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Is Anyone a Genius?

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Manage episode 493282804 series 2938331
Content provided by The Free Press. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by The Free Press or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://podcastplayer.com/legal.

Love him or hate him, many consider Elon Musk to be a modern-day genius. He co-founded PayPal, which transformed how people purchase things. He became the CEO of Tesla, which revolutionized electric vehicles—and made it cool to drive them. He founded SpaceX, accomplishing what only superpower nation-states have previously. And he is working to make our species interplanetary—maybe in a few years, we’ll be doing this podcast on Mars.

To many, these acts make Elon Musk a genius, perhaps the most important genius in history.

But it’s worth asking: What exactly makes him a genius? Is it a particular set of qualities, or is Elon Musk just particularly adept at playing the role of genius? Or at least what we’ve come to expect of geniuses? Is his offensive behavior excused by his genius, or the result of it? And why do human beings value genius, even to the point of deifying it?

All of these questions are raised in Helen Lewis’s new book, The Genius Myth. And not just with regard to Musk, but to so many of the figures our culture venerates as geniuses: Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, William Shakespeare, Isaac Newton, Pablo Picasso, Albert Einstein, and Steve Jobs. Lewis asks: Were these people actually geniuses? Or was their genius based on a myth? And more importantly, how does our perception of “genius” confuse and distort our understanding of success—and how we value, or don’t value, other human beings?

Today on Honestly, Bari asks Helen Lewis if some people belong to a special and superior class, what it means to be a genius, and if she believes in geniuses at all.

Go to groundnews.com/Honestly to get 40% off the unlimited access Vantage plan and unlock world-wide perspectives on today’s biggest news stories.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  continue reading

326 episodes

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Is Anyone a Genius?

Honestly with Bari Weiss

1,230 subscribers

published

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Manage episode 493282804 series 2938331
Content provided by The Free Press. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by The Free Press or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://podcastplayer.com/legal.

Love him or hate him, many consider Elon Musk to be a modern-day genius. He co-founded PayPal, which transformed how people purchase things. He became the CEO of Tesla, which revolutionized electric vehicles—and made it cool to drive them. He founded SpaceX, accomplishing what only superpower nation-states have previously. And he is working to make our species interplanetary—maybe in a few years, we’ll be doing this podcast on Mars.

To many, these acts make Elon Musk a genius, perhaps the most important genius in history.

But it’s worth asking: What exactly makes him a genius? Is it a particular set of qualities, or is Elon Musk just particularly adept at playing the role of genius? Or at least what we’ve come to expect of geniuses? Is his offensive behavior excused by his genius, or the result of it? And why do human beings value genius, even to the point of deifying it?

All of these questions are raised in Helen Lewis’s new book, The Genius Myth. And not just with regard to Musk, but to so many of the figures our culture venerates as geniuses: Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, William Shakespeare, Isaac Newton, Pablo Picasso, Albert Einstein, and Steve Jobs. Lewis asks: Were these people actually geniuses? Or was their genius based on a myth? And more importantly, how does our perception of “genius” confuse and distort our understanding of success—and how we value, or don’t value, other human beings?

Today on Honestly, Bari asks Helen Lewis if some people belong to a special and superior class, what it means to be a genius, and if she believes in geniuses at all.

Go to groundnews.com/Honestly to get 40% off the unlimited access Vantage plan and unlock world-wide perspectives on today’s biggest news stories.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  continue reading

326 episodes

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