WEBVTT - Albert Einstein: Inside the Mind of Quirky Genius 0:00:00.080 --> 0:00:11.960 Personology is a production of I Heart Radio. The name 0:00:12.000 --> 0:00:17.119 Albert Einstein is virtually synonymous with the word genius. A 0:00:17.160 --> 0:00:21.599 theoretical physicist, he developed the theory of relativity and brought 0:00:21.680 --> 0:00:26.400 us the most famous of all equations, E equals MC squared. 0:00:27.560 --> 0:00:33.560 He changed our understanding of the universe entirely creative, original, 0:00:34.120 --> 0:00:40.319 brilliant and quirky. How can we understand what made him tick? Hi? 0:00:40.920 --> 0:00:46.720 I'm Dr Gail Saltz and you're listening to Personology. Thrilled 0:00:46.760 --> 0:00:49.960 to have with me today? Michael Gordon Professor of Modern 0:00:50.040 --> 0:00:54.360 and contemporary history, particularly the history of science, at Princeton University, 0:00:54.640 --> 0:00:56.720 and he is also the author of the new book 0:00:56.880 --> 0:01:02.880 Einstein in Bohemia. Einstein was born on March fourteenth, eighteen 0:01:02.960 --> 0:01:05.240 seventy nine, who was born in the South German town 0:01:05.240 --> 0:01:09.800 of Woom and his father, Hermann Einstein, was an entrepreneur 0:01:10.120 --> 0:01:13.279 in an electrical engineering firm, which he did with his brother, 0:01:13.680 --> 0:01:16.720 so it was a family business working in this kind 0:01:16.760 --> 0:01:21.760 of electrical technology. And Einstein's early work, especially work on 0:01:21.800 --> 0:01:25.360 special relativity, is also linked to electrical technology in a 0:01:25.400 --> 0:01:28.360 bunch of ways. And Einstein worked in a patent office, 0:01:28.720 --> 0:01:33.160 largely as a specialist evaluating electromagnetic technologies. It's also the 0:01:33.160 --> 0:01:37.520 hottest area of physics and physics and inspired engineering at 0:01:37.520 --> 0:01:40.440 the times. It's interesting that it did carry through although 0:01:41.000 --> 0:01:44.000 his father really wanted him essentially to go study engineering 0:01:44.040 --> 0:01:46.440 and join the family business, and that is not what 0:01:46.560 --> 0:01:50.080 Albert wanted to do. So in that sense they departed 0:01:50.360 --> 0:01:53.160 from one another. I mean, his father essentially let him depart, 0:01:53.240 --> 0:01:55.600 if you will. It's important to frame it as though 0:01:55.640 --> 0:01:57.560 it's some sort of break between the two of them, 0:01:57.560 --> 0:02:00.440 because the relations don't seem to have suffered terrible because 0:02:00.440 --> 0:02:02.640 of this. I would say they're in the solid middle 0:02:02.680 --> 0:02:06.520 class bourgeoisie, but they're not at the top of that. 0:02:06.720 --> 0:02:09.440 They're kind of in the middle, but there's always a 0:02:09.480 --> 0:02:12.080 bit of a struggle going on. Einstein seems to be 0:02:12.160 --> 0:02:15.200 mostly shielded from that, and when you look at childhood pictures, 0:02:15.240 --> 0:02:19.360 he has all the classic bourgeois child pictures of like 0:02:19.440 --> 0:02:23.080 boy in school uniform against the backdrop. And his relationship 0:02:23.160 --> 0:02:25.560 with his mother, it sounds as though she is the 0:02:25.639 --> 0:02:29.519 more strict, tough, if you will, presence in the family 0:02:29.560 --> 0:02:33.520 between the two parents, though it's not like many people's 0:02:33.560 --> 0:02:36.320 relationships with their mothers it's close, but it's not unfraught. 0:02:36.720 --> 0:02:39.920 So his parents are very typical of Jews in the 0:02:39.919 --> 0:02:43.200 bourgeoisie in that period. In living in urban Germany, they 0:02:43.240 --> 0:02:47.840 were largely assimilated. They did some of the very surface traditions, 0:02:47.880 --> 0:02:50.840 but didn't observe in any way. They were completely irreligious 0:02:50.840 --> 0:02:54.320 in that regard. When Einstein was about eleven twelve, he 0:02:54.400 --> 0:02:58.240 became substantially interested in the Jewish tradition and started studying 0:02:58.280 --> 0:03:02.120 the stuff and even preparing and thinking about apart Mitzpah, 0:03:02.400 --> 0:03:06.280 and then around page twelve he abandons all of it. 0:03:06.440 --> 0:03:11.080 Was it scientific readings, material or his his commitment to 0:03:11.120 --> 0:03:13.280 science that made him give it up? Yeah, So what 0:03:13.480 --> 0:03:16.760 we have We actually have very few sources about Einstein's youth, 0:03:16.840 --> 0:03:19.160 but one of the sources we have is from a 0:03:19.200 --> 0:03:23.000 medical student in Munich who would visit the household. So 0:03:23.680 --> 0:03:26.640 one of the traditions that the Einstein did, which is 0:03:26.960 --> 0:03:30.920 sort of classic Jewish tradition for the Sabbath, meal have 0:03:31.360 --> 0:03:35.560 a talmud student over at your house religious students and 0:03:35.640 --> 0:03:39.600 feed them as a way of supporting their studies. Max 0:03:39.640 --> 0:03:42.320 toalmwould later emigrates to the United States, changes his last 0:03:42.400 --> 0:03:46.360 name to Tommy tell Me writes a book on special relativity, 0:03:46.440 --> 0:03:49.200 explaining it to a popular audience, and at the back 0:03:49.240 --> 0:03:52.000 of it he put his memories of what Albert Einstein 0:03:52.040 --> 0:03:53.840 was like as a child. So it's one of the 0:03:53.880 --> 0:03:58.200 few sources we have of that period. So Max talmwould 0:03:58.440 --> 0:04:02.680 really hit it off with the boy Einstein. So there's 0:04:02.680 --> 0:04:04.760 about there's over a decade of difference in their ages 0:04:04.920 --> 0:04:07.800 that they spent a lot of time talking. He works 0:04:07.840 --> 0:04:12.160 through the proofs of Euclid with him from a textbook 0:04:12.160 --> 0:04:15.600 his uncle had given him, and they read other kinds 0:04:15.640 --> 0:04:19.080 of popular science books together. He gives the boy popular 0:04:19.080 --> 0:04:23.400 science books, and it's though that engagement with a scientific 0:04:23.440 --> 0:04:26.560 explanation of how things go that alienate him from religion. 0:04:27.080 --> 0:04:29.240 One of the things that makes Einstein so interesting to 0:04:29.279 --> 0:04:33.240 think about is he's a mixture of radically unconventional things 0:04:33.279 --> 0:04:37.480 and enormously conventional choices. He does both of those in 0:04:37.520 --> 0:04:42.520 a weird mix. He kicks an unusual first spouse, but 0:04:42.600 --> 0:04:45.159 then he expects her to behave in exactly the way 0:04:45.520 --> 0:04:49.040 a conventional spouse would. I think in some ways that 0:04:49.480 --> 0:04:52.760 he was a mixture, just as we're talking about in 0:04:52.880 --> 0:04:54.840 terms of the type of student that he was so. 0:04:54.920 --> 0:05:00.080 On the one hand, he clearly excelled in math and 0:05:00.200 --> 0:05:03.080 sciences in certain way and that was where his interests lie. 0:05:03.560 --> 0:05:07.279 In other areas not so much. There's a very common 0:05:07.279 --> 0:05:09.240 myth that Einstein was a terrible students, and that's just 0:05:09.320 --> 0:05:12.400 not true. He was a very good student in the 0:05:12.440 --> 0:05:15.880 math and sciences, and he was a decent mediocre to 0:05:15.960 --> 0:05:19.560 decent students in other areas. Some of that is lack 0:05:19.640 --> 0:05:21.920 of interest, some of that is also lack of talent. 0:05:22.600 --> 0:05:26.000 He clearly had a hard time with languages. Some people 0:05:26.279 --> 0:05:28.400 learn them more easily, other people learn them with a 0:05:28.440 --> 0:05:32.040 greater difficulty. His lack of facility with French is one 0:05:32.080 --> 0:05:34.480 of the things that holds him up and enrolling in 0:05:34.520 --> 0:05:36.320 the university, and he needs to take a year of 0:05:36.400 --> 0:05:39.599 schooling to get his French up to snuff. He started 0:05:39.640 --> 0:05:44.480 learning English when he was thirty one and always learned 0:05:44.480 --> 0:05:48.760 it kind of imperfectly, and his his German is enormously expressive, 0:05:49.000 --> 0:05:52.240 almost poetic in places. He had a real facility with 0:05:52.279 --> 0:05:56.080 the language, but not of facility with any other language. 0:05:56.240 --> 0:06:00.520 Even though he was eventually competent in French and English 0:06:00.600 --> 0:06:04.960 and could read some Italian this collection of attending to 0:06:05.080 --> 0:06:09.279 only things that really really interested him and clearly appearing 0:06:09.320 --> 0:06:12.240 to not attend and be able to have the same 0:06:12.279 --> 0:06:15.960 facility therefore with things that did not interest him, and 0:06:16.000 --> 0:06:18.479 then going on to not only attend to the things 0:06:18.520 --> 0:06:22.760 that interested him, but like what you might call hyper focus. Uh, 0:06:22.960 --> 0:06:25.919 you know, like a deep dive that few other people 0:06:25.960 --> 0:06:28.480 could maintain for the lengths of time that he did, 0:06:28.560 --> 0:06:31.440 at the depth that he did. And that's why there 0:06:31.480 --> 0:06:35.600 are some groups that look at that collection of behaviors 0:06:35.600 --> 0:06:38.440 and say, could this be a person who has attention 0:06:38.480 --> 0:06:42.120 deficit disorder? In the sense that attention deficit disorder is 0:06:42.160 --> 0:06:45.320 not the lack of ability to pay attention, It is 0:06:45.360 --> 0:06:50.160 actually the faulty switch in one's ability to attend when 0:06:50.240 --> 0:06:53.040 one wants to attend, so that even, for example, if 0:06:53.080 --> 0:06:55.359 you're not going to do well in Greek or in 0:06:55.440 --> 0:06:58.640 French and you have to pay attention, you're able to 0:06:58.640 --> 0:07:00.960 get yourself to pay attention. But if you had a 0:07:01.080 --> 0:07:03.599 d D, you would just not be able to do it. 0:07:03.640 --> 0:07:06.599 You just could not make yourself do it. But if 0:07:06.640 --> 0:07:12.520 the math fascinated you, you could do that better and 0:07:12.600 --> 0:07:15.920 more deeply and for a longer period of time than 0:07:16.080 --> 0:07:19.560 somebody who did not have a d D. And in addition, 0:07:20.240 --> 0:07:23.000 many people with a d D, because of this faulty switch, 0:07:23.400 --> 0:07:29.160 their ability to harness innovative ideas and to have a 0:07:29.200 --> 0:07:33.640 greater number literally of out of the box thoughts that 0:07:33.680 --> 0:07:37.200 are related to daydreaming and fantasy and so on, is 0:07:37.280 --> 0:07:42.040 often superior. As an adult, he was perfectly capable of 0:07:42.560 --> 0:07:45.440 spending many hours paying attention to things he thought were 0:07:45.440 --> 0:07:49.480 boring and useless if they satisfied some greater goals. So 0:07:49.480 --> 0:07:52.040 he did a lot of fundraising for the Hebrew University 0:07:52.040 --> 0:07:55.200 in Jerusalem. He found these events idiotic and pointless, but 0:07:55.280 --> 0:07:59.240 he would do it. He engaged in extensive correspondence concerning 0:07:59.240 --> 0:08:03.480 the League of Nation, and lots of other efforts, such 0:08:03.520 --> 0:08:07.200 as writing affidavits for refugees in the nineties and trying 0:08:07.200 --> 0:08:09.720 to get them positions either in the UK or in 0:08:09.760 --> 0:08:11.760 the US. He would complain about how much time it 0:08:11.880 --> 0:08:14.200 was taking, but he would do it with focus. So 0:08:14.600 --> 0:08:16.680 it's not just the maths stuff that he can do 0:08:16.720 --> 0:08:18.280 this with. He can do this with a lot of things. 0:08:18.600 --> 0:08:21.360 I think it's just when he chooses to apply himself. 0:08:21.760 --> 0:08:25.080 He clearly did cultivate this image of the absent minded 0:08:25.080 --> 0:08:28.280 professor to some degree, I don't know, perhaps as a 0:08:28.320 --> 0:08:30.920 way of checking out when he preferred to check out, 0:08:31.400 --> 0:08:35.040 but the whole I don't tie my shoelaces, I don't 0:08:35.040 --> 0:08:37.400 wear socks. My hair looks like I've just stuck my 0:08:37.640 --> 0:08:41.400 finger in a socket. You know, he he clearly cultivated 0:08:41.440 --> 0:08:43.800 this image, that vision of mine, thing which I know 0:08:43.920 --> 0:08:46.000 everybody listening to this has in their mind right now. 0:08:46.480 --> 0:08:48.040 He did look like that, But he looked like that 0:08:48.120 --> 0:08:51.480 kind of the late thirties onward earlier. If you look 0:08:51.480 --> 0:08:53.120 at him in the twenties, he's dressed in a suit, 0:08:53.240 --> 0:08:55.800 he's got shoes, they're tied, and some of that is 0:08:55.840 --> 0:08:58.679 his wife died in thirty six and she stopped dressing him. 0:08:58.800 --> 0:09:02.720 But when he needed to look respectable, he looked perfectly respectable. 0:09:03.080 --> 0:09:06.800 It's only as he gets older that um either maybe 0:09:06.840 --> 0:09:09.880 he doesn't mean to, maybe he cares less. So it's 0:09:09.960 --> 0:09:11.840 it's not clear to me whether he always wanted to 0:09:11.840 --> 0:09:14.319 be kind of a shlub and then finally got the chance, 0:09:15.080 --> 0:09:19.360 or if the propensity to shlubbiness grew over time. This 0:09:19.440 --> 0:09:21.240 is a good spot to take a break, be back 0:09:21.240 --> 0:09:33.280 in a moment, Einstein rebelled against the authoritarian behavior of 0:09:33.320 --> 0:09:35.920 some of his teachers and dropped out of school at 0:09:35.960 --> 0:09:40.440 age sixteen. Later he was admitted to Swiss Polytechnic and 0:09:40.559 --> 0:09:43.240 five years later he graduated with his diploma to teach 0:09:43.280 --> 0:09:47.760 physics and mathematics. But Einstein couldn't find a teaching position, 0:09:48.360 --> 0:09:50.840 so he took a job in the patent office because 0:09:50.840 --> 0:09:55.640 he had to make money. He wanted to get married. 0:09:55.760 --> 0:09:58.840 There was already a first baby out of wedlock that 0:09:58.920 --> 0:10:00.800 was given up for adoption. He wanted to get married 0:10:00.840 --> 0:10:03.080 to start a family. He needed money, so he took 0:10:03.080 --> 0:10:05.200 the job. He liked the patent office in part because 0:10:05.200 --> 0:10:07.559 he was really good at it. So he did very 0:10:07.600 --> 0:10:11.280 well at this job. His superiors liked him. And when 0:10:11.320 --> 0:10:13.120 you think about what a patent officer has to do 0:10:13.120 --> 0:10:15.160 when they get a new invention, as they first of all, 0:10:15.400 --> 0:10:17.640 they have to figure out if it's new, and they 0:10:17.679 --> 0:10:20.400 have to figure out what the basic principle is the 0:10:20.440 --> 0:10:23.720 idea behind a patent application is there's a key idea 0:10:23.840 --> 0:10:28.360 that his novel and has some utility. So he got 0:10:28.480 --> 0:10:31.800 very good at reading these applications and seeing what are 0:10:31.800 --> 0:10:34.640 the fundamental principles By which this invention is supposed to work, 0:10:35.360 --> 0:10:37.679 and are they distinct from the fundamental principles of these 0:10:37.720 --> 0:10:41.720 other inventions that I looked at yesterday. That kind of 0:10:41.720 --> 0:10:45.240 thinking is not dissimilar to what he does with relativity theory, 0:10:45.559 --> 0:10:47.560 where he's like, what are the fundamental principles by which 0:10:47.559 --> 0:10:51.240 we measure time? We need a clock and we need 0:10:51.280 --> 0:10:53.800 to have mark an event happening at a certain place. 0:10:54.240 --> 0:10:56.480 The thought that he came in with the style of thinking, 0:10:56.520 --> 0:10:58.640 and that was what made him good the patent office, 0:10:58.760 --> 0:11:02.360 or did the work at the patent office inform his 0:11:02.520 --> 0:11:05.679 style of thinking that he would go on to use 0:11:05.720 --> 0:11:08.560 in terms of, you know, coming to special relativity and 0:11:08.559 --> 0:11:10.640 then general relativity. I think it's got to be a 0:11:10.640 --> 0:11:13.360 bit of both. He was certainly exposed to patent earlier 0:11:13.400 --> 0:11:16.720 because his father's business involved that kind of work, but 0:11:17.360 --> 0:11:19.680 even later when he was a professor, Einstein filed a 0:11:19.720 --> 0:11:22.360 ton of patents. Later on he had an idea for 0:11:22.360 --> 0:11:25.240 a refrigerator, he filed a patent, and Einstein continued to 0:11:25.240 --> 0:11:28.920 consult for people on their patent applications as a way 0:11:28.960 --> 0:11:30.920 of earning extra money and also because he was interested 0:11:30.920 --> 0:11:34.400 in it. So he liked the thinking in patents, and 0:11:34.720 --> 0:11:37.720 even after he didn't need the money anymore. So I 0:11:37.760 --> 0:11:40.680 think it's probably a bit that his style of thought 0:11:41.040 --> 0:11:43.400 mapped onto this, so it was congenial to him. But 0:11:43.440 --> 0:11:45.360 I think it's also it's the practice of doing it 0:11:45.480 --> 0:11:48.480 day in and day out created certain patterns of thinking. 0:11:49.040 --> 0:11:53.240 So he is newly married here. She became pregnant before 0:11:53.280 --> 0:11:55.720 they got married. He didn't marry her then, which is 0:11:55.760 --> 0:11:58.680 something that he could have done and sort of legitimized 0:11:59.040 --> 0:12:02.160 her and the whole thing. But because he didn't do that, 0:12:02.800 --> 0:12:06.280 she was sort of sent home, if you will, to 0:12:06.559 --> 0:12:10.000 have this baby. And sadly, it does seem from the 0:12:10.480 --> 0:12:13.000 few records that exist that that there may have been 0:12:13.040 --> 0:12:16.120 something wrong with the baby. Um. But we basically we 0:12:16.120 --> 0:12:18.120 don't even know what happened to the baby. It might 0:12:18.160 --> 0:12:21.800 have been adopted, it might have died, um, it might 0:12:21.840 --> 0:12:25.520 have been her family took the baby, but basically they 0:12:25.559 --> 0:12:29.200 have nothing further to do with this baby when she returns. 0:12:29.720 --> 0:12:31.599 She may have survived, you may not have survived. We 0:12:31.640 --> 0:12:33.960 just don't know at present what happened to her. People 0:12:34.280 --> 0:12:37.600 have looked, they're still looking, and that's the only daughter. 0:12:38.200 --> 0:12:42.240 So Einstein then marries her and they have two children. 0:12:42.960 --> 0:12:47.760 Hans Albert later on becomes the professor of engineering in 0:12:47.800 --> 0:12:50.800 the United States and has his own children. And then 0:12:51.360 --> 0:12:54.280 Eduard or as they called him, Teddy, and sadly, we 0:12:54.360 --> 0:13:00.200 know that Teddy ultimately developed schizophrenia and is serious slee 0:13:00.280 --> 0:13:03.760 psychiatrically ill marriage. The first wife also later on had 0:13:04.080 --> 0:13:07.560 very severe bouts of depression. There maybe some inherited mental 0:13:07.600 --> 0:13:10.240 illness that is going on in this case, but it's 0:13:10.320 --> 0:13:15.240 clear that Malva had her own struggles going on. But Teddy, 0:13:15.360 --> 0:13:18.360 Teddy really suffered quite badly as a girlder in a 0:13:18.480 --> 0:13:22.360 pained I'm fine to see it. His wife becomes more 0:13:22.440 --> 0:13:27.520 and more miserable, partially because she is a PhD physics 0:13:27.520 --> 0:13:30.200 student who would like to be doing work herself and 0:13:30.280 --> 0:13:33.840 really is sort of relegated to taking care of the 0:13:33.880 --> 0:13:38.240 house and taking care of the boys. Clearly, being relegated to, 0:13:38.960 --> 0:13:42.040 you know, housewife is not a happy circumstance for her. 0:13:42.640 --> 0:13:46.680 And and yet there is very little evidence that Einstein 0:13:46.720 --> 0:13:52.320 in any way tries to help or ameliorate her difficulties. 0:13:52.880 --> 0:13:55.760 His marriage falls apart, he doesn't have a close relationship 0:13:55.760 --> 0:13:59.520 with his children. He remarried to this distant cousin, but 0:13:59.640 --> 0:14:05.079 he similarly like an oddly unrelated sort of set up 0:14:05.120 --> 0:14:07.280 with her where you know, the deal was, you know, 0:14:07.360 --> 0:14:09.160 she would take care of him and be the wife, 0:14:09.200 --> 0:14:12.800 and he would be able to have relationships outside the 0:14:12.840 --> 0:14:14.960 marriage as long as they were just one at a time, 0:14:15.120 --> 0:14:18.920 you know, sort of serial infidelity and this odd way 0:14:19.200 --> 0:14:21.680 you know, even later of relating where he had this 0:14:21.960 --> 0:14:24.720 room in the house, you know, a private room where 0:14:24.880 --> 0:14:26.600 people could come in and meet with him, but his 0:14:26.640 --> 0:14:29.480 wife was to never come in there unless invited, because 0:14:29.960 --> 0:14:34.160 young women came in there who were invited. For many 0:14:34.200 --> 0:14:38.520 people who admire Einstein, the relationships with women is the 0:14:38.800 --> 0:14:42.560 picking point. It's unpleasant. He does not have the characteristics 0:14:42.640 --> 0:14:46.120 we now consider admirable. There's a lot of infidelity. He 0:14:46.240 --> 0:14:48.840 was immensely appealing to women, and he knew it, but 0:14:48.880 --> 0:14:53.080 it's almost like he was sort of unaware of who 0:14:53.240 --> 0:14:55.880 got hurt in the process. You know, you hear about 0:14:55.880 --> 0:14:58.840 serial philanderers that know exactly what they're doing and they're 0:14:58.960 --> 0:15:01.960 very savvy about it. They're very well aware of who 0:15:02.040 --> 0:15:04.680 it's hurting, and they have sort of almost a sociopathic 0:15:05.200 --> 0:15:07.880 you know, I don't care, but there are also people 0:15:07.920 --> 0:15:11.840 who do things in their relationships where it's almost like 0:15:11.920 --> 0:15:16.280 socially they're just not so aware, they're not aware that 0:15:16.320 --> 0:15:21.480 they're angry, that they're making others, you know, distressed or angry, 0:15:21.640 --> 0:15:23.960 or in the case of you know, his anti authoritarian 0:15:24.000 --> 0:15:26.760 reaction with professors. And I guess I just bring all 0:15:26.800 --> 0:15:29.600 this up because there are almost no names to put 0:15:29.640 --> 0:15:33.880 with Albert Einstein in terms of scientific discoveries and the 0:15:33.960 --> 0:15:38.880 magnitude of them, and the genius of him and such that. 0:15:38.960 --> 0:15:42.280 You know, you think of words like savant, and when 0:15:42.280 --> 0:15:46.200 you think of people who have savant like abilities, at 0:15:46.240 --> 0:15:51.560 the same time that socially they do so many maladaptive things, 0:15:52.480 --> 0:15:56.760 you do wonder about you know what today we used 0:15:56.760 --> 0:15:59.720 to call Asperger's now we call a very mild autism. 0:15:59.800 --> 0:16:04.400 But people who are incredibly intelligent in this skewed way, 0:16:04.920 --> 0:16:10.200 but socially emotionally have difficulty reading what's going on and 0:16:10.240 --> 0:16:13.200 therefore do a lot of things that make it hard 0:16:13.240 --> 0:16:16.600 for them to stay connected to important people. This grows 0:16:16.640 --> 0:16:19.760 over time. His relationship with Elsa, the cousin who becomes 0:16:19.760 --> 0:16:22.720 the second Mrs Einstein, began as an affair an extramarital 0:16:22.720 --> 0:16:26.080 affair where Malva would get hurt, and that begins in 0:16:27.200 --> 0:16:29.240 on a visit to Berlin from Prague, where they're living 0:16:29.280 --> 0:16:31.280 at the time, and then when they return to Zurich. 0:16:31.360 --> 0:16:34.320 There's actually a correspondence between them between Elsa and Albert 0:16:35.080 --> 0:16:38.320 where he says, you know, I destroyed your letters as 0:16:38.320 --> 0:16:40.440 you asked. You should probably send your letters to me 0:16:40.480 --> 0:16:44.440 in my office. So he's covering up the tracks. As 0:16:44.480 --> 0:16:47.760 he gets older, he cares less to cover up the tracks. 0:16:47.960 --> 0:16:51.120 Whether that's a cultural development or a psychological development, or 0:16:51.160 --> 0:16:54.680 just mediosyncrasy, it's hard to know. While the divorce is ongoing, 0:16:54.760 --> 0:16:58.440 he's basically living with his second wife. You can't really 0:16:58.640 --> 0:17:04.440 call Einstein a narcissist because narcissism is a grandiose view 0:17:04.480 --> 0:17:08.560 of oneself that's not consistent necessarily with reality, and in 0:17:08.600 --> 0:17:12.480 his case, well, his confident view of himself was very 0:17:12.480 --> 0:17:15.800 consistent with reality, so it makes it hard to call 0:17:15.880 --> 0:17:20.159 him a narcissist. But he did believe that he was 0:17:20.240 --> 0:17:22.120 going to he was doing these things. He was going 0:17:22.160 --> 0:17:25.320 to do these things such that he told Malva, when 0:17:25.359 --> 0:17:29.040 I win the Nobel Prize, I will give the prize 0:17:29.040 --> 0:17:31.560 money to you and the boys to take care of you. 0:17:41.920 --> 0:17:47.000 In Einstein wins the Nobel Prize in Physics for his 0:17:47.119 --> 0:17:51.320 services to theoretical physics and especially for his discovery of 0:17:51.359 --> 0:17:54.960 the law of the photoelectric effect, and he does indeed 0:17:55.160 --> 0:17:58.560 put the money in a trust for his children. The 0:17:58.600 --> 0:18:00.800 Nobel Prize when he says that is fifteen years old, 0:18:01.040 --> 0:18:04.000 it doesn't have the same status it now has, and 0:18:04.280 --> 0:18:06.359 looking at the kinds of people who have won Nobel 0:18:06.400 --> 0:18:10.399 Prizes up until that point, Einstein was quite reasonable to 0:18:10.440 --> 0:18:12.600 think that he would be in their number. Also, the 0:18:12.600 --> 0:18:15.639 scientific community is much smaller before World War Two than 0:18:15.680 --> 0:18:17.720 it is after World War two and much less global, 0:18:18.200 --> 0:18:21.280 so his chances of winning are higher that so it's 0:18:21.280 --> 0:18:24.040 not crazy. It still is a little bit galling to 0:18:24.119 --> 0:18:26.520 see that. And then when it happens and he gives 0:18:26.520 --> 0:18:28.480 the money, he wants to control how they spend the money. 0:18:28.600 --> 0:18:31.399 It's also complicated by the fact that rightland divorce begins, 0:18:31.400 --> 0:18:33.719 a war breaks out, which makes it hard to travel, 0:18:33.880 --> 0:18:37.120 even though Switzerland is neutral. And then after the war, 0:18:37.200 --> 0:18:39.760 when the Nobel Prize money does come in, Germany has 0:18:40.160 --> 0:18:43.720 the brunt of hyper inflation Switzerland doesn't, which is where 0:18:43.720 --> 0:18:46.320 the kids live, and it's very hard for Einstein actually 0:18:46.359 --> 0:18:51.480 financially meet the terms of the agreement because the currencies 0:18:51.520 --> 0:18:55.199 don't match. While the divorce is happening, he and Elsa 0:18:55.320 --> 0:18:58.040 have this relationship going. It is clear that Elsa really 0:18:58.080 --> 0:19:00.760 wants to regularize this. She wants to get married, and 0:19:00.800 --> 0:19:03.840 she's quite insistent on it. She has two fairly grown 0:19:03.920 --> 0:19:07.720 up daughters, Elsa and Margot and desn. Einstein proposed to 0:19:07.720 --> 0:19:10.359 one of the daughters as well, so he has a debate. 0:19:10.400 --> 0:19:13.040 He's like, should I propose to Elsa or should I 0:19:13.080 --> 0:19:16.040 propose to Ilsa, the older daughter, who's actually I kind 0:19:16.080 --> 0:19:18.960 of like better, And then he proposes to Elsa, and 0:19:19.040 --> 0:19:21.520 Elsa says, no, I really think you should marry my mother. 0:19:22.320 --> 0:19:25.479 And that's what he does. In this period, he has 0:19:25.520 --> 0:19:29.679 an affair with his secretary. There's lots of messiness in 0:19:29.840 --> 0:19:33.120 his life. In nineteen eleven, there's a big scandal breaks 0:19:33.119 --> 0:19:36.560 out in Paris with Marie Curie, who is having an 0:19:36.560 --> 0:19:40.280 affair with Paul Longevan, who is an important French physicist 0:19:40.400 --> 0:19:43.879 who's married. Madame Lingevan knows this, and they've kind of 0:19:43.920 --> 0:19:46.359 been having this kind of three way thing where they 0:19:46.359 --> 0:19:48.400 all know what's going on, but then it breaks into 0:19:48.400 --> 0:19:52.720 the newspapers and is used as a way to smear Curie. Einstein, 0:19:52.720 --> 0:19:54.480 who usually doesn't pay attention to stuff like this, pays 0:19:54.520 --> 0:19:56.960 attention to this, and he writes her a supportive letter, 0:19:57.560 --> 0:20:01.040 and he says, I don't understand what what people are doing, 0:20:01.240 --> 0:20:03.119 why people are smearing you this way? You're a very 0:20:03.160 --> 0:20:05.200 nice person. He also writes about it to his friend 0:20:05.280 --> 0:20:07.640 Einstein and says, like, why is everybody so upset about 0:20:07.640 --> 0:20:10.479 this infidelity? It's clear that nobody's getting hurt, and they 0:20:10.520 --> 0:20:12.000 all live in the same city, so it's not like 0:20:12.080 --> 0:20:14.080 he has to like travel really far to have an 0:20:14.080 --> 0:20:16.120 affair with her, Like like they all they're all there, 0:20:16.200 --> 0:20:18.240 they all know each other, Like it's not a problem, 0:20:18.280 --> 0:20:20.919 So why is everybody so sad about that? In his 0:20:21.040 --> 0:20:25.960 anti authoritarian ness, feels that the rules, the cultural rules, 0:20:26.480 --> 0:20:30.520 you know, aren't really sensical and shouldn't really apply, as 0:20:30.520 --> 0:20:35.320 opposed to his inability to see a record that these 0:20:35.400 --> 0:20:41.159 rules have to do with human feelings and people being hurt. No, 0:20:41.320 --> 0:20:44.480 he doesn't register the damage it does in the process 0:20:44.480 --> 0:20:47.240 of psycholanalizing Einstein, and it would have to psycholanalize Elsa 0:20:47.320 --> 0:20:50.520 as well to Elsa knew what she was getting into. Listen. 0:20:50.520 --> 0:20:52.080 I could just tell you from the work I do 0:20:52.200 --> 0:20:55.040 today that there are plenty of people who get involved 0:20:55.080 --> 0:20:59.080 with someone in an affair and still believe somehow that 0:20:59.160 --> 0:21:01.119 they will be the one and when they marry this 0:21:01.160 --> 0:21:03.320 person there will be no more cheating, and they are 0:21:03.400 --> 0:21:09.440 usually disappointed. It's unusual to be as academically and theoretically 0:21:09.600 --> 0:21:15.639 intelligent as Einstein is and to be as in some ways, 0:21:15.760 --> 0:21:19.879 let's say, lacking in emotional intelligence um in the way 0:21:20.080 --> 0:21:22.000 that he seems to be. And to make it even 0:21:22.000 --> 0:21:25.080 more complicated, Einstein was really good with children. Repeatedly. You 0:21:25.119 --> 0:21:27.800 see this in Princeton, but you also see this William Prague. 0:21:27.880 --> 0:21:30.600 On Sundays, he hangs out with a very large family 0:21:30.640 --> 0:21:35.680 of Mard's internets, who's a sanskritistin who teaches there um 0:21:35.720 --> 0:21:38.000 and the kids loved him. He would spend all day 0:21:38.080 --> 0:21:40.920 Sunday with them. Now he has his own family who 0:21:40.960 --> 0:21:43.760 aren't there like, so he's leaving his own family at 0:21:43.800 --> 0:21:45.879 home and going to hang out with somebody else's family. 0:21:46.400 --> 0:21:51.120 Adults with autism may have an easier time socializing with children, 0:21:51.200 --> 0:21:57.240 essentially because the pleasure in perseverating on something you know, 0:21:57.320 --> 0:22:00.520 to do something over and over again is something at 0:22:00.680 --> 0:22:05.760 would be more comfortable is actually a symptom of autism um. 0:22:05.800 --> 0:22:08.840 But you know it can work for you, let's say, 0:22:08.920 --> 0:22:11.400 in terms of engaging with children who might enjoy doing 0:22:11.400 --> 0:22:14.159 the same thing over and over again. And in your work, 0:22:14.560 --> 0:22:17.679 if you your attention to detail and your ability to 0:22:18.440 --> 0:22:22.880 you know, obsess on one thing, perseverate on one thing, 0:22:23.520 --> 0:22:26.720 something that might bore the heck out of somebody else 0:22:27.200 --> 0:22:30.360 can be a real asset um in terms of your 0:22:30.359 --> 0:22:34.680 thinking style, if you're trying to do rigorous, very specific 0:22:34.760 --> 0:22:38.159 scientific thinking. It's an interesting idea. I still resist in 0:22:38.200 --> 0:22:40.560 principle the sort of the idea. I think there's too 0:22:40.640 --> 0:22:43.360 much evidence about other aspects of mindstein. But it's very 0:22:43.400 --> 0:22:46.119 interesting that that patterns consistent. I think part of it 0:22:46.160 --> 0:22:50.959 may also just be him providing like so Tommy slash 0:22:51.040 --> 0:22:54.560 Talmud's impact on him as a child, that connection, I 0:22:54.600 --> 0:22:57.680 think is something that perhaps is live for him. It's 0:22:57.680 --> 0:23:00.320 something that he thinks, well. Another reason to be engage 0:23:00.359 --> 0:23:02.080 with these children's like you never know how you can 0:23:02.080 --> 0:23:04.439 shape their lives. This seems like a good place to 0:23:04.480 --> 0:23:23.000 take a break will be right back. Clearly, Albert Einstein 0:23:23.119 --> 0:23:27.520 was unusually intelligent. He himself spoke of his intense curiosity 0:23:27.600 --> 0:23:30.840