Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, you're welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
Speaker 1: There's Charles W Chuck Bryant over there, and it's just
Speaker 1: us today. And that's fine because it's a Thursday. We
Speaker 1: get a little crazy on Thursday. So we have a
Speaker 1: potluckum today. I brought Gavelta fish and Chuck doesn't like it.
Speaker 1: But we're just moving forward and this is stuff you
Speaker 1: should know. I think it's good. I brought my my
Speaker 1: deviled eggs. Yeah they're good. Thank you. You took my
Speaker 1: advice and used the secret ingredient Coleman's mustard. Oh of course,
Speaker 1: friends who are weigh into Coleman's. By the way, it's
Speaker 1: really great in deviled eggs. I'm not kidding. I believe it.
Speaker 1: I'm sure if you're a mustard fan, it's the one
Speaker 1: to go to. Oh yeah, you hate mustard for remember
Speaker 1: the narrative I hate mustard And he refused to accept that. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just so bonkers that I can't wrap my head
Speaker 1: around it, I guess is the problem. Speaking of narrative,
Speaker 1: this this story today is a bit of a cautionary
Speaker 1: tale on narratives. I think, oh, well, well put um
Speaker 1: and you know, we'll get into it here in a second.
Speaker 1: But it's the story of a of a young genius prodigy.
Speaker 1: And in researching this there you know a lot of
Speaker 1: conflicting accounts about how his home life was and how
Speaker 1: his parents treated him, and uh, it's a story of
Speaker 1: media sensationalism, and it's a story of parents who were
Speaker 1: ahead of the curve in a lot of ways for
Speaker 1: the time. But also I don't know about victims, but
Speaker 1: also just sort of fell into the usual state of
Speaker 1: parenthood at the time, which is end of the very
Speaker 1: sort of beginning of the twenties and reso, it's not
Speaker 1: like parenting then, let's that it's at its peak, you know. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: And you can also say that his parents, conceivably and
Speaker 1: him went against the grain of normalcy and status quo,
Speaker 1: and that um, you know, the American public immedia kind
Speaker 1: of bristled at that, and that they were treated poorly
Speaker 1: for that. And so you know, do we how much
Speaker 1: do we need to question of what what is said
Speaker 1: about them from you know, journalism at the time, And
Speaker 1: it's a it's a big morass, basically, I think to
Speaker 1: paraphrase what you're saying. It's a cautionary tale about making
Speaker 1: cautionary tales out of anything, right, Yeah, although I do
Speaker 1: think this is a cautionary tale. But okay, so we'll
Speaker 1: we'll we'll get to the end. Well, in the end,
Speaker 1: we'll reveal what you think it's a cautionary tale about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, well, let's just get into it. Let's
Speaker 1: let's talk about William James. Is it sidis or side
Speaker 1: it situs? Is it side ice? I don't think. So
Speaker 1: that's what you keep in your pocket for when you've
Speaker 1: got some lukewarm soda. Well, just like everything else with
Speaker 1: this guy, heard a couple of different pronunciations on YouTube,
Speaker 1: so so I saw it's it spelled out a couple
Speaker 1: of different places that seem to know what they were
Speaker 1: talking about side us, Yeah, with the emphasis on the side.
Speaker 1: But I had not heard of him before, had you. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean we did a chapter in our book on prodigies,
Speaker 1: and um, I he wasn't in the book, but I
Speaker 1: remember reading a little bit about him at the time,
Speaker 1: and I think just the whole idea of child prodigies really, um,
Speaker 1: it's super fascinating to me. So I would like to
Speaker 1: do one on Prodigies, maybe tackled. That would be maybe
Speaker 1: one of the first book chapters we retrofit as a podcast. Okay, cool, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah, they just have always fascinated me. And Billy
Speaker 1: was interesting in that a lot of times prodigies are
Speaker 1: prodigies in like a single discipline, not serily saying they're
Speaker 1: big dumb dumbs everywhere else, but there's like one major focus.
Speaker 1: But young Billy was a language prodigy, a math and
Speaker 1: science prodigy. He was just a well rounded kind of
Speaker 1: no a lot kid. Yeah, he really was, and he was.
Speaker 1: He's very frequently lifted up as the prodigy, perhaps the
Speaker 1: most gifted child that has ever lived, certainly at least
Speaker 1: in the recorded history in the West, and maybe the
Speaker 1: smartest human. Yeah, it's entirely possible. Yeah it is. Which
Speaker 1: I think is another thing that will really come up
Speaker 1: in that Prodigies episode is you know exactly how do
Speaker 1: you how do you say who's the smartest and who's not?
Speaker 1: Is it you know? Or i Q tests reliable? Which
Speaker 1: I think in addition to Prodigies, we need to do
Speaker 1: one just on i Q tests took Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: also want to go ahead and correct myself when I
Speaker 1: said he was well rounded, he was academically well round,
Speaker 1: did because as we will see, he was not very
Speaker 1: well rounded as a young child. Uh, and that was
Speaker 1: one of the major mistakes that his parents made, Yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure. UM And one of the other things that
Speaker 1: he's also often kind of held out as an example of,
Speaker 1: is this this burning question that we still have today,
Speaker 1: is um, are gifted children the products of their environment?
Speaker 1: Like can you just take basically any child and make
Speaker 1: them a gifted prodigy? Um? Or is it you know, genetics?
Speaker 1: Is it really just you know, is that we're gifted
Speaker 1: apt apt you know, where like you're you're kind of
Speaker 1: born with this. You didn't do anything to earn it
Speaker 1: or deserve it. You just it's just who you are.
Speaker 1: You're a gifted, intelligent person from a very early age.
Speaker 1: And we still haven't gotten to the bottom of that.
Speaker 1: But um and he actually he he kind of muddies
Speaker 1: that the answer to that question more than answers it
Speaker 1: at all, you know, because I mean, I definitely believe
Speaker 1: that you were born gifted, but then from the moment
Speaker 1: you're born on everything else plays in. So he comes
Speaker 1: one of the reason I think he he muddies the
Speaker 1: The answer to that question is he comes from very
Speaker 1: intelligent stock. Both his mother and his father were extremely
Speaker 1: intelligent people, um, but they also were the kind of
Speaker 1: people who tried to educate him starting around age two,
Speaker 1: maybe even a little earlier. So he's an amalgamation of
Speaker 1: those two things. Parents who were incredibly intelligent who would
Speaker 1: have ostensibly passed along some pretty smart jenes um, and
Speaker 1: parents who you know, made him produced an environment for
Speaker 1: him that made him into, you know, a prodigious learner. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So let's let's start with his folks. His dad, Boris.
Speaker 1: They were both Russian immigrants, and his dad was put
Speaker 1: in jail and Russia before he managed to get out
Speaker 1: of there for apparently in a prison that was so
Speaker 1: small he couldn't even recline himself fully in sleep and
Speaker 1: to sleep in a little like fetal position, I think,
Speaker 1: And he was he was jailed for for teaching, and
Speaker 1: he he was teaching peasants. He didn't have permission. They
Speaker 1: didn't like that in Russia. He was let out after
Speaker 1: a couple of years on the condition that he didn't
Speaker 1: teach other people how to read anymore. And supposedly didn't
Speaker 1: read himself, was under surveillance, but then got the heck
Speaker 1: out of there. Yeah, he was like, I see the
Speaker 1: writing on the wall. It's time for me to get
Speaker 1: out of here. I'm going to go to America. Because
Speaker 1: at the time, America was this shining beacon for immigrants
Speaker 1: saying come, We're a land of opportunity. We turned the
Speaker 1: lights on in the Statue of Liberty. Tom Brocott did
Speaker 1: it himself and just like a motel six and um,
Speaker 1: it's uh, it's it's the doors are open basically, So
Speaker 1: he and Sarah um Billy's mom both took America up
Speaker 1: on that, although separately. They actually met in America, although
Speaker 1: they were both from the Ukraine, I believe, yeah, and
Speaker 1: Boris he he sort of bucked a lot of trends
Speaker 1: back then, and this was in the late eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: He was an atheist, um, which was you know, not
Speaker 1: in fashion at the time. He later got into like
Speaker 1: he made a big name for himself in the early
Speaker 1: days of psychology and psychoanalysis, and he was an opponent
Speaker 1: of Freud, which was certainly rocked the boat at the time.
Speaker 1: And then he really despised traditional education and kind of
Speaker 1: all its forms and the way it was back then,
Speaker 1: particularly wrote memorization, it was he just hated it so
Speaker 1: much he saw zero value in it whatsoever. And so
Speaker 1: like that's kind of the basis of his concept of
Speaker 1: educating not just children but anybody. It's figure out what
Speaker 1: the basics are, learned the basics, the fundamentals, and then
Speaker 1: use those to reason your way to answer basically any
Speaker 1: question that you possibly could have. And that that idea
Speaker 1: applies to everything from philosophy to math, to literature to
Speaker 1: history to language. That you can figure anything out if
Speaker 1: you understand just a few fundamentals of it. And so
Speaker 1: that's what his big focus was on. That. Yes, Sarah,
Speaker 1: his mother, Um, she worked your way through college, paid
Speaker 1: for it herself. She worked as a nurse at night,
Speaker 1: went to medical school during the day. I believe was
Speaker 1: the first woman admitted to Boston medical school or medical college.
Speaker 1: And she never became a doctor, though she instead chose
Speaker 1: to parent. And Um, they both worked their way to
Speaker 1: the I mean, by the time they came to the
Speaker 1: East Coast in the eighteen eighties, they both worked their
Speaker 1: way to the top of as high as you could
Speaker 1: get in academic achievement in the United States. I think
Speaker 1: Boris had his bachelor's and masters from Harvard in three years.
Speaker 1: And uh, yes, Sarah went to Boston. You and that
Speaker 1: they were both overachievers and obviously had a kid. I
Speaker 1: never really They had a daughter named Helena, but I
Speaker 1: didn't see how much she achieved. I don't know either,
Speaker 1: although I saw that she and her brother shared a
Speaker 1: lot of similar interests, so they were close throughout his
Speaker 1: whole life. I'm sure she was pretty smart too, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would guess so too. Dumb, No, for certainly not um.
Speaker 1: But but the the one of the things about Boris
Speaker 1: and Sarah's both of them. Everything you just described that
Speaker 1: they achieved in America, they did within ten years of arriving.
Speaker 1: And when they both arrived, neither one of them spoke
Speaker 1: a word of English. They went from speaking no English
Speaker 1: to things like m d s and pH ds within
Speaker 1: ten years, so they made quite a splash. Um. And
Speaker 1: Boris himself enjoys kind of a separate fame from his
Speaker 1: son as well. He was a really well um respected,
Speaker 1: uh pioneer in psychology. I believe he was um instructed
Speaker 1: under William James, who was considered one of the two
Speaker 1: founders of psych pology, who basically believed that behavior human
Speaker 1: behavior um was a way that humans adapt to our environment.
Speaker 1: And so if you could just kind of study the environment,
Speaker 1: study behavior, you can just kind of understand the world
Speaker 1: that much better. And that was his kind of foundation
Speaker 1: for psychology. And um Boris sitis was, you know, one
Speaker 1: of his proteges um and he uh, bores it is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it does, um, But the uh man, you really threw
Speaker 1: me off with bores itis because now I can't stop
Speaker 1: thinking about what bores itis is. Enlarged foot. Sure, the
Speaker 1: bores ITAs like a big cartoony like keep on trucking
Speaker 1: guy foot, but just one of them. And then now
Speaker 1: we can put it to bed, thank you, because I
Speaker 1: think it would have thrown off the whole rest of
Speaker 1: the episode if we hadn't just addressed it on his face,
Speaker 1: you know. So um he so Boris Um looked up
Speaker 1: to Williams so much he named his son after him.
Speaker 1: It's William James sitis Um. But so he was respected
Speaker 1: in his in his own right as well. But it
Speaker 1: was it was Billy who became like far and away
Speaker 1: the most famous Situs, and it was largely because his
Speaker 1: parents really welcomed the spotlight and then realized far too
Speaker 1: late in Billy's life that that was not a good
Speaker 1: thing for a kid. Yeah, should we go over the
Speaker 1: you took up these from Sarah Situs is another condition? Um,
Speaker 1: you put ciitus on anything. Yeah, I guess you have
Speaker 1: to have two syllables like Josh sidis doesn't sound like it. No, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're absolutely right, Chuck situs. I guess it's like a
Speaker 1: it's something that ground beef can come down with or
Speaker 1: Jerry scitus. Yes, sure that has something to do with me.
Speaker 1: So it's me so overload like the blue man who
Speaker 1: took too much copper. This is um. You just turn
Speaker 1: you just start smelling like me, so it comes out
Speaker 1: of your ears. Uh so should we I think before
Speaker 1: our break, maybe let's run over um what you dug
Speaker 1: up from Sarah Sitas is one know if this is
Speaker 1: from her book that she wrote later, but she kind
Speaker 1: of outlined her and they're parenting sort of checklist, which
Speaker 1: when you read it it does not seem like a
Speaker 1: parenting checklist from the early nineteen hundreds. No, it's super progressive,
Speaker 1: isn't it. It is in a lot of ways. Uh.
Speaker 1: Then I'll get to the part that they kind of
Speaker 1: really forget at the end. But um, avoid punishment and
Speaker 1: always possible, not bad. Why because it's the first cause
Speaker 1: of fear. Pretty sensible. Sensible. Uh, try not to say
Speaker 1: don't to your children. Instead explain why what you say
Speaker 1: is so, that's awesome. That's a good one. A lot
Speaker 1: of these are still very valid. Um awakened curiosity for sure.
Speaker 1: Never failed to answer and never put off your child's questions.
Speaker 1: Probably the hardest thing to do as a parent, but
Speaker 1: valid right because they come hard and fast. Uh. Never
Speaker 1: force your child to learn, nor judge their ability to
Speaker 1: learn by adult standards. Now, that's a big one for
Speaker 1: them that I wonder if they really abided by either
Speaker 1: that or they did abide by it and they were
Speaker 1: they were misinterpreted and miss labeled later on, you know.
Speaker 1: Um there's a few more here. Implant ideas at bedtime,
Speaker 1: just before sleep. I don't know about the science behind that,
Speaker 1: but it sounds reasonable. Sure, Like when your child is
Speaker 1: going off to slumber land, you can introduce them to
Speaker 1: the concept that they'll die eventually one day and it
Speaker 1: really sticks in their head. Uh. Never lie to your
Speaker 1: child or use evasions if that's impossible, but sure, uh,
Speaker 1: refrain from showing him off. I think that's where they
Speaker 1: really dropped the ball. Yeah, that's almost revisionists to add that,
Speaker 1: because there's just no way that they knew that from
Speaker 1: the get go. They just didn't follow it. They didn't
Speaker 1: even seem to consider following it. And I think they
Speaker 1: really grossly overestimated the warmth of the response the public
Speaker 1: would would greet young William with, yeah, and then the
Speaker 1: big one that I think it just wasn't a thing
Speaker 1: back then, So I'm going to give them a pass.
Speaker 1: But we now know so much about social and what
Speaker 1: they call social emotional development and teaching and parenting, and
Speaker 1: it just didn't really exist back then, and and young
Speaker 1: Billy certainly didn't get any of that, so he writ
Speaker 1: he suffered for that reason. So they released this, and
Speaker 1: American parents responded by saying, we're tired just reading this list, right? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Uh so should we take that break so we can
Speaker 1: get some rest? All right, I gotta go put up
Speaker 1: this big foot. Let it relax for a little bit.
Speaker 1: You have Boris itists. So it took we kind of
Speaker 1: went over um Boris and Sarah's list on you know,
Speaker 1: how to raise a child, and it kind of underscores
Speaker 1: this premise that was basically the entire premise of boris
Speaker 1: Is approach to childhood education was that if you, um,
Speaker 1: if you do this with a kid, if you if
Speaker 1: you say okay, you know the um, if you create
Speaker 1: curiosity and interest in a child and then nurture it
Speaker 1: with lots of books and like, you know, lectures and
Speaker 1: whatever you can find to keep the kid's curiosity going
Speaker 1: and just feed seven. If they have a question or
Speaker 1: something like that, you just sit down with them and
Speaker 1: talk it out. That if you do this and you
Speaker 1: start a young enough age, you know, by the time
Speaker 1: your kid is you know, they should be at least
Speaker 1: as intelligent, if not more intelligent, than an average adult.
Speaker 1: And his premise was that you could do this with
Speaker 1: any kid, and that you kind of should do this
Speaker 1: with any kid. And their proof of concept was their
Speaker 1: son Billy, who had a really impressive list of accomplishments
Speaker 1: to his credit by the time he was like eight,
Speaker 1: nine or ten. Right, Yeah, I mean, we'll go through
Speaker 1: some of these. I think some of these maybe take
Speaker 1: with a grain of salt, because records from the early
Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds are what they are, and his story has
Speaker 1: been sort of Um, I don't know the best word
Speaker 1: is convoluted, exaggerated in place, maybe exaggerated in places. But
Speaker 1: I don't want to take anything away from because a
Speaker 1: lot of it checks out too. But let's just go
Speaker 1: go through him. Um. Supposedly, at eighteen months was reading
Speaker 1: the New York Times uh by three, New Latin by six,
Speaker 1: uh New Russian, French, German, Hebrew, Armenian, and Turkish. Was
Speaker 1: typing letters at three to Macy's about Christmas toys. Very cute, right.
Speaker 1: I also saw that he taught himself to eat with
Speaker 1: a spoon by eight months old, through trial and error.
Speaker 1: All right, that's I've seen babies do that, an eight
Speaker 1: month old baby. Yeah, it's hard to remember, Okay, alright,
Speaker 1: what else? Maybe not? I don't know. It just seems
Speaker 1: like something that baby would be like, I don't know what,
Speaker 1: this would be more likely to go in their eye
Speaker 1: or their ear than there in their mouth. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to remember. It's all a blur. Uh. Let
Speaker 1: me see. He apparently graduated. I mean, he went through
Speaker 1: grade school and like no time, he entered the first
Speaker 1: grade and graduated in through primary school entirely in seven months.
Speaker 1: It was basically like Billy Madison, Yeah, which I've never seen,
Speaker 1: but I know the story. Between six an eight he
Speaker 1: wrote at least four books. Uh. In At eight he
Speaker 1: passed the Harvard Medical School anatomy exam and then the
Speaker 1: entrance exam to M I T. And also at eight
Speaker 1: and then at his own language called in a book
Speaker 1: called The book was called Book of Vendorgood and the
Speaker 1: language was vendor Goood. Yeah, not like you know, just
Speaker 1: some gibberish or whatever. He took from like Latin and
Speaker 1: Greek and some of the Romance languages and figured out
Speaker 1: different ways to conjugate um words based on these this
Speaker 1: language and like he created his own language. It wasn't
Speaker 1: just some lame thing where words were replaced with words
Speaker 1: and I think they were like eight cases something grammatical cases. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It was really impressive stuff. Um. And it was the
Speaker 1: kind of thing I saw somebody put it, like a
Speaker 1: linguistics professor would have been, you know, well received for
Speaker 1: having written a book where they debuted their own language.
Speaker 1: And this kid was doing it and you know before
Speaker 1: he was ten. Yeah, so he's he's flying through school. Um,
Speaker 1: This is all going great as far as the plan
Speaker 1: that his parents had to raise a really, really smart kid.
Speaker 1: But a very bad thing happened as he was doing this,
Speaker 1: and the press noticed, Um, when you get into Harvard
Speaker 1: at nine years old. Um, they didn't let him untill
Speaker 1: he was eleven, but when you know, that's going to
Speaker 1: be a news story. And by nine when he when
Speaker 1: he entered Harvard as an eleven year old, it was
Speaker 1: it was the full court press from the media. Apparently
Speaker 1: he would and this is before he went to Harvard.
Speaker 1: He would come home from elementary and high school and
Speaker 1: there would be like two photographers waiting outside his place,
Speaker 1: and one of them would hold him while the other
Speaker 1: one would take his picture, like physically hold him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like he had no saying this what he would be accosted. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I hear this, and I think that's awful. The
Speaker 1: media is terrible. But I also I think, like, where
Speaker 1: where where was his mom? Where was his dad? While
Speaker 1: these photographers are holding him out in the street. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, he's a free range kid, I guess in
Speaker 1: that respect, And that's pretty bad. That's definitely a very
Speaker 1: unpleasant thing from childhood, and even worse that would basically
Speaker 1: lay the groundwork for his relationship with the media from
Speaker 1: that point on, and they would just keep going after him.
Speaker 1: Even after he'd been out of the limelight for decades,
Speaker 1: they would still they'd be like, whatever happened to that
Speaker 1: weirdo Billy Sitis and um they look him up and
Speaker 1: write an article on him, and it would he he
Speaker 1: was just as we'll see, he became a very private person.
Speaker 1: Was a huge invasion of his privacy. But that's where
Speaker 1: the whole thing started. But one of the other reasons
Speaker 1: I think also that he was such a private person
Speaker 1: and that the media spotlight was even worse to him
Speaker 1: than it would have been for any other child his
Speaker 1: age is that you touched on it. I think earlier
Speaker 1: that his father is showed play like there was no
Speaker 1: play involved. There was no socialization with his peers. There
Speaker 1: was no encouragement whatsoever for him to make friends, And
Speaker 1: I get the impression there was actually bit of a
Speaker 1: prohibition on him going out and making friends because his
Speaker 1: friends couldn't have possibly kept up with him, So how
Speaker 1: could he possibly be enriched by hanging out with other
Speaker 1: eight year olds? And I think his family kind of
Speaker 1: acknowledged that later on that that was a huge misstep
Speaker 1: and if they didn't, the rest of the world has
Speaker 1: has admitted it for them, and they've they've been vilified
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways for doing that, and I
Speaker 1: think rightfully so like if they've if they've been vilified,
Speaker 1: not all of it can be justified, but there's a
Speaker 1: couple of things that you can be like, yes, that
Speaker 1: was a really bad thing to do with Billy, and
Speaker 1: it messed him up, and that was a big one
Speaker 1: of them for sure. Uh. He when he got to Harvard,
Speaker 1: he started showing his um massive capacity for math and
Speaker 1: mathematical courses. He was designing his own log arrythmic tables.
Speaker 1: He gave his first lecture, uh, including to faculty when
Speaker 1: he was eleven years old, to the Harvard Mathematical Club
Speaker 1: about four dimensional bodies. And then you know, he sort
Speaker 1: of had apparently he had his little act down um
Speaker 1: with the press. He would introduce himself and he would
Speaker 1: he would try and you know, I think he was
Speaker 1: described as precocious a lot, but it came across I mean,
Speaker 1: precocious is sort of a nice way of saying that
Speaker 1: he was rude to a lot of adults who he
Speaker 1: thought he was smarter than yes, and I don't think
Speaker 1: he was ever really taught any different by his parents.
Speaker 1: The thing is, though, is like that's a really good
Speaker 1: anecdote and it does illustrate like what he was like
Speaker 1: at age eleven, granted, But the problem is is because
Speaker 1: you have so many, so few anecdotes about him, that
Speaker 1: it gives you the impression that he was a jerk.
Speaker 1: And I saw after he died, a friend of his
Speaker 1: road into a newspaper magazine and said, you know, a
Speaker 1: lot of these editorials about William Sidas are really misguided.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that you should know about
Speaker 1: him is he looked down on no one. He was
Speaker 1: a kind, gentle person who looked down on no one else.
Speaker 1: And um, I really think that you gotta take that
Speaker 1: along with that anecdote about him, like you know, kind
Speaker 1: of talking down to some of the professors at Harvard
Speaker 1: during that lecture. Well he was, Okay, that's a much
Speaker 1: more succinct way of putting what I was what I
Speaker 1: was trying to get at. I guess there's a lot
Speaker 1: of eleven year old jerks, but the age out of it, hopefully, sure.
Speaker 1: But that lecture, Chuck is it's a really pivotal moment
Speaker 1: in his life. For one, it basically said, hey, world,
Speaker 1: I am maybe the smartest person on the planet or
Speaker 1: whoever lived. Check it out. And then that brought all
Speaker 1: that media attention. But it also showed, like to the
Speaker 1: people who were paying attention and who knew what he
Speaker 1: was talking about, um, that that like this was a
Speaker 1: legit dude. This guy was going to contribute to who
Speaker 1: knows how many different fields in his lifetime. And in fact,
Speaker 1: Norbert Weener, who became the father of side Ntis, who
Speaker 1: was a child prodigy himself, he was like fourteen I
Speaker 1: think at the time. He went to Harvard, starting the
Speaker 1: same year as William Sidis did. Yeah, that's that lecture. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there were some interesting stories about those two being there
Speaker 1: at the same time. Yeah, because they were definitely not
Speaker 1: the same person. And though everybody lumped him together, you know, um,
Speaker 1: both being at Harvard and as like an eleven year
Speaker 1: old in the fourteen year old, but um, Norbert Wiener
Speaker 1: was at that lecture and he he noted that, like,
Speaker 1: this lecture is based on this guy's original thinking. This
Speaker 1: is not just a summation of a bunch of different
Speaker 1: work other people's work on bodies in the fourth dimension,
Speaker 1: like this is what this guy came up with about
Speaker 1: the fourth dimension and it all checks out, Like that's
Speaker 1: impressive stuff. Yeah. There was an M. I. T. Physics
Speaker 1: professor named Daniel Comstock who said that, you know, he
Speaker 1: has a real intellect. He said, it is not automatic.
Speaker 1: He does not cram his head with facts. He reasons
Speaker 1: and there there's a difference. That's a different kind of
Speaker 1: intelligence than just you know, memorizing a lot of stuff.
Speaker 1: So you can be on Jeopardy, um, which is you know,
Speaker 1: another kind of intelligence, no shape. I mean, I would
Speaker 1: love to go on Jeopardy and perform well. Um, but Comstock, oh,
Speaker 1: I would not do well, So I don't want to go.
Speaker 1: But do you think you'd freeze? I just I'm not
Speaker 1: Jeopardy material. I'm Jeopardy from the couch material. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You could shout it out occasionally only when you're and
Speaker 1: you're right. Yeah, but I'm not good enough to be
Speaker 1: on the show. Uh. Comstock went on to say, I
Speaker 1: believe he'll be a great mathematician, the leader in science
Speaker 1: in the future, the leader in that science in the future,
Speaker 1: and a lot of Hay has been made about i Q,
Speaker 1: not just for him but certainly for him, but just period.
Speaker 1: I mean, like you said, we should totally do one
Speaker 1: on i Q tests and whether it's even valid or not.
Speaker 1: But he uh, retroactively they have UM basically said that
Speaker 1: they think he had an i Q of about two
Speaker 1: fifty three d um A of one thirty is considered
Speaker 1: very advanced. They have retroactively UM said that Einstein had
Speaker 1: about a one sixty da Vinci had about a one eighty.
Speaker 1: Newton may have been about a one ninety. So take
Speaker 1: it for what it's worth. All this is just to
Speaker 1: say that Billy Sidis was, you know, super super smart
Speaker 1: by kind of any measure, and so so that Harvard
Speaker 1: lecture definitely brought the spotlight on him, not necessarily to UM,
Speaker 1: like an adoring spotlight. And then also at the same time,
Speaker 1: his father delivered a lecture that became a book, really
Speaker 1: kind of forty five page essay called Philistine and Genius,
Speaker 1: and it was basically where he lays out this idea
Speaker 1: that any kid can be a prodigy. And and then
Speaker 1: ultimately we're doing our children disservice by being lazy and
Speaker 1: you know, just living with the status quo and not
Speaker 1: producing geniuses because we're just we're just not up to
Speaker 1: the task. And that was not very well received either.
Speaker 1: So everybody started to hate Boris because he was an outsider.
Speaker 1: He's a recent immigrant from Russia and he was Jewish,
Speaker 1: and he was basically telling America that its parenting skills
Speaker 1: sucked um. And then at the same time, his son
Speaker 1: steps out or steps into the spotlight, is like the
Speaker 1: super brainiac, who's a proof of concept of all this.
Speaker 1: And so the attention that was lavished on both of them,
Speaker 1: on William for the rest of his life was you're
Speaker 1: a weirdo. We need to tear you down because if
Speaker 1: you if your father is correct, then we're all doing
Speaker 1: our kids at disservice. So there has to be something
Speaker 1: wrong with you or else we're the ones who are wrong.
Speaker 1: And so the media and the American public basically started
Speaker 1: to delight in tearing William down every chance they got,
Speaker 1: and he really just tried to run from the spotlight
Speaker 1: as best he could. All right, so let's take a
Speaker 1: break and we'll come back and kind of pick up
Speaker 1: at Harvard, where this eleven year old was still studying
Speaker 1: right after this. All right, So Little Billies at Harvard.
Speaker 1: His he was commuting, you know, with his parents, and
Speaker 1: then they decided that they were going to leave and
Speaker 1: go to New Hampshire and go into business, um, the
Speaker 1: mental health business. Basically boris open to sanatorium in Portsmouth,
Speaker 1: New Hampshire, and they said, basically, you know, try out
Speaker 1: the dorm, let's see how it works. He moved into
Speaker 1: the dorm. It did not go well at all. Uh.
Speaker 1: He was bullied. He was the butt of jokes and pranks. Uh.
Speaker 1: He did not have interest in girls. They teased him
Speaker 1: a lot about that. He eventually moved into a rooming house, uh,
Speaker 1: instead of the dorm. And even still he graduated Magna
Speaker 1: loud A at sixteen years old in nineteen fourteen and
Speaker 1: told reporters after he graduated, I want to live the
Speaker 1: perfect life. The only way to live the perfect life
Speaker 1: is to live it in seclusion. I've always hated crowds.
Speaker 1: He vowed to remained celibate, and you know, that's was
Speaker 1: kind of his life. He he I don't think he
Speaker 1: necessarily was that way by nature or yeah, by nature.
Speaker 1: I think he was sort of forced into retreatment because
Speaker 1: of what happened to him with the press, and having
Speaker 1: no social skills because he was not socialized because of
Speaker 1: his parents. A lot of factors going into it, for sure.
Speaker 1: And on that celibate thing, like a lot of people
Speaker 1: made a lot of hey about that at the time
Speaker 1: because he you know, revealed it publicly somehow. Um, he
Speaker 1: had taken a vow underneath the tree that he would
Speaker 1: remain celibate throughout his lifetime, which a lot of great
Speaker 1: thinkers have I think da Vinci did, and Newton did,
Speaker 1: and a bunch of others. Um, And he followed it
Speaker 1: in their footsteps. But he kept a picture of the
Speaker 1: tree that he kept he carried around with them to
Speaker 1: remind him like, oh, yeah, I'm celibate. Um. But the
Speaker 1: media again, they're like, oh, this is a great opportunity
Speaker 1: to tear this guy down. He's a total weirdo. He's
Speaker 1: not interested in girls, he's not even interested in guys,
Speaker 1: He's interested in nobody. Let's let's make let's use that
Speaker 1: as evidence that this guy is out of his mind.
Speaker 1: And he did very very sad. Yeah. So he leaves
Speaker 1: Harvard and with that degree, and for a little while
Speaker 1: he teaches math at William marsh Rice Institute for advancement
Speaker 1: of letters, science and art. Eventually they just said, can
Speaker 1: we just call it Rice University? It would be much easier.
Speaker 1: He arrived in December nineteen fifteen. He was seventeen years old.
Speaker 1: Um taught Euclidean geometry, non Euclidean geometry, and freshman math
Speaker 1: and didn't last long there either because he was younger
Speaker 1: than the people he was teaching and it was just
Speaker 1: really really tough. Um eventually went back to Harvard Law
Speaker 1: and left after three years without a degree, but with
Speaker 1: good standing. Apparently. Yeah, so he got back. I guess
Speaker 1: when he was at Harvard Law it must have been
Speaker 1: Um that he, uh, he became interested in socialism, fervently interested.
Speaker 1: He was described I think Chuck is a libertarian pacifist
Speaker 1: by a friend after he died, and that his whole
Speaker 1: thing like like, he was really passionate about trolley Carr transfers,
Speaker 1: about Northeastern Native American history, about a lot of varied stuff,
Speaker 1: but his great passion was the idea that every single
Speaker 1: person should be free to live their life as they
Speaker 1: see fit, and that the role of government, and you
Speaker 1: needed a strong government, was to protect that those individuals
Speaker 1: rights from encroachment in that sense that that is what
Speaker 1: he cared about, and for a little while was directed
Speaker 1: towards socialism and communism. And he was actually arrested h
Speaker 1: and considered you know, unpatriotic and unamerican um at this
Speaker 1: one May day rally um and almost went to jail
Speaker 1: supposedly for assaulting an officer. Allo. Everybody says that didn't
Speaker 1: actually happen. Yeah, it was for writing two charges, writing
Speaker 1: and assaulting a cop, and it was all over the
Speaker 1: newspapers because of who he is. I think a hundred
Speaker 1: and fourteen people were arrested, including a young lady named
Speaker 1: Martha Foley, who he actually fell in love with, so
Speaker 1: he he tested his celibacy with Martha, even though I
Speaker 1: think there I think it never grew beyond a close friendship.
Speaker 1: Isn't that right? Yeah? Well yeah, And I don't really
Speaker 1: understand what her her feelings were about. If she was
Speaker 1: just like, we're just friends. He was always in the
Speaker 1: friend zone with her, or she was like, you know,
Speaker 1: you're actually not interested in me, will be friends? Who knows.
Speaker 1: But she went on to marry another man, um and uh,
Speaker 1: I get the impression that Bill was left to kind
Speaker 1: of um just pine for her while looking at the
Speaker 1: picture of the tree that he took them out. Um.
Speaker 1: So back to the arrest. He was released on five
Speaker 1: dollars bail um under the condition that he be released
Speaker 1: under his father's care um or both of his parents
Speaker 1: I guess at the sanitarium. So he gets shipped off
Speaker 1: to New Hampshire. Um. He said in his own words,
Speaker 1: he was kidnapped by his parents by arrangement with the
Speaker 1: d A and was taken to the sanitarium operated by
Speaker 1: them and kept there a full year under various kinds
Speaker 1: of mental torture, consisting of being scolded and nagged at
Speaker 1: for an average of six to eight hours a day. UM.
Speaker 1: They said, they pumped him full of sleeping medicine, threatened
Speaker 1: to send him to uh just sort of a standard
Speaker 1: insane asylum, that's what they called him at the time.
Speaker 1: And it just sounds like it sounds like things went
Speaker 1: really really bad between he and his parents at that point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think, UM, I don't really know what the relationship
Speaker 1: was like, but it seems to have finally fully deteriorated
Speaker 1: during that year. I don't think they ever spoke after
Speaker 1: that well, that his parents wanted to. They used to
Speaker 1: like UM try to track him down and they would
Speaker 1: find as whoever his friends were, and you know, try
Speaker 1: to get them to turn him over to them, because
Speaker 1: you know, they're like, it's for his own good. He
Speaker 1: doesn't he's crazy or whatever. He UM that just you
Speaker 1: know is strange to him even further from them. But
Speaker 1: if if it wasn't deteriorating before, it was after that
Speaker 1: that year at the family sanitarium that or sanatorium that
Speaker 1: he had to spend. Yeah, so he UM eventually has
Speaker 1: released after that year, I think he goes to California
Speaker 1: for about a year, then makes his way back east,
Speaker 1: and basically from this point forward he did I mean
Speaker 1: they called them uninspired jobs kind of mostly where I saw,
Speaker 1: I don't think he was doing the good well hunting
Speaker 1: thing UM been doing like custodia were. Mostly what I
Speaker 1: found is that he was doing UM work. I mean
Speaker 1: they call them adding machines like accounting work. What they
Speaker 1: really were were sort of the first calculators, the UH
Speaker 1: comptometers and UM. Even then, apparently he would do work
Speaker 1: on two of them at once, one with his left hand,
Speaker 1: one with his right hand, and would do his eight
Speaker 1: hour work day and about an hour um, but would
Speaker 1: sort of move from job to job whenever you know,
Speaker 1: it says here, whenever people would recognize who he was.
Speaker 1: I think it was probably a little more nuanced than that.
Speaker 1: I would guess, like when the press got ahold of it. Um.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's like if someone in his office
Speaker 1: realized who he was, he was like, I'm out of here.
Speaker 1: But he would kind of go from job to job.
Speaker 1: He said that the very side of a mathematical formula
Speaker 1: makes me physically ill. But here's the thing. He I
Speaker 1: think a lot of publications make it seem like he
Speaker 1: was shunning smarts and doing anything worthwhile. But the entire time,
Speaker 1: he was just pumping out book uh, a lot of
Speaker 1: most of them not published, many of them under pseudonyms,
Speaker 1: but just writing about all kinds of stuff. He wrote
Speaker 1: that book on transfer tickets. Yeah, he did three pages
Speaker 1: on collecting transfer tickets. But he wrote a lot. Eventually.
Speaker 1: He did write one book that became fairly well known,
Speaker 1: called The Animate and the Inanimates in Yeah, which is
Speaker 1: a super daring um premise, and that it talks about
Speaker 1: the origin of the universe. Uh. It describes things like
Speaker 1: dark matter. Um. It predicts um black holes, which a
Speaker 1: lot of people are like, this is years before black
Speaker 1: holes were discovered. Well, I think Einstein had predicted black
Speaker 1: holes in his theory of relativity like a full ten
Speaker 1: years before, five years before he was writing this. But
Speaker 1: it's still super impressive. But the reason it's daring is
Speaker 1: because he is one of the few people to suggest,
Speaker 1: and you know, back up mathematically um or attempt to
Speaker 1: the the second law of thermodynamics that matter in the
Speaker 1: universe tends towards chaos and disorder and there will eventually
Speaker 1: be a total loss of energy because of that, that
Speaker 1: it can be reversed. And his premise was that life
Speaker 1: itself is an example of reverse entropy, where you know,
Speaker 1: disordered atoms are put into very orderly, very efficient machines
Speaker 1: called organisms or life, which is pretty awesome. And that
Speaker 1: was just part of it. But that's what really made
Speaker 1: him like a kind of a pioneer, and that was
Speaker 1: his big contribution. And I get the impression that this
Speaker 1: book that was published in UM is one of those
Speaker 1: things where I could see people going back in fifty
Speaker 1: years and somebody rediscovering his ideas and saying, oh my god,
Speaker 1: like you just advanced you know, quantum physics, by light
Speaker 1: by light years. It's just been kind of languishing until then,
Speaker 1: you know, or here's the cure for cancer. Yeah maybe. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is a really sad though, because I think the
Speaker 1: narrative that at the time was that like, boy genius
Speaker 1: goes bust because he's working these jobs. And by all accounts,
Speaker 1: you know, he lived the life he wanted to live,
Speaker 1: and he had he had I don't think like tons
Speaker 1: and tons of great friends, but he did have some
Speaker 1: very close friends who, like he said, described him as
Speaker 1: a as a good guy and kind of a could be,
Speaker 1: kind of a fun dude, and he wasn't completely maladjusted
Speaker 1: because of his childhood. And I think just wanted to
Speaker 1: be left alone. Yeah. So that's why in seven that
Speaker 1: New Yorker article on him was just so devastating, was
Speaker 1: because he'd been trying so hard to be left alone.
Speaker 1: Like his one and only publicly received book had been
Speaker 1: published a full twelve years before he totally dropped out,
Speaker 1: and The New Yorker sent a woman reporter to to
Speaker 1: basically become his friend, under the guys of just being
Speaker 1: his friend and to gather information and then publish an
Speaker 1: article about him. You know, yeah, he said it was
Speaker 1: humiliating and made him sound crazy. Um he sued now
Speaker 1: this way, I got really confused, and I don't know
Speaker 1: if he got to the bottom of it. He he
Speaker 1: did sue them for invasion of privacy and malicious libel um.
Speaker 1: And I saw all kinds of things from really good
Speaker 1: sources that the case was dismissed, that they basically and
Speaker 1: it's used in privacy law as saying, if you're a
Speaker 1: public figure, you're always a public figure. But I also
Speaker 1: saw that he did win some kind of settlement from them.
Speaker 1: I think they were just multiple suits. Maybe yeah. I
Speaker 1: think that the privacy the invasion of privacy suit he
Speaker 1: lost and it was upheld on appeal to that um
Speaker 1: that like you said, once, your public figure, always a
Speaker 1: public figure. But I think that that um libel was
Speaker 1: what he might have gotten a settlement for because there
Speaker 1: was misreporting reported that he'd gone to Toughs, and I
Speaker 1: think that was Norbert Wiener who had gone to Toughs
Speaker 1: just a couple of technical things, nothing really really big time.
Speaker 1: But he hated this this article so much. I get
Speaker 1: the impression he wasn't about to drop it. And the
Speaker 1: new Yorker settled out of court to settle it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this was nineteen thirty seven. Lawsuits followed and then
Speaker 1: very sadly that the sad end into this story is
Speaker 1: that in nineteen forty four, at the age of forty six,
Speaker 1: he was found dead by his landlady. Died of cerebral hemorrhage,
Speaker 1: the same thing that killed his father in nine. Mm hmm. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And you I mean, you can get a really good
Speaker 1: impression of how he was treated by the media with
Speaker 1: just the title of the obituary they ran about him
Speaker 1: in Time magazine. Um, it was called prodigious failure. That was.
Speaker 1: That was the title of his obituary in Time back
Speaker 1: in nineteen Who lived his own life? Yeah? Exactly what what?
Speaker 1: Why did he have to perform for you? And then
Speaker 1: over time, you know the idea that he was this
Speaker 1: great example of of what happens if you just give
Speaker 1: your kid too much attention and try to turn them
Speaker 1: into a um like a genius too young. This is
Speaker 1: what happens to him. They burn out and they end
Speaker 1: up running adding machines rather than doing anything useful. Um.
Speaker 1: That that was. That became that narrative that you have
Speaker 1: to look out for really interesting story. Yeah. So, um,
Speaker 1: you got anything else about william Sitis? No, look forward
Speaker 1: to uh to a full sort of more robust episode
Speaker 1: on Prodigies for sure. Did you want did you when
Speaker 1: you mentioned Goodwill Hunting? Did you see too that that
Speaker 1: um that he was he in part inspired that movie? Oh?
Speaker 1: Really yeah, that's interesting to do that parallel, um. And
Speaker 1: then I want to give one shout out. So you
Speaker 1: know he gave that talk on um four dimensional bodies
Speaker 1: at Harvard when he was eleven. I was like, I
Speaker 1: have no idea what that is. And I looked around
Speaker 1: and I found finally a really comprehensive, really understandable explainer
Speaker 1: on four dimensionals space. It's called what is four dimensional Space? Like?
Speaker 1: It's by J. D. Norton. And if you're all interested
Speaker 1: in figuring that out, I would strongly advise going to
Speaker 1: check that out. I wasn't talking to you. Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: Since since Chuck said, yeah, it's time for listener mail everybody,
Speaker 1: how about the apples? All right, I'm gonna call this
Speaker 1: sort of a double metal email. UM. Quickly we got
Speaker 1: one from a gentleman named Kirk Brett Fold and White
Speaker 1: Rock BC to challenge me on saying Bruce uh, saying
Speaker 1: Bruce Dickinson was the metal god, the god of metal.
Speaker 1: On the Damascus Steel episode, he said, I think you'll
Speaker 1: find that Judas Priests Rob Halford is widely acknowledged to
Speaker 1: hold the title of metal god. Okay, uh And I
Speaker 1: wrote Kirk back and I said, well, it's subjective. And
Speaker 1: I like Iron Maiden more than I like Judas Priest. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I do too. Yeah do you do? I'm with you
Speaker 1: you Oh yeah, yeah, like Juice Priest. But I really,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think Iron Maiden I just like him more. Yeah,
Speaker 1: me too. I think their songs more. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: I could see where he's coming from. It's much more
Speaker 1: melodic and maybe in that sense a little less metal
Speaker 1: than Judas Priest. Yeah maybe so. Uh. And then someone
Speaker 1: we gotta shout out Gunner who who took your side
Speaker 1: in the A C d C debate recently listened to
Speaker 1: to unrelated episodes, and in both episodes, Josh said he
Speaker 1: didn't like A C d C. So to you, Josh,
Speaker 1: I just want to say you're right. Finally, someone else
Speaker 1: thinks A C d C is overrated. They're just not
Speaker 1: that good. Although some of the early songs are written
Speaker 1: by the Flash and the Pan, and I love Flash
Speaker 1: in the Pan. A C G C, A C d
Speaker 1: C just doesn't do it for me. And that's from
Speaker 1: Gunner and Gunner. I'm here to say that you were wrong.
Speaker 1: I thought it was subjective. Well, that's my whole point
Speaker 1: is I'm making fun of him saying right and wrong.
Speaker 1: Oh I see, I see you turned it all over on.
Speaker 1: So yeah, confused and check this out. We're talking, we're
Speaker 1: talking about metal, we're talking about hard rock, and we're
Speaker 1: getting emails from dudes named Kirk and Gunner. I mean,
Speaker 1: how perfect is that we should start that band that
Speaker 1: we always heard Gunner and Flash in the Pan? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Have you heard of Flash in the Pan? I never
Speaker 1: had before. I hadn't, but I had to look that
Speaker 1: up to They were an AUSSI duo who produced uh
Speaker 1: some of the early A C d C stuff apparently,
Speaker 1: and then we're a band in their own right, so
Speaker 1: you gotta check them out too. Now, the A C
Speaker 1: D C and they wanted to produce the Spice Girls.
Speaker 1: They're two big successes, that's right, and we're gonna get
Speaker 1: that band with those guys. But I get to be
Speaker 1: flashed this time. I'm not gonna be panned anymore. I'll
Speaker 1: be Pan then can I be Pan? But I'm gonna
Speaker 1: really play up that like super light pan flute kind
Speaker 1: of thing. That's my jam, and I'm going to address like,
Speaker 1: what's the half goat half man god Dionysus. No, it's
Speaker 1: oh gosh, I can't think it's I guess it wouldn't
Speaker 1: be Dionysus to be pan anyway, I'm gonna be like
Speaker 1: the Greek god Pan. Okay, that's my jam, and I'm flash.
Speaker 1: So I'll just go out there and open my overcoat
Speaker 1: and no one will notice. Somebody will feel it. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I'm just leaving that one. Uh. If you wanna get
Speaker 1: in touch with Chuck and I, like Gunner and Kirk
Speaker 1: did our new pals, you can email us at stuff
Speaker 1: podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know
Speaker 1: is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts my
Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows