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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I

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Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, you're welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.

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Speaker 1: There's Charles W Chuck Bryant over there, and it's just

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Speaker 1: us today. And that's fine because it's a Thursday. We

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Speaker 1: get a little crazy on Thursday. So we have a

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Speaker 1: potluckum today. I brought Gavelta fish and Chuck doesn't like it.

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Speaker 1: But we're just moving forward and this is stuff you

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Speaker 1: should know. I think it's good. I brought my my

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Speaker 1: deviled eggs. Yeah they're good. Thank you. You took my

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Speaker 1: advice and used the secret ingredient Coleman's mustard. Oh of course,

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Speaker 1: friends who are weigh into Coleman's. By the way, it's

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Speaker 1: really great in deviled eggs. I'm not kidding. I believe it.

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Speaker 1: I'm sure if you're a mustard fan, it's the one

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Speaker 1: to go to. Oh yeah, you hate mustard for remember

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Speaker 1: the narrative I hate mustard And he refused to accept that. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's just so bonkers that I can't wrap my head

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Speaker 1: around it, I guess is the problem. Speaking of narrative,

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Speaker 1: this this story today is a bit of a cautionary

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Speaker 1: tale on narratives. I think, oh, well, well put um

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Speaker 1: and you know, we'll get into it here in a second.

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Speaker 1: But it's the story of a of a young genius prodigy.

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Speaker 1: And in researching this there you know a lot of

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Speaker 1: conflicting accounts about how his home life was and how

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Speaker 1: his parents treated him, and uh, it's a story of

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Speaker 1: media sensationalism, and it's a story of parents who were

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Speaker 1: ahead of the curve in a lot of ways for

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Speaker 1: the time. But also I don't know about victims, but

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Speaker 1: also just sort of fell into the usual state of

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Speaker 1: parenthood at the time, which is end of the very

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Speaker 1: sort of beginning of the twenties and reso, it's not

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Speaker 1: like parenting then, let's that it's at its peak, you know. Yeah, no,

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Speaker 1: And you can also say that his parents, conceivably and

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Speaker 1: him went against the grain of normalcy and status quo,

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Speaker 1: and that um, you know, the American public immedia kind

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Speaker 1: of bristled at that, and that they were treated poorly

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Speaker 1: for that. And so you know, do we how much

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Speaker 1: do we need to question of what what is said

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Speaker 1: about them from you know, journalism at the time, And

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Speaker 1: it's a it's a big morass, basically, I think to

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Speaker 1: paraphrase what you're saying. It's a cautionary tale about making

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Speaker 1: cautionary tales out of anything, right, Yeah, although I do

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Speaker 1: think this is a cautionary tale. But okay, so we'll

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Speaker 1: we'll we'll get to the end. Well, in the end,

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Speaker 1: we'll reveal what you think it's a cautionary tale about. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and you know, well, let's just get into it. Let's

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Speaker 1: let's talk about William James. Is it sidis or side

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Speaker 1: it situs? Is it side ice? I don't think. So

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Speaker 1: that's what you keep in your pocket for when you've

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Speaker 1: got some lukewarm soda. Well, just like everything else with

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Speaker 1: this guy, heard a couple of different pronunciations on YouTube,

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Speaker 1: so so I saw it's it spelled out a couple

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Speaker 1: of different places that seem to know what they were

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Speaker 1: talking about side us, Yeah, with the emphasis on the side.

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Speaker 1: But I had not heard of him before, had you. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I mean we did a chapter in our book on prodigies,

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Speaker 1: and um, I he wasn't in the book, but I

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Speaker 1: remember reading a little bit about him at the time,

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Speaker 1: and I think just the whole idea of child prodigies really, um,

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Speaker 1: it's super fascinating to me. So I would like to

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Speaker 1: do one on Prodigies, maybe tackled. That would be maybe

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Speaker 1: one of the first book chapters we retrofit as a podcast. Okay, cool, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but yeah, they just have always fascinated me. And Billy

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Speaker 1: was interesting in that a lot of times prodigies are

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Speaker 1: prodigies in like a single discipline, not serily saying they're

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Speaker 1: big dumb dumbs everywhere else, but there's like one major focus.

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Speaker 1: But young Billy was a language prodigy, a math and

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Speaker 1: science prodigy. He was just a well rounded kind of

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Speaker 1: no a lot kid. Yeah, he really was, and he was.

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Speaker 1: He's very frequently lifted up as the prodigy, perhaps the

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Speaker 1: most gifted child that has ever lived, certainly at least

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Speaker 1: in the recorded history in the West, and maybe the

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Speaker 1: smartest human. Yeah, it's entirely possible. Yeah it is. Which

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Speaker 1: I think is another thing that will really come up

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Speaker 1: in that Prodigies episode is you know exactly how do

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Speaker 1: you how do you say who's the smartest and who's not?

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Speaker 1: Is it you know? Or i Q tests reliable? Which

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Speaker 1: I think in addition to Prodigies, we need to do

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Speaker 1: one just on i Q tests took Yeah, and I

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Speaker 1: also want to go ahead and correct myself when I

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Speaker 1: said he was well rounded, he was academically well round,

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Speaker 1: did because as we will see, he was not very

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Speaker 1: well rounded as a young child. Uh, and that was

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Speaker 1: one of the major mistakes that his parents made, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: for sure. UM And one of the other things that

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Speaker 1: he's also often kind of held out as an example of,

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Speaker 1: is this this burning question that we still have today,

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Speaker 1: is um, are gifted children the products of their environment?

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Speaker 1: Like can you just take basically any child and make

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Speaker 1: them a gifted prodigy? Um? Or is it you know, genetics?

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Speaker 1: Is it really just you know, is that we're gifted

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Speaker 1: apt apt you know, where like you're you're kind of

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Speaker 1: born with this. You didn't do anything to earn it

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Speaker 1: or deserve it. You just it's just who you are.

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Speaker 1: You're a gifted, intelligent person from a very early age.

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Speaker 1: And we still haven't gotten to the bottom of that.

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Speaker 1: But um and he actually he he kind of muddies

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Speaker 1: that the answer to that question more than answers it

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Speaker 1: at all, you know, because I mean, I definitely believe

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Speaker 1: that you were born gifted, but then from the moment

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Speaker 1: you're born on everything else plays in. So he comes

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Speaker 1: one of the reason I think he he muddies the

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Speaker 1: The answer to that question is he comes from very

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Speaker 1: intelligent stock. Both his mother and his father were extremely

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Speaker 1: intelligent people, um, but they also were the kind of

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Speaker 1: people who tried to educate him starting around age two,

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Speaker 1: maybe even a little earlier. So he's an amalgamation of

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Speaker 1: those two things. Parents who were incredibly intelligent who would

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Speaker 1: have ostensibly passed along some pretty smart jenes um, and

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Speaker 1: parents who you know, made him produced an environment for

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Speaker 1: him that made him into, you know, a prodigious learner. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So let's let's start with his folks. His dad, Boris.

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Speaker 1: They were both Russian immigrants, and his dad was put

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Speaker 1: in jail and Russia before he managed to get out

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Speaker 1: of there for apparently in a prison that was so

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Speaker 1: small he couldn't even recline himself fully in sleep and

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Speaker 1: to sleep in a little like fetal position, I think,

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Speaker 1: And he was he was jailed for for teaching, and

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Speaker 1: he he was teaching peasants. He didn't have permission. They

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Speaker 1: didn't like that in Russia. He was let out after

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Speaker 1: a couple of years on the condition that he didn't

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Speaker 1: teach other people how to read anymore. And supposedly didn't

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Speaker 1: read himself, was under surveillance, but then got the heck

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Speaker 1: out of there. Yeah, he was like, I see the

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Speaker 1: writing on the wall. It's time for me to get

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Speaker 1: out of here. I'm going to go to America. Because

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Speaker 1: at the time, America was this shining beacon for immigrants

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Speaker 1: saying come, We're a land of opportunity. We turned the

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Speaker 1: lights on in the Statue of Liberty. Tom Brocott did

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Speaker 1: it himself and just like a motel six and um,

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Speaker 1: it's uh, it's it's the doors are open basically, So

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Speaker 1: he and Sarah um Billy's mom both took America up

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Speaker 1: on that, although separately. They actually met in America, although

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Speaker 1: they were both from the Ukraine, I believe, yeah, and

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Speaker 1: Boris he he sort of bucked a lot of trends

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Speaker 1: back then, and this was in the late eighteen hundreds.

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Speaker 1: He was an atheist, um, which was you know, not

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Speaker 1: in fashion at the time. He later got into like

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Speaker 1: he made a big name for himself in the early

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Speaker 1: days of psychology and psychoanalysis, and he was an opponent

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Speaker 1: of Freud, which was certainly rocked the boat at the time.

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Speaker 1: And then he really despised traditional education and kind of

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Speaker 1: all its forms and the way it was back then,

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Speaker 1: particularly wrote memorization, it was he just hated it so

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Speaker 1: much he saw zero value in it whatsoever. And so

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Speaker 1: like that's kind of the basis of his concept of

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Speaker 1: educating not just children but anybody. It's figure out what

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Speaker 1: the basics are, learned the basics, the fundamentals, and then

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Speaker 1: use those to reason your way to answer basically any

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Speaker 1: question that you possibly could have. And that that idea

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Speaker 1: applies to everything from philosophy to math, to literature to

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Speaker 1: history to language. That you can figure anything out if

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Speaker 1: you understand just a few fundamentals of it. And so

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Speaker 1: that's what his big focus was on. That. Yes, Sarah,

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Speaker 1: his mother, Um, she worked your way through college, paid

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Speaker 1: for it herself. She worked as a nurse at night,

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Speaker 1: went to medical school during the day. I believe was

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Speaker 1: the first woman admitted to Boston medical school or medical college.

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Speaker 1: And she never became a doctor, though she instead chose

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Speaker 1: to parent. And Um, they both worked their way to

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Speaker 1: the I mean, by the time they came to the

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Speaker 1: East Coast in the eighteen eighties, they both worked their

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Speaker 1: way to the top of as high as you could

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Speaker 1: get in academic achievement in the United States. I think

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Speaker 1: Boris had his bachelor's and masters from Harvard in three years.

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Speaker 1: And uh, yes, Sarah went to Boston. You and that

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Speaker 1: they were both overachievers and obviously had a kid. I

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Speaker 1: never really They had a daughter named Helena, but I

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Speaker 1: didn't see how much she achieved. I don't know either,

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Speaker 1: although I saw that she and her brother shared a

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Speaker 1: lot of similar interests, so they were close throughout his

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Speaker 1: whole life. I'm sure she was pretty smart too, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I would guess so too. Dumb, No, for certainly not um.

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Speaker 1: But but the the one of the things about Boris

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Speaker 1: and Sarah's both of them. Everything you just described that

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Speaker 1: they achieved in America, they did within ten years of arriving.

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Speaker 1: And when they both arrived, neither one of them spoke

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Speaker 1: a word of English. They went from speaking no English

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Speaker 1: to things like m d s and pH ds within

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Speaker 1: ten years, so they made quite a splash. Um. And

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Speaker 1: Boris himself enjoys kind of a separate fame from his

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Speaker 1: son as well. He was a really well um respected,

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Speaker 1: uh pioneer in psychology. I believe he was um instructed

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Speaker 1: under William James, who was considered one of the two

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Speaker 1: founders of psych pology, who basically believed that behavior human

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Speaker 1: behavior um was a way that humans adapt to our environment.

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Speaker 1: And so if you could just kind of study the environment,

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Speaker 1: study behavior, you can just kind of understand the world

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Speaker 1: that much better. And that was his kind of foundation

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Speaker 1: for psychology. And um Boris sitis was, you know, one

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Speaker 1: of his proteges um and he uh, bores it is. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it does, um, But the uh man, you really threw

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Speaker 1: me off with bores itis because now I can't stop

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Speaker 1: thinking about what bores itis is. Enlarged foot. Sure, the

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Speaker 1: bores ITAs like a big cartoony like keep on trucking

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Speaker 1: guy foot, but just one of them. And then now

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Speaker 1: we can put it to bed, thank you, because I

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Speaker 1: think it would have thrown off the whole rest of

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Speaker 1: the episode if we hadn't just addressed it on his face,

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Speaker 1: you know. So um he so Boris Um looked up

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Speaker 1: to Williams so much he named his son after him.

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Speaker 1: It's William James sitis Um. But so he was respected

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Speaker 1: in his in his own right as well. But it

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Speaker 1: was it was Billy who became like far and away

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Speaker 1: the most famous Situs, and it was largely because his

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Speaker 1: parents really welcomed the spotlight and then realized far too

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Speaker 1: late in Billy's life that that was not a good

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Speaker 1: thing for a kid. Yeah, should we go over the

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Speaker 1: you took up these from Sarah Situs is another condition? Um,

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Speaker 1: you put ciitus on anything. Yeah, I guess you have

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Speaker 1: to have two syllables like Josh sidis doesn't sound like it. No, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: you're absolutely right, Chuck situs. I guess it's like a

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Speaker 1: it's something that ground beef can come down with or

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Speaker 1: Jerry scitus. Yes, sure that has something to do with me.

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Speaker 1: So it's me so overload like the blue man who

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Speaker 1: took too much copper. This is um. You just turn

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Speaker 1: you just start smelling like me, so it comes out

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Speaker 1: of your ears. Uh so should we I think before

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Speaker 1: our break, maybe let's run over um what you dug

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Speaker 1: up from Sarah Sitas is one know if this is

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Speaker 1: from her book that she wrote later, but she kind

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Speaker 1: of outlined her and they're parenting sort of checklist, which

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Speaker 1: when you read it it does not seem like a

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Speaker 1: parenting checklist from the early nineteen hundreds. No, it's super progressive,

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Speaker 1: isn't it. It is in a lot of ways. Uh.

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Speaker 1: Then I'll get to the part that they kind of

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Speaker 1: really forget at the end. But um, avoid punishment and

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Speaker 1: always possible, not bad. Why because it's the first cause

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Speaker 1: of fear. Pretty sensible. Sensible. Uh, try not to say

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Speaker 1: don't to your children. Instead explain why what you say

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Speaker 1: is so, that's awesome. That's a good one. A lot

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Speaker 1: of these are still very valid. Um awakened curiosity for sure.

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Speaker 1: Never failed to answer and never put off your child's questions.

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Speaker 1: Probably the hardest thing to do as a parent, but

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Speaker 1: valid right because they come hard and fast. Uh. Never

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Speaker 1: force your child to learn, nor judge their ability to

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Speaker 1: learn by adult standards. Now, that's a big one for

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Speaker 1: them that I wonder if they really abided by either

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Speaker 1: that or they did abide by it and they were

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Speaker 1: they were misinterpreted and miss labeled later on, you know.

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Speaker 1: Um there's a few more here. Implant ideas at bedtime,

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Speaker 1: just before sleep. I don't know about the science behind that,

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Speaker 1: but it sounds reasonable. Sure, Like when your child is

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Speaker 1: going off to slumber land, you can introduce them to

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Speaker 1: the concept that they'll die eventually one day and it

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Speaker 1: really sticks in their head. Uh. Never lie to your

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Speaker 1: child or use evasions if that's impossible, but sure, uh,

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Speaker 1: refrain from showing him off. I think that's where they

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Speaker 1: really dropped the ball. Yeah, that's almost revisionists to add that,

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Speaker 1: because there's just no way that they knew that from

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Speaker 1: the get go. They just didn't follow it. They didn't

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Speaker 1: even seem to consider following it. And I think they

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Speaker 1: really grossly overestimated the warmth of the response the public

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Speaker 1: would would greet young William with, yeah, and then the

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Speaker 1: big one that I think it just wasn't a thing

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Speaker 1: back then, So I'm going to give them a pass.

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Speaker 1: But we now know so much about social and what

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Speaker 1: they call social emotional development and teaching and parenting, and

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Speaker 1: it just didn't really exist back then, and and young

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Speaker 1: Billy certainly didn't get any of that, so he writ

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Speaker 1: he suffered for that reason. So they released this, and

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Speaker 1: American parents responded by saying, we're tired just reading this list, right? Yeah?

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Speaker 1: Uh so should we take that break so we can

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Speaker 1: get some rest? All right, I gotta go put up

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Speaker 1: this big foot. Let it relax for a little bit.

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Speaker 1: You have Boris itists. So it took we kind of

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Speaker 1: went over um Boris and Sarah's list on you know,

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Speaker 1: how to raise a child, and it kind of underscores

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Speaker 1: this premise that was basically the entire premise of boris

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Speaker 1: Is approach to childhood education was that if you, um,

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Speaker 1: if you do this with a kid, if you if

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Speaker 1: you say okay, you know the um, if you create

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Speaker 1: curiosity and interest in a child and then nurture it

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Speaker 1: with lots of books and like, you know, lectures and

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Speaker 1: whatever you can find to keep the kid's curiosity going

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Speaker 1: and just feed seven. If they have a question or

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Speaker 1: something like that, you just sit down with them and

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Speaker 1: talk it out. That if you do this and you

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Speaker 1: start a young enough age, you know, by the time

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Speaker 1: your kid is you know, they should be at least

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Speaker 1: as intelligent, if not more intelligent, than an average adult.

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Speaker 1: And his premise was that you could do this with

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Speaker 1: any kid, and that you kind of should do this

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Speaker 1: with any kid. And their proof of concept was their

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Speaker 1: son Billy, who had a really impressive list of accomplishments

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Speaker 1: to his credit by the time he was like eight,

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Speaker 1: nine or ten. Right, Yeah, I mean, we'll go through

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Speaker 1: some of these. I think some of these maybe take

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Speaker 1: with a grain of salt, because records from the early

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Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds are what they are, and his story has

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Speaker 1: been sort of Um, I don't know the best word

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Speaker 1: is convoluted, exaggerated in place, maybe exaggerated in places. But

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Speaker 1: I don't want to take anything away from because a

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Speaker 1: lot of it checks out too. But let's just go

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Speaker 1: go through him. Um. Supposedly, at eighteen months was reading

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Speaker 1: the New York Times uh by three, New Latin by six,

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Speaker 1: uh New Russian, French, German, Hebrew, Armenian, and Turkish. Was

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Speaker 1: typing letters at three to Macy's about Christmas toys. Very cute, right.

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Speaker 1: I also saw that he taught himself to eat with

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Speaker 1: a spoon by eight months old, through trial and error.

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Speaker 1: All right, that's I've seen babies do that, an eight

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Speaker 1: month old baby. Yeah, it's hard to remember, Okay, alright,

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Speaker 1: what else? Maybe not? I don't know. It just seems

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Speaker 1: like something that baby would be like, I don't know what,

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Speaker 1: this would be more likely to go in their eye

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Speaker 1: or their ear than there in their mouth. You know,

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Speaker 1: I'm trying to remember. It's all a blur. Uh. Let

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Speaker 1: me see. He apparently graduated. I mean, he went through

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Speaker 1: grade school and like no time, he entered the first

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Speaker 1: grade and graduated in through primary school entirely in seven months.

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Speaker 1: It was basically like Billy Madison, Yeah, which I've never seen,

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Speaker 1: but I know the story. Between six an eight he

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Speaker 1: wrote at least four books. Uh. In At eight he

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Speaker 1: passed the Harvard Medical School anatomy exam and then the

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Speaker 1: entrance exam to M I T. And also at eight

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Speaker 1: and then at his own language called in a book

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Speaker 1: called The book was called Book of Vendorgood and the

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Speaker 1: language was vendor Goood. Yeah, not like you know, just

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Speaker 1: some gibberish or whatever. He took from like Latin and

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Speaker 1: Greek and some of the Romance languages and figured out

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Speaker 1: different ways to conjugate um words based on these this

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Speaker 1: language and like he created his own language. It wasn't

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Speaker 1: just some lame thing where words were replaced with words

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Speaker 1: and I think they were like eight cases something grammatical cases. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: It was really impressive stuff. Um. And it was the

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Speaker 1: kind of thing I saw somebody put it, like a

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Speaker 1: linguistics professor would have been, you know, well received for

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Speaker 1: having written a book where they debuted their own language.

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Speaker 1: And this kid was doing it and you know before

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Speaker 1: he was ten. Yeah, so he's he's flying through school. Um,

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Speaker 1: This is all going great as far as the plan

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Speaker 1: that his parents had to raise a really, really smart kid.

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Speaker 1: But a very bad thing happened as he was doing this,

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Speaker 1: and the press noticed, Um, when you get into Harvard

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Speaker 1: at nine years old. Um, they didn't let him untill

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Speaker 1: he was eleven, but when you know, that's going to

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Speaker 1: be a news story. And by nine when he when

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Speaker 1: he entered Harvard as an eleven year old, it was

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Speaker 1: it was the full court press from the media. Apparently

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Speaker 1: he would and this is before he went to Harvard.

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Speaker 1: He would come home from elementary and high school and

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Speaker 1: there would be like two photographers waiting outside his place,

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Speaker 1: and one of them would hold him while the other

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Speaker 1: one would take his picture, like physically hold him. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: Like he had no saying this what he would be accosted. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so I hear this, and I think that's awful. The

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Speaker 1: media is terrible. But I also I think, like, where

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Speaker 1: where where was his mom? Where was his dad? While

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Speaker 1: these photographers are holding him out in the street. Well,

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Speaker 1: you know, he's a free range kid, I guess in

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Speaker 1: that respect, And that's pretty bad. That's definitely a very

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Speaker 1: unpleasant thing from childhood, and even worse that would basically

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Speaker 1: lay the groundwork for his relationship with the media from

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Speaker 1: that point on, and they would just keep going after him.

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Speaker 1: Even after he'd been out of the limelight for decades,

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Speaker 1: they would still they'd be like, whatever happened to that

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Speaker 1: weirdo Billy Sitis and um they look him up and

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Speaker 1: write an article on him, and it would he he

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Speaker 1: was just as we'll see, he became a very private person.

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Speaker 1: Was a huge invasion of his privacy. But that's where

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Speaker 1: the whole thing started. But one of the other reasons

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Speaker 1: I think also that he was such a private person

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Speaker 1: and that the media spotlight was even worse to him

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Speaker 1: than it would have been for any other child his

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Speaker 1: age is that you touched on it. I think earlier

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Speaker 1: that his father is showed play like there was no

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Speaker 1: play involved. There was no socialization with his peers. There

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Speaker 1: was no encouragement whatsoever for him to make friends, And

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Speaker 1: I get the impression there was actually bit of a

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Speaker 1: prohibition on him going out and making friends because his

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Speaker 1: friends couldn't have possibly kept up with him, So how

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Speaker 1: could he possibly be enriched by hanging out with other

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Speaker 1: eight year olds? And I think his family kind of

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Speaker 1: acknowledged that later on that that was a huge misstep

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Speaker 1: and if they didn't, the rest of the world has

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Speaker 1: has admitted it for them, and they've they've been vilified

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Speaker 1: in a lot of ways for doing that, and I

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Speaker 1: think rightfully so like if they've if they've been vilified,

378
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Speaker 1: not all of it can be justified, but there's a

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Speaker 1: couple of things that you can be like, yes, that

380
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Speaker 1: was a really bad thing to do with Billy, and

381
00:22:34,840 --> 00:22:37,000
Speaker 1: it messed him up, and that was a big one

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00:22:37,040 --> 00:22:41,280
Speaker 1: of them for sure. Uh. He when he got to Harvard,

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00:22:41,320 --> 00:22:45,040
Speaker 1: he started showing his um massive capacity for math and

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Speaker 1: mathematical courses. He was designing his own log arrythmic tables.

385
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Speaker 1: He gave his first lecture, uh, including to faculty when

386
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Speaker 1: he was eleven years old, to the Harvard Mathematical Club

387
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Speaker 1: about four dimensional bodies. And then you know, he sort

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Speaker 1: of had apparently he had his little act down um

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Speaker 1: with the press. He would introduce himself and he would

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Speaker 1: he would try and you know, I think he was

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Speaker 1: described as precocious a lot, but it came across I mean,

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Speaker 1: precocious is sort of a nice way of saying that

393
00:23:19,200 --> 00:23:21,560
Speaker 1: he was rude to a lot of adults who he

394
00:23:21,640 --> 00:23:24,840
Speaker 1: thought he was smarter than yes, and I don't think

395
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Speaker 1: he was ever really taught any different by his parents.

396
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Speaker 1: The thing is, though, is like that's a really good

397
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Speaker 1: anecdote and it does illustrate like what he was like

398
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Speaker 1: at age eleven, granted, But the problem is is because

399
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Speaker 1: you have so many, so few anecdotes about him, that

400
00:23:41,080 --> 00:23:43,520
Speaker 1: it gives you the impression that he was a jerk.

401
00:23:44,280 --> 00:23:46,879
Speaker 1: And I saw after he died, a friend of his

402
00:23:47,040 --> 00:23:50,840
Speaker 1: road into a newspaper magazine and said, you know, a

403
00:23:50,840 --> 00:23:54,919
Speaker 1: lot of these editorials about William Sidas are really misguided.

404
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Speaker 1: And one of the things that you should know about

405
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Speaker 1: him is he looked down on no one. He was

406
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Speaker 1: a kind, gentle person who looked down on no one else.

407
00:24:03,560 --> 00:24:05,960
Speaker 1: And um, I really think that you gotta take that

408
00:24:06,280 --> 00:24:09,280
Speaker 1: along with that anecdote about him, like you know, kind

409
00:24:09,280 --> 00:24:12,240
Speaker 1: of talking down to some of the professors at Harvard

410
00:24:12,320 --> 00:24:16,920
Speaker 1: during that lecture. Well he was, Okay, that's a much

411
00:24:16,960 --> 00:24:19,280
Speaker 1: more succinct way of putting what I was what I

412
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Speaker 1: was trying to get at. I guess there's a lot

413
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Speaker 1: of eleven year old jerks, but the age out of it, hopefully, sure.

414
00:24:25,960 --> 00:24:29,600
Speaker 1: But that lecture, Chuck is it's a really pivotal moment

415
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Speaker 1: in his life. For one, it basically said, hey, world,

416
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Speaker 1: I am maybe the smartest person on the planet or

417
00:24:36,920 --> 00:24:40,440
Speaker 1: whoever lived. Check it out. And then that brought all

418
00:24:40,520 --> 00:24:44,080
Speaker 1: that media attention. But it also showed, like to the

419
00:24:44,080 --> 00:24:46,199
Speaker 1: people who were paying attention and who knew what he

420
00:24:46,280 --> 00:24:50,000
Speaker 1: was talking about, um, that that like this was a

421
00:24:50,080 --> 00:24:53,400
Speaker 1: legit dude. This guy was going to contribute to who

422
00:24:53,480 --> 00:24:57,040
Speaker 1: knows how many different fields in his lifetime. And in fact,

423
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Speaker 1: Norbert Weener, who became the father of side Ntis, who

424
00:25:00,960 --> 00:25:03,760
Speaker 1: was a child prodigy himself, he was like fourteen I

425
00:25:03,800 --> 00:25:06,080
Speaker 1: think at the time. He went to Harvard, starting the

426
00:25:06,160 --> 00:25:10,359
Speaker 1: same year as William Sidis did. Yeah, that's that lecture. Yeah,

427
00:25:10,520 --> 00:25:12,639
Speaker 1: there were some interesting stories about those two being there

428
00:25:12,640 --> 00:25:15,000
Speaker 1: at the same time. Yeah, because they were definitely not

429
00:25:15,119 --> 00:25:18,840
Speaker 1: the same person. And though everybody lumped him together, you know, um,

430
00:25:18,840 --> 00:25:21,760
Speaker 1: both being at Harvard and as like an eleven year

431
00:25:21,760 --> 00:25:24,159
Speaker 1: old in the fourteen year old, but um, Norbert Wiener

432
00:25:24,240 --> 00:25:26,920
Speaker 1: was at that lecture and he he noted that, like,

433
00:25:27,160 --> 00:25:30,280
Speaker 1: this lecture is based on this guy's original thinking. This

434
00:25:30,359 --> 00:25:32,600
Speaker 1: is not just a summation of a bunch of different

435
00:25:32,760 --> 00:25:36,600
Speaker 1: work other people's work on bodies in the fourth dimension,

436
00:25:37,119 --> 00:25:39,760
Speaker 1: like this is what this guy came up with about

437
00:25:39,800 --> 00:25:42,400
Speaker 1: the fourth dimension and it all checks out, Like that's

438
00:25:42,400 --> 00:25:45,320
Speaker 1: impressive stuff. Yeah. There was an M. I. T. Physics

439
00:25:45,320 --> 00:25:50,040
Speaker 1: professor named Daniel Comstock who said that, you know, he

440
00:25:50,119 --> 00:25:52,959
Speaker 1: has a real intellect. He said, it is not automatic.

441
00:25:53,280 --> 00:25:55,360
Speaker 1: He does not cram his head with facts. He reasons

442
00:25:56,200 --> 00:25:58,119
Speaker 1: and there there's a difference. That's a different kind of

443
00:25:58,119 --> 00:26:01,600
Speaker 1: intelligence than just you know, memorizing a lot of stuff.

444
00:26:01,640 --> 00:26:04,560
Speaker 1: So you can be on Jeopardy, um, which is you know,

445
00:26:04,760 --> 00:26:08,040
Speaker 1: another kind of intelligence, no shape. I mean, I would

446
00:26:08,080 --> 00:26:12,000
Speaker 1: love to go on Jeopardy and perform well. Um, but Comstock, oh,

447
00:26:12,040 --> 00:26:13,479
Speaker 1: I would not do well, So I don't want to go.

448
00:26:13,560 --> 00:26:19,440
Speaker 1: But do you think you'd freeze? I just I'm not

449
00:26:19,520 --> 00:26:24,160
Speaker 1: Jeopardy material. I'm Jeopardy from the couch material. Yeah. Yeah.

450
00:26:24,280 --> 00:26:27,080
Speaker 1: You could shout it out occasionally only when you're and

451
00:26:27,080 --> 00:26:28,520
Speaker 1: you're right. Yeah, but I'm not good enough to be

452
00:26:28,560 --> 00:26:31,240
Speaker 1: on the show. Uh. Comstock went on to say, I

453
00:26:31,240 --> 00:26:33,720
Speaker 1: believe he'll be a great mathematician, the leader in science

454
00:26:34,280 --> 00:26:37,240
Speaker 1: in the future, the leader in that science in the future,

455
00:26:37,480 --> 00:26:39,760
Speaker 1: and a lot of Hay has been made about i Q,

456
00:26:41,600 --> 00:26:44,280
Speaker 1: not just for him but certainly for him, but just period.

457
00:26:44,280 --> 00:26:45,840
Speaker 1: I mean, like you said, we should totally do one

458
00:26:45,880 --> 00:26:49,639
Speaker 1: on i Q tests and whether it's even valid or not.

459
00:26:49,800 --> 00:26:55,040
Speaker 1: But he uh, retroactively they have UM basically said that

460
00:26:55,080 --> 00:26:56,640
Speaker 1: they think he had an i Q of about two

461
00:26:56,640 --> 00:27:02,400
Speaker 1: fifty three d um A of one thirty is considered

462
00:27:02,520 --> 00:27:08,119
Speaker 1: very advanced. They have retroactively UM said that Einstein had

463
00:27:08,119 --> 00:27:10,440
Speaker 1: about a one sixty da Vinci had about a one eighty.

464
00:27:11,080 --> 00:27:13,840
Speaker 1: Newton may have been about a one ninety. So take

465
00:27:13,880 --> 00:27:16,600
Speaker 1: it for what it's worth. All this is just to

466
00:27:16,680 --> 00:27:20,280
Speaker 1: say that Billy Sidis was, you know, super super smart

467
00:27:20,600 --> 00:27:24,120
Speaker 1: by kind of any measure, and so so that Harvard

468
00:27:24,200 --> 00:27:28,480
Speaker 1: lecture definitely brought the spotlight on him, not necessarily to UM,

469
00:27:28,520 --> 00:27:32,680
Speaker 1: like an adoring spotlight. And then also at the same time,

470
00:27:33,240 --> 00:27:37,120
Speaker 1: his father delivered a lecture that became a book, really

471
00:27:37,200 --> 00:27:40,280
Speaker 1: kind of forty five page essay called Philistine and Genius,

472
00:27:40,880 --> 00:27:43,280
Speaker 1: and it was basically where he lays out this idea

473
00:27:43,320 --> 00:27:46,440
Speaker 1: that any kid can be a prodigy. And and then

474
00:27:46,960 --> 00:27:50,880
Speaker 1: ultimately we're doing our children disservice by being lazy and

475
00:27:51,200 --> 00:27:53,479
Speaker 1: you know, just living with the status quo and not

476
00:27:53,640 --> 00:27:56,760
Speaker 1: producing geniuses because we're just we're just not up to

477
00:27:56,800 --> 00:27:59,760
Speaker 1: the task. And that was not very well received either.

478
00:28:00,160 --> 00:28:03,080
Speaker 1: So everybody started to hate Boris because he was an outsider.

479
00:28:03,119 --> 00:28:06,160
Speaker 1: He's a recent immigrant from Russia and he was Jewish,

480
00:28:06,400 --> 00:28:09,600
Speaker 1: and he was basically telling America that its parenting skills

481
00:28:09,640 --> 00:28:12,680
Speaker 1: sucked um. And then at the same time, his son

482
00:28:12,800 --> 00:28:15,240
Speaker 1: steps out or steps into the spotlight, is like the

483
00:28:15,320 --> 00:28:18,280
Speaker 1: super brainiac, who's a proof of concept of all this.

484
00:28:18,760 --> 00:28:22,040
Speaker 1: And so the attention that was lavished on both of them,

485
00:28:22,240 --> 00:28:24,640
Speaker 1: on William for the rest of his life was you're

486
00:28:24,680 --> 00:28:26,960
Speaker 1: a weirdo. We need to tear you down because if

487
00:28:26,960 --> 00:28:29,760
Speaker 1: you if your father is correct, then we're all doing

488
00:28:29,840 --> 00:28:32,520
Speaker 1: our kids at disservice. So there has to be something

489
00:28:32,520 --> 00:28:35,800
Speaker 1: wrong with you or else we're the ones who are wrong.

490
00:28:36,000 --> 00:28:38,760
Speaker 1: And so the media and the American public basically started

491
00:28:38,800 --> 00:28:42,120
Speaker 1: to delight in tearing William down every chance they got,

492
00:28:42,400 --> 00:28:45,880
Speaker 1: and he really just tried to run from the spotlight

493
00:28:45,920 --> 00:28:49,040
Speaker 1: as best he could. All right, so let's take a

494
00:28:49,160 --> 00:28:51,440
Speaker 1: break and we'll come back and kind of pick up

495
00:28:51,720 --> 00:28:56,320
Speaker 1: at Harvard, where this eleven year old was still studying

496
00:28:56,480 --> 00:29:20,480
Speaker 1: right after this. All right, So Little Billies at Harvard.

497
00:29:21,240 --> 00:29:24,240
Speaker 1: His he was commuting, you know, with his parents, and

498
00:29:24,280 --> 00:29:27,000
Speaker 1: then they decided that they were going to leave and

499
00:29:27,040 --> 00:29:30,480
Speaker 1: go to New Hampshire and go into business, um, the

500
00:29:30,720 --> 00:29:34,920
Speaker 1: mental health business. Basically boris open to sanatorium in Portsmouth,

501
00:29:34,960 --> 00:29:38,960
Speaker 1: New Hampshire, and they said, basically, you know, try out

502
00:29:39,000 --> 00:29:41,800
Speaker 1: the dorm, let's see how it works. He moved into

503
00:29:41,840 --> 00:29:44,800
Speaker 1: the dorm. It did not go well at all. Uh.

504
00:29:44,800 --> 00:29:48,240
Speaker 1: He was bullied. He was the butt of jokes and pranks. Uh.

505
00:29:48,280 --> 00:29:50,800
Speaker 1: He did not have interest in girls. They teased him

506
00:29:50,800 --> 00:29:54,960
Speaker 1: a lot about that. He eventually moved into a rooming house, uh,

507
00:29:55,080 --> 00:29:59,680
Speaker 1: instead of the dorm. And even still he graduated Magna

508
00:30:00,120 --> 00:30:04,239
Speaker 1: loud A at sixteen years old in nineteen fourteen and

509
00:30:04,320 --> 00:30:08,080
Speaker 1: told reporters after he graduated, I want to live the

510
00:30:08,120 --> 00:30:10,480
Speaker 1: perfect life. The only way to live the perfect life

511
00:30:10,880 --> 00:30:14,560
Speaker 1: is to live it in seclusion. I've always hated crowds.

512
00:30:15,280 --> 00:30:19,520
Speaker 1: He vowed to remained celibate, and you know, that's was

513
00:30:19,600 --> 00:30:22,600
Speaker 1: kind of his life. He he I don't think he

514
00:30:22,880 --> 00:30:27,880
Speaker 1: necessarily was that way by nature or yeah, by nature.

515
00:30:27,960 --> 00:30:32,000
Speaker 1: I think he was sort of forced into retreatment because

516
00:30:32,040 --> 00:30:34,680
Speaker 1: of what happened to him with the press, and having

517
00:30:34,680 --> 00:30:38,240
Speaker 1: no social skills because he was not socialized because of

518
00:30:38,280 --> 00:30:41,160
Speaker 1: his parents. A lot of factors going into it, for sure.

519
00:30:41,320 --> 00:30:43,320
Speaker 1: And on that celibate thing, like a lot of people

520
00:30:43,440 --> 00:30:45,240
Speaker 1: made a lot of hey about that at the time

521
00:30:45,280 --> 00:30:48,920
Speaker 1: because he you know, revealed it publicly somehow. Um, he

522
00:30:48,960 --> 00:30:51,640
Speaker 1: had taken a vow underneath the tree that he would

523
00:30:51,640 --> 00:30:54,520
Speaker 1: remain celibate throughout his lifetime, which a lot of great

524
00:30:54,520 --> 00:30:57,280
Speaker 1: thinkers have I think da Vinci did, and Newton did,

525
00:30:57,360 --> 00:31:00,080
Speaker 1: and a bunch of others. Um, And he followed it

526
00:31:00,120 --> 00:31:02,600
Speaker 1: in their footsteps. But he kept a picture of the

527
00:31:02,680 --> 00:31:05,800
Speaker 1: tree that he kept he carried around with them to

528
00:31:05,840 --> 00:31:08,440
Speaker 1: remind him like, oh, yeah, I'm celibate. Um. But the

529
00:31:09,000 --> 00:31:11,480
Speaker 1: media again, they're like, oh, this is a great opportunity

530
00:31:11,520 --> 00:31:13,680
Speaker 1: to tear this guy down. He's a total weirdo. He's

531
00:31:13,720 --> 00:31:16,560
Speaker 1: not interested in girls, he's not even interested in guys,

532
00:31:16,600 --> 00:31:20,640
Speaker 1: He's interested in nobody. Let's let's make let's use that

533
00:31:20,720 --> 00:31:23,000
Speaker 1: as evidence that this guy is out of his mind.

534
00:31:23,200 --> 00:31:26,800
Speaker 1: And he did very very sad. Yeah. So he leaves

535
00:31:26,840 --> 00:31:30,360
Speaker 1: Harvard and with that degree, and for a little while

536
00:31:30,440 --> 00:31:35,160
Speaker 1: he teaches math at William marsh Rice Institute for advancement

537
00:31:35,240 --> 00:31:38,920
Speaker 1: of letters, science and art. Eventually they just said, can

538
00:31:38,960 --> 00:31:42,080
Speaker 1: we just call it Rice University? It would be much easier.

539
00:31:42,880 --> 00:31:45,800
Speaker 1: He arrived in December nineteen fifteen. He was seventeen years old.

540
00:31:46,360 --> 00:31:51,720
Speaker 1: Um taught Euclidean geometry, non Euclidean geometry, and freshman math

541
00:31:52,560 --> 00:31:56,000
Speaker 1: and didn't last long there either because he was younger

542
00:31:56,040 --> 00:31:57,840
Speaker 1: than the people he was teaching and it was just

543
00:31:58,040 --> 00:32:01,720
Speaker 1: really really tough. Um eventually went back to Harvard Law

544
00:32:02,480 --> 00:32:05,480
Speaker 1: and left after three years without a degree, but with

545
00:32:05,560 --> 00:32:12,840
Speaker 1: good standing. Apparently. Yeah, so he got back. I guess

546
00:32:12,960 --> 00:32:15,520
Speaker 1: when he was at Harvard Law it must have been

547
00:32:16,240 --> 00:32:22,480
Speaker 1: Um that he, uh, he became interested in socialism, fervently interested.

548
00:32:22,480 --> 00:32:27,800
Speaker 1: He was described I think Chuck is a libertarian pacifist

549
00:32:28,240 --> 00:32:30,840
Speaker 1: by a friend after he died, and that his whole

550
00:32:30,880 --> 00:32:35,360
Speaker 1: thing like like, he was really passionate about trolley Carr transfers,

551
00:32:35,400 --> 00:32:41,200
Speaker 1: about Northeastern Native American history, about a lot of varied stuff,

552
00:32:41,800 --> 00:32:45,600
Speaker 1: but his great passion was the idea that every single

553
00:32:45,680 --> 00:32:48,200
Speaker 1: person should be free to live their life as they

554
00:32:48,200 --> 00:32:51,120
Speaker 1: see fit, and that the role of government, and you

555
00:32:51,160 --> 00:32:55,960
Speaker 1: needed a strong government, was to protect that those individuals

556
00:32:56,080 --> 00:32:58,680
Speaker 1: rights from encroachment in that sense that that is what

557
00:32:58,720 --> 00:33:00,520
Speaker 1: he cared about, and for a little while was directed

558
00:33:00,520 --> 00:33:04,320
Speaker 1: towards socialism and communism. And he was actually arrested h

559
00:33:04,320 --> 00:33:08,520
Speaker 1: and considered you know, unpatriotic and unamerican um at this

560
00:33:08,600 --> 00:33:12,320
Speaker 1: one May day rally um and almost went to jail

561
00:33:12,440 --> 00:33:15,400
Speaker 1: supposedly for assaulting an officer. Allo. Everybody says that didn't

562
00:33:15,400 --> 00:33:19,480
Speaker 1: actually happen. Yeah, it was for writing two charges, writing

563
00:33:19,480 --> 00:33:22,680
Speaker 1: and assaulting a cop, and it was all over the

564
00:33:22,680 --> 00:33:25,360
Speaker 1: newspapers because of who he is. I think a hundred

565
00:33:25,360 --> 00:33:30,000
Speaker 1: and fourteen people were arrested, including a young lady named

566
00:33:30,000 --> 00:33:33,240
Speaker 1: Martha Foley, who he actually fell in love with, so

567
00:33:33,480 --> 00:33:38,360
Speaker 1: he he tested his celibacy with Martha, even though I

568
00:33:38,400 --> 00:33:41,440
Speaker 1: think there I think it never grew beyond a close friendship.

569
00:33:41,560 --> 00:33:45,600
Speaker 1: Isn't that right? Yeah? Well yeah, And I don't really

570
00:33:45,680 --> 00:33:49,000
Speaker 1: understand what her her feelings were about. If she was

571
00:33:49,080 --> 00:33:50,680
Speaker 1: just like, we're just friends. He was always in the

572
00:33:50,720 --> 00:33:53,280
Speaker 1: friend zone with her, or she was like, you know,

573
00:33:53,480 --> 00:33:56,440
Speaker 1: you're actually not interested in me, will be friends? Who knows.

574
00:33:56,480 --> 00:34:01,520
Speaker 1: But she went on to marry another man, um and uh,

575
00:34:01,640 --> 00:34:04,120
Speaker 1: I get the impression that Bill was left to kind

576
00:34:04,160 --> 00:34:07,880
Speaker 1: of um just pine for her while looking at the

577
00:34:07,920 --> 00:34:11,960
Speaker 1: picture of the tree that he took them out. Um.

578
00:34:12,120 --> 00:34:14,680
Speaker 1: So back to the arrest. He was released on five

579
00:34:15,120 --> 00:34:18,720
Speaker 1: dollars bail um under the condition that he be released

580
00:34:18,800 --> 00:34:22,000
Speaker 1: under his father's care um or both of his parents

581
00:34:22,040 --> 00:34:25,680
Speaker 1: I guess at the sanitarium. So he gets shipped off

582
00:34:25,719 --> 00:34:29,800
Speaker 1: to New Hampshire. Um. He said in his own words,

583
00:34:30,600 --> 00:34:33,600
Speaker 1: he was kidnapped by his parents by arrangement with the

584
00:34:33,680 --> 00:34:36,279
Speaker 1: d A and was taken to the sanitarium operated by

585
00:34:36,320 --> 00:34:39,359
Speaker 1: them and kept there a full year under various kinds

586
00:34:39,360 --> 00:34:42,879
Speaker 1: of mental torture, consisting of being scolded and nagged at

587
00:34:42,920 --> 00:34:46,800
Speaker 1: for an average of six to eight hours a day. UM.

588
00:34:46,840 --> 00:34:49,960
Speaker 1: They said, they pumped him full of sleeping medicine, threatened

589
00:34:49,960 --> 00:34:52,240
Speaker 1: to send him to uh just sort of a standard

590
00:34:52,640 --> 00:34:54,879
Speaker 1: insane asylum, that's what they called him at the time.

591
00:34:55,760 --> 00:34:58,759
Speaker 1: And it just sounds like it sounds like things went

592
00:34:58,840 --> 00:35:02,719
Speaker 1: really really bad between he and his parents at that point. Yeah,

593
00:35:02,920 --> 00:35:06,040
Speaker 1: I think, UM, I don't really know what the relationship

594
00:35:06,120 --> 00:35:09,320
Speaker 1: was like, but it seems to have finally fully deteriorated

595
00:35:09,400 --> 00:35:11,479
Speaker 1: during that year. I don't think they ever spoke after

596
00:35:11,520 --> 00:35:14,600
Speaker 1: that well, that his parents wanted to. They used to

597
00:35:14,680 --> 00:35:17,319
Speaker 1: like UM try to track him down and they would

598
00:35:17,640 --> 00:35:20,520
Speaker 1: find as whoever his friends were, and you know, try

599
00:35:20,600 --> 00:35:22,640
Speaker 1: to get them to turn him over to them, because

600
00:35:22,680 --> 00:35:24,400
Speaker 1: you know, they're like, it's for his own good. He

601
00:35:24,400 --> 00:35:28,040
Speaker 1: doesn't he's crazy or whatever. He UM that just you

602
00:35:28,080 --> 00:35:30,520
Speaker 1: know is strange to him even further from them. But

603
00:35:30,880 --> 00:35:33,960
Speaker 1: if if it wasn't deteriorating before, it was after that

604
00:35:33,960 --> 00:35:37,400
Speaker 1: that year at the family sanitarium that or sanatorium that

605
00:35:37,440 --> 00:35:41,000
Speaker 1: he had to spend. Yeah, so he UM eventually has

606
00:35:41,040 --> 00:35:44,080
Speaker 1: released after that year, I think he goes to California

607
00:35:44,160 --> 00:35:47,000
Speaker 1: for about a year, then makes his way back east,

608
00:35:47,760 --> 00:35:51,440
Speaker 1: and basically from this point forward he did I mean

609
00:35:51,440 --> 00:35:54,200
Speaker 1: they called them uninspired jobs kind of mostly where I saw,

610
00:35:54,280 --> 00:35:56,760
Speaker 1: I don't think he was doing the good well hunting

611
00:35:56,800 --> 00:36:00,640
Speaker 1: thing UM been doing like custodia were. Mostly what I

612
00:36:00,680 --> 00:36:04,200
Speaker 1: found is that he was doing UM work. I mean

613
00:36:04,200 --> 00:36:07,279
Speaker 1: they call them adding machines like accounting work. What they

614
00:36:07,320 --> 00:36:10,920
Speaker 1: really were were sort of the first calculators, the UH

615
00:36:11,160 --> 00:36:16,080
Speaker 1: comptometers and UM. Even then, apparently he would do work

616
00:36:16,120 --> 00:36:18,839
Speaker 1: on two of them at once, one with his left hand,

617
00:36:18,880 --> 00:36:21,399
Speaker 1: one with his right hand, and would do his eight

618
00:36:21,400 --> 00:36:24,520
Speaker 1: hour work day and about an hour um, but would

619
00:36:24,560 --> 00:36:27,480
Speaker 1: sort of move from job to job whenever you know,

620
00:36:27,520 --> 00:36:29,960
Speaker 1: it says here, whenever people would recognize who he was.

621
00:36:30,080 --> 00:36:32,000
Speaker 1: I think it was probably a little more nuanced than that.

622
00:36:32,480 --> 00:36:36,080
Speaker 1: I would guess, like when the press got ahold of it. Um.

623
00:36:36,120 --> 00:36:37,840
Speaker 1: I don't think it's like if someone in his office

624
00:36:37,840 --> 00:36:39,640
Speaker 1: realized who he was, he was like, I'm out of here.

625
00:36:40,840 --> 00:36:42,719
Speaker 1: But he would kind of go from job to job.

626
00:36:42,760 --> 00:36:45,440
Speaker 1: He said that the very side of a mathematical formula

627
00:36:45,680 --> 00:36:50,640
Speaker 1: makes me physically ill. But here's the thing. He I

628
00:36:50,680 --> 00:36:52,640
Speaker 1: think a lot of publications make it seem like he

629
00:36:52,680 --> 00:36:57,760
Speaker 1: was shunning smarts and doing anything worthwhile. But the entire time,

630
00:36:58,480 --> 00:37:01,719
Speaker 1: he was just pumping out book uh, a lot of

631
00:37:01,760 --> 00:37:04,719
Speaker 1: most of them not published, many of them under pseudonyms,

632
00:37:04,840 --> 00:37:07,720
Speaker 1: but just writing about all kinds of stuff. He wrote

633
00:37:07,719 --> 00:37:14,520
Speaker 1: that book on transfer tickets. Yeah, he did three pages

634
00:37:14,600 --> 00:37:18,360
Speaker 1: on collecting transfer tickets. But he wrote a lot. Eventually.

635
00:37:18,360 --> 00:37:21,359
Speaker 1: He did write one book that became fairly well known,

636
00:37:21,440 --> 00:37:25,840
Speaker 1: called The Animate and the Inanimates in Yeah, which is

637
00:37:25,880 --> 00:37:29,040
Speaker 1: a super daring um premise, and that it talks about

638
00:37:29,040 --> 00:37:32,839
Speaker 1: the origin of the universe. Uh. It describes things like

639
00:37:33,239 --> 00:37:38,320
Speaker 1: dark matter. Um. It predicts um black holes, which a

640
00:37:38,360 --> 00:37:40,239
Speaker 1: lot of people are like, this is years before black

641
00:37:40,239 --> 00:37:43,560
Speaker 1: holes were discovered. Well, I think Einstein had predicted black

642
00:37:43,560 --> 00:37:46,200
Speaker 1: holes in his theory of relativity like a full ten

643
00:37:46,280 --> 00:37:48,960
Speaker 1: years before, five years before he was writing this. But

644
00:37:49,000 --> 00:37:52,160
Speaker 1: it's still super impressive. But the reason it's daring is

645
00:37:52,200 --> 00:37:55,160
Speaker 1: because he is one of the few people to suggest,

646
00:37:55,680 --> 00:37:59,480
Speaker 1: and you know, back up mathematically um or attempt to

647
00:37:59,800 --> 00:38:02,799
Speaker 1: the the second law of thermodynamics that matter in the

648
00:38:02,880 --> 00:38:05,960
Speaker 1: universe tends towards chaos and disorder and there will eventually

649
00:38:05,960 --> 00:38:09,000
Speaker 1: be a total loss of energy because of that, that

650
00:38:09,120 --> 00:38:12,000
Speaker 1: it can be reversed. And his premise was that life

651
00:38:12,040 --> 00:38:16,640
Speaker 1: itself is an example of reverse entropy, where you know,

652
00:38:17,280 --> 00:38:23,960
Speaker 1: disordered atoms are put into very orderly, very efficient machines

653
00:38:24,400 --> 00:38:27,920
Speaker 1: called organisms or life, which is pretty awesome. And that

654
00:38:28,000 --> 00:38:30,319
Speaker 1: was just part of it. But that's what really made

655
00:38:30,400 --> 00:38:32,160
Speaker 1: him like a kind of a pioneer, and that was

656
00:38:32,200 --> 00:38:34,680
Speaker 1: his big contribution. And I get the impression that this

657
00:38:34,719 --> 00:38:38,440
Speaker 1: book that was published in UM is one of those

658
00:38:38,440 --> 00:38:41,240
Speaker 1: things where I could see people going back in fifty

659
00:38:41,320 --> 00:38:45,080
Speaker 1: years and somebody rediscovering his ideas and saying, oh my god,

660
00:38:45,160 --> 00:38:48,759
Speaker 1: like you just advanced you know, quantum physics, by light

661
00:38:49,000 --> 00:38:52,319
Speaker 1: by light years. It's just been kind of languishing until then,

662
00:38:52,440 --> 00:38:59,120
Speaker 1: you know, or here's the cure for cancer. Yeah maybe. Uh.

663
00:38:59,160 --> 00:39:00,759
Speaker 1: This is a really sad though, because I think the

664
00:39:00,880 --> 00:39:04,760
Speaker 1: narrative that at the time was that like, boy genius

665
00:39:04,760 --> 00:39:08,719
Speaker 1: goes bust because he's working these jobs. And by all accounts,

666
00:39:08,920 --> 00:39:10,960
Speaker 1: you know, he lived the life he wanted to live,

667
00:39:11,600 --> 00:39:13,719
Speaker 1: and he had he had I don't think like tons

668
00:39:13,760 --> 00:39:15,960
Speaker 1: and tons of great friends, but he did have some

669
00:39:16,120 --> 00:39:19,279
Speaker 1: very close friends who, like he said, described him as

670
00:39:19,320 --> 00:39:21,440
Speaker 1: a as a good guy and kind of a could be,

671
00:39:21,520 --> 00:39:25,360
Speaker 1: kind of a fun dude, and he wasn't completely maladjusted

672
00:39:25,360 --> 00:39:28,480
Speaker 1: because of his childhood. And I think just wanted to

673
00:39:28,520 --> 00:39:33,279
Speaker 1: be left alone. Yeah. So that's why in seven that

674
00:39:33,360 --> 00:39:36,839
Speaker 1: New Yorker article on him was just so devastating, was

675
00:39:36,880 --> 00:39:39,520
Speaker 1: because he'd been trying so hard to be left alone.

676
00:39:40,040 --> 00:39:43,000
Speaker 1: Like his one and only publicly received book had been

677
00:39:43,000 --> 00:39:46,280
Speaker 1: published a full twelve years before he totally dropped out,

678
00:39:46,600 --> 00:39:50,799
Speaker 1: and The New Yorker sent a woman reporter to to

679
00:39:51,000 --> 00:39:54,200
Speaker 1: basically become his friend, under the guys of just being

680
00:39:54,280 --> 00:39:57,520
Speaker 1: his friend and to gather information and then publish an

681
00:39:57,600 --> 00:39:59,799
Speaker 1: article about him. You know, yeah, he said it was

682
00:40:00,160 --> 00:40:04,719
Speaker 1: humiliating and made him sound crazy. Um he sued now

683
00:40:04,760 --> 00:40:06,680
Speaker 1: this way, I got really confused, and I don't know

684
00:40:06,719 --> 00:40:08,799
Speaker 1: if he got to the bottom of it. He he

685
00:40:08,840 --> 00:40:12,720
Speaker 1: did sue them for invasion of privacy and malicious libel um.

686
00:40:12,760 --> 00:40:15,120
Speaker 1: And I saw all kinds of things from really good

687
00:40:15,120 --> 00:40:19,000
Speaker 1: sources that the case was dismissed, that they basically and

688
00:40:19,040 --> 00:40:21,719
Speaker 1: it's used in privacy law as saying, if you're a

689
00:40:21,719 --> 00:40:25,000
Speaker 1: public figure, you're always a public figure. But I also

690
00:40:25,000 --> 00:40:28,080
Speaker 1: saw that he did win some kind of settlement from them.

691
00:40:28,160 --> 00:40:31,359
Speaker 1: I think they were just multiple suits. Maybe yeah. I

692
00:40:31,400 --> 00:40:34,200
Speaker 1: think that the privacy the invasion of privacy suit he

693
00:40:34,320 --> 00:40:37,360
Speaker 1: lost and it was upheld on appeal to that um

694
00:40:37,400 --> 00:40:39,680
Speaker 1: that like you said, once, your public figure, always a

695
00:40:39,680 --> 00:40:43,759
Speaker 1: public figure. But I think that that um libel was

696
00:40:43,840 --> 00:40:46,080
Speaker 1: what he might have gotten a settlement for because there

697
00:40:46,160 --> 00:40:49,319
Speaker 1: was misreporting reported that he'd gone to Toughs, and I

698
00:40:49,320 --> 00:40:51,279
Speaker 1: think that was Norbert Wiener who had gone to Toughs

699
00:40:51,520 --> 00:40:55,480
Speaker 1: just a couple of technical things, nothing really really big time.

700
00:40:55,560 --> 00:40:58,640
Speaker 1: But he hated this this article so much. I get

701
00:40:58,680 --> 00:41:01,160
Speaker 1: the impression he wasn't about to drop it. And the

702
00:41:01,239 --> 00:41:04,719
Speaker 1: new Yorker settled out of court to settle it. Yeah,

703
00:41:04,760 --> 00:41:08,680
Speaker 1: so this was nineteen thirty seven. Lawsuits followed and then

704
00:41:08,800 --> 00:41:12,160
Speaker 1: very sadly that the sad end into this story is

705
00:41:12,239 --> 00:41:15,120
Speaker 1: that in nineteen forty four, at the age of forty six,

706
00:41:15,840 --> 00:41:20,600
Speaker 1: he was found dead by his landlady. Died of cerebral hemorrhage,

707
00:41:20,960 --> 00:41:25,560
Speaker 1: the same thing that killed his father in nine. Mm hmm. Yeah.

708
00:41:25,600 --> 00:41:27,719
Speaker 1: And you I mean, you can get a really good

709
00:41:27,760 --> 00:41:30,640
Speaker 1: impression of how he was treated by the media with

710
00:41:30,760 --> 00:41:34,160
Speaker 1: just the title of the obituary they ran about him

711
00:41:34,200 --> 00:41:39,480
Speaker 1: in Time magazine. Um, it was called prodigious failure. That was.

712
00:41:39,920 --> 00:41:42,839
Speaker 1: That was the title of his obituary in Time back

713
00:41:42,880 --> 00:41:48,680
Speaker 1: in nineteen Who lived his own life? Yeah? Exactly what what?

714
00:41:48,880 --> 00:41:51,319
Speaker 1: Why did he have to perform for you? And then

715
00:41:51,360 --> 00:41:53,680
Speaker 1: over time, you know the idea that he was this

716
00:41:54,120 --> 00:41:58,200
Speaker 1: great example of of what happens if you just give

717
00:41:58,239 --> 00:42:01,000
Speaker 1: your kid too much attention and try to turn them

718
00:42:01,040 --> 00:42:04,000
Speaker 1: into a um like a genius too young. This is

719
00:42:04,040 --> 00:42:05,799
Speaker 1: what happens to him. They burn out and they end

720
00:42:05,880 --> 00:42:10,080
Speaker 1: up running adding machines rather than doing anything useful. Um.

721
00:42:10,120 --> 00:42:12,440
Speaker 1: That that was. That became that narrative that you have

722
00:42:12,560 --> 00:42:17,319
Speaker 1: to look out for really interesting story. Yeah. So, um,

723
00:42:17,520 --> 00:42:21,320
Speaker 1: you got anything else about william Sitis? No, look forward

724
00:42:21,320 --> 00:42:25,400
Speaker 1: to uh to a full sort of more robust episode

725
00:42:25,400 --> 00:42:29,200
Speaker 1: on Prodigies for sure. Did you want did you when

726
00:42:29,239 --> 00:42:32,359
Speaker 1: you mentioned Goodwill Hunting? Did you see too that that

727
00:42:32,600 --> 00:42:36,680
Speaker 1: um that he was he in part inspired that movie? Oh?

728
00:42:36,719 --> 00:42:41,320
Speaker 1: Really yeah, that's interesting to do that parallel, um. And

729
00:42:41,640 --> 00:42:43,440
Speaker 1: then I want to give one shout out. So you

730
00:42:43,440 --> 00:42:46,600
Speaker 1: know he gave that talk on um four dimensional bodies

731
00:42:46,640 --> 00:42:49,480
Speaker 1: at Harvard when he was eleven. I was like, I

732
00:42:49,520 --> 00:42:51,800
Speaker 1: have no idea what that is. And I looked around

733
00:42:51,800 --> 00:42:58,440
Speaker 1: and I found finally a really comprehensive, really understandable explainer

734
00:42:58,960 --> 00:43:02,680
Speaker 1: on four dimensionals space. It's called what is four dimensional Space? Like?

735
00:43:03,120 --> 00:43:06,040
Speaker 1: It's by J. D. Norton. And if you're all interested

736
00:43:06,080 --> 00:43:08,920
Speaker 1: in figuring that out, I would strongly advise going to

737
00:43:09,000 --> 00:43:13,200
Speaker 1: check that out. I wasn't talking to you. Yeah. Uh.

738
00:43:13,239 --> 00:43:17,200
Speaker 1: Since since Chuck said, yeah, it's time for listener mail everybody,

739
00:43:20,120 --> 00:43:23,560
Speaker 1: how about the apples? All right, I'm gonna call this

740
00:43:23,640 --> 00:43:27,600
Speaker 1: sort of a double metal email. UM. Quickly we got

741
00:43:27,600 --> 00:43:31,360
Speaker 1: one from a gentleman named Kirk Brett Fold and White

742
00:43:31,480 --> 00:43:36,520
Speaker 1: Rock BC to challenge me on saying Bruce uh, saying

743
00:43:36,560 --> 00:43:39,800
Speaker 1: Bruce Dickinson was the metal god, the god of metal.

744
00:43:40,680 --> 00:43:42,839
Speaker 1: On the Damascus Steel episode, he said, I think you'll

745
00:43:42,880 --> 00:43:46,640
Speaker 1: find that Judas Priests Rob Halford is widely acknowledged to

746
00:43:46,680 --> 00:43:50,000
Speaker 1: hold the title of metal god. Okay, uh And I

747
00:43:50,040 --> 00:43:52,480
Speaker 1: wrote Kirk back and I said, well, it's subjective. And

748
00:43:53,120 --> 00:43:56,759
Speaker 1: I like Iron Maiden more than I like Judas Priest. Uh. Yeah,

749
00:43:56,880 --> 00:43:59,080
Speaker 1: I do too. Yeah do you do? I'm with you

750
00:43:59,160 --> 00:44:01,480
Speaker 1: you Oh yeah, yeah, like Juice Priest. But I really,

751
00:44:01,600 --> 00:44:04,960
Speaker 1: I mean, I think Iron Maiden I just like him more. Yeah,

752
00:44:05,000 --> 00:44:08,160
Speaker 1: me too. I think their songs more. Yeah, I think

753
00:44:08,280 --> 00:44:10,000
Speaker 1: I could see where he's coming from. It's much more

754
00:44:10,000 --> 00:44:12,840
Speaker 1: melodic and maybe in that sense a little less metal

755
00:44:13,239 --> 00:44:17,000
Speaker 1: than Judas Priest. Yeah maybe so. Uh. And then someone

756
00:44:17,320 --> 00:44:21,360
Speaker 1: we gotta shout out Gunner who who took your side

757
00:44:21,400 --> 00:44:23,880
Speaker 1: in the A C d C debate recently listened to

758
00:44:23,880 --> 00:44:27,840
Speaker 1: to unrelated episodes, and in both episodes, Josh said he

759
00:44:27,840 --> 00:44:30,280
Speaker 1: didn't like A C d C. So to you, Josh,

760
00:44:30,360 --> 00:44:34,600
Speaker 1: I just want to say you're right. Finally, someone else

761
00:44:34,600 --> 00:44:36,440
Speaker 1: thinks A C d C is overrated. They're just not

762
00:44:36,480 --> 00:44:38,800
Speaker 1: that good. Although some of the early songs are written

763
00:44:38,800 --> 00:44:42,200
Speaker 1: by the Flash and the Pan, and I love Flash

764
00:44:42,239 --> 00:44:44,120
Speaker 1: in the Pan. A C G C, A C d

765
00:44:44,200 --> 00:44:46,000
Speaker 1: C just doesn't do it for me. And that's from

766
00:44:46,040 --> 00:44:49,320
Speaker 1: Gunner and Gunner. I'm here to say that you were wrong.

767
00:44:52,160 --> 00:44:55,399
Speaker 1: I thought it was subjective. Well, that's my whole point

768
00:44:55,440 --> 00:44:57,400
Speaker 1: is I'm making fun of him saying right and wrong.

769
00:44:57,640 --> 00:44:59,840
Speaker 1: Oh I see, I see you turned it all over on.

770
00:45:00,120 --> 00:45:04,640
Speaker 1: So yeah, confused and check this out. We're talking, we're

771
00:45:04,640 --> 00:45:07,319
Speaker 1: talking about metal, we're talking about hard rock, and we're

772
00:45:07,320 --> 00:45:10,560
Speaker 1: getting emails from dudes named Kirk and Gunner. I mean,

773
00:45:10,600 --> 00:45:13,719
Speaker 1: how perfect is that we should start that band that

774
00:45:13,760 --> 00:45:16,960
Speaker 1: we always heard Gunner and Flash in the Pan? Yeah?

775
00:45:17,160 --> 00:45:19,080
Speaker 1: Have you heard of Flash in the Pan? I never

776
00:45:19,120 --> 00:45:20,759
Speaker 1: had before. I hadn't, but I had to look that

777
00:45:20,880 --> 00:45:26,200
Speaker 1: up to They were an AUSSI duo who produced uh

778
00:45:26,440 --> 00:45:28,360
Speaker 1: some of the early A C d C stuff apparently,

779
00:45:28,400 --> 00:45:30,160
Speaker 1: and then we're a band in their own right, so

780
00:45:30,800 --> 00:45:33,800
Speaker 1: you gotta check them out too. Now, the A C

781
00:45:33,920 --> 00:45:36,040
Speaker 1: D C and they wanted to produce the Spice Girls.

782
00:45:36,080 --> 00:45:38,960
Speaker 1: They're two big successes, that's right, and we're gonna get

783
00:45:39,000 --> 00:45:40,680
Speaker 1: that band with those guys. But I get to be

784
00:45:40,760 --> 00:45:43,839
Speaker 1: flashed this time. I'm not gonna be panned anymore. I'll

785
00:45:43,880 --> 00:45:46,320
Speaker 1: be Pan then can I be Pan? But I'm gonna

786
00:45:46,440 --> 00:45:50,799
Speaker 1: really play up that like super light pan flute kind

787
00:45:50,800 --> 00:45:53,920
Speaker 1: of thing. That's my jam, and I'm going to address like,

788
00:45:54,000 --> 00:45:58,200
Speaker 1: what's the half goat half man god Dionysus. No, it's

789
00:45:58,400 --> 00:46:01,200
Speaker 1: oh gosh, I can't think it's I guess it wouldn't

790
00:46:01,200 --> 00:46:03,680
Speaker 1: be Dionysus to be pan anyway, I'm gonna be like

791
00:46:03,719 --> 00:46:07,120
Speaker 1: the Greek god Pan. Okay, that's my jam, and I'm flash.

792
00:46:07,160 --> 00:46:08,920
Speaker 1: So I'll just go out there and open my overcoat

793
00:46:10,320 --> 00:46:15,040
Speaker 1: and no one will notice. Somebody will feel it. Yeah, well,

794
00:46:15,080 --> 00:46:19,319
Speaker 1: I'm just leaving that one. Uh. If you wanna get

795
00:46:19,400 --> 00:46:22,160
Speaker 1: in touch with Chuck and I, like Gunner and Kirk

796
00:46:22,239 --> 00:46:25,840
Speaker 1: did our new pals, you can email us at stuff

797
00:46:25,880 --> 00:46:32,200
Speaker 1: podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know

798
00:46:32,280 --> 00:46:35,239
Speaker 1: is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts my

799
00:46:35,280 --> 00:46:38,719
Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or

800
00:46:38,719 --> 00:46:40,520
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows