Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
Speaker 1: from House Stuff Works dot com. Ahoy, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the love boat. I'm Julie, your cruise director, with me
Speaker 1: as always as Isaac, your bartender. How are you doing?
Speaker 1: I just did the little double gun the double guns
Speaker 1: looking good. You're a genius. Thank you for coming up
Speaker 1: with that. Thank you. You're a genius to chuck, thank you.
Speaker 1: Do you want to know how we can callague to
Speaker 1: each other geniuses without cracking up? I'm cracking up on
Speaker 1: the inside, but sure, because we have no idea what
Speaker 1: constitutes a genius, do we? Right? We like to throw
Speaker 1: the word around, as you were pointing out earlier. Oh,
Speaker 1: he's a genius, or he's a socialist, story's a fascist,
Speaker 1: he's a genius. You should see the bathroom he designed.
Speaker 1: He's genius. You know. Yeah, it definitely is a word
Speaker 1: that gets to run a lot. But the way that
Speaker 1: we use the word genius now, actually uh is kind
Speaker 1: of a throwback to its original meaning in the Greco
Speaker 1: Roman era, the word genius when everyone was wrestling. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like you could be a genius at wrestling. Really? What
Speaker 1: it what it? What it described was somebody's um natural
Speaker 1: enthusiasm inclination towards certain activities, not just your your abilities,
Speaker 1: but you know how revved up you were, so so
Speaker 1: somebody who was pretty good at bathroom design would have
Speaker 1: been considered a genius at bathroom designs. Like the word vintage,
Speaker 1: people always thinks vintage just means old, But I think
Speaker 1: vintage specifically means like characterized by that person's best work,
Speaker 1: like a tailor, their best five pairs of pants they made.
Speaker 1: I think so I might just learned that just now
Speaker 1: I might be wrong thanks to you. Are we picking
Speaker 1: up Jerry's laugh? Because we're in a yeah, two ft
Speaker 1: by two ft space right now? This room is not genius. No,
Speaker 1: it stinks of volatile organic compounds. We should say what.
Speaker 1: They actually moved us for one day into an even
Speaker 1: smaller office like the sign Felds. Remember when Castanza they
Speaker 1: kept moving him around because they didn't like him, and
Speaker 1: he were eventually going to end up in a storage
Speaker 1: closet like he did. Yeah, I think we've arrived there.
Speaker 1: I'm sure it's lovely. It's just not for podcasting. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm a little lightheaded. So if this, if this goes oddly,
Speaker 1: that's why it's the paints and the airplane glue. That's
Speaker 1: airplane glue. Is genius, it is. Yeah, we were talking
Speaker 1: about genius for some reason. Where are we? Yeah? Because
Speaker 1: this is about genius. Okay, Oh so yeah, I was
Speaker 1: saying the original idea of genius was enthusiasm, throwing yourself
Speaker 1: into something where you were into right. Um. And then
Speaker 1: thanks to a guy named Francis Galton, who he was
Speaker 1: a pretty smart guy himself, but he had a long
Speaker 1: history of just kind of missing the big picture with
Speaker 1: his ideas, he came up with eugenics. Sure, he was
Speaker 1: the first one to start attributing um genius to intellect.
Speaker 1: He kind of narrowed it a little more, and eventually
Speaker 1: this led to our idea of genius being quantifiable e g.
Speaker 1: Through i Q tests or g which we'll get to. Nice. Nice, Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't. I'll just go ahead and say I don't
Speaker 1: know how quantifiable it is. Well, it's not. And there's
Speaker 1: actually two pretty big reasons why quantifying genius is virtually
Speaker 1: impossible at least with our current understanding of the mind.
Speaker 1: And they are they are uh Well, the first one
Speaker 1: is pretty obvious. Genius is a very subjective thing. Um.
Speaker 1: Some people think it's like an i Q higher than
Speaker 1: one forty or one seventy five I've heard, which you know,
Speaker 1: that's just a smart quantifying, quantify quantifier And I'm clearly
Speaker 1: no genius. And the other thing is, like you said,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a big picture thing. In science and
Speaker 1: medical inquiries, that kind of thing is all about the detail.
Speaker 1: So it's really hard to like analyze and study. It's
Speaker 1: like studying intercessory prayer. How do you study that? How
Speaker 1: do you quantify happiness or prayer or genius? You know? Um,
Speaker 1: our colleague Tracy V. Wilson, I like how she put it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she did a good job just kind of getting rid
Speaker 1: of the crud that's often associated with genius. And and
Speaker 1: just if you have like crazy hair and a big
Speaker 1: mustache and you know math, you're a genius, do you
Speaker 1: get rid of all that? And uh, for the for
Speaker 1: the purposes of this podcast, will adopt her description, right,
Speaker 1: which was that a genius is an extraordinarily intelligent person
Speaker 1: who breaks new ground with discoveries, inventions, or works of art. Right,
Speaker 1: Because you can't just be a really smart person, you
Speaker 1: have to do something with it to truly be a genius.
Speaker 1: That's what makes a genius. It's not just intelligence, it's
Speaker 1: intelligence with creative energy. Well, the creative part is huge,
Speaker 1: and we'll get to that, but it's um She goes
Speaker 1: on to say, and I agree that they usually will
Speaker 1: change the way we look at the world, or at
Speaker 1: least the way people in whatever field they're in look
Speaker 1: at their field. They make a difference or difference makers.
Speaker 1: Have you ever heard of a guy named William James
Speaker 1: sidis Now, he reportedly had the highest um i Q
Speaker 1: in history. I'm higher than ask Maryland of Parade. As
Speaker 1: a matter of fact, yes, asked Maryland says, hers is
Speaker 1: two thirty. She claims the highest ever measured. This guy
Speaker 1: supposedly was to fifty. Yeah. Um, let me let me
Speaker 1: keep you more than a q a at the end
Speaker 1: of Parade magazine. Sadly, no really, Okay, So let me
Speaker 1: let me give you a little background on sittence. Okay, uh.
Speaker 1: He was eighteen months old when he started reading the
Speaker 1: New York Times. Okay, so far so uh. At two
Speaker 1: he taught himself Latin. Three, he taught himself Greek. Uh.
Speaker 1: He could speak more than forty languages by the time
Speaker 1: he was an adult. Uh. He graduated kum laude at
Speaker 1: sixteen from Harvard and became the youngest professor ever in
Speaker 1: the history of Rice University. I imagine he was like
Speaker 1: seventeen or something. Who's a young guy, and then within
Speaker 1: I think about a year at Rice, he dropped his
Speaker 1: position and spent the rest of his life working like
Speaker 1: menial jobs. He went from job to job just doing
Speaker 1: normal labor. So he's not a genius though he would
Speaker 1: not qualify as a genius by this definition. You have
Speaker 1: a two ft Q. You're clearly a prodigy. You're an
Speaker 1: incredibly brilliant person. But if you don't contribute to humanity,
Speaker 1: what are you worth? You're like a Buddhist monk who
Speaker 1: goes and spends your life meditating in a cave. We
Speaker 1: curse you, sorry, but but that's that's the point. And
Speaker 1: geniuses are incredibly valuable in society. I don't remember what
Speaker 1: podcast it was in what we were talking about, um
Speaker 1: mauthis and the idea that the more the larger the
Speaker 1: world population, the more incidents of the births of geniuses happens. Right, Uh,
Speaker 1: and then the more geniuses you have, the further along
Speaker 1: society is helped by leaps and bounds. Right, Well, if
Speaker 1: you think MENSA is a quantifier, then there's about three
Speaker 1: million geniuses in the US. But I don't buy that,
Speaker 1: right because MENSA standards, UM, they accept people who well
Speaker 1: it's not just like you, but standardized intelligence tests. Um,
Speaker 1: they accept people who score within the top two percent
Speaker 1: of those. So if you just extend that with basic
Speaker 1: math to percent of the population in the US is
Speaker 1: like six million people, right, and then thirty million worldwide.
Speaker 1: But I don't buy it anyway, because they don't even
Speaker 1: count in the creative element. You know, Gina Davis is
Speaker 1: in mensa that everyone always says that. Anytime you hear
Speaker 1: about MENSA, people go, you know, Gina Davis, even I
Speaker 1: think we had this conversation you brought up Ronny Harlan
Speaker 1: and yeah, the the Pirate movie they made. Let's play
Speaker 1: the clip, shall we? No? Okay we won't. Um, just
Speaker 1: get back to she just spit bologny out of her mouth.
Speaker 1: She shouldn't be eating bologny anyway. I did her a favor.
Speaker 1: You're right, so you wanna talk about the brain is
Speaker 1: that where we're going. Let's let's get to it. I mean,
Speaker 1: like if if you're going to go in search your
Speaker 1: genius with or without Leonard Nimoy, Um, you are going
Speaker 1: to start looking in the brain, right. I love that
Speaker 1: show the best. It's awesome, so super seventies. Um, so
Speaker 1: let's go into the brain. Clearly we're gonna find our
Speaker 1: answers here, right, Maybe no, no, but we should talk
Speaker 1: about it. The cerebral cortex, as we all know, is
Speaker 1: the largest and outermost part of your brain, and this
Speaker 1: is where the higher functions like thought and reasoning happen
Speaker 1: as opposed to lower functions like just basic survival that
Speaker 1: kind of thing, right, And the basic stuff is found
Speaker 1: in your brain stem, which is how Mike the chicken
Speaker 1: was able to live for so long. That's right. Uh,
Speaker 1: the cortex is cerebral cortex is divided into lobes, and
Speaker 1: within those lobes are regions that help you handle specific tasks.
Speaker 1: And uh, we do know it has a big impact
Speaker 1: on how we think, but it's a little tricky to
Speaker 1: study because one reason that Tracy point out, which I
Speaker 1: thought was really valid, is to get an m R
Speaker 1: I done, you're lying there in a tube. They can't
Speaker 1: actively study how your brain operates on a day to
Speaker 1: day basis, why you're functioning, which is the great failing
Speaker 1: of the wonder machine. Yeah, I bet you they can
Speaker 1: solve that one day. Oh they will definitely, And by
Speaker 1: they I mean people other than you, me or Jerry.
Speaker 1: It's some genius perhaps precisely. But she did point out
Speaker 1: a cool study from cal Irvine in two thousand four
Speaker 1: and they they did pinpoint that the volume of gray
Speaker 1: matter in parts of the cerebral cortex has a greater
Speaker 1: impact on your overall intelligence than how law your brain is.
Speaker 1: Because we talked about that in the Einstein thing, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the gray matter, h man, I know, the white matter transmits.
Speaker 1: The gray matter is like a problem solving. I believe
Speaker 1: in white matter is used to transmit information. But Einstein's
Speaker 1: brain was smaller than your average bear's brain. It was.
Speaker 1: Remember we talked about what happened to his brain and
Speaker 1: um when what they finally found. The big distinction they
Speaker 1: found in his brain that was abnormal was that his
Speaker 1: prietal lobe was almost missing this fissure within it that
Speaker 1: most people have. So he had a very narrow fissure
Speaker 1: and they also wider, and so had a big prietal lobe,
Speaker 1: which is responsible for century and put, but it also
Speaker 1: handles things like mathematics. Unsurprisingly enough, so he had a
Speaker 1: big prival lobe with a small fishure in between it,
Speaker 1: which they theorized means or meant that his his pridal
Speaker 1: lobe could communicate with itself more a fishly more effectively,
Speaker 1: and a genius was born by Josh Youers. He proved
Speaker 1: that Adams Adams exist. He figured out that light behaves
Speaker 1: as a particle and a wave. He developed the theory
Speaker 1: of relativity and the famous equation equals mc squared by six.
Speaker 1: Where were you and by that age? I wish I
Speaker 1: could remember, Chuck me too. You were you were? Were
Speaker 1: you following fish around or something like that? Wire panic, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I was. I think I was living in New Jersey
Speaker 1: at the time, but I goofed around enough in Athens.
Speaker 1: I wasn't coming up with theories of relativity, nor was
Speaker 1: I know I was thrown a lot of darts. Some
Speaker 1: other interesting aspects of the brain um is that it
Speaker 1: actually develops. It goes from thicker to thinner as we age,
Speaker 1: So it goes from undeveloped to the cerebral cortex thickening,
Speaker 1: and then after adolescence or maybe during adolescence it begins
Speaker 1: to thin, right, And what the what a study in
Speaker 1: Nature I think two thousand and six found was that
Speaker 1: UM kids whose brains thick and faster in youth tended
Speaker 1: to have higher i Q s. And the reason that
Speaker 1: this could be significant is that they we we tend
Speaker 1: to find intelligence is an inherited trait or what appears
Speaker 1: to be an inherited trait. So this is a physical
Speaker 1: example of how uh intelligence could be inherited through organic
Speaker 1: structure of the brain. So that's intelligence, but that's not genius.
Speaker 1: But we can't even we But at the same time,
Speaker 1: we can't even really describe intelligence. Like consider, let's let's
Speaker 1: talk about the i Q tests, all right. The are
Speaker 1: our big um arousal for the i Q test began
Speaker 1: in the in the mid nineteen twenties when a psychologist
Speaker 1: named Katherine Morris Cox published UM The Early Mental Traits
Speaker 1: of Three Geniuses, and basically she went back from and
Speaker 1: it was exhaustive. She used like fift sources and studied
Speaker 1: the the work the traits, the UM contributions of three
Speaker 1: hundred actually three hundred and one. Oun't know why she
Speaker 1: called it three hundred, but three hundred one Great minds
Speaker 1: and then basically gave them an i Q test based
Speaker 1: on this uh and came up in. The highest rated
Speaker 1: one was Johann Gurta, very nice thank you. Did you
Speaker 1: know he had a theory of evolution like seventy five
Speaker 1: years before Darwin? Yeah, and he came up with human chemistry.
Speaker 1: He was a smart guy. But he cocked in at
Speaker 1: number one, at two fifty or to ten. Sorry, not
Speaker 1: bad at all. But as this book came out and
Speaker 1: became you know, um, the public became aware of it,
Speaker 1: it was like, hey, we didn't know about these i
Speaker 1: Q tests. Is awesome, we can start measuring how smart
Speaker 1: people are. Ironically, the earliest i Q tests were used
Speaker 1: to measure mental handicaps and children. Yeah, but then they
Speaker 1: started figuring out, hey, you can use this for gifted
Speaker 1: kids to find the gifted kids as well, and the
Speaker 1: Stanford psychologist U mixed with the first guy who came
Speaker 1: up with the i Q test, bin At. The two
Speaker 1: together formed the Stanford Binet IQ tests that we used today.
Speaker 1: Have you ever had yours done I refused to I
Speaker 1: never will. I took one at one point, but it
Speaker 1: wasn't like the standard test. It was just some hackneyed version,
Speaker 1: and I scored really high. That's the reason I know
Speaker 1: that it was pretty much BS because I'm kind of smart,
Speaker 1: but not anything like Uh I scored. I didn't. I
Speaker 1: don't put any stock into it, but chuck, I guess
Speaker 1: that kind of underscores um. A really good criticism of
Speaker 1: i Q tests is that they may be standardized, they
Speaker 1: may be widely accepted, but we aren't percent sure that
Speaker 1: they measure everything. So I wouldn't even say we're sure
Speaker 1: they measure everything. The measure mathematical aptitude, language abilities, um,
Speaker 1: what else? Uh? Well, yeah, sure, along with memory and
Speaker 1: spatial ability. Okay, but is that every Well No, in
Speaker 1: any standardized test, the word itself kind of says it all.
Speaker 1: It's standardized, right. No standardized tests that you give different
Speaker 1: people can really tell you the same thing about all
Speaker 1: those different people. No, I can't. And I mean the
Speaker 1: very questions that the test test asks. Wow, these pain
Speaker 1: themes are really getting on top of me. Uh, the
Speaker 1: very questions that these tests ask um actually can be biased? Um?
Speaker 1: I heard, I heard of I think an S A T.
Speaker 1: I hope it wasn't an S A T question. It's
Speaker 1: a little too easy. But um, some sort of standardized
Speaker 1: tests asked the question which of these places would you
Speaker 1: go to buy milk? And it was like grocery store,
Speaker 1: convenience store, dairy or something like that. You can buy
Speaker 1: milk at all those Josh, well you can. But I mean,
Speaker 1: like for kids out in the sticks where there isn't
Speaker 1: a grocery store, but there's a convenience store, that's where
Speaker 1: they go to buy their milk. But they missed the
Speaker 1: question because the answer was supposed to be grocery store.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a pretty dumb examp ample, but it's accurate.
Speaker 1: I mean, the very people who write the tests are
Speaker 1: biased in some ways, and i Q tests have been
Speaker 1: shown to skew against um certain ethnic and socioeconomic groups. Yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: same say, any standardized test does so boo boo to.
Speaker 1: That is what I say. And the other thing, too,
Speaker 1: is is that geniuses don't, like people can generally consider genius,
Speaker 1: don't necessarily score well in these tests anyway. No, that's true.
Speaker 1: To throw it out the door, I say, Um, I
Speaker 1: will say that just while we might as well give
Speaker 1: a little information on the IQ test. The standard score
Speaker 1: is a hundred with the deviation of sixteen, So the
Speaker 1: average score of the general population will be between eighty
Speaker 1: four and one sixteen. Right, but no one knows what
Speaker 1: over that indicates a genius. A widely accepted number is
Speaker 1: one forty. But somebody just made that up at some
Speaker 1: point in time. Well, like I said, I read one.
Speaker 1: And it's not to say that a really high score
Speaker 1: doesn't mean you're a genius, like it could mean you're
Speaker 1: a genius. The i Q test is capturing something, probably,
Speaker 1: but it's not capturing the whole picture, I think is
Speaker 1: the point we're trying to make right here, right, not
Speaker 1: at all. So let's leave the i Q test in
Speaker 1: our dust. Okay, maybe we should go with Steinberg's I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: Sternberg's try arch theory. I kind of like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are some competing explanations of what components there are
Speaker 1: to intellect, right, Yeah, Sternberg said that he thought it um.
Speaker 1: Human intelligence includes a few things plus the try arc.
Speaker 1: Creative intelligence, so the ability to generate new ideas, interesting ideas,
Speaker 1: analytical intelligence so you can examine facts, draw conclusions that's
Speaker 1: pretty good and practical intelligence, which means you can fit
Speaker 1: into your environment, which like kind of yeah, But I disagree, man.
Speaker 1: I went back and reread that a couple of times,
Speaker 1: and you know, Racy points out that there are a
Speaker 1: lot of critics of you know, um practical intelligences. Everybody
Speaker 1: has that to a certain degree, that does that really
Speaker 1: count to towards being a genius? I disagree. I've met
Speaker 1: some people who well, I mean, think about it. It's
Speaker 1: the classic example of somebody who's very book smart, but
Speaker 1: you should never let walk down an alley by themselves
Speaker 1: and by himself for her. So many many people like that. Sure,
Speaker 1: and then there's you know, the super street smart um
Speaker 1: ratso Rizzo, you know, who can make his way him
Speaker 1: Jersey Midnight cowboy here exactly, who who can make his
Speaker 1: way in the world, but you know, would probably do
Speaker 1: horribly on an IQ test. The very fact that there
Speaker 1: there are those different um polar extremes means to me
Speaker 1: that there's something to that that is an aspect of intellect, right,
Speaker 1: And you remember I mentioned g earlier. I didn't want
Speaker 1: to leave people hanging there. But the i Q test
Speaker 1: they have come up with a unit and they call
Speaker 1: that unit for intelligence g right, and that's actually i
Speaker 1: Q tests are under a larger umbrella of what's called psychometrics,
Speaker 1: which is basically the study of an attempt of the
Speaker 1: measurement of intelligence. Right yeah. Um. Back in the seventies,
Speaker 1: there is a statistician named Carl your skog you're a
Speaker 1: skog weird, um, and he figured out that you. He
Speaker 1: figured out a way to measure intelligence that basically lead
Speaker 1: to the appearance of three different kinds of intelligence. While
Speaker 1: we're on theories of intelligence, right, okay, he came up
Speaker 1: with um fluid intelligence, right, yes, okay, And this is
Speaker 1: basically coming up with new ideas on your own to
Speaker 1: solve problems. Crystallized intelligence is UM understanding already established techniques
Speaker 1: of problem solving and being able to identify which technique
Speaker 1: will best work to solve a particular problem. And then
Speaker 1: there's visual spatial reasoning, which is UM kind of an
Speaker 1: aptitude at creating mental images in your head to solve problems.
Speaker 1: It's very important part of mathematics. Actually, So we have
Speaker 1: your Scogg's ideas, we've got um, what's your guy's name, Sternberg's.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about Howard Gardner, and he has the feel
Speaker 1: good we're all geniuses kind of theory, right, Yeah, multiple intelligence.
Speaker 1: He thinks there's seven types linguistic, logical, mathematic, musical, bodily, kinetic,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, kinesthetic, spatial, which is always in there, uh intrapersonal,
Speaker 1: and interpersonal. But that's, like you said, it's a little
Speaker 1: too uh broad, is what a lot of critics say.
Speaker 1: There's always a critic of each of these. It seems
Speaker 1: like one person comes out with something and people say, well,
Speaker 1: I think that sounds good, and then another part of
Speaker 1: the camp says, no, I don't agree at all. Isn't
Speaker 1: that the way with everything they chook? Pretty much like
Speaker 1: mountain dew code read is the greatest drink ever. No,
Speaker 1: it's not gular, Mountain Dews way better. Good point um.
Speaker 1: And then I guess another hallmark of intelligence, something that
Speaker 1: can be measured, is geniuses aptitude toward social awkwardness. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of them. Are generally known as quirky,
Speaker 1: odd characters makeup friends John Nash did. Yeah, absolutely. Einstein
Speaker 1: was sort of a wacky guy. Yeah, he liked to
Speaker 1: stick his tongue out, he was zany. Yeah, that people
Speaker 1: always pointed that picture. So you look how crazy he was.
Speaker 1: Got anyone else? Well, let's talk about studying that. Yes, Josh,
Speaker 1: a Purdue uh study perdue you saw four and twenty
Speaker 1: three students gifted students and suggested that they were more
Speaker 1: susceptible to being bullied. So they're little mammy panbies, I
Speaker 1: guess a little bit. Also, there was a study UM
Speaker 1: out of was it Stanford That it was a twenty
Speaker 1: year study actually UM that ended in ninety that actually
Speaker 1: gave UM children aptitude tests and personal adjustment tests and
Speaker 1: found that there was a negative correlation between i Q
Speaker 1: and social adjustment. Right, So basically it's it's quantifying what
Speaker 1: we all already know that if you're a smart kid,
Speaker 1: you're going to eat mud several times in your life. Yes,
Speaker 1: I never ate mud. That's why my IQ score was
Speaker 1: bs uh. Well, one thing that they geniuses have in common,
Speaker 1: I think we can all agree on that you need
Speaker 1: to have to be a genius and not just smart.
Speaker 1: This creative intelligence and high waisted pants. Creative intelligence and
Speaker 1: high waisted pants. This is where it all comes together
Speaker 1: to me, right, Yeah, I mean when we talked about
Speaker 1: this earlier, like you can't. It's not good enough to
Speaker 1: just be smart. Then you're just a really intelligent person.
Speaker 1: That leap between intelligence and genius is bridged by creative prowess. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's how you break new ground. Right, Why did you
Speaker 1: point it me? Because promise was a horrible I like that,
Speaker 1: thanks man. The thing is, though, Josher's is that, uh,
Speaker 1: this is another thing that you can't quantify and study necessarily,
Speaker 1: So once again it's hard to kind of pinpoint creativity
Speaker 1: and imagination. Although they researchers do think that creative people
Speaker 1: have less latent inhibition, and I completely agree with that, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we've talked about that with the Thinking cap episodes where
Speaker 1: schizophrenics have low latent inhibition and they take this extra
Speaker 1: stimuli and their brain constructs solution hallucinations out of it.
Speaker 1: The idea was that creative geniuses, who who have low
Speaker 1: latent inhibition take this additional stimuli and use it in
Speaker 1: novel creative ways. Yeah, that's one way of looking at it.
Speaker 1: There's also um a quantifiable method or a couple of
Speaker 1: them to determine how much um creativity a genius has
Speaker 1: lent to the world. Right, It isn't that article you
Speaker 1: that time article you sent me. I thought that was
Speaker 1: kind of lame. Explain but that this is the level
Speaker 1: that we're at to try to survey a genius. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: what is was this the guy who wrote the book
Speaker 1: Simmons Simonton. Yeah, he yeh, Dave dean Keith almost said,
Speaker 1: David Keith, what a great actor. Dean Keith. Simonton wrote
Speaker 1: a book called a Genius one on one Creators, Leaders, Prodigies,
Speaker 1: and he came up with a little notion that add
Speaker 1: up the number of times someone has been in a publication,
Speaker 1: has been cited in a professional publication in the field,
Speaker 1: or the number of times their composer's work maybe has
Speaker 1: been performed or recorded. And I just think that's stupid.
Speaker 1: I think the I think there's one that's worse, and
Speaker 1: that's counting encyclopedia references. That's awful, because I think you
Speaker 1: can be a genius who was undiscovered. You may have
Speaker 1: like written a thousand great compositions of music that you
Speaker 1: never show the world. No, then the same things just
Speaker 1: holding menial jobs. It's that's virtually the same thing as
Speaker 1: holding that stuff in your head. You have to share
Speaker 1: it with the world. To be a genius or else
Speaker 1: you're just some smart schmoke. I don't know if I
Speaker 1: agree with that. Well, but I don't know if I
Speaker 1: do either. I think you can still be a genius
Speaker 1: in and of yourself. You can be a genius in
Speaker 1: a vacuum, but not considered a genius by the populace
Speaker 1: who wants to own you, right, you know, I guess
Speaker 1: that's a difference. The difference I see in the the
Speaker 1: guy who wrote, or gal maybe who wrote uh several
Speaker 1: great compositions and that were never discovered, and the guy
Speaker 1: who just got the menial jobs is he didn't seem
Speaker 1: to have any creative genius going on. Yeah, he learn
Speaker 1: he was book learning, book learning. Um. Although if you
Speaker 1: are trying to come up with a measure of you know,
Speaker 1: creative genius, then counting Encyclopedia entries does work. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's a way to go, right, Malcolm Gladwell should talk
Speaker 1: about him. No, he is of the belief that, along
Speaker 1: with Galton I think you're talking about with eugenics, that
Speaker 1: practice is really what leads to genius, hard work and
Speaker 1: practice and practice and practice, which I don't know about
Speaker 1: that either. What do you think I told you I'm
Speaker 1: not talking about Gladwell. Oh really all right? Moving on then?
Speaker 1: Uh and there was well, fine, forget glad Well. Let's
Speaker 1: talk about Ericsson Andrews Erickson as a rival. They call
Speaker 1: him a friendly rival, which I thought was kind of
Speaker 1: funny of the Simonson guy I was talking about their
Speaker 1: their um conflicts end in tickle fights, right, It kind
Speaker 1: of reminded me of the good Will hunting like Robin
Speaker 1: Williams and that other guy. Right, there were friendly rivals.
Speaker 1: But he is popular for the tenure rule, which has
Speaker 1: been around for a long time. But that's a notion
Speaker 1: that it takes ten years or ten thousand hours of
Speaker 1: dedicated practice to master a complex endeavor, and Gladwell is
Speaker 1: a believer in that. So chuck um. There's a guy
Speaker 1: named David Gallantson too, who's kind of come up with
Speaker 1: and at least a qualification of creative genius, Right he didn't, Well,
Speaker 1: doesn't that kind of underscore like where the field of
Speaker 1: genius or intelligence research is right now that we we've
Speaker 1: just pooh pooed absolutely every sec it's all over the place. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah, say what he says, because I want to
Speaker 1: prove that he says that there's actually now he says
Speaker 1: there's three kinds. Originally said there's there's two types of innovators.
Speaker 1: There's conceptual innovators who think in bold, dramatic steps, which
Speaker 1: Einstein would fall into. And do you know that among
Speaker 1: very smart people, he's considered kind of a flash in
Speaker 1: the pan. Yeah, think about it. He did everything that
Speaker 1: he was going to do by age six. After that
Speaker 1: he just went around canoeing with Walter math Ou as
Speaker 1: Walter math Ou same thing. Um. But then there's experimental
Speaker 1: innovators and they learned through trial and error over This
Speaker 1: would be the Thomas Edison's of the genius world um.
Speaker 1: And then everybody started shouting at David Gallerson. Then he
Speaker 1: said shut up, shut up, and went back to the
Speaker 1: drawing board and came up with the idea that genius
Speaker 1: can also be expressed in a continuum over time, throughout
Speaker 1: a long lifetime of great contribution and work. That's my
Speaker 1: problem with it. What everybody shouted at him. And he
Speaker 1: went back and was like can you go? He was like, well,
Speaker 1: you can either get everything done really early, or you
Speaker 1: can produce all your great work later in life. And
Speaker 1: they were like, but what about people do it all
Speaker 1: their life. He went, well, yeah, you can do that too.
Speaker 1: It's like so lame. So should we just list out
Speaker 1: some some geniuses throughout history that people generally consider genius
Speaker 1: and didn't like this list either, But we don't like
Speaker 1: anything about this one doing George Washington's number forty five,
Speaker 1: and here's number one. It starts at number two, and
Speaker 1: if one's Einstein, I'm gonna literally eat this list. One
Speaker 1: was Einstein. I didn't copy pastel of them. We have
Speaker 1: geniuses like Tesla's three, um Da Vinci number two, Isaac Newton,
Speaker 1: number four, Hawking of course, Michelangelo, Archimedes, Josh is eating
Speaker 1: his list. Warren Buffett is on there. Not bad. Sure
Speaker 1: they had to round it out and make it as
Speaker 1: approachable that all the readers they could Aristotle, Picasso, Neils
Speaker 1: Or Jefferson, Plato, Churchill, Benjamin Franklin. I think I'd agree
Speaker 1: with that one. Shakespeare, Sir Francis Drake, Michael Faraday, Chuck Darwin,
Speaker 1: Renee de Descartes or is it desplaine deplane des plane,
Speaker 1: Gary Cass casper Off and I think Bobby Fisher was
Speaker 1: on their both chess champions. I don't know, they're they're
Speaker 1: considered geniuses. It's all subjective that it is completely subjective.
Speaker 1: I think we're gonna end this with this observation. Genius
Speaker 1: is like pornography. It's impossible to fully define, but we
Speaker 1: know when we see it, right, Chuck, who who was that? Uh?
Speaker 1: Suitor Bruce Suitor, Bruce Jenner. If you want to learn
Speaker 1: more about genius, I think there's more than just this article.
Speaker 1: There's a bunch of good genius articles on the site
Speaker 1: at how stuffworks dot com. And there's also a bunch
Speaker 1: of articles on the people that we've mentioned, because we're
Speaker 1: doing a whole new series on painters. Right, yeah, we
Speaker 1: are at Cosso and Van Gogh. You can type it
Speaker 1: in the handy search bar. Of course, since I said that,
Speaker 1: it means it's time for listener and mail Chuck first
Speaker 1: before we do anything. Before anything, yes, let's uh, we
Speaker 1: get we should probably plug our new Facebook page. We
Speaker 1: were on Facebook for a while. This is nothing new
Speaker 1: to us, but we streamlined our stuff. We had a
Speaker 1: fan page and a regular page and it was also strange,
Speaker 1: so we consolidated and we're actually active on Facebook now.
Speaker 1: Yes we are, um, so, yes we are. We have
Speaker 1: a our brand new Facebook page is stuff you should know.
Speaker 1: Just type that into the handy search part Facebook or
Speaker 1: I think it's Facebook dot com slash stuff you should know.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'm not positive. Fine, And also, buddy, we're tweeting.
Speaker 1: You are tweeting, tweeted twice. Yeah, and your tweeting, I know,
Speaker 1: I feel like a modern child. All right. If you
Speaker 1: want to follow us on Twitter, we have our Twitter
Speaker 1: name as s y s K podcast right, yeah, so
Speaker 1: that would be at and the how they do it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: look at you guys, y ESK podcast and we'll be
Speaker 1: saying funny things as well as uh sending out links
Speaker 1: to cool stuff. And you know we're active now, that
Speaker 1: is true. So check us out, will you yes on
Speaker 1: on the show? Yes? All right, Josh, listener mail. For
Speaker 1: goodness sakes, listener mail, I'm gonna read a couple of
Speaker 1: quickies here from a young boy named Sam and from
Speaker 1: a trucker name and net. And it took us to task.
Speaker 1: Oh no, over what I will read it first? And
Speaker 1: that says u Hi chucking Josh. I am a oh
Speaker 1: for the road truck driver and love your podcast over
Speaker 1: the road. That's what she says. I would love for
Speaker 1: you guys to come along with me into the twenty
Speaker 1: one century. Regarding truck drivers, I've been driving for almost
Speaker 1: thirteen years, and guess what, I'm a woman. In fact,
Speaker 1: I have two sons. Y'all's age when you talk about
Speaker 1: truck drivers is in the McDonald's podcast. You always talk
Speaker 1: about big, burly guys. Well, I may be big and
Speaker 1: probably more surly than Burley, but I'm definitely not a guy.
Speaker 1: Don't forget us, lady drivers, love love love the show,
Speaker 1: so and how could we forget? I mean large Marge
Speaker 1: was a huge factor. Yeah, J's big adventure and that
Speaker 1: was a net. That was a net, and I told
Speaker 1: her that I would read this as our penance a net.
Speaker 1: I'm making the blow your horn signed for the tractor trailer.
Speaker 1: So if you're hearing this right now to your horn, awesome.
Speaker 1: I hope she didn't just cause an accident. This is
Speaker 1: from Sam, and Sam is just another a cute little kid,
Speaker 1: and I like these. I saw that that's a caps. Yeah, Hi,
Speaker 1: Chuck and Josh. I'm Sam blank be because I'm using
Speaker 1: your last name substitute. I'm eleven years old. You guys
Speaker 1: helped me get through many boring tasks like dog poop
Speaker 1: pick up my least favorite chore. I think it's mine too.
Speaker 1: Actually that in the cat box I just stopped as
Speaker 1: an adult, I don't pick up. You just don't go
Speaker 1: into the yard. I just watch where I'm walking in
Speaker 1: the yard. Okay. I think the funniest podcast was the
Speaker 1: Twinkie podcast. You guys make me laugh in my bed
Speaker 1: when I listen. Also in the supermarket, so he listens
Speaker 1: when he goes to sleep and when he's grocery shopping,
Speaker 1: or I guess when his mom's grocery shopping, or dad
Speaker 1: or two dad's. I don't know. Kids today are pretty independent. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're right. I think you guys are the funniest people
Speaker 1: in the world. I have a few suggestions, like what
Speaker 1: dues cat Got your Tongue mean? And other phrases means
Speaker 1: improper English? I do. Also, Riot Control really cracked me up.
Speaker 1: Does an eleven year old kid know what riot control is?
Speaker 1: And legos? So he wants to know about I Got
Speaker 1: your Tongue? Legos and riot control and trading cards and football?
Speaker 1: So could you please please read my shout out on
Speaker 1: the air, And here's my shout out, and this is
Speaker 1: an all caps. I told you mom, I would get
Speaker 1: my email read on air. Ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Speaker 1: So that's from Sam w And he said, I thought
Speaker 1: Josh looked like Chuck and Chuck looked like Josh, but
Speaker 1: that changed when I saw your pictures on the site. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we get that a lot. Yeah, we're well, not that
Speaker 1: I look like you and you look like me, but
Speaker 1: that we look like different people. Okay, that's always a case.
Speaker 1: With the voice. I'm much uglier than you would think.
Speaker 1: That is not true. You are a lovely, handsome man.
Speaker 1: Thank you all right? Well, thanks Sam, keep on shopping
Speaker 1: and the net keep on trucking. If you have an
Speaker 1: interesting email that you want to roll the dice and
Speaker 1: see if we'll read it on the air. Cost you
Speaker 1: nothing in this digital age, you can send us an
Speaker 1: electronic mail. Just address it to stuff podcast at how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. M For more on this and
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Want more how stuff works, check out our blogs on
Speaker 1: the how stuff works dot com home page. Brought to
Speaker 1: you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready,
Speaker 1: are you