor).
Practice radical honesty by saying everything that crossed his mind for a month.
Outsource everything in his life, including the task of reading to his kids.
Pose naked for Esquire, where he is employed as an editor at large.
Be the ideal husband by doing everything his wife wanted for a month.
Some experiments his wife, Julie, vetoed:
Require her to be the ideal wife for a month, doing everything he asked.
Try all the sexual positions in the Kama Sutra.
Push limits of technology by communicating only through technology, not face to face, for a few months. ("That was a no-no. Julie said, 'You are not going to our niece's bat mitzvah through Skype.' ")
George Plimpton, the inspiration behind Mr. Jacobs's "career as a human guinea pig," was famous for his participatory journalism, writing about his time as a would-be back-up quarterback for the Detroit Lions in his book, Paper Lion. Gloria Steinem, the noted feminist, went under the bunny ears to expose the treatment of women at the Playboy Club. But Mr. Jacobs takes the literary genre some call experiential journalism to a new level of awkward situations that yield insight, hilarity, lessons and humility.
"Shtick lit" one person dubbed the genre.
Mr. Jacobs winces at the implied criticism.
"I head someone call it annulism," he says with faux grandeur, sitting taller in his seat and squaring his shoulders. "I like that," he says of the practice of trying something for a year and then writing a book about it. "It sounds classy. ...
"The experiments always change my life," says the 41-year-old, who has a slightly nerdy demeanour with a nasally voice, slight build and ill-fitting blazer. "A lot of pain and humiliation are going on while it's happening but hopefully you can take things from it."
