July 31, 2025 • 46 mins
Child prodigies are unique in that they achieve adult levels of achievement, but do not typically excel in adulthood. Why? Who knows.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Chuck and Jerry's here too, and we're all feeling pretty
precocious today. You're own stuff you should know? You know?
Speaker 1 (00:22):
Judging from what just happened, I think if we released
a little five minute mini episode every week of the
five minutes before we where we're recording, but before we
start the stuff that we're doing, I bet people would
eat that up.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Yeah, rate it R so, yeah, I'm sure some people
would like that the stuff you should know. Army definitely would, Yeah,
for sure.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Everyone else would be like, who cares what these guys
are talking about?
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Off mine exactly. I tune in for facts and that's it. Yeah,
you know who else would probably eat it up?
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Chuck M I'm thinking about names in this. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Well, I was just going to start with Mozart. Oh, okay, Wolfgang, Amadas, Martza,
We're going to love that kind of thing. He was
really into hearing people talk candidly to one another. It
was one of his things.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Well, we're talking about child prodigies, and that's why you
bring up Mozart obviously thanks to Julia for help with this,
and also, this is the first time I think that
we're covering something that was a chapter in our book.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
No, we've done it before, and I can't place it
really definitely. There was one other one that we definitely did.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Yeah, mister potato head.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
No, no, I'll try to think of it and I'll
allocate about five percent of my brain to coming up
with it while we do the episode.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Okay, okay. At any rate, this was one of the
chapters from our book, and we were both individually relieved
when we texted each other that we each read reread
the chapter and it was basically the same, and I
was worried. I was like, man, this is going to
be so different that one of them is going to
be sort of wrong. But long way of saying why
we talked about Mozart is because if you read anything
(02:07):
on the internet about child prodigies, Mozart's a name that's
gonna probably come up, one of the more famous prodigies.
And there's Julia found a pretty fun story about Mozart
as a teenager.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Right, Yeah, I actually went and listened to this miserare Yeah, miserrere.
It's a choral piece for like, I think, nine choral parts,
and it was written by Gregorio Aligari back in I
don't remember when he wrote it, but at least before
seventeen seventy, because that was the year that a young
Amideus Mozart, who was fourteen at the time, went to
(02:41):
Vatican City to hear this. And the reason he and
his father traveled to Vatican City is because this choral
piece was so beloved by the people, I guess the
Pope and all of his buddies. Yeah, that they forbade
anybody from performing it outside of Vatican City, and so
you know, a corollary to that was no one could
transcribe it, so that it was just to be heard
(03:04):
in Vatican City. They thought it was that beautiful. And
it's if you heard it, you probably recognize it. Your
mom probably listened to it while she was cleaning the house,
or you heard it on like, yeah, America's top forty
in the seventies or something.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
I've just I've been distracted ever since you said the
Pope and his buddies, because now I can think of
this a sitcom called Pope in Company that's not bad
ampersand's CEO dot obviously.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Right, and the Pope has his like favorite reclienter that's
almost like an extra character.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Yeah, don't sit in it if you're not that's right. Yeah.
So anyway, a very revered thing within Vatican City. And
did you mention that no one could transcribe it? I
certainly did while you were I was were space distract. Yeah,
I was really thinking about like what the opening credits
to that sitcom would look like.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Do you have the theme song in your head?
Speaker 1 (03:52):
It's clicking around up there. I'm no prodigy, so it'll
take a minute. But you mentioned the transcription because Mozart,
as a precocious fourteen year old, couldn't fall asleep apparently
the night after the performance, so he woke up from
his slumber and transcribed it even though he wasn't supposed
to from memory as a fourteen year old. Went back
(04:15):
heard it a couple of days later and was like, oh,
I made a couple of mistakes from memory. He realized
this and went back and fixed them. He had hit
it in his hat because you know, he wasn't allowed
to have this transcribe. But just kind of a fun
story of Mozart's precociousness.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Yeah, and so he was at he was age fourteen,
so technically by this time he was a former prodigy.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Oh, is that the cutoff?
Speaker 2 (04:39):
No? Ten is the cutoff. You have to have achieved
this by ten to be considered a prodigy. But the
reason I said generally is because if you go by
the strictest definition of prodigy, there are only a handful
of the ones we talk about in this episode, or
we'll talk about, actually qualify as prodigy. And technically Mozart,
(05:02):
you could make a case if he was a prodigy,
he was kind of a poor example of a prodigy
because he went on to do great things as an adult,
which is also something that's not usually characteristic of a prodigy.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Yeah, and we also need to kind of spell out
the difference between genius and prodigy because they're not necessarily
the same thing. Well they're not the same thing at all,
but they can overlap at times. I guess it's the
better way to say it.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
But yeah, and I think Mozart would be an example
of that.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
Yeah, for sure. But genius usually is a high IQ
or a high Q score of one hundred and forty,
but they may not, you know, ever, achieve anything. You
can be a genius and not achieve anything great. I mean,
you probably will if you're a genius, but not necessarily.
Prodigy doesn't necessarily have a high IQ. They often do,
(05:50):
but oh yeah, there it is right there generally by
the age of ten. But what a prodigy is is
a kid that achieves like, like surpasses adult lever levels
of mastery by the time they're ten, like stuff that
you know, a lot of adults can't even achieve an
expertise or you know, like I can do this math
or this chess or this play this you know, instrument
(06:12):
better than an adult who's been doing it for decades
before the age of ten.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Yeah, they reached like the elite level where you can't
really get any better as far as adults go, by
the age of ten. And then one of the other
things about being a prodigy then is that by definition,
you have achieved something. Yeah, whereas like you said, but
being a genius, you are genius throughout your whole life,
but you may or may not achieve something. Right, to
be considered a prodigy, you have to have achieved something.
(06:39):
It's just part and parcel with it.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
Yeah, and prodigies were all the rage sort of in
the beginning of the twentieth century, when tabloid journalism started
and when IQ tests started, they were all over the newspapers.
People just were, you know, amazed and want you know,
in alle of these these kids who could do these
amazing things. They were all over the place.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Yeah, the term pint size was thrown around a lot.
But they would they would like reporters would interview them
to ask them their thoughts on like current events and
stuff like that, and they'd be quoted extensively in the paper.
And people, I mean people like you said, were in awe,
but they were also like, oh, it's a pretty good point.
I hadn't thought about that, you know, so they were
taken seriously too. And then there's a couple of other
(07:24):
points that kind of make up prodigies that we've kind
of figured out over the years. One of the things
we should say about prodigies is that there's a surprising
lack of people working on this. There are some people
who study prodigies, and they're experts in the psychology and
neurology of prodigies, but because there's so few people working
on it, we don't have a full grasp on it.
(07:46):
So it's largely speculation, but it seems like we're starting
to get on track about what makes a prodigy. But
even still, there's not like a cut and dried, uniform
definition of a prodigy. Some extra things though, that usually
show up in particular is that they usually excel in
(08:07):
just one field of knowledge, a domain, and then in
that specific field of knowledge, they excel in one kind
of sub section of it. So for example, if you
were a music prodigy, you probably are a prodigy in say,
classical music. You're not like classical jazz ska, right, you're
(08:31):
a prodigy in just one yeah. Yeah, So that's another
frequent thing too. You just get really, really really good
at one specific thing. That's a characteristic of prodigies.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
Yeah, and there you know, you can be a prodigy
in anything. A lot of times. You'll see it in
music and the maths. Chess is another good one that
you see a lot of prodigies in. But you can
really be a prodigy in anything. But it's, like you said,
a narrow range. But they usually exhibit one intelligence type
(09:04):
if you're talking about like psychological intelligence type, linguistic, mathematico, logical, spatial, visual, musical, kinesthetic, Yeah, interpersonal, interpersonal,
and naturalistic. And you know it's a rare that a
prodigy excels in more than one of these. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
And the that's multiple intelligences theory that Gardner I can't
remember Gardner's first name put out in the early nineties
and it basically overturned the idea of general intelligence, which
up to that point that's what everybody thought people had.
And Gardner was like, no, actually, I think it's like
carved into different areas and people can kind of take
from each of those. Then that would that makes up
(09:46):
your intelligence, not just a big general encyclopedia version of it. Yeah,
but it seems to be pretty well, pretty well accepted
these days. But like you said, most of the time
they'll excel in just one of the Again, you know,
you're probably not a linguistic prodigy and an intra personal
(10:06):
prodigy where you are really good at examining yourself.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Yeah, And how you get to be a prodigy is,
you know, pretty complex, and we'll see later. It's probably
a combination of a bunch of different things. It's definitely
a combination of nature and nurture. And they've done some
studying and we'll get to some studies later on about
the you know, genetics and the biology of it all
and like brain function. But there is a psychologist who
(10:31):
is also in our book, Ellen Winner, and she's one
of the people if you look up prodigies, she's one
of the few experts you talked about that knows a
lot about this stuff. But she she believes in both
nature and nurture, but she very much is like, there's
got to be a genetic component. And she has a
quote if a child suddenly, at age three goes to
the piano and picks out a tune and does it beautifully,
(10:54):
this has to be because that child has a different brain.
And I totally agree, like there's something you're born with.
If you if you've ever seen the videos of Tiger
Woods when he's like two years old with a pretty
perfect golf swing, like it's that that's something that someone
is born with, right.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
There's also Julia found a quote from an editor of
Vanity Fair who mentioned Elizabeth Bentson we'll talk about a
little bit more, but he agreed that it was probably biology,
but he hasscribed it to a perfect functioning of her
endocrine glands, so interesting. He figured it was glandular as
(11:34):
what was behind being a productory. But the point is
it was biology. And this is nineteen thirteen, by the way,
so like right now, right now, it's no, it's not
nineteen thirteen, it's nineteen eighty three.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
Oh, thank god, I've got of my son riches and
my OPI thanks up.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
I know, you look kind of out of place, man.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
So the other thing about genetics is you can see
it in like, you know, there can be blings that
are prodigies, like together, I guess co prodigies. Yeah, so
it definitely sort of leans to the idea that it
could be genetic. There are quite a few male, very
famous male composers who had sisters who were also prodigies
and amazing composers in pianist sur violinists or what have you,
(12:18):
but they didn't get the you know, the attention that
their you know, brother sibling counterparts got because they were girls.
Maria Mozart was one. Felix Mendelssohn had a sister named
Fanny who was a music prodigy m H. And then
others that you often see mentioned obviously are Venus and
Serena Williams, and then the Polgar sisters who were Judet,
(12:39):
Susan and Sophia.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
They were chess prodigies, right, And you were thinking about
Pope and Company as a sitcom. Well, I was studying this.
I noticed Felix and Fanny would make a good children's
book series, right. Oh yeah, Like I just imagine them
as little kids, and in between piano lessons they go
off and solve mysteries together. Felix and Fanny series. And
(13:02):
so anytime I think of children's books, I think of
our literary agent, our former agent, Stephen Barr.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Oh. Yeah, So I looked him up to.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
Say hi, and I was looking I was looking him
up on the internet. He has his own children's book
that he wrote and published. It's called The Upside Down Hat.
And so I emailed him and congratulated him. I was
very excited to see that. Yeah, he's got some more
coming too.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Stephen was the best, and I knew he had a
kid since we had worked with him. So that's that's
super cool. I love that.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
Yeah, he's got two now. He says, two.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
Kids are two children's books.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
Two kids three children's books, including the two that are
coming out soon.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
Well, I guess he needs to get a third kid, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
Write one for Yeah. It's called the Upside Down Hat
and it's pretty cute looking.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
Oh that's wonderful. So I guess let's take a break. Well,
I guess the last thing we should say is, you know,
I mentioned sort of the perfect storm of things to
make a prodigy, and that definitely seems to be the consensus.
Like there's some genetics at play, but the cognitive, developmental
and environmental factors are all kind of coming together at
(14:07):
the same time to lead to that what Ellen Winter
calls a rage to master, which we're going to talk
about out of the break, that seems to be the recipe, right.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
It makes me wonder, like how many things have we
just not understood that we could have already. Have we
not constantly been trying to boil everything down to one
thing like this is one cause for all this other stuff,
like is it nature? Is it nurture? No, it's both,
And I'm glad to see that prodigy researchers have accepted
that fact.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Greed.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
Okay, well, let's take that break then.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
All right, we'll be right back. All right. So I
(15:05):
mentioned the phrase rage to master, and that was something
I believe Ellen winner came up with and that's kind
of exactly what it sounds like, which is something that
they found with prodigies. At these these little kids come
out of the womb, they get to be like two
maybe three years old, and all of a sudden, out
of nowhere, they exhibit a gift. And that's the only
(15:28):
thing they want to do. And this is not some
kid who's like, hey, they turned out to be pretty
good at this, and they played a lot of piano,
like we're talking about prodigies. Like, they become obsessed with
they have a rage to master this thing.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
Yeah, And it's just basically like they ignore everything else,
even stuff that little kids would want to do, like
fun playing stuff, yeah, going to.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
The movies or whatever, making friends.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
All they want to do. Yeah, All they want to
do is that one thing over and over and over
again and master it. And so there's a researcher named
Larry Vanderbert who who believes that it has to do
with the connection between the cerebellum and the cerebral cortex.
And the reason he focus isn't on the cerebellum is
because apparently that is where we learn things, we become
(16:14):
experts in things, we learn to practice things, and the
cerebellum has a bunch of connections to the cerebral cortex.
Cerebral cortex is in charge of our higher functioning. So
with those two combined together, working together, us doing things
repetitively is how we learn to get better and better
at it. Right, His whole thing is that with a prodigy,
(16:38):
what we're seeing is the evolution of humanity at its
brightest point, Like these are examples of what could conceivably
be every single person if that perfect storm you're talking
about came together, and it's just like the most finely
tuned functioning example of what our have evolved to be
(17:01):
able to do. That's what he says prodigies are.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
Yeah, it's pretty interesting. He theorizes that the cerebellum creates
some kind of feedback loop is what he calls it,
where you have, you know, some kind of selective affinity
or a talent or an interest in something and getting
better at that. I mean, it's got to be like
a dopamine reward or something like that. It hits those
reward centers and there's some sort of psychological gold star
(17:25):
that you give yourself and that feels so good that
this that the kid with a prodigious brain is constantly
seeking that reward and it creates what he calls a
maximal grip, Like this grip has just got hold of
this kid because they're always seeking that that mental gold
star of getting better and better and better at that
one thing.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Yeah right, so it's almost like they're there. They have
no chill, right, they it's like their brains get stuck
in a natural progression or natural part of developing as
a human being from childhood to adulthood, and they just
go off like a rock on that one tangent.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Yeah that was not me.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
No, it wasn't me either.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
I can do a lot of things pretty good.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Yeah, a dileton.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
Yeah, I mean that's always been my thing. Like with sports,
I was never like built the way that you needed
to be built to play like varsity sports. But I
could throw a football and catch a football and pun
of football, and I could play little tennis. I can
play a little golf. I can you know, I played
you know, a little baseball, little softball, little soccer and
kick a soccer ball. I can throw frisbee, like you know,
(18:33):
I'm well rounded athletically, But I was never gonna be
on a like a a high school team, right, I gotcha.
I was okay in church league.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
Everybody went.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
But I wouldn't embarrass myself in anything. You know.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
I excelled as a child in hiding my knockoff Flintstone
vitamins in my Lincoln log houses because they were so
disgusting I couldn't eat them. I can actually almost make
myself nauseated thinking about him. Now.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
Really, Betty was not a vitamin.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
I don't remember that. Was she not? She was missing?
Speaker 1 (19:11):
I don't think so, because I there was a local
band in Atlanta called Betty's Not a Vitamin? Okay, because
of that factod.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
Well, had she been in the flintstone knockoff vitamins, I had,
she would have looked all misshaped and her name would
have been like Teddy or something like that with two
with three t's.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
There's one other thing about Larry Vanderwert's hypothesis about the cerebellum,
because he said, you know, this is a weird like
example of human natural human development. He pointed out that
part of what being a prodigy is excelling at something cultural, right,
like everything that prodigy kids do. They're not inventing anything,
(19:55):
they're just getting good at something that already exists.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
Yeah, So part of his theory hypothesis is that you
couldn't have a prodigy by definition before the event of culture.
So he theorizes that probably about ten thousand years ago
is when the first prodigies started to pop up.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
Oh interesting, I thought it took son her daughter.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Yeah maybe great great great great great great great great
grandson or daughter. Okay, yeah, good point, that's my posit I.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
Never remember when tuk took lived, so you know, me,
I get a little confused.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
He's all over the place.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
So another really interesting biological piece to this is memory
and working memory is something that they found. I think
there was a paper in twenty twelve by researchers Irbach
and Rutsots. They gathered cognitive data from eight child prodigies
and they looked at a couple of things. They looked
(20:52):
at their developmental history. They looked at scores on the
Stanford Benet fifth Edition Intelligence test and the autismctrum quotient,
and they found, you know, there were different range of IQs,
but even the ones had high IQs weren't on the
extreme end. Of like you know, super genius or anything.
But what they did find was that every single one
(21:15):
of them were then the ninety ninth percentile for working memory.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
I saw some also scored in the ninety nine point
ninth percentile, so.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
Like there's something there.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
I was reading I think a Scientific American article on this,
and they said that if you just randomly selected eight
people and gave them this test, like there's a zero
chance that they would all score in the ninety ninth percentile.
So yeah, it is quite a finding. But I think
also like a really important finding too, is that their
IQs aren't particularly eye popping. Yeah, but you know some
(21:48):
of them were I think past one forty, and that's
the one fortis the minimum for genius. One thirty, I
think is where being gifted starts. At least one of
them had an IQ of a hund that is exactly
average IQ. So IQ or intelligence, or at least the
way that we understand measuring intelligence with IQ. See, it
(22:11):
doesn't seem to have that much to do with being
a prodigy. Has some because again one hundred I think
was the minimum, and they went up to genius level
and passed, But it doesn't have nearly as much as
you would think.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
Yeah, for sure. But working memory, like that's really interesting
to me because that's the last like, that's your active
working memory, the last few things that have happened, calling
those up really easily. So if you're talking you know
about obviously with you know, musicianship and chess and math
and things like that, like being able to really quickly
(22:44):
recall the last few notes you played, or the last
few parts of this logarithm, that's that's gonna have a
big impact obviously.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
For sure. There's a good example that I found of that,
John von Newman, who would go on to become a
great mathematician, physicist, pioneering commuter computer science. He as a
child prodigy, would entertain his parents' friends at their parties
by they give him a phone book and he would
read over one of the pages and then hand the
phone book back, and they'd ask him questions like what's
(23:15):
you know. They'd pick a name and say what's their
phone number and address, and he'd tell them and then
they'd say, well, recite this whole page, and he would
recite it verbatim just after looking at it for a
little while, which is an amazing example of working memory.
But that's also I mean, he was a phone book prodigy,
pure and simple.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
As you know. I recently had lunch with a friend
of the show and pal Kevin Pollack, the actor, yes
and comedian, and sadly you were out of town so
you couldn't go. But Pollack's first his first act was
not doing it because he's a great impressionist, as we
all know, not doing impressions of comedy albums. Like a
(23:56):
lot of kids, the first thing they do is like
just repeat the bits from comedy record or specials, right.
He would he would mouth them in perfect synchronicity.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Oh wow.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
So he would do air air comedy and he would
do like the throat clears and everything, and he did it,
you know as like I don't know how young he was.
He said he was like six or seven to where
like one of his mom's neighbors or one of his
neighbors or one of his mom's friends was like, you're
doing this at the you know, the shine bombs, bar
mitsv it next week, like I'm booking you. And he
(24:26):
was like for the first six years or so of
his life, like he did at school, like my act
was completely just mouthing these comedy bits.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
That's pretty awesome. Yeah, it's fun. It's impressive. He was
a Richard Pryor comedy album prodigy.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
Well, I mean he made a good point which was
he was like, the material killed because the material was great,
because it was like the best comics. And he went
and then I got it down so good that part killed,
and he was like I couldn't fail.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
Basically, that's pretty great man.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
Yeah, fun story.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
Oh yeah, So one other thing about working memory, Chuck,
before we move on. One of the things that that
helps with is learning things like chess or math, or
things that have steps to them. You're keeping the information
you need to complete this step so you can move
on to the next and you're probably also thinking about
what the next step is too simultaneously. Working memory really
(25:16):
comes in handy for that. So it makes sense that
they have just amazing working memory levels.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
Yeah. And the connection to autism is really interesting too
because in that paper, you know, and from twenty twelve,
I mentioned that they looked at cognitive data for several things,
one of which was the autism spectrum quotient, and they
found it. You know, they found a pretty undeniable connection.
They found that subjects who were prodigies had definitely had
more autistic relatives than the general population does, and very
(25:47):
high scores and the attention to detail part of the
autism spectrum quotient. So you know, attention to detail is
something obviously if you have a gift for you might
wind up a prodigy.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
Yeah, but they didn't score high or beyond the general
population and the other parts of the autism spectrum quotient. Yeah,
so they don't have autism. I think that's because there's
a separate group where if you have like severe autism
or some other cognitive difference, you are a savant. You're
(26:22):
not a prodigy. You're a savant, even though the stuff
you're doing is prodigious. It's yeah, you're you're considered separate
for some reason. I don't know why, but that seems
to still be the case.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
Yeah, that's interesting. Those same two researchers, Ruth Zots and
was it Ulbach Ulrock Urbabach, Urbach Jerry Orbach Jerry Orboch,
they did it. They authored a second paper, and this
is from twenty fourteen, where they studied eighteen prodigies this
time and they were masters. These eighteen and either math, music,
(26:54):
or art, and some of the patterns they found were
pretty interesting. They all had that same great working memory,
so that was sort of proved out a little further even,
but the music and math prodigy scored a lot higher
on working memory than even the art prodigies, and this
was super interesting to me. The math prodigies displayed the
highest levels of overall intelligence and extraordinary visual spatial skills,
(27:18):
where as the art prodigies had the lowest visual spatial scores. Yeah,
which is weird, Yeah, counterintuitive.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
Should we take a break or keep going? Yeah, let's
take a break. Okay, We're going to take a break.
Everybody here, we go. Okay, Chuck. So we've talked a
(27:58):
couple of times about how prodigy experts agree that it
does seem to be a combination of nature and nurture.
I think perfect storm is a term that people use
a lot. So the parents of a prodigy definitely do
have a role in their development as a prodigy, and
there have been parents of prodigies who have really kind
(28:21):
of claimed that they're essentially responsible for their child's prodigy.
There was a I think William James Sittis's dad, Remember
we did a whole episode on that poor guy. Oh yeah, deal,
he was one of the most amazing child prodigies of
all time, just beyond gifted, just dusted other prodigies like
(28:43):
made them look like just lumps of unmolded clay, done
by an artist prodigy with terrible visual spatial skills. Essentially,
I love it. But he's but he was worth his
whole his own episode. It was a good episode. But
his dad, Boris was taught him from a very early age,
essentially from basically when he was born, and he essentially
(29:06):
claimed responsibility. There's another very famous prodigy whose name was
Winnifred Sackville Stoner junior, and her mom was Winnifred Sackville
Stoner senior, and her mom claimed responsibility for her child's prodigy.
We'll talk a little bit more about them, but parents
(29:26):
do play a huge role, even when even if it's
not quite as far as some of them boast.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
Yeah, I mean, you know, if you're going to be
a prodigy at golf or tennis or you know, piano
or something like that, it requires you know, those those
things aren't cheap. I mean, certainly there are stories of
people who from a family that maybe you know, didn't
have the kind of resources that other families might have
that you know, find a local municipal golf course where
(29:52):
they can go and play super cheap. But those are
like those are kind of rich kid sports pianos cost
a lot of money. So a lot of times with
these if you look at the parents in the family situation,
they are very involved parents who have resources to make
it happen, not only with equipment, but dedicating the time
and hiring a lot of times at very expensive hourly rates,
(30:14):
like masters in that thing to help teach that kid.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
Yeah. Yeah, so yeah, you can boil it down to
a handful of factors that parents play a large role in. First,
you have to start that with the kid has a
natural ability, right, you don't teach that that has to
exist already.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
Then that the kid has to have access to those teachers.
And like you said, these aren't Joe Schmoe teachers like
teaching out of their house on the side for a
little extra cash. These are like the best of the
best teacher experts in this field. That's who the parents
need to have the resources to pay, and those teachers
(30:53):
have to come in at just the right moment. I
don't think it's necessarily down to the minute, but they
have to come pretty early in the kid's development so
that the kid doesn't get bored because they've gone as
far as they can go, or because they don't necessarily
understand what would even be next.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
Yeah, or you know, you might get lucky and have
that within your own family, like I I mean, I
think Wolfgang van Halen. I don't know what age he
achieved his level of talent, but you know he had
a built in situation with his father and was the
touring bassist and backup singer with Van Halen when he
(31:31):
was like sixteen years old, and can play everything, like
I mean, he's not just a guitar guy, but he
plays on his records with his band Mammoth. He plays
it all. He plays the drums, he plays the keyboards,
he plays the bass, he plays the guitar, he does
all the singing. He's like, you know, he's a prodigy,
and he had a built in teacher as a you know,
one of the greatest guitar players of all time.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
I thought you were joking. I didn't realize that Eddie
van Halen's son is named Wolfgang. I thought you were
making a joke about Mozart.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
We no, I mean that is kind of funny.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
Well, Mozart's father is he was a music teacher as well.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
And his name was Eddie Vnhalen.
Speaker 2 (32:09):
Sorry. Yeah, so yeah, if you have a like you said,
a built in family member already that knows what they're
doing and can teach you at least early on, that
helps a lot. I think also Picasso, his father was
an art instructor, but oh I didn't know that. Yeah,
Picasso just excelled way beyond his father, very very early on.
(32:32):
I think his father also kind of took that a
little personally. Seems like the type.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
Yeah, and you know, there are some exceptions here, Like
with everything, it's not like every single prodigy has had
the means and the resources and the parents that threw
everything at them to try and help them. And one
notable exception Julia found was Blaize Pascal, the French math prodigy.
He was born in sixteen twenty three and at the
beginning of his schooling, his dad very famous appetition. At
(33:01):
the end, Pascal said, I want my kid to learn
more than math, and math is so interesting. If he
gets a hold of these math books. He's going to
ignore everything else because math is so incredible, and so
he hid all the math books in his house. But
young Pascal got an outdated math book somehow that was
in English, even though he only spoke French. And he
(33:23):
was so smart in such a prodigy, he translated that
and reinvented parts of that of like geometry in that
book that weren't in the book.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
Right. Yeah, he also came up with probability theory later on.
Like he was definitely a math prodigy, and so he
overcame an absence of material. There's also some good examples
of prodigies who overcame a like an absence of resources, right, So,
like they came from very poor families, like Stevie Wonder
(33:56):
is a very good example of that, self taught musician
on all sorts different instruments, and his parents did not
have their resources to buy them all these things. There
was another guy from the turn of the last century
named Srinivasa Ramanujohn and he was very poor in India,
(34:16):
came from a very poor family, and he, like Blaize Pascal,
got his hands on an outdated math book and just
taught himself math and became he ended up studying at Cambridge.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
Yeah, for sure. I mean, there are definitely those examples,
but they're they're also on the other side, like plenty
of examples of you know, the the nurture thing going
in a bad direction. Yeah, where the parents have and
I know we Julie didn't cover this, but in our
book we covered. Do you remember who wrote that chapter, by.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
The way, I think it was yours.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
I think it was too so long ago. I don't remember,
I know you mean, but I think it might have
been mine because I remember very much wanting to include
and did include in the book the story of Time Marinovich,
who was a prodigious quarterback, and another you know example
at Jennifer Capriotti, the tennis prodigy. Like they were kids
who were both excelling to the point where they were
(35:13):
young teenagers and sports illustrated being written about, and they
were pushed by these overbearing fathers in their case, and
they both burned out and washed out and ended up,
you know, having problems with drugs and problems with the
law and stuff like that. So there are some pretty
sad cases there where parents take what could potentially be
a good thing and just ruin it because their parents.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
You know, I was reading today about Venus and Serena
Williams and their tennis prodigy status. I guess, but yeah, Richard,
their father, Richard Williams, he had Venus turned pro at
age fourteen because the USTA was about to release the
(35:57):
Kapriati rule, which was like U king urn pro after
a certain age because Jack Dicapriotti was such a cautionary tale.
So before the rule could be passed, Richard was like,
you're turning pro now. And her debut she beat number
sixty six and almost beat number the top seeded player
(36:17):
at her first professional tournament age fourteen. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:22):
Boy, those William's sisters were fun, or still are fun
to watch. I didn't see that movie, did you, King Richard?
Speaker 2 (36:29):
No, I didn't. Okay, moving on, Yeah, we have nothing
to say about it then, apparently.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
Well, speaking of moving on, we're to the point where
we talk about when you're not a prodigy anymore, because
you mentioned early on you know, once you have mastered
this thing, that's it, and a lot of times that
is it. Some you know, there are different stories. Some
some flame out and go down a bad road. Some
go on to have you know, great careers doing their thing,
(36:57):
like you mentioned Mozart obviously, but some going to have
great careers and it's not like a super famous situation
like Mozart, but they do great for themselves. But you know,
it's like being a child movie star, Like once you
reach a certain age, that sort of appeal might be
over the adorableness of the kid that can play the
piano at ten years old, right, and you're just an
(37:18):
adult who can play the piano really well, and all
of a sudden, you're not special anymore, and that can
lead to a big fall.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
Yeah, yeah, it can because you're essentially, especially at the
early on in the twentieth century when the papers would
track you down and ask your opinion as a child prodigy,
you were a child star essentially, and that is not
something that society has figured out how to handle properly.
We don't know what to do with child stars, so
(37:44):
instead we just chew them up and spit them out
and say good luck, we don't need you any longer.
That same effect in general can happen to child prodigies,
and one really good example is Bobby Fisher. He's He's, He's.
The cautionary tale for child prodigies and how bad things
can get after you're not a prodigy anymore.
Speaker 1 (38:05):
Yeah, for sure, he was the chess prodigy. I've recommended
it before, but the great, great film Searching for Bobby
Fischer is so so good, highly recommended. But he was
born in Chicago in the forties, was playing competitive chess
by the age of eight and when the US opened
at fourteen, and became the youngest international grand master at
fifteen years old in nineteen fifty eight. Fifteen years old
(38:28):
in six months. But when his career fell, he fell
hard and spent a couple of decades roaming around southern
California destitute. He spent nine months in a Japanese prison,
and is kind of known, you know, for the last
couple of decades of his life as being a pretty
hateful anti Semite.
Speaker 2 (38:48):
Yeah, yeah, he he. I don't know if he had
a blog or something like that, but after nine to
eleven he publicly celebrated it on his blog, like he yeah,
he really just took some seriously weird turns, and yeah
he was. He's just a great example of how bad
things can get after society's done with you and you're
(39:10):
not useful anymore not adorable or noteworthy. I think also
he clearly had some mental health issues that were yeah,
probably going to emerge either way.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
But yeah, yeah, being a.
Speaker 2 (39:25):
Child prodigy and it's such a weird way to grow
up that could not have helped at all.
Speaker 1 (39:31):
Yeah, and you know, there are other cases of kids,
and here's a piece of advice. You can do what
you want if you've got a really pretty genius kid,
but don't send your kid to college at like twelve
years old. Now, I just I don't see that ever
leading to good things. I think you should try and
normalize a child's childhood as much as possible, even if
they're you know, unchallenged in school. There are other ways
(39:52):
that you can foster that, I think, besides saying you're
going to Harvard at eleven and you're going to be
in the newspapers for that. The case of Elizabeth Benson,
she was a two hundred and fourteen plus IQ kid
who went to college at twelve and graduated and disappeared.
And later on that was one of those like where
are they now? Articles? And this is no shade at
(40:14):
somebody who's a cashier. It's a fine job, and we
need cashiers. But the article very much was like this
former child prodigy is now just a cashier, and that
was sort of how it was framed.
Speaker 2 (40:26):
Yeah, but despite that, she kept like batting away that
that kind of sentiment and just talking about how happy
she was. She's she was married. She was very happy
with her very normal life with her very normal husband.
And this is a person like a two hundred and fourteen,
it has a plus next to it, which might as
well be an asterisk. She scored perfectly on an IQ test.
(40:49):
And the reason that plus is there is because they
imagined she could have kept going, but they ran out
of questions.
Speaker 1 (40:56):
Y got a question.
Speaker 2 (40:57):
Yeah, so she and she even considered herself in the
art article. She said, you know, based on the stories
of some of my peers, like I actually got off
pretty well, Like I'm happy with life as an adult, right, Yeah,
but yeah, she's an example of one that went pretty well.
But the best that you could do if you don't
eventually turn into an adult who starts contributing greatly to
(41:20):
your fields of interest, like Mozart, like John von Newman,
like Pablo Picasso, the best you can hope for is
to lead a normal life as an adult.
Speaker 1 (41:29):
You know, I keep thinking you're gonna say John bon
Job every time.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
I keep wanting to call him Johann too, and it's
not oh interesting.
Speaker 1 (41:38):
Yeah, you mentioned Winnifred Sackville Stoner Junior or early on.
She was a language prodigy in the early twentieth century,
probably most famous for in fourteen hundred ninety two Columbus
Aaled the Ocean Blue was written by Winnifred Sackville Stoner Junior.
But her mom was one of those parents that really
(41:59):
really pushed her a parent mm hm, and gained a
lot of fame. Like the mother did, she wrote books
about it. Was sort of like Royal Tanninbaum's when Ethelene Tannenbaum,
you know, talked about her prodigious family of children. And
I think we mentioned the tann and bombs in the book,
of course, because I wrote the chapter. Yeah, that's one
of my favorite movies. But the mom gained a lot
(42:21):
of attention and was on the like the lecture circuit
and stuff like that, and the daughter was like, you know,
take my advice, dear mothers, spare your children from so
called fame which easily turns to shame, and be happy
if you have a happy, healthy, contented boy or girl,
Amen to that.
Speaker 2 (42:40):
Yeah, it's great advice, great advice. So if you have
a child prodigy on your hands, trade carefully, console experts,
maybe get in touch with Ellen Winner. I'm sure she'd
be very happy to speak with you and tell you
what not to do. So there you go. That's our
annual dose of advice for the parents of child prodigies.
Speaker 1 (43:02):
Yeah, and I also want to say, I bet it's
not the easiest thing though, to be fair to parents,
you know, it's it puts them in a tough position
if your kid is obsessed with this one thing and
clearly super gifted, because you don't want to squash that.
So it's a it's a tight rope you're walking there,
so you know, I get it.
Speaker 2 (43:18):
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, it's not a position I would
necessarily want to be in. But heck no, you've got
some really great fodder for your your annual Christmas letter
that you send out with your Christmas card.
Speaker 1 (43:28):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
You want to make your your sister in Boise feel jealous.
You talk about you talk about your child prodigy and
what they're doing.
Speaker 1 (43:37):
Yeah, I've only known one person in my life that
does that, and that is an Emily's family. Her aunt
Peg sends out the annual Christmas sort of family catch
up thing, and I've always just been delighted to read
it and thought it was super cool and wondered why
no one in my lousy family ever cared enough to
do anything.
Speaker 2 (43:54):
That's a very so high o thing to do.
Speaker 1 (43:56):
Oh is it okay?
Speaker 2 (43:57):
Yeah? For sure, I get it. Before we go on
to listener mail, Chuck, I just want to point out
a couple of at least one good band and album
named Rage Semaster.
Speaker 1 (44:08):
Oh, very nice.
Speaker 2 (44:10):
And then I think you could make a pretty good
bon Jovi tribute band with Johann bon Jovi, right.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
Or John bon JOHI yeah, there you go.
Speaker 2 (44:20):
John von Newman, by the way, we can get that
except for stuff you should know listen, Yeah, that's true.
What were you going to say, because I want to
hear what out?
Speaker 1 (44:28):
You know what I was going to say?
Speaker 2 (44:29):
Do you say it?
Speaker 1 (44:31):
Bada bing bada boom Banjovi?
Speaker 2 (44:33):
And there Chuck has unlocked listed her mail.
Speaker 1 (44:39):
This is a correction of sorts, and this is something
I didn't know. I'm glad to know when we did
our USAID episode we were talking about condoms for Gaza.
This is from Bernie. He said, I think you guys
did a great job. Just wanted to clarify something. Fifty
million dollars for condoms was not for Gaza as in
Gaza next to Israel. It was for Gaza Province and Mozambique.
Elon Musk even correct this in one of his weird
(45:01):
Oval Office press conferences, but as you said, the SoundBite
had already gone out and people did not want to
hear any retraction to what they now believe. So glad
you guys covered this topic is so important globally. Someone
who's been in this line of work for my entire
adult life, this episode really hit home to me. Keep
up the great work, all the best, Bernie F. Chavis.
Speaker 2 (45:21):
Thanks a lot, Bernie. That was very gentle correction and
we appreciate those rather than I can't believe you guys
screwed this up this badly, which we get once in
a while, but for the most part we hear gentle
corrections like Bernie, So hats off to you and thanks
for setting us straight. Bernie. If you want to be
like Bernie and send us an email, you can. You
can send it off to stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (45:47):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Chuck and Jerry's here too, and we're all feeling pretty
precocious today. You're own stuff you should know? You know?
Speaker 1 (00:22):
Judging from what just happened, I think if we released
a little five minute mini episode every week of the
five minutes before we where we're recording, but before we
start the stuff that we're doing, I bet people would
eat that up.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Yeah, rate it R so, yeah, I'm sure some people
would like that the stuff you should know. Army definitely would, Yeah,
for sure.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Everyone else would be like, who cares what these guys
are talking about?
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Off mine exactly. I tune in for facts and that's it. Yeah,
you know who else would probably eat it up?
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Chuck M I'm thinking about names in this. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Well, I was just going to start with Mozart. Oh, okay, Wolfgang, Amadas, Martza,
We're going to love that kind of thing. He was
really into hearing people talk candidly to one another. It
was one of his things.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Well, we're talking about child prodigies, and that's why you
bring up Mozart obviously thanks to Julia for help with this,
and also, this is the first time I think that
we're covering something that was a chapter in our book.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
No, we've done it before, and I can't place it
really definitely. There was one other one that we definitely did.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Yeah, mister potato head.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
No, no, I'll try to think of it and I'll
allocate about five percent of my brain to coming up
with it while we do the episode.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Okay, okay. At any rate, this was one of the
chapters from our book, and we were both individually relieved
when we texted each other that we each read reread
the chapter and it was basically the same, and I
was worried. I was like, man, this is going to
be so different that one of them is going to
be sort of wrong. But long way of saying why
we talked about Mozart is because if you read anything
(02:07):
on the internet about child prodigies, Mozart's a name that's
gonna probably come up, one of the more famous prodigies.
And there's Julia found a pretty fun story about Mozart
as a teenager.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Right, Yeah, I actually went and listened to this miserare Yeah, miserrere.
It's a choral piece for like, I think, nine choral parts,
and it was written by Gregorio Aligari back in I
don't remember when he wrote it, but at least before
seventeen seventy, because that was the year that a young
Amideus Mozart, who was fourteen at the time, went to
(02:41):
Vatican City to hear this. And the reason he and
his father traveled to Vatican City is because this choral
piece was so beloved by the people, I guess the
Pope and all of his buddies. Yeah, that they forbade
anybody from performing it outside of Vatican City, and so
you know, a corollary to that was no one could
transcribe it, so that it was just to be heard
(03:04):
in Vatican City. They thought it was that beautiful. And
it's if you heard it, you probably recognize it. Your
mom probably listened to it while she was cleaning the house,
or you heard it on like, yeah, America's top forty
in the seventies or something.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
I've just I've been distracted ever since you said the
Pope and his buddies, because now I can think of
this a sitcom called Pope in Company that's not bad
ampersand's CEO dot obviously.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Right, and the Pope has his like favorite reclienter that's
almost like an extra character.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Yeah, don't sit in it if you're not that's right. Yeah.
So anyway, a very revered thing within Vatican City. And
did you mention that no one could transcribe it? I
certainly did while you were I was were space distract. Yeah,
I was really thinking about like what the opening credits
to that sitcom would look like.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Do you have the theme song in your head?
Speaker 1 (03:52):
It's clicking around up there. I'm no prodigy, so it'll
take a minute. But you mentioned the transcription because Mozart,
as a precocious fourteen year old, couldn't fall asleep apparently
the night after the performance, so he woke up from
his slumber and transcribed it even though he wasn't supposed
to from memory as a fourteen year old. Went back
(04:15):
heard it a couple of days later and was like, oh,
I made a couple of mistakes from memory. He realized
this and went back and fixed them. He had hit
it in his hat because you know, he wasn't allowed
to have this transcribe. But just kind of a fun
story of Mozart's precociousness.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Yeah, and so he was at he was age fourteen,
so technically by this time he was a former prodigy.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Oh, is that the cutoff?
Speaker 2 (04:39):
No? Ten is the cutoff. You have to have achieved
this by ten to be considered a prodigy. But the
reason I said generally is because if you go by
the strictest definition of prodigy, there are only a handful
of the ones we talk about in this episode, or
we'll talk about, actually qualify as prodigy. And technically Mozart,
(05:02):
you could make a case if he was a prodigy,
he was kind of a poor example of a prodigy
because he went on to do great things as an adult,
which is also something that's not usually characteristic of a prodigy.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Yeah, and we also need to kind of spell out
the difference between genius and prodigy because they're not necessarily
the same thing. Well they're not the same thing at all,
but they can overlap at times. I guess it's the
better way to say it.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
But yeah, and I think Mozart would be an example
of that.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
Yeah, for sure. But genius usually is a high IQ
or a high Q score of one hundred and forty,
but they may not, you know, ever, achieve anything. You
can be a genius and not achieve anything great. I mean,
you probably will if you're a genius, but not necessarily.
Prodigy doesn't necessarily have a high IQ. They often do,
(05:50):
but oh yeah, there it is right there generally by
the age of ten. But what a prodigy is is
a kid that achieves like, like surpasses adult lever levels
of mastery by the time they're ten, like stuff that
you know, a lot of adults can't even achieve an
expertise or you know, like I can do this math
or this chess or this play this you know, instrument
(06:12):
better than an adult who's been doing it for decades
before the age of ten.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Yeah, they reached like the elite level where you can't
really get any better as far as adults go, by
the age of ten. And then one of the other
things about being a prodigy then is that by definition,
you have achieved something. Yeah, whereas like you said, but
being a genius, you are genius throughout your whole life,
but you may or may not achieve something. Right, to
be considered a prodigy, you have to have achieved something.
(06:39):
It's just part and parcel with it.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
Yeah, and prodigies were all the rage sort of in
the beginning of the twentieth century, when tabloid journalism started
and when IQ tests started, they were all over the newspapers.
People just were, you know, amazed and want you know,
in alle of these these kids who could do these
amazing things. They were all over the place.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Yeah, the term pint size was thrown around a lot.
But they would they would like reporters would interview them
to ask them their thoughts on like current events and
stuff like that, and they'd be quoted extensively in the paper.
And people, I mean people like you said, were in awe,
but they were also like, oh, it's a pretty good point.
I hadn't thought about that, you know, so they were
taken seriously too. And then there's a couple of other
(07:24):
points that kind of make up prodigies that we've kind
of figured out over the years. One of the things
we should say about prodigies is that there's a surprising
lack of people working on this. There are some people
who study prodigies, and they're experts in the psychology and
neurology of prodigies, but because there's so few people working
on it, we don't have a full grasp on it.
(07:46):
So it's largely speculation, but it seems like we're starting
to get on track about what makes a prodigy. But
even still, there's not like a cut and dried, uniform
definition of a prodigy. Some extra things though, that usually
show up in particular is that they usually excel in
(08:07):
just one field of knowledge, a domain, and then in
that specific field of knowledge, they excel in one kind
of sub section of it. So for example, if you
were a music prodigy, you probably are a prodigy in say,
classical music. You're not like classical jazz ska, right, you're
(08:31):
a prodigy in just one yeah. Yeah, So that's another
frequent thing too. You just get really, really really good
at one specific thing. That's a characteristic of prodigies.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
Yeah, and there you know, you can be a prodigy
in anything. A lot of times. You'll see it in
music and the maths. Chess is another good one that
you see a lot of prodigies in. But you can
really be a prodigy in anything. But it's, like you said,
a narrow range. But they usually exhibit one intelligence type
(09:04):
if you're talking about like psychological intelligence type, linguistic, mathematico, logical, spatial, visual, musical, kinesthetic, Yeah, interpersonal, interpersonal,
and naturalistic. And you know it's a rare that a
prodigy excels in more than one of these. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
And the that's multiple intelligences theory that Gardner I can't
remember Gardner's first name put out in the early nineties
and it basically overturned the idea of general intelligence, which
up to that point that's what everybody thought people had.
And Gardner was like, no, actually, I think it's like
carved into different areas and people can kind of take
from each of those. Then that would that makes up
(09:46):
your intelligence, not just a big general encyclopedia version of it. Yeah,
but it seems to be pretty well, pretty well accepted
these days. But like you said, most of the time
they'll excel in just one of the Again, you know,
you're probably not a linguistic prodigy and an intra personal
(10:06):
prodigy where you are really good at examining yourself.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Yeah, And how you get to be a prodigy is,
you know, pretty complex, and we'll see later. It's probably
a combination of a bunch of different things. It's definitely
a combination of nature and nurture. And they've done some
studying and we'll get to some studies later on about
the you know, genetics and the biology of it all
and like brain function. But there is a psychologist who
(10:31):
is also in our book, Ellen Winner, and she's one
of the people if you look up prodigies, she's one
of the few experts you talked about that knows a
lot about this stuff. But she she believes in both
nature and nurture, but she very much is like, there's
got to be a genetic component. And she has a
quote if a child suddenly, at age three goes to
the piano and picks out a tune and does it beautifully,
(10:54):
this has to be because that child has a different brain.
And I totally agree, like there's something you're born with.
If you if you've ever seen the videos of Tiger
Woods when he's like two years old with a pretty
perfect golf swing, like it's that that's something that someone
is born with, right.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
There's also Julia found a quote from an editor of
Vanity Fair who mentioned Elizabeth Bentson we'll talk about a
little bit more, but he agreed that it was probably biology,
but he hasscribed it to a perfect functioning of her
endocrine glands, so interesting. He figured it was glandular as
(11:34):
what was behind being a productory. But the point is
it was biology. And this is nineteen thirteen, by the way,
so like right now, right now, it's no, it's not
nineteen thirteen, it's nineteen eighty three.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
Oh, thank god, I've got of my son riches and
my OPI thanks up.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
I know, you look kind of out of place, man.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
So the other thing about genetics is you can see
it in like, you know, there can be blings that
are prodigies, like together, I guess co prodigies. Yeah, so
it definitely sort of leans to the idea that it
could be genetic. There are quite a few male, very
famous male composers who had sisters who were also prodigies
and amazing composers in pianist sur violinists or what have you,
(12:18):
but they didn't get the you know, the attention that
their you know, brother sibling counterparts got because they were girls.
Maria Mozart was one. Felix Mendelssohn had a sister named
Fanny who was a music prodigy m H. And then
others that you often see mentioned obviously are Venus and
Serena Williams, and then the Polgar sisters who were Judet,
(12:39):
Susan and Sophia.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
They were chess prodigies, right, And you were thinking about
Pope and Company as a sitcom. Well, I was studying this.
I noticed Felix and Fanny would make a good children's
book series, right. Oh yeah, Like I just imagine them
as little kids, and in between piano lessons they go
off and solve mysteries together. Felix and Fanny series. And
(13:02):
so anytime I think of children's books, I think of
our literary agent, our former agent, Stephen Barr.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Oh. Yeah, So I looked him up to.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
Say hi, and I was looking I was looking him
up on the internet. He has his own children's book
that he wrote and published. It's called The Upside Down Hat.
And so I emailed him and congratulated him. I was
very excited to see that. Yeah, he's got some more
coming too.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Stephen was the best, and I knew he had a
kid since we had worked with him. So that's that's
super cool. I love that.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
Yeah, he's got two now. He says, two.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
Kids are two children's books.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
Two kids three children's books, including the two that are
coming out soon.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
Well, I guess he needs to get a third kid, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
Write one for Yeah. It's called the Upside Down Hat
and it's pretty cute looking.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
Oh that's wonderful. So I guess let's take a break. Well,
I guess the last thing we should say is, you know,
I mentioned sort of the perfect storm of things to
make a prodigy, and that definitely seems to be the consensus.
Like there's some genetics at play, but the cognitive, developmental
and environmental factors are all kind of coming together at
(14:07):
the same time to lead to that what Ellen Winter
calls a rage to master, which we're going to talk
about out of the break, that seems to be the recipe, right.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
It makes me wonder, like how many things have we
just not understood that we could have already. Have we
not constantly been trying to boil everything down to one
thing like this is one cause for all this other stuff,
like is it nature? Is it nurture? No, it's both,
And I'm glad to see that prodigy researchers have accepted
that fact.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Greed.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
Okay, well, let's take that break then.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
All right, we'll be right back. All right. So I
(15:05):
mentioned the phrase rage to master, and that was something
I believe Ellen winner came up with and that's kind
of exactly what it sounds like, which is something that
they found with prodigies. At these these little kids come
out of the womb, they get to be like two
maybe three years old, and all of a sudden, out
of nowhere, they exhibit a gift. And that's the only
(15:28):
thing they want to do. And this is not some
kid who's like, hey, they turned out to be pretty
good at this, and they played a lot of piano,
like we're talking about prodigies. Like, they become obsessed with
they have a rage to master this thing.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
Yeah, And it's just basically like they ignore everything else,
even stuff that little kids would want to do, like
fun playing stuff, yeah, going to.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
The movies or whatever, making friends.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
All they want to do. Yeah, All they want to
do is that one thing over and over and over
again and master it. And so there's a researcher named
Larry Vanderbert who who believes that it has to do
with the connection between the cerebellum and the cerebral cortex.
And the reason he focus isn't on the cerebellum is
because apparently that is where we learn things, we become
(16:14):
experts in things, we learn to practice things, and the
cerebellum has a bunch of connections to the cerebral cortex.
Cerebral cortex is in charge of our higher functioning. So
with those two combined together, working together, us doing things
repetitively is how we learn to get better and better
at it. Right, His whole thing is that with a prodigy,
(16:38):
what we're seeing is the evolution of humanity at its
brightest point, Like these are examples of what could conceivably
be every single person if that perfect storm you're talking
about came together, and it's just like the most finely
tuned functioning example of what our have evolved to be
(17:01):
able to do. That's what he says prodigies are.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
Yeah, it's pretty interesting. He theorizes that the cerebellum creates
some kind of feedback loop is what he calls it,
where you have, you know, some kind of selective affinity
or a talent or an interest in something and getting
better at that. I mean, it's got to be like
a dopamine reward or something like that. It hits those
reward centers and there's some sort of psychological gold star
(17:25):
that you give yourself and that feels so good that
this that the kid with a prodigious brain is constantly
seeking that reward and it creates what he calls a
maximal grip, Like this grip has just got hold of
this kid because they're always seeking that that mental gold
star of getting better and better and better at that
one thing.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Yeah right, so it's almost like they're there. They have
no chill, right, they it's like their brains get stuck
in a natural progression or natural part of developing as
a human being from childhood to adulthood, and they just
go off like a rock on that one tangent.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Yeah that was not me.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
No, it wasn't me either.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
I can do a lot of things pretty good.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Yeah, a dileton.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
Yeah, I mean that's always been my thing. Like with sports,
I was never like built the way that you needed
to be built to play like varsity sports. But I
could throw a football and catch a football and pun
of football, and I could play little tennis. I can
play a little golf. I can you know, I played
you know, a little baseball, little softball, little soccer and
kick a soccer ball. I can throw frisbee, like you know,
(18:33):
I'm well rounded athletically, But I was never gonna be
on a like a a high school team, right, I gotcha.
I was okay in church league.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
Everybody went.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
But I wouldn't embarrass myself in anything. You know.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
I excelled as a child in hiding my knockoff Flintstone
vitamins in my Lincoln log houses because they were so
disgusting I couldn't eat them. I can actually almost make
myself nauseated thinking about him. Now.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
Really, Betty was not a vitamin.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
I don't remember that. Was she not? She was missing?
Speaker 1 (19:11):
I don't think so, because I there was a local
band in Atlanta called Betty's Not a Vitamin? Okay, because
of that factod.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
Well, had she been in the flintstone knockoff vitamins, I had,
she would have looked all misshaped and her name would
have been like Teddy or something like that with two
with three t's.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
There's one other thing about Larry Vanderwert's hypothesis about the cerebellum,
because he said, you know, this is a weird like
example of human natural human development. He pointed out that
part of what being a prodigy is excelling at something cultural, right,
like everything that prodigy kids do. They're not inventing anything,
(19:55):
they're just getting good at something that already exists.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
Yeah, So part of his theory hypothesis is that you
couldn't have a prodigy by definition before the event of culture.
So he theorizes that probably about ten thousand years ago
is when the first prodigies started to pop up.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
Oh interesting, I thought it took son her daughter.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Yeah maybe great great great great great great great great
grandson or daughter. Okay, yeah, good point, that's my posit I.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
Never remember when tuk took lived, so you know, me,
I get a little confused.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
He's all over the place.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
So another really interesting biological piece to this is memory
and working memory is something that they found. I think
there was a paper in twenty twelve by researchers Irbach
and Rutsots. They gathered cognitive data from eight child prodigies
and they looked at a couple of things. They looked
(20:52):
at their developmental history. They looked at scores on the
Stanford Benet fifth Edition Intelligence test and the autismctrum quotient,
and they found, you know, there were different range of IQs,
but even the ones had high IQs weren't on the
extreme end. Of like you know, super genius or anything.
But what they did find was that every single one
(21:15):
of them were then the ninety ninth percentile for working memory.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
I saw some also scored in the ninety nine point
ninth percentile, so.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
Like there's something there.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
I was reading I think a Scientific American article on this,
and they said that if you just randomly selected eight
people and gave them this test, like there's a zero
chance that they would all score in the ninety ninth percentile.
So yeah, it is quite a finding. But I think
also like a really important finding too, is that their
IQs aren't particularly eye popping. Yeah, but you know some
(21:48):
of them were I think past one forty, and that's
the one fortis the minimum for genius. One thirty, I
think is where being gifted starts. At least one of
them had an IQ of a hund that is exactly
average IQ. So IQ or intelligence, or at least the
way that we understand measuring intelligence with IQ. See, it
(22:11):
doesn't seem to have that much to do with being
a prodigy. Has some because again one hundred I think
was the minimum, and they went up to genius level
and passed, But it doesn't have nearly as much as
you would think.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
Yeah, for sure. But working memory, like that's really interesting
to me because that's the last like, that's your active
working memory, the last few things that have happened, calling
those up really easily. So if you're talking you know
about obviously with you know, musicianship and chess and math
and things like that, like being able to really quickly
(22:44):
recall the last few notes you played, or the last
few parts of this logarithm, that's that's gonna have a
big impact obviously.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
For sure. There's a good example that I found of that,
John von Newman, who would go on to become a
great mathematician, physicist, pioneering commuter computer science. He as a
child prodigy, would entertain his parents' friends at their parties
by they give him a phone book and he would
read over one of the pages and then hand the
phone book back, and they'd ask him questions like what's
(23:15):
you know. They'd pick a name and say what's their
phone number and address, and he'd tell them and then
they'd say, well, recite this whole page, and he would
recite it verbatim just after looking at it for a
little while, which is an amazing example of working memory.
But that's also I mean, he was a phone book prodigy,
pure and simple.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
As you know. I recently had lunch with a friend
of the show and pal Kevin Pollack, the actor, yes
and comedian, and sadly you were out of town so
you couldn't go. But Pollack's first his first act was
not doing it because he's a great impressionist, as we
all know, not doing impressions of comedy albums. Like a
(23:56):
lot of kids, the first thing they do is like
just repeat the bits from comedy record or specials, right.
He would he would mouth them in perfect synchronicity.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Oh wow.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
So he would do air air comedy and he would
do like the throat clears and everything, and he did it,
you know as like I don't know how young he was.
He said he was like six or seven to where
like one of his mom's neighbors or one of his
neighbors or one of his mom's friends was like, you're
doing this at the you know, the shine bombs, bar
mitsv it next week, like I'm booking you. And he
(24:26):
was like for the first six years or so of
his life, like he did at school, like my act
was completely just mouthing these comedy bits.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
That's pretty awesome. Yeah, it's fun. It's impressive. He was
a Richard Pryor comedy album prodigy.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
Well, I mean he made a good point which was
he was like, the material killed because the material was great,
because it was like the best comics. And he went
and then I got it down so good that part killed,
and he was like I couldn't fail.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
Basically, that's pretty great man.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
Yeah, fun story.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
Oh yeah, So one other thing about working memory, Chuck,
before we move on. One of the things that that
helps with is learning things like chess or math, or
things that have steps to them. You're keeping the information
you need to complete this step so you can move
on to the next and you're probably also thinking about
what the next step is too simultaneously. Working memory really
(25:16):
comes in handy for that. So it makes sense that
they have just amazing working memory levels.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
Yeah. And the connection to autism is really interesting too
because in that paper, you know, and from twenty twelve,
I mentioned that they looked at cognitive data for several things,
one of which was the autism spectrum quotient, and they
found it. You know, they found a pretty undeniable connection.
They found that subjects who were prodigies had definitely had
more autistic relatives than the general population does, and very
(25:47):
high scores and the attention to detail part of the
autism spectrum quotient. So you know, attention to detail is
something obviously if you have a gift for you might
wind up a prodigy.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
Yeah, but they didn't score high or beyond the general
population and the other parts of the autism spectrum quotient. Yeah,
so they don't have autism. I think that's because there's
a separate group where if you have like severe autism
or some other cognitive difference, you are a savant. You're
(26:22):
not a prodigy. You're a savant, even though the stuff
you're doing is prodigious. It's yeah, you're you're considered separate
for some reason. I don't know why, but that seems
to still be the case.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
Yeah, that's interesting. Those same two researchers, Ruth Zots and
was it Ulbach Ulrock Urbabach, Urbach Jerry Orbach Jerry Orboch,
they did it. They authored a second paper, and this
is from twenty fourteen, where they studied eighteen prodigies this
time and they were masters. These eighteen and either math, music,
(26:54):
or art, and some of the patterns they found were
pretty interesting. They all had that same great working memory,
so that was sort of proved out a little further even,
but the music and math prodigy scored a lot higher
on working memory than even the art prodigies, and this
was super interesting to me. The math prodigies displayed the
highest levels of overall intelligence and extraordinary visual spatial skills,
(27:18):
where as the art prodigies had the lowest visual spatial scores. Yeah,
which is weird, Yeah, counterintuitive.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
Should we take a break or keep going? Yeah, let's
take a break. Okay, We're going to take a break.
Everybody here, we go. Okay, Chuck. So we've talked a
(27:58):
couple of times about how prodigy experts agree that it
does seem to be a combination of nature and nurture.
I think perfect storm is a term that people use
a lot. So the parents of a prodigy definitely do
have a role in their development as a prodigy, and
there have been parents of prodigies who have really kind
(28:21):
of claimed that they're essentially responsible for their child's prodigy.
There was a I think William James Sittis's dad, Remember
we did a whole episode on that poor guy. Oh yeah, deal,
he was one of the most amazing child prodigies of
all time, just beyond gifted, just dusted other prodigies like
(28:43):
made them look like just lumps of unmolded clay, done
by an artist prodigy with terrible visual spatial skills. Essentially,
I love it. But he's but he was worth his
whole his own episode. It was a good episode. But
his dad, Boris was taught him from a very early age,
essentially from basically when he was born, and he essentially
(29:06):
claimed responsibility. There's another very famous prodigy whose name was
Winnifred Sackville Stoner junior, and her mom was Winnifred Sackville
Stoner senior, and her mom claimed responsibility for her child's prodigy.
We'll talk a little bit more about them, but parents
(29:26):
do play a huge role, even when even if it's
not quite as far as some of them boast.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
Yeah, I mean, you know, if you're going to be
a prodigy at golf or tennis or you know, piano
or something like that, it requires you know, those those
things aren't cheap. I mean, certainly there are stories of
people who from a family that maybe you know, didn't
have the kind of resources that other families might have
that you know, find a local municipal golf course where
(29:52):
they can go and play super cheap. But those are
like those are kind of rich kid sports pianos cost
a lot of money. So a lot of times with
these if you look at the parents in the family situation,
they are very involved parents who have resources to make
it happen, not only with equipment, but dedicating the time
and hiring a lot of times at very expensive hourly rates,
(30:14):
like masters in that thing to help teach that kid.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
Yeah. Yeah, so yeah, you can boil it down to
a handful of factors that parents play a large role in. First,
you have to start that with the kid has a
natural ability, right, you don't teach that that has to
exist already.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
Then that the kid has to have access to those teachers.
And like you said, these aren't Joe Schmoe teachers like
teaching out of their house on the side for a
little extra cash. These are like the best of the
best teacher experts in this field. That's who the parents
need to have the resources to pay, and those teachers
(30:53):
have to come in at just the right moment. I
don't think it's necessarily down to the minute, but they
have to come pretty early in the kid's development so
that the kid doesn't get bored because they've gone as
far as they can go, or because they don't necessarily
understand what would even be next.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
Yeah, or you know, you might get lucky and have
that within your own family, like I I mean, I
think Wolfgang van Halen. I don't know what age he
achieved his level of talent, but you know he had
a built in situation with his father and was the
touring bassist and backup singer with Van Halen when he
(31:31):
was like sixteen years old, and can play everything, like
I mean, he's not just a guitar guy, but he
plays on his records with his band Mammoth. He plays
it all. He plays the drums, he plays the keyboards,
he plays the bass, he plays the guitar, he does
all the singing. He's like, you know, he's a prodigy,
and he had a built in teacher as a you know,
one of the greatest guitar players of all time.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
I thought you were joking. I didn't realize that Eddie
van Halen's son is named Wolfgang. I thought you were
making a joke about Mozart.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
We no, I mean that is kind of funny.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
Well, Mozart's father is he was a music teacher as well.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
And his name was Eddie Vnhalen.
Speaker 2 (32:09):
Sorry. Yeah, so yeah, if you have a like you said,
a built in family member already that knows what they're
doing and can teach you at least early on, that
helps a lot. I think also Picasso, his father was
an art instructor, but oh I didn't know that. Yeah,
Picasso just excelled way beyond his father, very very early on.
(32:32):
I think his father also kind of took that a
little personally. Seems like the type.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
Yeah, and you know, there are some exceptions here, Like
with everything, it's not like every single prodigy has had
the means and the resources and the parents that threw
everything at them to try and help them. And one
notable exception Julia found was Blaize Pascal, the French math prodigy.
He was born in sixteen twenty three and at the
beginning of his schooling, his dad very famous appetition. At
(33:01):
the end, Pascal said, I want my kid to learn
more than math, and math is so interesting. If he
gets a hold of these math books. He's going to
ignore everything else because math is so incredible, and so
he hid all the math books in his house. But
young Pascal got an outdated math book somehow that was
in English, even though he only spoke French. And he
(33:23):
was so smart in such a prodigy, he translated that
and reinvented parts of that of like geometry in that
book that weren't in the book.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
Right. Yeah, he also came up with probability theory later on.
Like he was definitely a math prodigy, and so he
overcame an absence of material. There's also some good examples
of prodigies who overcame a like an absence of resources, right, So,
like they came from very poor families, like Stevie Wonder
(33:56):
is a very good example of that, self taught musician
on all sorts different instruments, and his parents did not
have their resources to buy them all these things. There
was another guy from the turn of the last century
named Srinivasa Ramanujohn and he was very poor in India,
(34:16):
came from a very poor family, and he, like Blaize Pascal,
got his hands on an outdated math book and just
taught himself math and became he ended up studying at Cambridge.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
Yeah, for sure. I mean, there are definitely those examples,
but they're they're also on the other side, like plenty
of examples of you know, the the nurture thing going
in a bad direction. Yeah, where the parents have and
I know we Julie didn't cover this, but in our
book we covered. Do you remember who wrote that chapter, by.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
The way, I think it was yours.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
I think it was too so long ago. I don't remember,
I know you mean, but I think it might have
been mine because I remember very much wanting to include
and did include in the book the story of Time Marinovich,
who was a prodigious quarterback, and another you know example
at Jennifer Capriotti, the tennis prodigy. Like they were kids
who were both excelling to the point where they were
(35:13):
young teenagers and sports illustrated being written about, and they
were pushed by these overbearing fathers in their case, and
they both burned out and washed out and ended up,
you know, having problems with drugs and problems with the
law and stuff like that. So there are some pretty
sad cases there where parents take what could potentially be
a good thing and just ruin it because their parents.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
You know, I was reading today about Venus and Serena
Williams and their tennis prodigy status. I guess, but yeah, Richard,
their father, Richard Williams, he had Venus turned pro at
age fourteen because the USTA was about to release the
(35:57):
Kapriati rule, which was like U king urn pro after
a certain age because Jack Dicapriotti was such a cautionary tale.
So before the rule could be passed, Richard was like,
you're turning pro now. And her debut she beat number
sixty six and almost beat number the top seeded player
(36:17):
at her first professional tournament age fourteen. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:22):
Boy, those William's sisters were fun, or still are fun
to watch. I didn't see that movie, did you, King Richard?
Speaker 2 (36:29):
No, I didn't. Okay, moving on, Yeah, we have nothing
to say about it then, apparently.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
Well, speaking of moving on, we're to the point where
we talk about when you're not a prodigy anymore, because
you mentioned early on you know, once you have mastered
this thing, that's it, and a lot of times that
is it. Some you know, there are different stories. Some
some flame out and go down a bad road. Some
go on to have you know, great careers doing their thing,
(36:57):
like you mentioned Mozart obviously, but some going to have
great careers and it's not like a super famous situation
like Mozart, but they do great for themselves. But you know,
it's like being a child movie star, Like once you
reach a certain age, that sort of appeal might be
over the adorableness of the kid that can play the
piano at ten years old, right, and you're just an
(37:18):
adult who can play the piano really well, and all
of a sudden, you're not special anymore, and that can
lead to a big fall.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
Yeah, yeah, it can because you're essentially, especially at the
early on in the twentieth century when the papers would
track you down and ask your opinion as a child prodigy,
you were a child star essentially, and that is not
something that society has figured out how to handle properly.
We don't know what to do with child stars, so
(37:44):
instead we just chew them up and spit them out
and say good luck, we don't need you any longer.
That same effect in general can happen to child prodigies,
and one really good example is Bobby Fisher. He's He's, He's.
The cautionary tale for child prodigies and how bad things
can get after you're not a prodigy anymore.
Speaker 1 (38:05):
Yeah, for sure, he was the chess prodigy. I've recommended
it before, but the great, great film Searching for Bobby
Fischer is so so good, highly recommended. But he was
born in Chicago in the forties, was playing competitive chess
by the age of eight and when the US opened
at fourteen, and became the youngest international grand master at
fifteen years old in nineteen fifty eight. Fifteen years old
(38:28):
in six months. But when his career fell, he fell
hard and spent a couple of decades roaming around southern
California destitute. He spent nine months in a Japanese prison,
and is kind of known, you know, for the last
couple of decades of his life as being a pretty
hateful anti Semite.
Speaker 2 (38:48):
Yeah, yeah, he he. I don't know if he had
a blog or something like that, but after nine to
eleven he publicly celebrated it on his blog, like he yeah,
he really just took some seriously weird turns, and yeah
he was. He's just a great example of how bad
things can get after society's done with you and you're
(39:10):
not useful anymore not adorable or noteworthy. I think also
he clearly had some mental health issues that were yeah,
probably going to emerge either way.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
But yeah, yeah, being a.
Speaker 2 (39:25):
Child prodigy and it's such a weird way to grow
up that could not have helped at all.
Speaker 1 (39:31):
Yeah, and you know, there are other cases of kids,
and here's a piece of advice. You can do what
you want if you've got a really pretty genius kid,
but don't send your kid to college at like twelve
years old. Now, I just I don't see that ever
leading to good things. I think you should try and
normalize a child's childhood as much as possible, even if
they're you know, unchallenged in school. There are other ways
(39:52):
that you can foster that, I think, besides saying you're
going to Harvard at eleven and you're going to be
in the newspapers for that. The case of Elizabeth Benson,
she was a two hundred and fourteen plus IQ kid
who went to college at twelve and graduated and disappeared.
And later on that was one of those like where
are they now? Articles? And this is no shade at
(40:14):
somebody who's a cashier. It's a fine job, and we
need cashiers. But the article very much was like this
former child prodigy is now just a cashier, and that
was sort of how it was framed.
Speaker 2 (40:26):
Yeah, but despite that, she kept like batting away that
that kind of sentiment and just talking about how happy
she was. She's she was married. She was very happy
with her very normal life with her very normal husband.
And this is a person like a two hundred and fourteen,
it has a plus next to it, which might as
well be an asterisk. She scored perfectly on an IQ test.
(40:49):
And the reason that plus is there is because they
imagined she could have kept going, but they ran out
of questions.
Speaker 1 (40:56):
Y got a question.
Speaker 2 (40:57):
Yeah, so she and she even considered herself in the
art article. She said, you know, based on the stories
of some of my peers, like I actually got off
pretty well, Like I'm happy with life as an adult, right, Yeah,
but yeah, she's an example of one that went pretty well.
But the best that you could do if you don't
eventually turn into an adult who starts contributing greatly to
(41:20):
your fields of interest, like Mozart, like John von Newman,
like Pablo Picasso, the best you can hope for is
to lead a normal life as an adult.
Speaker 1 (41:29):
You know, I keep thinking you're gonna say John bon
Job every time.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
I keep wanting to call him Johann too, and it's
not oh interesting.
Speaker 1 (41:38):
Yeah, you mentioned Winnifred Sackville Stoner Junior or early on.
She was a language prodigy in the early twentieth century,
probably most famous for in fourteen hundred ninety two Columbus
Aaled the Ocean Blue was written by Winnifred Sackville Stoner Junior.
But her mom was one of those parents that really
(41:59):
really pushed her a parent mm hm, and gained a
lot of fame. Like the mother did, she wrote books
about it. Was sort of like Royal Tanninbaum's when Ethelene Tannenbaum,
you know, talked about her prodigious family of children. And
I think we mentioned the tann and bombs in the book,
of course, because I wrote the chapter. Yeah, that's one
of my favorite movies. But the mom gained a lot
(42:21):
of attention and was on the like the lecture circuit
and stuff like that, and the daughter was like, you know,
take my advice, dear mothers, spare your children from so
called fame which easily turns to shame, and be happy
if you have a happy, healthy, contented boy or girl,
Amen to that.
Speaker 2 (42:40):
Yeah, it's great advice, great advice. So if you have
a child prodigy on your hands, trade carefully, console experts,
maybe get in touch with Ellen Winner. I'm sure she'd
be very happy to speak with you and tell you
what not to do. So there you go. That's our
annual dose of advice for the parents of child prodigies.
Speaker 1 (43:02):
Yeah, and I also want to say, I bet it's
not the easiest thing though, to be fair to parents,
you know, it's it puts them in a tough position
if your kid is obsessed with this one thing and
clearly super gifted, because you don't want to squash that.
So it's a it's a tight rope you're walking there,
so you know, I get it.
Speaker 2 (43:18):
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, it's not a position I would
necessarily want to be in. But heck no, you've got
some really great fodder for your your annual Christmas letter
that you send out with your Christmas card.
Speaker 1 (43:28):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
You want to make your your sister in Boise feel jealous.
You talk about you talk about your child prodigy and
what they're doing.
Speaker 1 (43:37):
Yeah, I've only known one person in my life that
does that, and that is an Emily's family. Her aunt
Peg sends out the annual Christmas sort of family catch
up thing, and I've always just been delighted to read
it and thought it was super cool and wondered why
no one in my lousy family ever cared enough to
do anything.
Speaker 2 (43:54):
That's a very so high o thing to do.
Speaker 1 (43:56):
Oh is it okay?
Speaker 2 (43:57):
Yeah? For sure, I get it. Before we go on
to listener mail, Chuck, I just want to point out
a couple of at least one good band and album
named Rage Semaster.
Speaker 1 (44:08):
Oh, very nice.
Speaker 2 (44:10):
And then I think you could make a pretty good
bon Jovi tribute band with Johann bon Jovi, right.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
Or John bon JOHI yeah, there you go.
Speaker 2 (44:20):
John von Newman, by the way, we can get that
except for stuff you should know listen, Yeah, that's true.
What were you going to say, because I want to
hear what out?
Speaker 1 (44:28):
You know what I was going to say?
Speaker 2 (44:29):
Do you say it?
Speaker 1 (44:31):
Bada bing bada boom Banjovi?
Speaker 2 (44:33):
And there Chuck has unlocked listed her mail.
Speaker 1 (44:39):
This is a correction of sorts, and this is something
I didn't know. I'm glad to know when we did
our USAID episode we were talking about condoms for Gaza.
This is from Bernie. He said, I think you guys
did a great job. Just wanted to clarify something. Fifty
million dollars for condoms was not for Gaza as in
Gaza next to Israel. It was for Gaza Province and Mozambique.
Elon Musk even correct this in one of his weird
(45:01):
Oval Office press conferences, but as you said, the SoundBite
had already gone out and people did not want to
hear any retraction to what they now believe. So glad
you guys covered this topic is so important globally. Someone
who's been in this line of work for my entire
adult life, this episode really hit home to me. Keep
up the great work, all the best, Bernie F. Chavis.
Speaker 2 (45:21):
Thanks a lot, Bernie. That was very gentle correction and
we appreciate those rather than I can't believe you guys
screwed this up this badly, which we get once in
a while, but for the most part we hear gentle
corrections like Bernie, So hats off to you and thanks
for setting us straight. Bernie. If you want to be
like Bernie and send us an email, you can. You
can send it off to stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (45:47):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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