I think the two different things.

Though.

What I mean is that the achievement stands next to the personal qualities.

So if I think, if you're a regular person and you don't change your socks for days on end, people go a bit much.

But if you're Michelangelo and you don't change your socks for days and then because you're painting the Sistine Chapel, it becomes, oh my god, he's so devoted to his art that he doesn't even have time to think about his socks.

And now you've worked in university, so I am at one hundred percent sure you have worked with people who are useless at a number of things, and this is taken as well.

They just don't have time to think about departmental meeting emails because they're just thinking about the big questions of life and it's what you And that doesn't happen to bricklayers, right, No one cares if you're a bricklayer.

If you can't do minor admin tasks, they don't take it as proof that you're actually your mind is occupied with bricklaying.

But it happens at those kind of higher realms that we read oddness as specialness.

Hello, and Welcome to the Psychology Podcast.

In each episode, we talk with inspiring scientists, thinkers, and other self actualizing individuals who will give you a greater understanding of yourself, others, and the world we live in.

We even hope to give you a glimpse into human possibility.

Today we feature Helen Lewis, an English journalists and staff writer for The Atlantic.

In this episode, we discussed Helen's most recent book called The Genius Myth, A Curious History of a dangerous idea.

Helen argues that since there is no objective definition of genius, societies anoint exceptional people as geniuses to demonstrate what they value.

In turn, we give those special people latitude that is not extended to ordinary mortals, and we have a set of stories about what geniuses are and how they think and how singular their achievements are, stories that she argues are often entirely untrue.

This was a very stimulating conversation.

Helen and I share similar criticisms of i Q and the way we treat those we deem genius in our society.

I think this conversation is short as spar lots of thought and discussion.

So with that further Ado, I bring you Helen Lewis, Helen Louis, thank you so much for being on the Psychology podcast.

How you doing, I'm doing good, thank you, and I'm delighted to be here.

I think it turns out you and I've got a lot of overlapping interests, so this would be really fun.

I would say, quite a lot.

Yeah, I've read.

I read your book.

I devoured your book.

I can't think of a better added.

I mean, I literally was like, this is amazing, this is like like I nerded out.

I had to apologize that psychologists don't come out of it particularly.

Well yeah, well fair yeah, well fair enough, they didn't.

They didn't come out partically well in my book And Gifted either, you know, and the History of Psychology.

I don't know if you had a chance to read and Gifted, But there's so much overlap.

Well, no, that's the thing I was looking at.

You wrote about the complexity of greatness as well, right, and all the words on intelligence really chimes with what I've been thinking and writing about in this book.

Yeah, but yeah, I think probably we both came to the conclusion that in the twentieth centuries psychologists were wildly overconfident about what could be known at the time about intelligence and giftedness.

Yes, absolutely, I mean there was this real abuse of a test right at the IQ test, which was not the original spirit of the test at all offered.

Brene was had a good heart.

He wanted to help really differentiate between those who didn't really need as much resources from those who really could use the resources.

And I'm sure you saw in your research that he wrote an essay the last I think month of his life or so where he's like, I can't believe what the Americans have done in my test.

I mean that's a rough French translation, but.

Yeah, also, yeah, no, I think that's really sad.

But you're right, it's a story of good intentions about like how do I work out which kids are falling behind their peers and that need extra attention, and that somehow, in that early bit of the twentieth century becomes magically transmitted into what if everybody has a number floating above their head that says how worthwhile they are as a human being?

And it was never intended to be to be read like that.

And you know, I saw you on Sam Harris's podcast usefully pushing back against the idea that IQ is only what's measured on IQ test, you know, the very simple glib dismissal that people have of it now.

But you know that does obviously go in both directions.

People wildly underclaim for it now.

I think that's a more fashionable thing to do, but that's almost a reaction to the twentieth centuries wild overclaims for it.

Yeah, yeah, let's let's let's talk about that.

And now I want to say this up from something I really liked about your book is you you do have a lot of nuance, and it's different than some other books I've read, which are just like IQ bashing books or just like genius, just just like let's just bash you know, the whole idea of genius.

There are multiple instances where you're like, well, you know a lot of people will say that there's no heritable basis ti Q whatever whatsoever, that it's a completely useless test, that all it measures IQ and none of that is true.

You see, that's a paraphrase of a of a section he wrote.

I was like, good for Helen, like, yeah, because I you know, I get I get annoyed when when when I know certain things aren't true, and and people like make me say things, you know, So like I did a whole book where I really seriously criticized the IQ test, called unngifted, and talked about my own personal experiences how when I was a kid, I was whole, I was treated I was in special Ed.

I mean, they treated me like I was really stupid.

And so I had a lot of criticisms.

But then I went on the podcast circuit and everyone was like, it's almost like they wanted me to say that it's a completely useless test and we can't gather any information whatsoever, and like all IQ test makers should go to hell.

And I was like, well, you know, a lot of I count a lot of IQ test makers as my friends now, you know, like I published papers with them.

I don't think I don' want I don't want them to go to hell.

And a lot of them are well meaning.

A lot of them want to use the test for educational purposes to see what are the cognitive deficits that but most need help with, but not to limit potential.

I know that's the spirit of a lot of modern modern day IQ test makers, but that's very different than the spirit of early day So tell me a little bit about tell me a little about the history of genius, of the phrase genius and how it was connected to the IQ test.

Well, I think what you're hitting on is the fact that what people are off for having is an argument that's behind the actual argument.

And that's exactly what the central thesis of the genius myth is.

That kind of who gets called a genius is often a kind of argument for something, whether it's an argument for a particular country being brilliant, or particularly discipline being brilliant, or the tendency within that field that they represent, you know, putting your nails, namely your colors on the mast of kind of one bit of the field or another being important.

That's why you call someone a genius.

So there's all this kind of extra political stuff.

It's not, you know, and I don't think anyone woul really argue that it is just a simple objective measure, but it's often treated like that.

Effectively, it's often treated like there is some kind of rational basis for it.

It's more interesting to work out why.

And I think you're exactly right about the way that the IQ test gets treated.

I think a lot of people one of the things I really love about doing history is you finally find out where the origin of things that people just say to you on the Internet are.

And I think what I hear a lot when people bash the IQ test is ground up bits of Stephen J.

Gould's Mismeasure of Man, which is his famous book that took on phrenology.

It took on you know, the overt racists and new genicists who ended up deploying the IQ test, but it also dramatically overstated the kind of environmentalist case for IQ and understated the heritability of IQ.

And what we end up, I think is a sort of I often find that people regurgitate a kind of powdered form of that to me for political reasons, because people don't want to follow the end of the line of thought to the end and end up and think suddenly they're on the same page as people that they find politically a borrent.

So yeah, but this is a very recent idea of genius that it's got.

You know, there is a genius level IQ before that that I try to return to in the book is the Greek and Roman sense of a kind of visiting spirit, of a divine inspiration, something that works through you.

It's a moment, it's a lightning strike.

And I think that's really helpful because you know, neither you or I are in the process of debunking that some people are talented or that some things are beautiful.

To love the thing you caveat it in your book that I was like, yeah, Helen.

Someone does need to say Monnet is better at painting than me.

Shock it like, here we go.

I'm never you know, I'm never going to solve a deep mathematical problem, and some people can.

And that's actually, that's fine, that's great.

I'm glad.

I'm happy for them.

I just I don't know.

I wouldn't want that to be me.

But you know, that's that's the thing is that, you know, what I'm fighting against is that later idea of genius as a as a type of person.

And that's you know, that's comes in.

You can see the shift in the English dictionaries sixteen hundred, seventeen hundreds.

So it's happening as we come out of the Renaissance and into the Industrial Revolution and modernity essentially, and you know, there's lots of reasons why that might be.

The historian Endarrenment Matthew talks about it as a kind of product of secularization.

You know, if you start believing that God is ruling everything and that humans are doing stuff, you're probably more open to the idea that some humans are essentially demi gods or secular saints.

Is the phrase that gets used a lot.

Then you come to the Romantics, and this is the one that's funny to me, because you know, we see poetry.

The poets are the kind of great geniuses, and they are supposed to be men, but who have this very feminine essence within them.

You know, they are tubercular, they're kind of pale and feverish and not really connected to this world.

Not kind of hearty, stout men, but these kind of more self like creatures.

And then you know, we get through to the genius level IQ, And now I think we talk about the kind of tech innovators.

You know, those are the kind of models.

It's Sam Altman's and Elon Musk's and Steve Jobs's and you know, these people who are you know, who make breakthroughs in technology are our modern idea of genius.

But that's funny because you know how many great bisexual male poets are being hailed as the kind of archetype of genius these days.

It's quite a good way to reflect on the fact that ideas of genius are historically contingent.

Yeah, I was just gonna say, that's tied to the historic nature of what Will was termin equating i Q genius.

I mean that he has a quote that I that I quote often where he's like, genius has only recruited from the lines of high of the high IQ.

So I think I think a lot of that has its roots in the adoption of the IQ test, right.

But I also think that's very funny because he renames his big longitudinal study, this brilliant longitudinal study from genetic studies of genius to genetic studies of the gifted.

Like there's a very subtle downgrade, isn't there, And like what he's actually looking for and what he's actually found.

Yeah.

What's also I always found interesting about the title is he never actually looked at genetics.

I mean, he's not like he did a DNA analysis of any of the kids.

I mean, that's just all clear how he's thinking about the whole thing, which is very galton esque Carlton esk.

I mean Galton was obsessed with genetics.

To understand that he was a Yeah, he was.

He was a very keen proponent in this very unemotional, unempathetic way.

He just I think he looked at people as sort of collections of variables rather than any kind of rounded sense of a kind of other mind at work.

Yes, And I'm going to guess and that and say, you know, he was kind of a genius in a way like I looked at some of his he's obsessed.

Everything you said is true, and I'm just yes, ending.

I mean, he was obsessed with measurement, and he developed some modern day statistical techniques that still are very valuable.

And he's a Victorian, isn't he.

Like I think he's the kind of peak Victorian, Like everything can be classified.

Finally, everything will be reduced to numbers in my perfect gallery of humanity.

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Okay, now back to the show.

Yeah yeah, so well tell me let's back up a second.

How do you define the g What do you see as the as the genius myth if you had to define it on our podcast, right.

Well, it's the idea that you know that there are special people, and some people are you know, they are just all around three hundred and sixty degree special people.

And there's lots of individual genius myths, by which I mean stories, and you will find that, you know, I don't know if you've read the bit about Friedrich Gaus, the mathematician, and this kind of fable that grows up about him in the schoolroom and they're asked to do this and add together these numbers and it's kind of busy work, except he comes up with an equation and you know, and only seven.

And this proves that he's a kind of genius early on.

And one of the things that a great scientific historian does is trace that idea through all its different iterations.

And first one is, you know, many years after Gaus died, so it's a fable, it's a parable, and it's obviously trying to create particular portrait of what it means to be a child prodigy and what it means to be talented at maths.

And that's the bit that I find interesting.

This is what I call genius myths.

Which are these ideas, these kind of they're kind of preset patterns, and that reality just ends up getting hammered into them because we all in our minds have these ideas, you know, the tortured artist being another one of them, and they unfortunately the kind of polarity flows back the other way, and that we tend to overrate how talented people are based around how much of a prick they are.

Right, it's not just that, oh, some talented people are also very different to get along with.

It's actually if you are nice and agreeable and conscientious and you know, a team player, people actually, I think, tend to underrate your brilliance because they have an image in their mind of what a brilliant person, a brilliant man is.

I genuinely think it's I think it's something that although very few of us would think we're competing with geniuses, I think a lot of us work in environments where we see prima donnas get rewarded for bad behavior and actually get treated better because they are stampy feet, divas and narcissists.

So I think that's a bit in the book that will probably appeal to people in all kinds of different walks of life is that some people ask for special treatment and somehow that means that they get it rather than everybody going God, I say such hard why can't he print his own emails?

You know, why can't I do this?

And whatever it might be?

They get kind of like I have this metaphor in about the beehive.

You know, they get treated like the queen bee and everybody brings them the royal jelly, whereas the worker bees, who just get on with it and don't make so much of a fast people then tend to just deprecate them and disregard them.

Yeah, your point is very well taken.

I think that.

Well, just for the sake of conversation, do you think it's possible to differentiate between genius as great marketing let's call that a category, and true genius or do you think there's no such thing as true genius?

I think either marketing is genius or nothing is.

I think that's the question to say it, right, You can just say if some people are supremely talented in one domain, then one of those domains is marketing, and somebody like Picasso, Pablo Picasso probably was.

He was both a technically brilliant artist.

But he was also fully okay with inhabiting the persona of the great artist and you know, limiting what he did and selling himself and being stock to by the right galleries and all that kind of stuff.

So the business side he was brilliant at too.

And that's if if you can be a genius at draftsmanship, then you can be a genius at marketing.

Donald Trump probably is a genius at marketing.

This is maybe this is my most controversial but anything that comes out of the book, but you know he is.

He has reached the top through a unique set of circumstances and abilities that nobody, clearly nobody else can replicate.

And that's if you want to call anything else genius, that probably is genius too.

I'd be happy and not saying any human was a genius.

Right, right.

So the point you make in your book is that you're okay saying there are acts of genius, but you're not into You're not so under the personhood aspect of it.

You've a quote here quote genius transmutes odd into special.

Could one argue I love playing Devil's advocate?

Could what argue that you're you're real by saying just they're just odd.

That's not fully appreciating how that they're amazing.

Like in some cases it transmutes amazing into special.

Could some people say, oh, hell, and you just have sour grapes?

How do you respond to that?

I think the two different things, though.

What I mean is that the achievement stands next to the personal qualities.

So if I think, if you're a regular person and you don't change your socks for days on end, people go a bit much.

But if you're Michelangelo and you don't change your socks for days and then because you're painting the Sistine Chapel, it becomes, oh my god, he's so devoted to his art that he doesn't even have time to think about his socks.

And that you've worked in university, so I am one hundred percent sure you have worked with people who are useless at a number of things, and this is taken as well.

They just don't have time to think about departmental meeting emails because are just thinking about the big questions of life, and it's what and that doesn't happen to bricklayers, right, No one cares if you're a bricklayer.

If you can't do minor admin tasks.

They don't take it as proof that you're actually your mind is occupied with bricklaying.

But it happens at those kind of higher realms that we read oddness a specialness.

Wow, I'm going to start taking notes because I want to get the essence of your argument.

I think you have multiple arguments.

Actually, I think one is that we overwook a lot of geniuses in the way that we as society think about genius and what falls within the perview genius.

And that's been my lifelong project.

So with that one, where like it's like, oh, soul ligned right.

And then there's another argument you're making, which is that we give a pass in a lot of ways to people if we really like one thing they do.

But then there's a third argument I feel like you just made, which is sometimes we actually treat something it's not really genius at all, and we treat that as genius.

I feel like that's a third argument you're making.

We treat that as genius because it's like, well, we know they can do this other stuff, so everything they do must bee Maybe there's like a Helo effect of genius.

There's a hell effective attractiveness.

We know that an attractive, physically attractive person can get away with anything.

Maybe there's as you're saying, there's a say, there's a hell effect for genius.

We'll just coin that right now.

I think that's a very good way of describing it.

Yeah, because there is the kind of oh, he must be playing for d chess and that's just you know, you don't understand.

And you see that a huge amount if you look on X and you look at kind of Elon Musk fanboys.

You know, like there's that autism capital account for example, that just follows in mir Grant.

The thing is, you me immortals don't understand the genius behind this, and it's like ah.

Another explanation is that he has done some incredibly successful things in his life with his companies, but this one was a bad idea.

It looks like a bad idea because it is a bad idea.

And maybe it's the case that you know, people don' I don't have that my dis touch and everything they touch turns to gold.

Maybe they're good at some things and not at others.

And I think that's that to me, is a very obvious example of that halo effect you we're beingked, you know, we're being asked to consider that things are four D chess when they're just normal chess.

I guess every old chess is for D chess because it happens in time.

But anyway, five D chess, that's up the DS on that.

One, Helen, You've you've really got me thinking.

I'm not because like I'm not ready to completely give away to get over the phrase genius.

I think that the way I have, the way I have thought about is it really just represents a really top one percent ability or achievement in something, whatever it is.

And you know, if everyone's a genius, then then then no one's a genius, right, Like it's obviously built into the word itself something quite unique, not necessarily special in a special way of you're talking about a narcissistic sort of deserving a special special privileges.

That's not what I mean by unique.

Unique and have a differ meaning as well, where you don't feel entired everything.

But if I do, let's get I don't think.

To be honestly, I'm sure I will continue to casually use it because it is it is.

But you know what I mean, I just you know, I would like to say that I'm going to try and think about stopping using it, but actually it's such a common you know.

I went to the Genius Bar to do my you know, or look at the I mentioned the Verizon adverts that got Einstein in them.

It's such a completely you know, a concept that is woven so deeply into our society that I don't I think.

But what I do like about what you're saying, and I think I would agree with, is that you don't want to lose the sense of wonder and transcendence.

You don't want to lose the idea.

And I took about this in the book that You Go and you know, for me, I read about Van Goff's Almond Blossom, which is one of my favorite painting.

It's very simple painting of this light blue background and these beautiful white flaves, clearly influenced by Japanese woodblock painting.

It's got his unique brush stroke, and I just I love everything about it, and looking at it gives me a deep sense of peace and wonderment.

And I don't need to tear that down and kick it and say, actually, we've over romanticized Vincent Van Gooff's life into a kind of neat deal parable about the fact that people are overlooked during their own lives or mentally ill people can still be creative.

In fact, maybe that's part of their creativity.

All those things can kind of co exist alongside the fact that simply I am happy that that exists in the world, and I find it lovely and beautiful.

And I think that's where some of the resistance to the book comes from, is people who think I want to take things away from them.

And where that does possibly come into it is when you're talking about the kind of me too stuff, you know, and the kind of deconalization of the curriculum, and the kind of idea that we're going to have to reckon with the fact that some people who we hail as geniuses were quote unquote bad.

People, horrible humans.

Yeah, because that is tricky because I don't know about you, but for me, I can't stop it in some respects souring how I feel about stuff, because you want if you love someone's work, you want to love the person too.

I don't.

I think it's just human to want to do that.

Well, that's very interesting.

Maybe that's why a lot of people overlook.

Yeah, a lot of terrible things, you know, like the Michael Jackson defenders are we shouldn't even go there because I don't want them coming on my thing.

But you know, I'm not saying I know what Michael Jackson did, but I'm just saying just the certainty.

It's almost like your belief in Jesus Christ.

You know, it's like, you know, like, don't question you know that a person could have done anything bad because we love his music so much.

It's like that's not logical.

But okay, that's turning him into a saint, isn't it, Because I think you know, I talked about the book about MJ the musical, and it does make a very good case.

You know, he was abused by his father, who was violent and domineering, and I feel very sorry for him about that.

He obviously experienced racism and that has something to do with the body dysmorphia that he felt.

And you know, he became famous very young, which is for most people a horrible experience.

And you can see that that's why he wanted to build a theme park and own a chimp and like all of that stuff is true, but also the allegations are really serious.

Well, and I think it's people who don't necessarily want there to be someone's music that they enjoy.

It's that they want to they want an icon, and other people are trying to take that away.

And I think you're exactly right to compare it to religious belief.

That kind of fandom has a lot of overlap with if they believe in him, and and what you're essentially saying is you're saying that this is a false prophet and no wonder people rap really strongly to that.

Yeah.

I actually tweeted the other day something and then deleted it for five seconds.

A good idea, but it's relevant to this conversation.

So maybe, Yeah, the purpose of that was just to have the conversation with you, But it's that I said, what's the difference between these these these self help gurus that everyone treats like God and a cult like a cult figure, a cult leader, Like, what's the difference?

Have you?

I mean, yeah, Well, the difference is that the difference is what the effect is, right.

I think that one thing I you know, I did a series about kind of gurus on the internet, and you know, people will and Silicon Value will openly say that any good startup is essentially a cult.

You know, it's these people who have got these you know, there's usually one charismatic guy at the center of it, lots of people, you know, who's articulated emission.

Lots of people will do things that people the outside well think are stupid and crazy, like staying up for twenty hours straight coding or whatever it might be.

But everybody involved has chosen to be there.

Then we talk about the catactics of coercion.

They're not really being violently coerced to stay in the startup.

They're maybe just hoping to be rich, but that's not you know, that's not coercion, and you know, and ultimately at the end they may come out of that experience feeling that it's been good.

They if the startup goes to IPO and they're suddenly rich, and they can spend the rest of their lives doing what, you know, following their passion.

But the dynamics are eerily similar.

And I think that's probably what you were kind of alluding to a lot of those self help grew is the method of change is believe in me.

Believe in me, and take my word as gospel.

And if you think that has been genuinely really good in your life, then you don't think of it as a cult because we think are inherently bad.

But the mechanisms are extremely similar.

Right, and and specifically ooming in on the idea that maybe bad behavior will be not only accepted but extalled as uh, you know, you know, viewed as Oh, have you noticed there's this thing that if someone is is the guru or the not just the guru, but like everyone just idolizes you read you read that that that level you reach, that level of people of your fans idolizing you.

I've noticed a phenomenon where if there's bad behavior that in any other context would be bad, maybe this is this is exactly what you're saying, there's bad behavior in any other context, it's actually not just accepted, which is your point, but it's sometimes like twisted into it's almost like the more that people on the outside, the outgroup, hate on it, if you're really in the in group, the more you're like, oh, that's evidence that that what the person actually did was pretty bad ass.

We're gonna defend them, I defend them, but we're going to like extol it and celebrate it.

There's a very brilliant Scott Alexander blog post from now like a decade ago that he talks about this when he talks about the animal rights charity Peter Petter Parents, I think it can be a clear treatment of animals and how they would go into like atrocities and say we're going to help all the people, you know who were hurt by Hurricane Katrina, but only if they become vegan, and people would get really really angry about that, and it would generate a huge amount of controversy.

Meanwhile, there are loads of animal charities that are just normal, you know, they just say maybe eat less meat, or like, who would you like to adopt a cat?

And one of the things he talks about is the idea that by making everybody within a group agree something you know reprehensible is true, it becomes a much greater identity marker.

And he then he goes on to talk about, you know, Catholics believing in transubstunciation.

If you believe that the host literally becomes the body of Christ and other people go that's mad, then it really means something if you profess it, whereas if you just said something like we should all do good works and be nice to poor people.

That provides no clear boundary between the in group and the outgroup.

And I think that's similar with to what you're talking about about kind of defending a genius.

If someone's actions become indefensible to most people, you are making a much stronger in group claim by going along with it anyway.

Definitely, and just the whole idea of myrdom is relevant here too, Like well, and actually for me, so the topic of my new book on just people who have these vi they create a they're not victims at all, but they create a victim mindset, you know, like they're a they are a victim, but they're not really You're not really like you're not really canceled, Like like your platform is like bigger than anyone else's platform.

How are you canceled?

You know that sort of thing.

I thought that was really interesting observation and I'm really lookingward to reading that book because isn't it Bertrand Russell Who's got this idea about the kind of moral purity of the victim.

And I think it's what, Yeah, it's kind of relaxing because you just you know, I wrote a piece of a while ago that was about people who fake their identities and claimed to be black during the kind of George Floyd up raising Black or Hispanic.

And these were left wing academics, you know, and they would claim falsely to be black or Hispanic at a time in which people making big conversations about racial injustice in America.

And I went back and looked at the number of people who claimed falsely claim to be Holocaust survivors.

And there's a great bit where two fake Holocaust survivors meet each other for a concert, and you think, did they at any point go well, I know I'm not really one, but are you really one?

But then you know, and there was, you know, and it was apparently an established phenomenon in post ward Germany that people would sort of think themselves into thinking I was actually Jewish or I was actually one of the resisters, and they weren't because people had been presented with a simple moral story and they wanted to be on the right side of it.

And I think something similar happened with those academics, you know.

I called it kind of munch and social munchaus, and they wanted essentially a time when we'd heard that white people were bad.

They thought I'm bad.

I'm not a white person, right, rather than kind of trying to assimilate some slightly more nuanced moral picture.

And I think that's sort of a bit relevant to what you're talking about in your book, right, is the idea that victims are good, this identity category of people are good.

I must be a member of this identity category that you can see all the individual stepped.

But it does end up with this ludicrous situation when the one case I was talking about, you get an Italian American woman passing herself off as a Hispanic scholar known as Jessica la Bomballera, and she's actually called Jessica Krug, and she's from a bit, you know, perfectly regular bit of America.

But it wasn't glamorous in the same way it's not glamorous to have one of the hole of fake Holocaust survivors was orphaned as a kid during the war, but to sort of a non Jewish family.

But that's a sad story of you know, a very mundane story of dislocation and childhood trauma.

Whereas the one that people got excited about was I survived Auschwitz and you can see why people ended up gravitating.

This happens with almost every terror, major travity.

It happened with nine to eleven.

There was a woman who was giving nine to eleven tours as if her partner had died in it and got busted for the fact she wasn't anywhere near New York on the day.

There was people who claimed falsey to be survivors of the Battle Clan massacre in France.

People just I think your book is very timely because there is a lot of genuine Victimo out there.

But there is also a kind of relaxing moral purity about about that at a time when people are very tense about being morally pure.

Yeah, and we found our research that that is correlated with the dark triad personality.

Remind me, that's machiavellianism.

Nism, narcissism, and psychopathy.

Psychopathy.

Some people have posited a dark tetrad which included sadism.

So you're you're the head of the curve on that.

Wow, wow, wow, wow.

You just gave me so many examples that I'm kicking myself for not and including them my book.

They would be no.

But that's what happens when you write a book.

Someone said to me, oh, have you read Tim Harford's book Messy.

It's all about the fact that creativity is a lot harder and I think dark and I had the same thing when I saw your twenty thirteen book.

I was like, where were you when I needed you?

Scott's book?

I would love to read this two years ago.

Yeah, but you did.

You did cite my Complexity of Greatness book, which I really appreciate, you know, because I have no problem with the term greatness.

I want to want to keep greatness in the human in the human vocabulary, so people have something to aspire to, you know, the people have, and also that we you know, like you said, I love that you you used it the word transcendence, you know, and that's I wrote book called transcend and I'm obsessed with transcendent states of consciousness.

So I think that kind of pointing towards what humans could be is something very inspiring to young people and older people.

But I think that young people could use a little more inspiration these days.

But so yeah, so thank you, yeah, thank you.

No, And I think, well, you'll know, of having lived in Britain for all that time, I think British culture is particularly hostile to aspiration and success.

We find that people crally those Yeah, I think there's a kind of sense of who do you think you are?

I I you know, I report a lot in America now and people are a lot happy with like openly boasting about successes that they've had, which is just a complete no no in British culture.

So I think that, you know, I think that's worthwhile saying working really hard to become a great painter is good and should be encouraged.

Yeah, let's let's shift gears a second and talk about something that is very near and dear to your heart.

And that's the gendered aspect of the term genius.

It is undeniable.

I mean, it's like, it's like you have a lot of men that have declared themselves and everyone around them have declared them geniuses.

And you have a lot of women who I think are geniuses, but just don't have that even have the motivation to be seen as a genius.

I mean, I talked about this in the same Harris podcast about positions of power.

You see that the dark triad traits, which is which is extremely high men.

You know, if you look at the the curves of you know, you have more dark triad on the on the left side of the curve, but also on the right side you have extremely high proportion and those are the ones that tend to get into power.

And then on our light triad scale, it's like mostly women are like triad and they have no motivation, you know, like on average, there's a very low we find very low you know, the motivation, the motive for power.

Their motive is, you know, like can we make the world a good place?

You know, like that doesn't count anymore that a.

Bunch of losers more ambitious.

Yeah.

So you we do see this in our data in terms of power, in terms of who ends up in power.

How does that relate?

Perhaps because I've been you got me thinking like there's got to be a connection here to to the gendered aspect of the genius story as well.

Yeah.

It's always a really difficult isn't it, Because I you know, my first book was on feminism, and so I did a bit of that redcover women it's called The Women, and I did a bit of that kind of recovering of women who I think have been on barely forgotten from history, and that has been a huge feminist project since the second wave really is rewriting women, and again that can become its own kind of genius myth.

I think of the painters Artemisia Gentiliski or Lee Krasner, who was Jackson Pollock's widow.

They have both been repackaged for the art market in recent years as these kind of you go girl feminist inspirational tales, and Jane Austen has definitely had that happened to her in terms of writers.

But there are I think it's absolutely undeniable that, you know, just in material conditions.

Until very recently, women weren't excluded from lots of the things that you needed to be a genius.

So women couldn't join the Royal Society.

You know, someone who's great a physicist as Hertha Ayrton wasn't allowed to She won a medal, but she wasn't allowed to join the Royal Society, which then locks you out of you know, you can't do life drawing classes, whatever it might be.

If you're an artist, if you can't join the Royal Academy, if you don't join the Royal Society as a scientist, you can't have a you know, you can't learn about the latest cutting edge research from all of your peers and what they're doing all that important stuff.

If you can't go university, which women couldn't for most of the existence of universities and all the other groups too, then you're not you know, you're being locked out of working at the edge of your field basically, and so all of that social stuff is I think people sort of think that naively, well, that that all that was legal discrimination, which luckily we ended all that and there are no kind of soft repercussions of that that go on one of them.

And you can tell me if this isn't supported by the latest research.

But I think there is pretty good research that says we more likely to describe men as brilliant kind of regardless of the achievement.

Oh really, that would actually be really interested in seeing that research.

Yeah, well, I will hunt it out because I think it there's a there's a kind of just a feeling that you know, you have all of these phrases like young Turk, although I'm sure hopefully that one's probably been canceled by now, but the kind of idea that you get me kind of these bright young men and that they're you know, and that men are judged on potential rather than kind of achievement, and so I do think there is a level of gender stuff.

The counterpoint to that is, as you say, there may be some personality traits that make men more likely to strive for the things that we tend to describe as genius, like being a CEO.

They may be more career driven on average, But I think it's you know, I am.

I'm always trying to urge humility on those kind of very evolutionary biology and very manner sphere explanations for historical disparities in achievement of men and women, because you know, those the equivalents of those people one hundred and fifty years ago were arguing that women couldn't go to university.

You know, their brains were just too small.

And actually, you know, women's brains do way less.

So with these little brains have this spetical university.

But they're more efficient, they're more the dend rates are more efficient.

That's what.

Yeah, Actually the gap between the neurons is smaller, so it's delightful.

But now the big question is, in lots of like the humanities, how do we get more men to go to university.

You know.

So now we've got to a situation which we've said, well, hang, if we made universities too friendly to female learning styles or the thing that I think has probably happened, which is that men don't like doing feminine coded things, and the humanities has become pretty feminine coded, and that's been a big turn off to men in the same way that writing novels, you know, it was always you know, women did that all the way through, but in the eighteenth century that was the ones who had known and lionized were men, and so more men kind of wanted to do.

Epic poetry was a thing that straight men were really into in the seventeen hundreds, and it's kind of not coded like that anymore.

And so, you know, I just think we have to be kind of slightly humble about before declaring there are simple biological explanations for these disparities, and see them as a as yet kind of interesting negotiated blend of possibly biology and but also culture.

Yeah, if I may, and there's no pressure, but if I may, get your email, adders, I'd love to send you an article I wrote called why don't people care that More?

Men don't choose caregiving professions.

And I wrote for Scientific American in twenty twenty, it's not.

Give me, give me your highlights though, because my explanation, it pays really badly and it has no social prestige.

So why would you go into that?

Not something else.

I need to reread miraticle read an article so on ago where you're like.

I know, I do that sometimes, and then I laugh at my own jokes because they were obviously written by someone with my exact sense of humor.

But I've since in the intervening to I have forgotten them, And then you think that's weird, isn't it?

Well done?

Past me?

Exactly right.

Also consistent with a status value perspective, the occupations in which men are extremely underrepresented were viewed as lower in status and therefore less deserving of attention and social action towards change than stem fields where women are extremely underrepresented.

So that's that's that's in a line with what you're saying.

I think, well, that makes sense, doesn't it.

It's aspirational if you're a woman to go into male dominated, highly paid, highly prestigious, it might be tough.

You know, there may be all kinds of things keeping you out of that.

But you are trading up in the same way that women started wearing trousers in the nineteen hundreds and men didn't start wearing skirts.

Right.

That's a very obvious kind of point of comparison for sure.

But this research also found, which I think is interesting, is that both men and women have the same bias.

So on average, both men and women were biased in their perception of different gender imbalances based on gender representation of the fields, even after controlling for the earning potential of the fields.

I think there are certain things in the society ethos that that both men and women buy into that we need to change something so that everyone kind of sees something differently.

Hmm, that's yeah.

But this is these are the kind of questions, as I say, like, I think that the book is very ambitious, maybe fatally so, but it does get you into lots of areas that I find interesting.

It it does feel a bit like a kind of skeleton key that unlocks thinking about lots of psychology, sociology, literature, art, all of these things, which is one of the reasons you know, it took me for in a bit years to write it, and yeah, and I still don't think I finished it really in the sense that I think I could keep thinking about these questions for a very long time.

Well, congratulations on getting it out there.

It's it's no easy feats, and I really appreciate the amount of care and attention you put into it.

The the just to I'm just thinking about you as a person.

You're you're You're a you are a difficult woman, and I mean that in the best way possible, right, I mean you that's the title of your book, right, Yeah, you don't like you're you're different.

Like now, I'm not saying you're different than women.

That's a very sexist thing to say, but but in some ways you are.

I do mean that.

I'm fine with you saying that.

I don't mind saying that.

I know I went I went to an all girls school, and some of the research shows you that women who go to all girls schools are more like pushy, right, they will put their hand up more in class.

You don't get into those situations, I know.

And who knows if I would have been similarly, Maubi, if I'd gone to a mixed sex school, maybe I would have done.

But yeah, I do I enjoy competing in male domains.

I have lots of male friends.

I podcast, which is just about the malest thing that any human can do, right, and podcast bro, I am a podcast bro, And I I really enjoy all of that.

And I enjoy arguing with people.

Yes, uh, well but you don't there.

But also you don't you don't take you don't take ship from men, you know, like I, I mean, there's that epic, famous conversation we can call it.

I guess suppose between you and Jordan Peterson that that went viral, right, And I mean you in that whole you didn't.

You didn't just like cow chout of his genius to a self proclaimed genius, right, Like you're like, wait a minute, Like I disagree with that.

I disagree with that, Like you, you don't mind saying what you did.

But there's also there's something deeper though that I'm trying to get it about yours.

But there's also let me tell you that, and that experience is a very good example of why women might not do those things.

So there are fine we can have the argument about whether or not women on average are more assertive, more agreeable, which where they fall on those scales, But the social penalty for doing those things is real.

You know, if you look at the YouTube comments under those videos, there are people who think I'm stupid, who think I'm an NPC, who think that he completely dominated that conversation, who to this day do weird AI photoshops of me, like where I've got a little beard because they think I'm like unacceptedly like haggish and sort of like, you know, disgusting physically because I'm you know, I'm unfeminine for having done that.

And it's all the same stuff that was thrown at the suffragettes, right, They were depicted as monstrous and kind of you know, unfeminine for doing these things.

So there is a very good reason for women not to do them.

If you are someone who cares about people being very rude about your looks and intellect on the internet, then you you know, stay away from big debates with big male intellectualbles would be my argument.

But you're also absolutely I mean, you definitely threatened his fan base.

I mean, I've known Jordan for a while and I think you know that everyone has good and bad you know, right.

I made a program called The New Gurus, in which I talked to a guy who had been a massive Jordan Pedson fan, and he'd interviewed people from his psychology career, and I think there was definitely, pre the cancelation and the benzos, there was somebody who loved his job, loved educating young people, felt a real kind of sense of that he wanted to be a shepherd and a steward for the next generation.

And I think that's still there, It's just buried under fifteen layers of his brain has been overwhelmed by being an Internet monster and celebrity and half people loving him and half the people hating him.

Right, Like, I think any of us would probably go a bit weird after that experience.

Yes, And the point I'm trying to make here as well is that you that you were one of the first, I think maybe the first.

So he was on a series of interviews at that time in that epic of human history.

He was on a series where it was Dunk on woman, this is how this is how I think it was.

Dunk Let's get me talking to a woman, Dunk and woman, Duncan woman, Dunk and woman, Duncan woman, all this fans being like, yes, yes, Jordan, Yes, you, and then you and then your interview I feel like stopped the train that was happening.

I mean, that didn't stop it, but but it was the first interview I saw where I was like, yeah, go hell and I did.

I don't know, I didn't know.

I didn't know you uh, no offense.

But fine.

After that, you know, I was like, Okay, okay, this woman.

I kind of diged this woman because you were the first episode where you're just like, no, I.

Know, but I think you'll that's that.

I think that reflects very well on you.

No, because I just think that lots of people didn't see that.

They just saw that as the next woman that he dunked on quite which again yeah, I mean, you know, people, it was very funny when I did Sam Harris's podcast because I've changed my hair, I'm slightly blonding out.

They were like, but hang on a minute halfway through, like they've been cheated.

This is the woman that talked to Jordan Peter.

She seems very reasonable, And I was like, maybe you should go back and rear praise how that went down, and did you just come to it with enormous prejudices and preconceptions about like, oh, here's another feminist whining about women, and actually listen to what was actually said.

But yeah, well, I hope people also listen to this podcast, and.

I hope that everybody goes back and admits that I was right.

That's I hope about all of life.

And I just think that's a great thing to stake my future happiness on.

Yeah, it's funny, it's funny.

Well, no, I mean, you you live, you live, you walk the talk, right, I mean, you live, you know, difficult women?

I mean, but but but it shouldn't it really, you shouldn't even be phrased that way.

But unfortunately that is how it's phrased.

And in an ideal world, I don't think that's how it would be phrased, right, it though?

But do you not think that in some ways you might be a difficult man, and that you've talked about your kind of non traditional route to academia, and that actually those qualities within you have also, like I think, for if you're going to be somebody who aims to be an original thinker, then actually a bit of outsider irishness and a bit of spikeness is a good you know, you can turn that into your superpower.

I agree, as long as we don't have a connotation that we were talking about nasty women, you know, in like a Trump sense, because I think that's how I was, you know, kind of association I have when you that's the social I am.

When you say difficult women, I think nasty women.

Yeah, a nasty woman that's in a bad way.

But uh wait, there's just so many things going through my head right now.

Off the record, Mike, off the record, did you see the new U Jordan Peterson religion versus Atheists?

Well, this is what Okay, this is what I mean about the fact that I think people need to go back and watch my debate with him and just think maybe there was just a moment where they felt really threatened and they thought he represented something that they wanted to exist in the world, and that therefore they kind of saw something that wasn't there.

Like he does a lot of the same rhetorical techniques like your Gish gallup, like the kind of picking on one way, like he's a whole bit in a minima.

He tries to make out, he projects onto me that I'm arguing that patriarchy is like tyranny in some ridiculous way, and I'm saying, well that you know, and he said, well, you know, how could you live if it was a tyranny?

And I didn't but I didn't say it was a tyranny, but you know, and he he will argue with something.

He will say you've said something, and then argue with it.

And because he's so fluent, it's very hard to go but stop the train, like I didn't.

I didn't say that, and he was very good at that, and clearly post Benzo's post coma post pivoting to the Daily Wires Christian fan base, he's not quite got it.

And then he also had the misfortune to be fighting Reddit atheists who are like, while you were out at a party, I studied the blade.

You know, they've heard all those Christian apologetics archaists before.

That's how they practice, that's what they do for sport.

Well, I think consistently what you just said.

I think they were.

They were difficult boys.

I don't know.

To me, they look like children because it looked like so I was like hard for me calling them then, but they would get mad at me probably if I didn't call them men.

So they're men, but they were probably difficult.

That was a group of difficult men.

Yeah, we can.

I will keep that on the record.

Then what we just talked about, because you're.

Right, because what they weren't they what they weren't was deferential to the great man I'm saying, And I think that is a really This is when I come to about the idea that genius is kind of poisonous to the geniuses is that I think if you walk into every interaction expected that you will be treated as if you're special, then it becomes very weird and impossible for you to function in places where you're not special, and that causes people a huge amount of unhappiness.

For example, it causes politicians who've left the limelight enormous unhappiness.

They don't know how to be normal again.

Sports stars you have to retire pretty young, like what's the second neck of your life?

You know, and lots of people.

Again, to go back to Elion Muscow, I do talk about in the book, I think the great mistake that he made with Doge was thinking I'm a brilliant businessman.

Government is like a business.

I'll be brilliant at this too, and not having any respect for a different domain.

That probably had different rules and different leavers that you had to pull.

And this is where I think that the idea of a three six yr own special person makes the people itself who you know, instead of thinking, God, I was lucky.

Wasn't it great that I just had that perfect moment and these great collaborators and I was you know, and I went to such a great university.

If you still in think thinking I am the Nietzschean superman who moves through the world changing it, then if that goes away, what are you?

What's what's left?

You know, if you just see yourself as this individual glorious island and then the success goes away, You're you're nothing.

Instead of thinking what do I love doing?

What do I enjoy doing?

Who would I enjoy working with?

Like what?

You know?

What is what is my place in this Brownian motion of society that I could I could get back to?

Yeah, there's so much there and just causing the whoop on on our mutual friend Jordan person he has the thing that's so painful and I messages with his former and grad students about this.

You know, there's there's so there was so much potential in the sky and and and a lot of it is going to be left unrealized because of some personality quirks, you know, And.

It's really moving.

Like I think it's a bit weird when he starts crying when he talks about how young men look up to him, because it looks like emotional dysregulation at this point, but it comes from a genuine feeling that he's motivated by in his own mind.

And that's what I mean.

I'm sure he was a really good professor because he was really did invest time in his students.

He really cared about.

Them, and I was like the best of him.

But the Internet, Yeah, that was the best of him, and the Internet rewarded the worst of him, and celebrity and money rewarded the worst of him.

And he you know, I feel like the grail Night.

You know, he chose poorly and he could make a different choice in future.

That's the other thing I think is my reason for saying I wanted to talk about acts of genius is that this goes back to your research about the idea we should think of ourselves in this much more fluid way and think about what can I do?

What is dynamic?

You know, how can I change what I've got these gifts now they might be the same ones I've got in ten years time, Like what should i be doing now to grow?

And we can all take something from that.

You don't have to become calcified in this sort of image of yourself, you know, and like you know, I'm sure you've written about gifted children and the fact they struggle in adulthood.

Yeah, because it's like you become calcified in this image of yourself rather than thinking who am I now?

What's the best I can do in the world?

Now?

Oh yeah, I feel you get trapped.

You would get anyone would get trapped in the label of genius.

I mean that's a lot.

That's a big thing to live up to.

I mean, wow, a difficult second album, right.

I prefer my whole life to go on to be the underdog, like I that's my that's the story of my life.

Personally.

I like to be the underdog, you know, Helen, If I had to choose between being deemed the genius or I mean, people don't expect anything from me and then I do something people like, Okay, Scott's got something.

But I think that's made you have a more interesting career right, And I say this based on having like you googled you beforehand, because it means that you don't get stuck doing more of the thing that you've got famous for or got successful for.

I got popular for right.

You go, well, maybe I'm like, I'm intellectually, I've exhausted this, like I've mined this territory.

Where next?

And journalism is a career is very like that.

You know, people really want you to have a beat and you to do it, and then they know who you are.

And I think I confuse people sometimes because I can't work out whether or not I'm left wing or right wing, because it's like, who are you?

But yesterday you were criticizing the left and now you're criticizing the right, and people want you to be this sort of stable brand.

They do, but it's way more.

Interesting to be chaotic.

Probably not as well rewarded, but it's more fun and lots of careers.

I think, well, I completely agree.

Tell me if you agree with the slightly pessimistic conclusion of the book, which is we will never win.

The people who want to talk about genius in this much more social contingent way will never win because we like stories.

And stories depends on winning, right, and I think a lot about that.

I have very different metrics for winning than I see a lot of people have as metrics for winning.

And I think I need to make peace with a lot of things, like make peace with am I okay, you know, not you know, sacrificing quantity of followers for quality of contribution.

And I'm okay with that making that, But you have to want to make certain sacrifices.

I think a lot of people people make.

So many people talk so much so often about making the sacrifices to get more followers, but they don't talk about the others at the other end of the sacrifice, which is the sacrifice to not get more followers.

Yeah, no, I think that's right.

I always thought about what I wanted in my career, and I thought, well, what I want to do is always be interested.

You know, I never want to be bored.

That's the thing.

Money is great, and you know, I'm very like a decent middle class salary.

I'm very happy about that.

But beyond that, would I go and work in a soul destroying job that I wasn't interested in for big b ucks?

No, I don't you know, what I want is to be curious and to be kind of like a shark, constantly moving forward.

And I think that, you know, maybe that's not how everybody feels about happiness, but I think probably more more people than you think would be happier if they took more chances and didn't worry as much about being popular and worried more about being interested.

Yes, and I want to talk about a phenomena, like a wildfire kind of phenomenal.

In a lot of ways, genius is something people bestow bestow on you, right.

Genius is in some cases there's a confluence between the person who thinks their whole life they their their whole life since they were two years old, they thought themselves a genius, and then and then they're like pune with the public's catching on.

You know, but but but but but Genius seems to sometimes just be this something.

You know.

It could be like someone yodling on TikTok and that catches fire and now they're the new quote genius, you know, or maybe they're not described as a genius, but popularity maybe it's intertwined these days.

Genius and popularity.

I think in this generation is something different than like the Da Vinci kind of eraror genius, do you know what I mean?

Yeah, And I think there's an interesting you're hypothetical yodler is that somebody who'd be happy to devote the rest of their life to, you know, maybe smashing the paradigm of yodling, right, and they event a whole new way of doing it.

And that's actually there are lots of people who are like that, right, They would rather go really deep into something or were they somebody who accidentally this did well for them and it becomes a terrible prison for them and they're paraded around the world as the yodler, and you know, the fame weighs heavily upon them, and you know, you just have to There are micro versions of that in all of our lives.

I think if you have any kind of creative career that you just need to work out whether or not do you still love it the thing that you know that is currently giving you rewards, And you know, if you don't, maybe you've got a family and a house and a mortgage and you kind of need to stick with it anyway.

But I just think long term, try to try to keep loving it.

M trying to keep what a beautiful, beautiful thing.

We could own the interview right now, but I'd be remiss not to have you talk for a couple of minutes about the deficit model, because it's so central to your book, you know, can you explain what that is?

Well?

I just I went through a space of watching biopics which or about geniuses.

So it's John Nash in A Beautiful Mind, which is a Ron Howard Bier pic, Stephen Hawking in the Theory of Everything, and then Alan Turing in The Imitation Game.

And it was really interesting that there was a kind of format for all of these, which was, you get this incredible gift, but here's its incredible price.

And now that a lot of that is dictated by the kind of need for the like a movie template.

But I think it just applies a lot more broadly to how we tend to think about gifts.

I've got a book behind me on the shelve that I read which is called The Price of Greatness, which is.

About one of my theory.

Yeah, right, but it is all about that, right, It's all about the kind of you know.

One of the things that it says is, you know, you are more likely to find high achievement among people who lost a parent when they were young, and then we.

Said physically disabled as well.

Yeah, and I think which I think is really interesting that the kind of what are the internal motives with people that drive them to extraordinary things?

Often they are pain or loss or a sense in some way of being missing something, and so that you know, it does have its roots in reality, but it is also become baked into how we tell those stories.

And it reached its final kind of apergy when you get to like the American idol thing, right, and someone comes on and says, I'm going to sing Ivita and it's for my grandmother who passed last week, And you think, really, is it though?

Or did you just want to be on TV and be famous?

But you can't say out loud and I'm going to be singing you know something from Avita because I practiced really hard at singing and I would like to do it professionally.

You know, we just baked into it this idea of we need to have kind of there needs to be a mense struggle, and I think that's possibly a way for the rest of us of dealing with our inevitable feelings of envy towards the incredibly successful, if we want to think that that great success came at a price and maybe made people unhappy.

It's kind of easier to live in a world in which we're than you know, the kind of normal sized people, and we're being surrounded by these giants living these big, successful lives.

But you know, that's it is kind of manipulative in some sense.

I think one of the things I found, and I only found out quite late in the writing process, so it's only in there slightly, is that Ron Howard was looking at a completely different story of a guy, and it was the story of this guy who was bipolar, and nonetheless he managed to go to an ivy League university and he wrote a memoir about it, and he presented himself as somebody who was, you know, who's able to kind of keep his paranoid delusions in check, and his memoir solved for a huge amount of money, and you know, it was that was going to be a beautiful mind.

And then, unfortunately what happened is this guy who believed his parents were Nazis and doing experiments on him, murdered his girlfriend, stabbed her a number of times, and he is now living in a high security mental hospital, and then that it's no longer such a touching, heartwarming story, and you know, of kind of somebody who's brilliant but troubled.

It's a much more sad story of somebody who's whose troubles led them eventually down to a really dark place.

Indeed, And I just remember thinking, well, that's the problem, isn't it.

There's a set version of picking winners in those stories.

And I think it's quite hard for people who are living with mental illness to be told constantly that it is this thing that should be improving their lives or there's some kind of nobility and grace in it, when for lots of people that isn't their experience.

It is just a wholly negative one and something that they wish would go away.

But we want it to be kind of inspirational again, because I think it's more comfortable for those of us on the on the outside of it to think that there's a point to it, you know, cosmically, there's a point to this suffering.

Well that's do you have a couple more minutes?

Yeah, of course, because this is this is I mean, it's a topic.

I've researched the link between mental illness and creativity, but also I've been a big advocate of neurodiversity and it's hidden gifts, And so it sounds like perhaps you're arguing against that view and saying like maybe that's part of the you're saying that's a myth, Scott, is that is that what you're saying, like for instance, ADHD Often this kind of inattention is treated in an education context like a deficit, but in a different context sometimes it's they have such a rich imagination that can be channeled towards great creativity.

Would would you argue against that view or or how does that relate to what you're saying.

I think that's a really reasonable way of saying it.

I was quite struck by that recent New York times pace, which I thought was a brave and unusual thing for the New York Times to run, which was a piece maybe saying we should treat ADHD more fluidly.

And actually one of the things that people who struggle in that very rigid box of school with adh they often find careers in which those periods of intense focus but also you know, struggle to do the boring things.

You know, they can cope with that, they can suit them more.

I thought that was a really helpful way of thinking about it, and I don't think it's bad.

I think, you know, you could say the same about autism and the current tech scene.

Right There's loads and loads of people if you go to Silicon Valley who are autistic, and those careers really really suit them.

So I don't have any problem with that at all.

I just think I'm just thinking about people in my own life I know who suffer from very serious mental illnesses, and they just they find that people around them want it to be inspirational, they want there to be a kind of happy ending and tied up with a neat little bow, and actually they don't find a great deal of meaning in it.

It's just a really horrible and so I think I'm talking I'm not talking less about developmental issues or neurodivergence.

That I am talking about meant severe mental illness in that.

Case, yes, And I think it's a very important distinction because our researchers full ball and mentalness is not corely in the creativity, but it's usual a watered down version of that.

The children get so there's some is.

Just the psychoticism theory?

Is this the idea that if you kind of make it going all.

Hands okay, I promise.

But but but like schizophrenia, if you if you're if you're a sibling or not sibling of your child of someone stophrenia, you get you don't get the most deabilitating genes, but you get some genes that are conduced to creativity that are associated with schizophrenia.

We call it schizo tippy, which is a personality trait.

It's not a mental illness.

It's a personality trait that we all differ a continuum.

But those who score really highen schizo tippy tend to have someone in their ancestry that had a much more extreme version of it.

But intuitive sense, doesn't it, because tell me if this is wrong, that in a way that explains why those conditions would persist through human history.

That's exactly right.

But it's like sickle salinemia, right, Like the single sickle cell gene gives you resist it's malaria.

So if you live in a malarial climate, having one of them is good.

Having two of them is bad.

And I'm really life limiting.

But okay, but that that then explains why you would you know, why you'd find that persisting in populations through time is the mild.

Mild form is good, severe form is bad.

That's the argument.

Yeah, we've written papers about the evolutionary genetics of the psychosis creativity link.

I think as the title of paper we wrote.

So yeah, I'm not I'm not going full hands sizing on you.

If if people read the book, they will understand that that is a pretty cruel disc but I would not have I would not have leveled that at you.

Well yeah, well, thank you, and you talk about how he had his own idea and has head that he was a genius.

Let's end on this because I have it dawned on me that people really do create their own self mythologies, and I think that, yes, it's true that other people can deem reduced, but I think in a lot of these cases, these individuals they love the sound of their own voice too.

I think there's a correlation there between in both things.

You know, the people who don't love the sound of their own voice but really are hidden geniuses don't tend to be out there as much, and so I think there's something there.

What do you think I think that is that is possibly true.

You know, I asked Walter Isaacson, you know who's done these big biographies of lates geniuses, and he's done he does Steve Jobs, He's don't need a musk, and before that he's done Einstein, And let me think I would sa Leonard da Vinci.

But you know he said the one of his that didn't actually like wasn't as a bigger seller as Jennifer Dowder, who's been involved in Crisper in this gene editing research which has the potential to be absolutely transformative.

And you know that people kind of forget that he did that one because she has not been a kind of public intellectual in the same way.

Right, she hasn't stepped up to that.

You know, very few scientists do.

But somebody like a Richard Dawkins does.

You know, They are very eloquent and very willing to be out in public making their arguments, kind of taking on all comers.

And you know, definitely, I think it helps if you want to be hailed as a genius, to play a genius in public, and lots of people don't want to do that, men and women.

They're kind of quite retiring, They just or personality wise, they'd rather just be in their lab or in their studio or whatever it might be, just doing the thing, not you know, doing the public side of it too.

And I think that does unfortunately that if you want to be hailed as a genius, you have to kind of go, hey, I'm a genius, and you have to have enough people agree with you.

You know, those are the two things that probably necessary.

Yeah, exactly, all right, So let's end on a quote from the great Helen Lewis quote.

Because there is no objective definition of genius and there never can be.

Societies anoint exceptional people as geniuses to demonstrate what they value.

We call some people special to demonstrate what we find special, and in turn, we give those special people lattitude that is not extended to ordinary mortals.

We have a set of stories about what geniuses are and how they work and how singular their achievements are, stories that are often entirely untrue.

True.

Thank you, helenus for being on the Psycholic Podcast and sharing your wisdom with us.

Oh, thank you very much for having me