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Child Prodigies: Better to Burn Out Than Fade Away · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and we're all feeling pretty
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: precocious today. You're own stuff you should know? You know?
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: Judging from what just happened, I think if we released
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: a little five minute mini episode every week of the
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: five minutes before we where we're recording, but before we
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: start the stuff that we're doing, I bet people would
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: eat that up.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, rate it R so, yeah, I'm sure some people
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: would like that the stuff you should know. Army definitely would, Yeah,
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: for sure.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: Everyone else would be like, who cares what these guys
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: are talking about?
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: Off mine exactly. I tune in for facts and that's it. Yeah,
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: you know who else would probably eat it up?
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: Chuck M I'm thinking about names in this. I don't know.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: Well, I was just going to start with Mozart. Oh, okay, Wolfgang, Amadas, Martza,
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: We're going to love that kind of thing. He was
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: really into hearing people talk candidly to one another. It
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: was one of his things.
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  Speaker 1: Well, we're talking about child prodigies, and that's why you
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: bring up Mozart obviously thanks to Julia for help with this,
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: and also, this is the first time I think that
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: we're covering something that was a chapter in our book.
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: No, we've done it before, and I can't place it
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  Speaker 2: really definitely. There was one other one that we definitely did.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, mister potato head.
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: No, no, I'll try to think of it and I'll
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: allocate about five percent of my brain to coming up
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: with it while we do the episode.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: Okay, okay. At any rate, this was one of the
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: chapters from our book, and we were both individually relieved
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: when we texted each other that we each read reread
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: the chapter and it was basically the same, and I
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: was worried. I was like, man, this is going to
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: be so different that one of them is going to
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: be sort of wrong. But long way of saying why
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  Speaker 1: we talked about Mozart is because if you read anything
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: on the internet about child prodigies, Mozart's a name that's
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: gonna probably come up, one of the more famous prodigies.
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  Speaker 1: And there's Julia found a pretty fun story about Mozart
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  Speaker 1: as a teenager.
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  Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, I actually went and listened to this miserare Yeah, miserrere.
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: It's a choral piece for like, I think, nine choral parts,
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  Speaker 2: and it was written by Gregorio Aligari back in I
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: don't remember when he wrote it, but at least before
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: seventeen seventy, because that was the year that a young
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: Amideus Mozart, who was fourteen at the time, went to
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: Vatican City to hear this. And the reason he and
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: his father traveled to Vatican City is because this choral
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: piece was so beloved by the people, I guess the
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: Pope and all of his buddies. Yeah, that they forbade
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: anybody from performing it outside of Vatican City, and so
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: you know, a corollary to that was no one could
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  Speaker 2: transcribe it, so that it was just to be heard
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: in Vatican City. They thought it was that beautiful. And
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: it's if you heard it, you probably recognize it. Your
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: mom probably listened to it while she was cleaning the house,
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: or you heard it on like, yeah, America's top forty
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: in the seventies or something.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: I've just I've been distracted ever since you said the
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: Pope and his buddies, because now I can think of
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: this a sitcom called Pope in Company that's not bad
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: ampersand's CEO dot obviously.
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: Right, and the Pope has his like favorite reclienter that's
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: almost like an extra character.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, don't sit in it if you're not that's right. Yeah.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: So anyway, a very revered thing within Vatican City. And
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  Speaker 1: did you mention that no one could transcribe it? I
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: certainly did while you were I was were space distract. Yeah,
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: I was really thinking about like what the opening credits
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: to that sitcom would look like.
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  Speaker 2: Do you have the theme song in your head?
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: It's clicking around up there. I'm no prodigy, so it'll
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: take a minute. But you mentioned the transcription because Mozart,
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: as a precocious fourteen year old, couldn't fall asleep apparently
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: the night after the performance, so he woke up from
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: his slumber and transcribed it even though he wasn't supposed
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  Speaker 1: to from memory as a fourteen year old. Went back
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  Speaker 1: heard it a couple of days later and was like, oh,
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  Speaker 1: I made a couple of mistakes from memory. He realized
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  Speaker 1: this and went back and fixed them. He had hit
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: it in his hat because you know, he wasn't allowed
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  Speaker 1: to have this transcribe. But just kind of a fun
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: story of Mozart's precociousness.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, and so he was at he was age fourteen,
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  Speaker 2: so technically by this time he was a former prodigy.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, is that the cutoff?
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  Speaker 2: No? Ten is the cutoff. You have to have achieved
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  Speaker 2: this by ten to be considered a prodigy. But the
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: reason I said generally is because if you go by
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  Speaker 2: the strictest definition of prodigy, there are only a handful
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  Speaker 2: of the ones we talk about in this episode, or
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: we'll talk about, actually qualify as prodigy. And technically Mozart,
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: you could make a case if he was a prodigy,
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: he was kind of a poor example of a prodigy
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  Speaker 2: because he went on to do great things as an adult,
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  Speaker 2: which is also something that's not usually characteristic of a prodigy.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and we also need to kind of spell out
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: the difference between genius and prodigy because they're not necessarily
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: the same thing. Well they're not the same thing at all,
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: but they can overlap at times. I guess it's the
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: better way to say it.
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  Speaker 2: But yeah, and I think Mozart would be an example
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  Speaker 2: of that.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. But genius usually is a high IQ
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: or a high Q score of one hundred and forty,
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  Speaker 1: but they may not, you know, ever, achieve anything. You
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  Speaker 1: can be a genius and not achieve anything great. I mean,
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: you probably will if you're a genius, but not necessarily.
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  Speaker 1: Prodigy doesn't necessarily have a high IQ. They often do,
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  Speaker 1: but oh yeah, there it is right there generally by
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  Speaker 1: the age of ten. But what a prodigy is is
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  Speaker 1: a kid that achieves like, like surpasses adult lever levels
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  Speaker 1: of mastery by the time they're ten, like stuff that
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: you know, a lot of adults can't even achieve an
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  Speaker 1: expertise or you know, like I can do this math
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  Speaker 1: or this chess or this play this you know, instrument
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  Speaker 1: better than an adult who's been doing it for decades
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  Speaker 1: before the age of ten.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, they reached like the elite level where you can't
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  Speaker 2: really get any better as far as adults go, by
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  Speaker 2: the age of ten. And then one of the other
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  Speaker 2: things about being a prodigy then is that by definition,
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  Speaker 2: you have achieved something. Yeah, whereas like you said, but
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  Speaker 2: being a genius, you are genius throughout your whole life,
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  Speaker 2: but you may or may not achieve something. Right, to
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: be considered a prodigy, you have to have achieved something.
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  Speaker 2: It's just part and parcel with it.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, and prodigies were all the rage sort of in
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: the beginning of the twentieth century, when tabloid journalism started
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  Speaker 1: and when IQ tests started, they were all over the newspapers.
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  Speaker 1: People just were, you know, amazed and want you know,
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  Speaker 1: in alle of these these kids who could do these
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  Speaker 1: amazing things. They were all over the place.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, the term pint size was thrown around a lot.
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  Speaker 2: But they would they would like reporters would interview them
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  Speaker 2: to ask them their thoughts on like current events and
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  Speaker 2: stuff like that, and they'd be quoted extensively in the paper.
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  Speaker 2: And people, I mean people like you said, were in awe,
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  Speaker 2: but they were also like, oh, it's a pretty good point.
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  Speaker 2: I hadn't thought about that, you know, so they were
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  Speaker 2: taken seriously too. And then there's a couple of other
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  Speaker 2: points that kind of make up prodigies that we've kind
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  Speaker 2: of figured out over the years. One of the things
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  Speaker 2: we should say about prodigies is that there's a surprising
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  Speaker 2: lack of people working on this. There are some people
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  Speaker 2: who study prodigies, and they're experts in the psychology and
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  Speaker 2: neurology of prodigies, but because there's so few people working
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  Speaker 2: on it, we don't have a full grasp on it.
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  Speaker 2: So it's largely speculation, but it seems like we're starting
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  Speaker 2: to get on track about what makes a prodigy. But
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  Speaker 2: even still, there's not like a cut and dried, uniform
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  Speaker 2: definition of a prodigy. Some extra things though, that usually
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  Speaker 2: show up in particular is that they usually excel in
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  Speaker 2: just one field of knowledge, a domain, and then in
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  Speaker 2: that specific field of knowledge, they excel in one kind
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  Speaker 2: of sub section of it. So for example, if you
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  Speaker 2: were a music prodigy, you probably are a prodigy in say,
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  Speaker 2: classical music. You're not like classical jazz ska, right, you're
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  Speaker 2: a prodigy in just one yeah. Yeah, So that's another
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  Speaker 2: frequent thing too. You just get really, really really good
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  Speaker 2: at one specific thing. That's a characteristic of prodigies.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, and there you know, you can be a prodigy
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  Speaker 1: in anything. A lot of times. You'll see it in
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  Speaker 1: music and the maths. Chess is another good one that
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: you see a lot of prodigies in. But you can
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  Speaker 1: really be a prodigy in anything. But it's, like you said,
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  Speaker 1: a narrow range. But they usually exhibit one intelligence type
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  Speaker 1: if you're talking about like psychological intelligence type, linguistic, mathematico, logical, spatial, visual, musical, kinesthetic, Yeah, interpersonal, interpersonal,
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  Speaker 1: and naturalistic. And you know it's a rare that a
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  Speaker 1: prodigy excels in more than one of these. Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: And the that's multiple intelligences theory that Gardner I can't
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: remember Gardner's first name put out in the early nineties
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  Speaker 2: and it basically overturned the idea of general intelligence, which
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  Speaker 2: up to that point that's what everybody thought people had.
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  Speaker 2: And Gardner was like, no, actually, I think it's like
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: carved into different areas and people can kind of take
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: from each of those. Then that would that makes up
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: your intelligence, not just a big general encyclopedia version of it. Yeah,
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: but it seems to be pretty well, pretty well accepted
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  Speaker 2: these days. But like you said, most of the time
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  Speaker 2: they'll excel in just one of the Again, you know,
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  Speaker 2: you're probably not a linguistic prodigy and an intra personal
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  Speaker 2: prodigy where you are really good at examining yourself.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, And how you get to be a prodigy is,
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: you know, pretty complex, and we'll see later. It's probably
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: a combination of a bunch of different things. It's definitely
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: a combination of nature and nurture. And they've done some
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: studying and we'll get to some studies later on about
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: the you know, genetics and the biology of it all
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: and like brain function. But there is a psychologist who
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  Speaker 1: is also in our book, Ellen Winner, and she's one
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  Speaker 1: of the people if you look up prodigies, she's one
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  Speaker 1: of the few experts you talked about that knows a
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: lot about this stuff. But she she believes in both
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: nature and nurture, but she very much is like, there's
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: got to be a genetic component. And she has a
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: quote if a child suddenly, at age three goes to
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  Speaker 1: the piano and picks out a tune and does it beautifully,
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  Speaker 1: this has to be because that child has a different brain.
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: And I totally agree, like there's something you're born with.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: If you if you've ever seen the videos of Tiger
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: Woods when he's like two years old with a pretty
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: perfect golf swing, like it's that that's something that someone
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: is born with, right.
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: There's also Julia found a quote from an editor of
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: Vanity Fair who mentioned Elizabeth Bentson we'll talk about a
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: little bit more, but he agreed that it was probably biology,
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: but he hasscribed it to a perfect functioning of her
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: endocrine glands, so interesting. He figured it was glandular as
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: what was behind being a productory. But the point is
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: it was biology. And this is nineteen thirteen, by the way,
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: so like right now, right now, it's no, it's not
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: nineteen thirteen, it's nineteen eighty three.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, thank god, I've got of my son riches and
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: my OPI thanks up.
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: I know, you look kind of out of place, man.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: So the other thing about genetics is you can see
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: it in like, you know, there can be blings that
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: are prodigies, like together, I guess co prodigies. Yeah, so
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: it definitely sort of leans to the idea that it
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: could be genetic. There are quite a few male, very
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: famous male composers who had sisters who were also prodigies
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: and amazing composers in pianist sur violinists or what have you,
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: but they didn't get the you know, the attention that
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: their you know, brother sibling counterparts got because they were girls.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: Maria Mozart was one. Felix Mendelssohn had a sister named
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: Fanny who was a music prodigy m H. And then
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: others that you often see mentioned obviously are Venus and
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: Serena Williams, and then the Polgar sisters who were Judet,
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: Susan and Sophia.
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: They were chess prodigies, right, And you were thinking about
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: Pope and Company as a sitcom. Well, I was studying this.
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: I noticed Felix and Fanny would make a good children's
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: book series, right. Oh yeah, Like I just imagine them
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: as little kids, and in between piano lessons they go
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: off and solve mysteries together. Felix and Fanny series. And
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: so anytime I think of children's books, I think of
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: our literary agent, our former agent, Stephen Barr.
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: Oh. Yeah, So I looked him up to.
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: Say hi, and I was looking I was looking him
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: up on the internet. He has his own children's book
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: that he wrote and published. It's called The Upside Down Hat.
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: And so I emailed him and congratulated him. I was
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: very excited to see that. Yeah, he's got some more
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: coming too.
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: Stephen was the best, and I knew he had a
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: kid since we had worked with him. So that's that's
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: super cool. I love that.
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he's got two now. He says, two.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: Kids are two children's books.
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: Two kids three children's books, including the two that are
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: coming out soon.
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: Well, I guess he needs to get a third kid, Yeah.
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: Write one for Yeah. It's called the Upside Down Hat
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: and it's pretty cute looking.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: Oh that's wonderful. So I guess let's take a break. Well,
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: I guess the last thing we should say is, you know,
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: I mentioned sort of the perfect storm of things to
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: make a prodigy, and that definitely seems to be the consensus.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: Like there's some genetics at play, but the cognitive, developmental
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: and environmental factors are all kind of coming together at
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: the same time to lead to that what Ellen Winter
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: calls a rage to master, which we're going to talk
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: about out of the break, that seems to be the recipe, right.
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: It makes me wonder, like how many things have we
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: just not understood that we could have already. Have we
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: not constantly been trying to boil everything down to one
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: thing like this is one cause for all this other stuff,
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: like is it nature? Is it nurture? No, it's both,
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: And I'm glad to see that prodigy researchers have accepted
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: that fact.
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: Greed.
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: Okay, well, let's take that break then.
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: All right, we'll be right back. All right. So I
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: mentioned the phrase rage to master, and that was something
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: I believe Ellen winner came up with and that's kind
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: of exactly what it sounds like, which is something that
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: they found with prodigies. At these these little kids come
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: out of the womb, they get to be like two
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: maybe three years old, and all of a sudden, out
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: of nowhere, they exhibit a gift. And that's the only
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: thing they want to do. And this is not some
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: kid who's like, hey, they turned out to be pretty
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: good at this, and they played a lot of piano,
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: like we're talking about prodigies. Like, they become obsessed with
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: they have a rage to master this thing.
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's just basically like they ignore everything else,
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: even stuff that little kids would want to do, like
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: fun playing stuff, yeah, going to.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: The movies or whatever, making friends.
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: All they want to do. Yeah, All they want to
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: do is that one thing over and over and over
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: again and master it. And so there's a researcher named
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: Larry Vanderbert who who believes that it has to do
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: with the connection between the cerebellum and the cerebral cortex.
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: And the reason he focus isn't on the cerebellum is
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: because apparently that is where we learn things, we become
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: experts in things, we learn to practice things, and the
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: cerebellum has a bunch of connections to the cerebral cortex.
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: Cerebral cortex is in charge of our higher functioning. So
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: with those two combined together, working together, us doing things
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: repetitively is how we learn to get better and better
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: at it. Right, His whole thing is that with a prodigy,
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: what we're seeing is the evolution of humanity at its
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: brightest point, Like these are examples of what could conceivably
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: be every single person if that perfect storm you're talking
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: about came together, and it's just like the most finely
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: tuned functioning example of what our have evolved to be
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: able to do. That's what he says prodigies are.
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's pretty interesting. He theorizes that the cerebellum creates
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: some kind of feedback loop is what he calls it,
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: where you have, you know, some kind of selective affinity
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: or a talent or an interest in something and getting
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: better at that. I mean, it's got to be like
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: a dopamine reward or something like that. It hits those
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: reward centers and there's some sort of psychological gold star
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: that you give yourself and that feels so good that
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: this that the kid with a prodigious brain is constantly
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: seeking that reward and it creates what he calls a
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: maximal grip, Like this grip has just got hold of
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: this kid because they're always seeking that that mental gold
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: star of getting better and better and better at that
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: one thing.
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah right, so it's almost like they're there. They have
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: no chill, right, they it's like their brains get stuck
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: in a natural progression or natural part of developing as
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: a human being from childhood to adulthood, and they just
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: go off like a rock on that one tangent.
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah that was not me.
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: No, it wasn't me either.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: I can do a lot of things pretty good.
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, a dileton.
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's always been my thing. Like with sports,
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: I was never like built the way that you needed
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: to be built to play like varsity sports. But I
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: could throw a football and catch a football and pun
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: of football, and I could play little tennis. I can
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: play a little golf. I can you know, I played
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: you know, a little baseball, little softball, little soccer and
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: kick a soccer ball. I can throw frisbee, like you know,
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: I'm well rounded athletically, But I was never gonna be
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: on a like a a high school team, right, I gotcha.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: I was okay in church league.
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: Everybody went.
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: But I wouldn't embarrass myself in anything. You know.
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: I excelled as a child in hiding my knockoff Flintstone
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: vitamins in my Lincoln log houses because they were so
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: disgusting I couldn't eat them. I can actually almost make
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: myself nauseated thinking about him. Now.
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: Really, Betty was not a vitamin.
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: I don't remember that. Was she not? She was missing?
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: I don't think so, because I there was a local
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: band in Atlanta called Betty's Not a Vitamin? Okay, because
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: of that factod.
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: Well, had she been in the flintstone knockoff vitamins, I had,
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: she would have looked all misshaped and her name would
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: have been like Teddy or something like that with two
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: with three t's.
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: I love it.
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: There's one other thing about Larry Vanderwert's hypothesis about the cerebellum,
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: because he said, you know, this is a weird like
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: example of human natural human development. He pointed out that
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: part of what being a prodigy is excelling at something cultural, right,
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: like everything that prodigy kids do. They're not inventing anything,
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: they're just getting good at something that already exists.
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So part of his theory hypothesis is that you
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: couldn't have a prodigy by definition before the event of culture.
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: So he theorizes that probably about ten thousand years ago
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: is when the first prodigies started to pop up.
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: Oh interesting, I thought it took son her daughter.
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah maybe great great great great great great great great
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: grandson or daughter. Okay, yeah, good point, that's my posit I.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: Never remember when tuk took lived, so you know, me,
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: I get a little confused.
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: He's all over the place.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: So another really interesting biological piece to this is memory
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: and working memory is something that they found. I think
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: there was a paper in twenty twelve by researchers Irbach
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: and Rutsots. They gathered cognitive data from eight child prodigies
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: and they looked at a couple of things. They looked
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: at their developmental history. They looked at scores on the
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: Stanford Benet fifth Edition Intelligence test and the autismctrum quotient,
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: and they found, you know, there were different range of IQs,
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: but even the ones had high IQs weren't on the
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: extreme end. Of like you know, super genius or anything.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: But what they did find was that every single one
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: of them were then the ninety ninth percentile for working memory.
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: I saw some also scored in the ninety nine point
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: ninth percentile, so.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: Like there's something there.
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: I was reading I think a Scientific American article on this,
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: and they said that if you just randomly selected eight
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: people and gave them this test, like there's a zero
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: chance that they would all score in the ninety ninth percentile.
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: So yeah, it is quite a finding. But I think
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: also like a really important finding too, is that their
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: IQs aren't particularly eye popping. Yeah, but you know some
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: of them were I think past one forty, and that's
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: the one fortis the minimum for genius. One thirty, I
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: think is where being gifted starts. At least one of
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: them had an IQ of a hund that is exactly
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: average IQ. So IQ or intelligence, or at least the
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: way that we understand measuring intelligence with IQ. See, it
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: doesn't seem to have that much to do with being
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: a prodigy. Has some because again one hundred I think
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: was the minimum, and they went up to genius level
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: and passed, But it doesn't have nearly as much as
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: you would think.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. But working memory, like that's really interesting
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: to me because that's the last like, that's your active
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: working memory, the last few things that have happened, calling
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: those up really easily. So if you're talking you know
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: about obviously with you know, musicianship and chess and math
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: and things like that, like being able to really quickly
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: recall the last few notes you played, or the last
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: few parts of this logarithm, that's that's gonna have a
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: big impact obviously.
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: For sure. There's a good example that I found of that,
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: John von Newman, who would go on to become a
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: great mathematician, physicist, pioneering commuter computer science. He as a
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: child prodigy, would entertain his parents' friends at their parties
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: by they give him a phone book and he would
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: read over one of the pages and then hand the
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: phone book back, and they'd ask him questions like what's
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: you know. They'd pick a name and say what's their
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: phone number and address, and he'd tell them and then
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: they'd say, well, recite this whole page, and he would
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: recite it verbatim just after looking at it for a
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: little while, which is an amazing example of working memory.
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: But that's also I mean, he was a phone book prodigy,
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: pure and simple.
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: As you know. I recently had lunch with a friend
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: of the show and pal Kevin Pollack, the actor, yes
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: and comedian, and sadly you were out of town so
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: you couldn't go. But Pollack's first his first act was
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: not doing it because he's a great impressionist, as we
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: all know, not doing impressions of comedy albums. Like a
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: lot of kids, the first thing they do is like
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: just repeat the bits from comedy record or specials, right.
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: He would he would mouth them in perfect synchronicity.
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: Oh wow.
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: So he would do air air comedy and he would
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: do like the throat clears and everything, and he did it,
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: you know as like I don't know how young he was.
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: He said he was like six or seven to where
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: like one of his mom's neighbors or one of his
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: neighbors or one of his mom's friends was like, you're
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: doing this at the you know, the shine bombs, bar
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: mitsv it next week, like I'm booking you. And he
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: was like for the first six years or so of
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: his life, like he did at school, like my act
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: was completely just mouthing these comedy bits.
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: That's pretty awesome. Yeah, it's fun. It's impressive. He was
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: a Richard Pryor comedy album prodigy.
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: Well, I mean he made a good point which was
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: he was like, the material killed because the material was great,
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: because it was like the best comics. And he went
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: and then I got it down so good that part killed,
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: and he was like I couldn't fail.
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: Basically, that's pretty great man.
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, fun story.
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, So one other thing about working memory, Chuck,
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: before we move on. One of the things that that
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: helps with is learning things like chess or math, or
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: things that have steps to them. You're keeping the information
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: you need to complete this step so you can move
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: on to the next and you're probably also thinking about
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: what the next step is too simultaneously. Working memory really
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: comes in handy for that. So it makes sense that
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: they have just amazing working memory levels.
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And the connection to autism is really interesting too
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: because in that paper, you know, and from twenty twelve,
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: I mentioned that they looked at cognitive data for several things,
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: one of which was the autism spectrum quotient, and they
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: found it. You know, they found a pretty undeniable connection.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: They found that subjects who were prodigies had definitely had
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: more autistic relatives than the general population does, and very
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: high scores and the attention to detail part of the
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: autism spectrum quotient. So you know, attention to detail is
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: something obviously if you have a gift for you might
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: wind up a prodigy.
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but they didn't score high or beyond the general
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: population and the other parts of the autism spectrum quotient. Yeah,
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: so they don't have autism. I think that's because there's
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: a separate group where if you have like severe autism
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: or some other cognitive difference, you are a savant. You're
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: not a prodigy. You're a savant, even though the stuff
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: you're doing is prodigious. It's yeah, you're you're considered separate
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: for some reason. I don't know why, but that seems
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: to still be the case.
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's interesting. Those same two researchers, Ruth Zots and
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: was it Ulbach Ulrock Urbabach, Urbach Jerry Orbach Jerry Orboch,
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: they did it. They authored a second paper, and this
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: is from twenty fourteen, where they studied eighteen prodigies this
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: time and they were masters. These eighteen and either math, music,
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: or art, and some of the patterns they found were
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: pretty interesting. They all had that same great working memory,
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: so that was sort of proved out a little further even,
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: but the music and math prodigy scored a lot higher
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: on working memory than even the art prodigies, and this
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: was super interesting to me. The math prodigies displayed the
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: highest levels of overall intelligence and extraordinary visual spatial skills,
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: where as the art prodigies had the lowest visual spatial scores. Yeah,
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: which is weird, Yeah, counterintuitive.
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: Should we take a break or keep going? Yeah, let's
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: take a break. Okay, We're going to take a break.
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: Everybody here, we go. Okay, Chuck. So we've talked a
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: couple of times about how prodigy experts agree that it
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: does seem to be a combination of nature and nurture.
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: I think perfect storm is a term that people use
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: a lot. So the parents of a prodigy definitely do
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: have a role in their development as a prodigy, and
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: there have been parents of prodigies who have really kind
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: of claimed that they're essentially responsible for their child's prodigy.
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: There was a I think William James Sittis's dad, Remember
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: we did a whole episode on that poor guy. Oh yeah, deal,
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: he was one of the most amazing child prodigies of
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: all time, just beyond gifted, just dusted other prodigies like
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: made them look like just lumps of unmolded clay, done
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: by an artist prodigy with terrible visual spatial skills. Essentially,
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: I love it. But he's but he was worth his
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: whole his own episode. It was a good episode. But
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: his dad, Boris was taught him from a very early age,
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: essentially from basically when he was born, and he essentially
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: claimed responsibility. There's another very famous prodigy whose name was
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: Winnifred Sackville Stoner junior, and her mom was Winnifred Sackville
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: Stoner senior, and her mom claimed responsibility for her child's prodigy.
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: We'll talk a little bit more about them, but parents
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: do play a huge role, even when even if it's
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: not quite as far as some of them boast.
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, you know, if you're going to be
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: a prodigy at golf or tennis or you know, piano
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: or something like that, it requires you know, those those
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: things aren't cheap. I mean, certainly there are stories of
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: people who from a family that maybe you know, didn't
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: have the kind of resources that other families might have
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: that you know, find a local municipal golf course where
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: they can go and play super cheap. But those are
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: like those are kind of rich kid sports pianos cost
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: a lot of money. So a lot of times with
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: these if you look at the parents in the family situation,
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: they are very involved parents who have resources to make
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: it happen, not only with equipment, but dedicating the time
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: and hiring a lot of times at very expensive hourly rates,
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: like masters in that thing to help teach that kid.
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, so yeah, you can boil it down to
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: a handful of factors that parents play a large role in. First,
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: you have to start that with the kid has a
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: natural ability, right, you don't teach that that has to
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: exist already.
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: Then that the kid has to have access to those teachers.
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: And like you said, these aren't Joe Schmoe teachers like
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: teaching out of their house on the side for a
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: little extra cash. These are like the best of the
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: best teacher experts in this field. That's who the parents
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: need to have the resources to pay, and those teachers
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: have to come in at just the right moment. I
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: don't think it's necessarily down to the minute, but they
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: have to come pretty early in the kid's development so
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: that the kid doesn't get bored because they've gone as
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: far as they can go, or because they don't necessarily
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: understand what would even be next.
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, or you know, you might get lucky and have
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: that within your own family, like I I mean, I
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: think Wolfgang van Halen. I don't know what age he
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: achieved his level of talent, but you know he had
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: a built in situation with his father and was the
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: touring bassist and backup singer with Van Halen when he
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: was like sixteen years old, and can play everything, like
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: I mean, he's not just a guitar guy, but he
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: plays on his records with his band Mammoth. He plays
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: it all. He plays the drums, he plays the keyboards,
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: he plays the bass, he plays the guitar, he does
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: all the singing. He's like, you know, he's a prodigy,
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: and he had a built in teacher as a you know,
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: one of the greatest guitar players of all time.
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: I thought you were joking. I didn't realize that Eddie
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: van Halen's son is named Wolfgang. I thought you were
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: making a joke about Mozart.
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: We no, I mean that is kind of funny.
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: Well, Mozart's father is he was a music teacher as well.
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: And his name was Eddie Vnhalen.
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: Sorry. Yeah, so yeah, if you have a like you said,
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: a built in family member already that knows what they're
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: doing and can teach you at least early on, that
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: helps a lot. I think also Picasso, his father was
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: an art instructor, but oh I didn't know that. Yeah,
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: Picasso just excelled way beyond his father, very very early on.
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: I think his father also kind of took that a
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: little personally. Seems like the type.
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, there are some exceptions here, Like
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: with everything, it's not like every single prodigy has had
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: the means and the resources and the parents that threw
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: everything at them to try and help them. And one
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: notable exception Julia found was Blaize Pascal, the French math prodigy.
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: He was born in sixteen twenty three and at the
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: beginning of his schooling, his dad very famous appetition. At
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: the end, Pascal said, I want my kid to learn
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: more than math, and math is so interesting. If he
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: gets a hold of these math books. He's going to
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: ignore everything else because math is so incredible, and so
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: he hid all the math books in his house. But
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: young Pascal got an outdated math book somehow that was
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: in English, even though he only spoke French. And he
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: was so smart in such a prodigy, he translated that
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: and reinvented parts of that of like geometry in that
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: book that weren't in the book.
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: Right. Yeah, he also came up with probability theory later on.
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: Like he was definitely a math prodigy, and so he
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: overcame an absence of material. There's also some good examples
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: of prodigies who overcame a like an absence of resources, right, So,
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: like they came from very poor families, like Stevie Wonder
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: is a very good example of that, self taught musician
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: on all sorts different instruments, and his parents did not
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: have their resources to buy them all these things. There
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: was another guy from the turn of the last century
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: named Srinivasa Ramanujohn and he was very poor in India,
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: came from a very poor family, and he, like Blaize Pascal,
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: got his hands on an outdated math book and just
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: taught himself math and became he ended up studying at Cambridge.
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. I mean, there are definitely those examples,
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: but they're they're also on the other side, like plenty
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: of examples of you know, the the nurture thing going
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: in a bad direction. Yeah, where the parents have and
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: I know we Julie didn't cover this, but in our
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: book we covered. Do you remember who wrote that chapter, by.
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: The way, I think it was yours.
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: I think it was too so long ago. I don't remember,
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: I know you mean, but I think it might have
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: been mine because I remember very much wanting to include
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: and did include in the book the story of Time Marinovich,
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: who was a prodigious quarterback, and another you know example
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: at Jennifer Capriotti, the tennis prodigy. Like they were kids
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: who were both excelling to the point where they were
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: young teenagers and sports illustrated being written about, and they
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: were pushed by these overbearing fathers in their case, and
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: they both burned out and washed out and ended up,
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: you know, having problems with drugs and problems with the
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: law and stuff like that. So there are some pretty
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: sad cases there where parents take what could potentially be
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: a good thing and just ruin it because their parents.
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: You know, I was reading today about Venus and Serena
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: Williams and their tennis prodigy status. I guess, but yeah, Richard,
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: their father, Richard Williams, he had Venus turned pro at
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: age fourteen because the USTA was about to release the
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: Kapriati rule, which was like U king urn pro after
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: a certain age because Jack Dicapriotti was such a cautionary tale.
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: So before the rule could be passed, Richard was like,
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: you're turning pro now. And her debut she beat number
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: sixty six and almost beat number the top seeded player
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: at her first professional tournament age fourteen. Yeah.
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: Boy, those William's sisters were fun, or still are fun
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: to watch. I didn't see that movie, did you, King Richard?
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: No, I didn't. Okay, moving on, Yeah, we have nothing
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: to say about it then, apparently.
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: Well, speaking of moving on, we're to the point where
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: we talk about when you're not a prodigy anymore, because
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: you mentioned early on you know, once you have mastered
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: this thing, that's it, and a lot of times that
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: is it. Some you know, there are different stories. Some
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: some flame out and go down a bad road. Some
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: go on to have you know, great careers doing their thing,
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: like you mentioned Mozart obviously, but some going to have
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: great careers and it's not like a super famous situation
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: like Mozart, but they do great for themselves. But you know,
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: it's like being a child movie star, Like once you
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: reach a certain age, that sort of appeal might be
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: over the adorableness of the kid that can play the
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: piano at ten years old, right, and you're just an
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: adult who can play the piano really well, and all
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: of a sudden, you're not special anymore, and that can
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: lead to a big fall.
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it can because you're essentially, especially at the
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: early on in the twentieth century when the papers would
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: track you down and ask your opinion as a child prodigy,
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: you were a child star essentially, and that is not
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: something that society has figured out how to handle properly.
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: We don't know what to do with child stars, so
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: instead we just chew them up and spit them out
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: and say good luck, we don't need you any longer.
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: That same effect in general can happen to child prodigies,
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: and one really good example is Bobby Fisher. He's He's, He's.
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: The cautionary tale for child prodigies and how bad things
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: can get after you're not a prodigy anymore.
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, he was the chess prodigy. I've recommended
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: it before, but the great, great film Searching for Bobby
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: Fischer is so so good, highly recommended. But he was
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: born in Chicago in the forties, was playing competitive chess
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: by the age of eight and when the US opened
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: at fourteen, and became the youngest international grand master at
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: fifteen years old in nineteen fifty eight. Fifteen years old
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: in six months. But when his career fell, he fell
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: hard and spent a couple of decades roaming around southern
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: California destitute. He spent nine months in a Japanese prison,
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: and is kind of known, you know, for the last
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: couple of decades of his life as being a pretty
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: hateful anti Semite.
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, he he. I don't know if he had
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: a blog or something like that, but after nine to
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: eleven he publicly celebrated it on his blog, like he yeah,
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: he really just took some seriously weird turns, and yeah
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: he was. He's just a great example of how bad
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: things can get after society's done with you and you're
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: not useful anymore not adorable or noteworthy. I think also
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: he clearly had some mental health issues that were yeah,
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: probably going to emerge either way.
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, being a.
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: Child prodigy and it's such a weird way to grow
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: up that could not have helped at all.
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, there are other cases of kids,
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: and here's a piece of advice. You can do what
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: you want if you've got a really pretty genius kid,
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: but don't send your kid to college at like twelve
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: years old. Now, I just I don't see that ever
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: leading to good things. I think you should try and
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: normalize a child's childhood as much as possible, even if
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: they're you know, unchallenged in school. There are other ways
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: that you can foster that, I think, besides saying you're
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: going to Harvard at eleven and you're going to be
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: in the newspapers for that. The case of Elizabeth Benson,
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: she was a two hundred and fourteen plus IQ kid
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: who went to college at twelve and graduated and disappeared.
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: And later on that was one of those like where
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: are they now? Articles? And this is no shade at
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: somebody who's a cashier. It's a fine job, and we
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: need cashiers. But the article very much was like this
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: former child prodigy is now just a cashier, and that
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: was sort of how it was framed.
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but despite that, she kept like batting away that
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: that kind of sentiment and just talking about how happy
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: she was. She's she was married. She was very happy
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: with her very normal life with her very normal husband.
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: And this is a person like a two hundred and fourteen,
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: it has a plus next to it, which might as
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: well be an asterisk. She scored perfectly on an IQ test.
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: And the reason that plus is there is because they
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: imagined she could have kept going, but they ran out
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: of questions.
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: Y got a question.
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so she and she even considered herself in the
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: art article. She said, you know, based on the stories
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: of some of my peers, like I actually got off
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: pretty well, Like I'm happy with life as an adult, right, Yeah,
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: but yeah, she's an example of one that went pretty well.
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: But the best that you could do if you don't
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: eventually turn into an adult who starts contributing greatly to
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: your fields of interest, like Mozart, like John von Newman,
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: like Pablo Picasso, the best you can hope for is
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: to lead a normal life as an adult.
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: You know, I keep thinking you're gonna say John bon
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: Job every time.
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: I keep wanting to call him Johann too, and it's
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: not oh interesting.
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you mentioned Winnifred Sackville Stoner Junior or early on.
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: She was a language prodigy in the early twentieth century,
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: probably most famous for in fourteen hundred ninety two Columbus
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: Aaled the Ocean Blue was written by Winnifred Sackville Stoner Junior.
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: But her mom was one of those parents that really
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: really pushed her a parent mm hm, and gained a
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: lot of fame. Like the mother did, she wrote books
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: about it. Was sort of like Royal Tanninbaum's when Ethelene Tannenbaum,
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: you know, talked about her prodigious family of children. And
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: I think we mentioned the tann and bombs in the book,
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: of course, because I wrote the chapter. Yeah, that's one
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: of my favorite movies. But the mom gained a lot
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: of attention and was on the like the lecture circuit
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: and stuff like that, and the daughter was like, you know,
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: take my advice, dear mothers, spare your children from so
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: called fame which easily turns to shame, and be happy
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: if you have a happy, healthy, contented boy or girl,
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: Amen to that.
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's great advice, great advice. So if you have
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: a child prodigy on your hands, trade carefully, console experts,
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: maybe get in touch with Ellen Winner. I'm sure she'd
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: be very happy to speak with you and tell you
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: what not to do. So there you go. That's our
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: annual dose of advice for the parents of child prodigies.
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I also want to say, I bet it's
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: not the easiest thing though, to be fair to parents,
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: you know, it's it puts them in a tough position
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: if your kid is obsessed with this one thing and
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: clearly super gifted, because you don't want to squash that.
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: So it's a it's a tight rope you're walking there,
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: so you know, I get it.
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, it's not a position I would
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: necessarily want to be in. But heck no, you've got
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: some really great fodder for your your annual Christmas letter
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: that you send out with your Christmas card.
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure.
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: You want to make your your sister in Boise feel jealous.
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: You talk about you talk about your child prodigy and
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: what they're doing.
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I've only known one person in my life that
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: does that, and that is an Emily's family. Her aunt
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: Peg sends out the annual Christmas sort of family catch
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: up thing, and I've always just been delighted to read
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: it and thought it was super cool and wondered why
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: no one in my lousy family ever cared enough to
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: do anything.
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: That's a very so high o thing to do.
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: Oh is it okay?
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah? For sure, I get it. Before we go on
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: to listener mail, Chuck, I just want to point out
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: a couple of at least one good band and album
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: named Rage Semaster.
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: Oh, very nice.
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: And then I think you could make a pretty good
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: bon Jovi tribute band with Johann bon Jovi, right.
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: Or John bon JOHI yeah, there you go.
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: John von Newman, by the way, we can get that
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: except for stuff you should know listen, Yeah, that's true.
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: What were you going to say, because I want to
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: hear what out?
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: You know what I was going to say?
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: Do you say it?
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: Bada bing bada boom Banjovi?
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: And there Chuck has unlocked listed her mail.
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: This is a correction of sorts, and this is something
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: I didn't know. I'm glad to know when we did
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: our USAID episode we were talking about condoms for Gaza.
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: This is from Bernie. He said, I think you guys
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: did a great job. Just wanted to clarify something. Fifty
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: million dollars for condoms was not for Gaza as in
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: Gaza next to Israel. It was for Gaza Province and Mozambique.
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: Elon Musk even correct this in one of his weird
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: Oval Office press conferences, but as you said, the SoundBite
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: had already gone out and people did not want to
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: hear any retraction to what they now believe. So glad
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: you guys covered this topic is so important globally. Someone
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: who's been in this line of work for my entire
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: adult life, this episode really hit home to me. Keep
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: up the great work, all the best, Bernie F. Chavis.
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: Thanks a lot, Bernie. That was very gentle correction and
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: we appreciate those rather than I can't believe you guys
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: screwed this up this badly, which we get once in
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: a while, but for the most part we hear gentle
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: corrections like Bernie, So hats off to you and thanks
• 45:35
  Speaker 2: for setting us straight. Bernie. If you want to be
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: like Bernie and send us an email, you can. You
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: can send it off to stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.