Child Prodigies: Better to Burn Out Than Fade Away

Child prodigies are unique in that they achieve adult levels of achievement, but do not typically excel in adulthood. Why? Who knows. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 1:07Speaker 00

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 1:17Josh Clark?

  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 here on Stuff You Should Know.

• 1:28Speaker 02

  You know, judging from what just happened, I think if we released a little five-minute mini-episode every week of the five minutes before we're recording, but before we start the stuff that we're doing, I bet people would eat that up.

• 1:42Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 1:43Speaker 02

  Rated R.

• 1:46Josh Clark?

  So, yeah, I'm sure some people would like that. The Stuff You Should Know Army definitely would.

• 1:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. Everyone else would be like, who cares what these guys are talking about off mic.

• 1:56Josh Clark?

  Exactly. I tune in for facts, and that's it.

• 2:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:02Josh Clark?

  You know who else would probably eat it up, Chuck?

• 2:05Speaker 02

  Hmm, I'm thinking about names in this.

• 2:09Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 2:10Josh Clark?

  Well, I was just gonna start with Mozart.

• 2:12Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 2:13Josh Clark?

  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, I really loved that kind of thing. He was really into hearing people talk candidly to one another. It was one of his things.

• 2:24Speaker 02

  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.

• 2:36Josh Clark?

  No, we've done it before, and I can't place it.

• 2:39Speaker 02

  Really?

• 2:39Josh Clark?

  But we definitely, there was one other one that we definitely did, yeah.

• 2:43Speaker 02

  Mr. Potato Head?

• 2:44Josh Clark?

  No, no, I'll try to think of it, and I'll allocate about 5% of my brain to coming up with it while we do the episode, okay?

• 2:53Speaker 02

  Uh, 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 gonna be so different that one of them is gonna be sort of wrong. But, long way of saying why we talked about Mozart is because if you read anything 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, right?

• 3:25Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I actually went and listened to this, Misereer. Yeah, Misereer. It's a choral piece for like, I think, nine choral parts. And it was written by Gregorio Allegieri back in, I don't remember when he wrote it, but at least before 1770. Because that was the year that a young Amadeus Mozart, who was 14 at the time, went to 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.

• 3:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:59Josh Clark?

  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 in Vatican City, they thought it was that beautiful. And it's, if you heard it, you'd probably recognize it. Your mom probably listened to it while she was cleaning the house, or you heard it on like,

• 4:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:20Josh Clark?

  America's Top 40 in the 70s or something.

• 4:23Speaker 02

  Uh, I've just, I've been distracted ever since you said the Pope and his buddies, because now I can think of a sitcom called Pope and Company.

• 4:31Josh Clark?

  That's not bad.

• 4:32Speaker 02

  And per sans C-O dot, obviously.

• 4:34Josh Clark?

  Right, and the Pope has his, like, favorite recliner. That's almost like an extra character.

• 4:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, don't sit in it if you're not.

• 4:41Josh Clark?

  That's right.

• 4:42Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, so anyway, a very revered thing within Vatican City. And did you mention that no one could transcribe it?

• 4:47Josh Clark?

  I certainly did while you were.

• 4:49Speaker 02

  I was spaced out. Yeah, I was really thinking about like what the opening credits of that sitcom would look like.

• 4:55Josh Clark?

  Do you have the theme song in your head?

• 4:57Speaker 02

  Oh, it's clicking around up there. I'm not, I'm no prodigy, so it'll take a minute.

• 5:02Josh Clark?

  All right.

• 5:03Speaker 02

  But you mentioned the transcription because Mozart, as a precocious 14-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 14-year-old, went back, 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 hid it in his hat because, you know, he wasn't allowed to have this transcribed. But just kind of a fun story of Mozart's precociousness.

• 5:36Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and so he was at, he was age 14. So technically, by this time, he was a former prodigy.

• 5:43Speaker 02

  Oh, was that the cutoff?

• 5:45Josh Clark?

  No, 10 is the cutoff. You have to have achieved this by 10 to be considered a prodigy. But the reason I said generally is because if you go by the strictest definition of prodigy, there are, there are only a handful of the ones we talk about in this episode, or we'll talk about, actually qualify as prodigies. And technically Mozart, 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.

• 6:21Speaker 02

  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, is the better way to say it, but.

• 6:33Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and I think Mozart would be an example of that.

• 6:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. But genius usually is a high IQ or a high IQ score of 140. 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.

• 6:51Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 6:51Speaker 02

  A prodigy doesn't necessarily have a high IQ. They often do, but, oh yeah, there it is right there, generally by the age of 10. But what a prodigy is, is a kid. That achieves like, like surpasses adult lever, uh, levels of mastery. By the time they're 10, like stuff that, you know, a lot of adults can't even achieve in expertise. Or, you know, like I can do this math or this chess or this play this, you know, instrument. Better than an adult who's been doing it for decades before the age of 10.

• 7:22Josh Clark?

  Yeah, they reach like the elite level where you can't really get any better as far as adults go by the age of 10. And then one of the other things about being a prodigy then is that by definition you have achieved something.

• 7:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:36Josh Clark?

  Whereas like you said, but the being a genius, you're, you're a genius throughout your whole life, but you may or may not achieve something.

• 7:41Speaker 02

  Right.

• 7:42Josh Clark?

  To be considered a prodigy, you have to have achieved something. It's just part and parcel with it.

• 7:46Speaker 02

  Yeah. And prodigies were, um, all the rage sort of in the, uh, beginning of the 20th 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 awe of these, these kids who could do these amazing things. They were all over the place.

• 8:07Josh Clark?

  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, that'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 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, they're experts in, 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.

• 8:52Josh Clark?

  So it's largely speculation, but it seems like we're starting to get on, 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 is in particular is that they. Usually excel in just one field of knowledge, a domain. And then in that specific field of knowledge, they excel in one kind of subsection 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?

• 9:36Josh Clark?

  You're a prodigy in just one. Yeah.

• 9:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:39Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So that's another, another frequent thing too. You just get really, really, really good at one specific thing. That's a characteristic of prodigies.

• 9:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, and they're, 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. If you're talking about like psychological intelligence type, linguistic, mathematical, logical, spatial, visual, musical, kinesthetic, yeah, interpersonal, intrapersonal and naturalistic. And, you know, it's a rare that a prodigy excels in more than one of these.

• 10:29Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and the, that's multiple intelligences theory that Gardner, I can't remember Gardner's first name, put out in the early 90s. 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's, that makes up your intelligence, not just a big general encyclopedia version of it.

• 10:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:57Josh Clark?

  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 those. Again, you know, you're probably not a linguistic prodigy and an intrapersonal prodigy where you are really good at examining yourself.

• 11:16Speaker 02

  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, 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 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.

• 11:45Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 11:45Speaker 02

  That knows a lot about this stuff, but she, she believes in both nature and nurture, but she very much is like, there's gotta be a genetic component. She has a quote, "If a child suddenly at age three goes to the piano and picks out a tune and does it beautifully, 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, the videos of Tiger Woods when he's like two years old with a pretty perfect golf swing. Like, it's, it's something that someone is born with.

• 12:18Josh Clark?

  Right. There's also, Julia found a quote from an editor of Vanity Fair who mentioned Elizabeth Benson, who we'll talk about a little bit more. But he agreed that it was probably biology, but he ascribed it to a perfect functioning of her endocrine glands.

• 12:38Speaker 02

  Oh, interesting.

• 12:38Josh Clark?

  He figured it was glandular is what was behind being a prodigy. But the point is, it was biology. And this is 1913, by the way, so.

• 12:48Speaker 02

  Like, right now?

• 12:50Josh Clark?

  Right now, it's, no, it's not 1913, it's 1983.

• 12:54Speaker 02

  Oh, thank God. I've got my sun breeches and my OP tank top.

• 12:58Josh Clark?

  I know, you look kind of out of place, man.

• 13:01Speaker 02

  So, the other thing about genetics is you can see it in, like, you know, there can be siblings that are prodigies, like, together, I guess, co-prodigies.

• 13:10Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 13:10Speaker 02

  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 and pianists or violinists or what have you. 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. And then others that you often see mentioned, obviously, are Venus and Serena Williams. And then the Polger sisters, who were Judith, Susan, and Sophia, they were chess prodigies.

• 13:48Josh Clark?

  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?

• 14:00Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 14:00Josh Clark?

  Like, I just imagined them as little kids, and in between piano lessons, they go off and solve mysteries together. Felix and Fanny series. And so anytime I think of children's books, I think of our literary agent, our former agent, Stephen Barr.

• 14:15Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 14:15Josh Clark?

  So I looked him up to say hi, and 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, and he's got two more coming, too.

• 14:31Speaker 02

  Stephen was the best, and I knew he had a kid since we had worked with him, so that's super cool. I love that.

• 14:37Josh Clark?

  Yeah, he's got two now, he says.

• 14:39Speaker 02

  Two kids or two children's books?

• 14:41Josh Clark?

  Two kids, three children's books, including the two that are coming out soon.

• 14:46Speaker 02

  Well, I guess he needs to get a third kid.

• 14:48Josh Clark?

  Right, one for each. Yeah, it's called The Upside Down Hat, and it's pretty cute looking.

• 14:53Speaker 02

  Oh, that's wonderful.

• 14:56Speaker 02

  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.

• 15:08Josh Clark?

  Great.

• 15:09Speaker 02

  But the cognitive, developmental, and environmental factors are all kind of coming together at 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.

• 15:22Josh Clark?

  Right. 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.

• 15:42Speaker 02

  Agreed.

• 15:44Josh Clark?

  Okay, well, let's take that break, then.

• 15:45Speaker 02

  All right, we'll be right back.

• 16:03Josh Clark?

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• 19:27Speaker 02

  All right, so I mentioned the phrase rage to master, and that was something I believe Ellen Winter 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 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.

• 20:02Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and it's just basically like they, they ignore everything else, even stuff that, that little kids would want to do, like fun playing stuff, or going to the movies or whatever.

• 20:12Speaker 02

  Making friends.

• 20:12Josh Clark?

  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 Vandervert, who, who believes that it has to do with the, the connection between the cerebellum and the cerebral cortex. And the reason he focuses in on the cerebellum is because apparently that is where we learn things, we become 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?

• 20:57Josh Clark?

  His whole thing is that with a prodigy, 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 were talking about came together. And it's just like the most finely tuned functioning example of what our brains have evolved to be able to do. That's what he says prodigies are.

• 21:27Speaker 02

  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 it hits those reward centers. And there's some sort of psychological gold star that you give yourself and that feels so good that this, that the kid with the 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.

• 22:06Josh Clark?

  Yeah, right. So it's almost like they're

• 22:10Speaker 02

  They have no chill.

• 22:11Josh Clark?

  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 rocket on that one tangent.

• 22:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was not me.

• 22:27Josh Clark?

  No, it wasn't me either.

• 22:29Speaker 02

  I can do a lot of things pretty good.

• 22:32Josh Clark?

  Yeah, a dilettante.

• 22:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, that's always been my thing, like with with sports. I was never like built the way you needed to be built to play like varsity sports. But I could throw a football and catch a football and punt a football and I could play a little tennis. I can play a little golf. I can, you know, I played, you know, a little baseball, a little softball, a little soccer and kick a soccer ball.

• 22:54Josh Clark?

  Wow.

• 22:54Speaker 02

  I can throw a frisbee like, you know, I'm well rounded athletically, but I was never gonna be on a like a a high school team.

• 23:03Josh Clark?

  Right. I gotcha.

• 23:05Speaker 02

  I was okay in church league.

• 23:07Josh Clark?

  Everybody wins.

• 23:08Speaker 02

  But I wouldn't embarrass myself in anything, you know?

• 23:11Josh Clark?

  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. Man, they were gross. I can actually almost make myself nauseated thinking about them now.

• 23:26Speaker 02

  Really?

• 23:29Speaker 02

  Betty was not a vitamin.

• 23:31Josh Clark?

  I don't remember that. Was she not? She was missing?

• 23:34Speaker 02

  I don't think so because I there was a local band in Atlanta called Betty's Not a Vitamin.

• 23:39Josh Clark?

  Oh, okay.

• 23:40Speaker 02

  Because of that factoid.

• 23:41Josh Clark?

  Well, had she been in the Flintstone knockoff vitamins I had, she would have looked all misshapen and her name would have been like Teddy or something like that. With two with three Ts.

• 23:55Speaker 02

  I love it.

• 23:56Josh Clark?

  There's one other thing about Larry Vandervert'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. They're just getting good at something that already exists.

• 24:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 24:21Josh Clark?

  So part of his theory or hypothesis is that you couldn't have a prodigy by definition before the advent of culture. So he theorizes that probably about 10,000 years ago is when the first prodigies started to pop up.

• 24:36Speaker 02

  Oh, interesting.

• 24:37Josh Clark?

  I thought that was.

• 24:37Speaker 02

  Took took son or daughter?

• 24:40Josh Clark?

  Yeah, maybe great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandson or daughter.

• 24:45Speaker 02

  Okay, yeah, good point.

• 24:46Josh Clark?

  That's my posit.

• 24:48Speaker 02

  I never remember when Took Took lived, so you know me, I get a little confused.

• 24:51Josh Clark?

  He's all over the place.

• 24:53Speaker 02

  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 2012 by researchers Urbach and Ruth Zots. They gathered cognitive data from eight child prodigies. And they looked at a couple of things. They looked at their developmental history. They looked at scores on the Stanford Benet Fifth Edition Intelligence Test and the Autism Spectrum 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.

• 25:34Speaker 02

  But what they did find was that every single one of them were in the 99th percentile for working memory.

• 25:41Josh Clark?

  I saw some also scored in the 99.9th percentile.

• 25:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, so there's something there.

• 25:48Josh Clark?

  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 99th percentile. So it is quite a finding. But I think also, like, a really important finding, too, is that their IQs aren't particularly eye popping.

• 26:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:11Josh Clark?

  You know, some of them were, I think, past 140, and that's the, 140 is the minimum for genius. 130, I think, is where being gifted starts. At least one of them had an IQ of 100, and that is exactly average IQ.

• 26:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:27Josh Clark?

  So IQ or intelligence, or at least the way that we understand measuring intelligence with IQ, see, it doesn't seem to have that much to do with being a prodigy. Has some, because again, 100, 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.

• 26:47Speaker 02

  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 recall the last few notes you played or the last few parts of this logarithm, that's gonna have a big impact, obviously.

• 27:16Josh Clark?

  For sure. There's a good example that I found of that. John von Neumann, who would go on to become a great mathematician, physicist, pioneer in computer science. He, as a child prodigy, would entertain his parents' friends at their parties by, they'd 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, 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.

• 27:59Speaker 02

  As you know, I recently had lunch with a friend of the show and pal Kevin Pollak, the actor

• 28:04Josh Clark?

  Yes.

• 28:04Speaker 02

  and comedian. And sadly, you were out of town, so you couldn't go. But Pollak'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 lot of kids, the first thing they do is like, just repeat the bits from comedy records or specials.

• 28:24Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 28:24Speaker 02

  He would, he would mouth them in perfect synchronicity.

• 28:29Josh Clark?

  Oh, wow.

• 28:29Speaker 02

  So he would do 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, you know, the Shine Bombs Bar Mitzvah next week. Like, I'm booking you. And he was like, for the first six years or so of his life, like, he did it at school. Like, my act was completely just mouthing these comedy bits.

• 28:56Josh Clark?

  That's pretty awesome. Yeah, that's pretty, that's impressive. He was a Richard Pryor comedy album prodigy.

• 29:02Speaker 02

  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, basically.

• 29:14Josh Clark?

  That's pretty great, man.

• 29:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, fun story.

• 29:16Josh Clark?

  Oh yeah, so one other thing about working memory, Chuck, before we move on. It, one of the things that it 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 comes in handy for that. So it makes sense that they have just amazing working memory levels.

• 29:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, and the connection to autism is really interesting too, because in that paper, you know, from 2012, 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 high scores in 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.

• 30:22Josh Clark?

  Yeah, but they didn't score high or beyond the, the general population in the other parts of the autism spectrum quotient. 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 not a prodigy, you're a savant, even though the stuff you're doing is prodigious. It's, you're, you're considered separate for some reason. I don't know why, but that seems to still be the case.

• 30:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's interesting. The, those same two researchers, Ruth Zots and, was it Ulbach, Ulrock?

• 31:04Josh Clark?

  Urbach.

• 31:05Speaker 02

  Urbach?

• 31:06Josh Clark?

  Jerry Orbach.

• 31:07Speaker 02

  Jerry Orbach. They authored a second paper, and this was from 2014, where they studied 18 prodigies this time. And they were masters, these 18, in either math, music, 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 prodigies 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, whereas the art prodigies had the lowest visual spatial scores.

• 31:45Josh Clark?

  Yeah, which is weird.

• 31:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, counterintuitive.

• 31:48Josh Clark?

  Yep. Should we take a break or keep going?

• 31:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, let's take a break.

• 31:53Josh Clark?

  OK, we're gonna take a break, everybody. Here we go.

• 32:12Josh Clark?

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• 32:22Speaker 02

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• 32:35Josh Clark?

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• 32:50Speaker 02

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• 33:15Josh Clark?

  You know, eating is a huge part of our lives. It fuels us, it brings us together, and it's one of life's great pleasures. But once a meal's over, we don't think much about what happens next unless something starts to feel off, because what we eat and how our bodies respond to it is complicated.

• 33:30Speaker 02

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• 33:59Josh Clark?

  Through personal stories and expert insight, listen in to unpack what it means when your body doesn't always respond to food the way you expect, and what science is now revealing about why. Listen to Eating Interrupted on the iHeart app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 34:18Speaker 03

  First thought is like, wow, how are we going to do all this?

• 34:20Josh Clark?

  Hey, this is Josh and Chuck from Stuff You Should Know.

• 34:23Speaker 02

  That's Alan Goya, planning engineer at AT&T, and he's talking about Intuit Dome, home of the Los Angeles Clippers, where every seat, screen, phone, and transaction is connected with AT&T fiber and 5G, redefining the fan's experience, and Alan's master plan made it all possible.

• 34:39Speaker 03

  It was going to rival anything that was already built, and that takes quite a bit of people and different teams to all be on the same page.

• 34:47Josh Clark?

  That includes field services manager Drexel Jones. His team made sure it all came together and held up on game day.

• 34:53Speaker 04

  Through Alan's whole crew design, we connected the event visitors to the world.

• 34:59Speaker 02

  And after years of hard work and collaboration, it was opening night.

• 35:03Speaker 04

  To actually see the whole stadium light up and data's flowing is a beautiful thing.

• 35:07Speaker 03

  What the fans experience is incredible. It gave me a lot of pride.

• 35:10Josh Clark?

  AT&T, connecting fans to what they love.

• 35:14Speaker 05

  Connecting changes everything. AT&T.

• 35:27Josh Clark?

  Okay Chuck, so we've talked a 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, the, the parents of a prodigy definitely do have a role in, in their development as a prodigy. And there have been parents of prodigies who have really kind of claimed that they're essentially responsible for their child's prodigy. There was a, I think William James Sidis's dad, remember we did a whole episode on that poor guy?

• 36:04Speaker 02

  Oh yeah. What's his deal?

• 36:06Josh Clark?

  He was one of the most amazing child prodigies of all time, just beyond gifted, just dusted other prodigies, like made them look like just lumps of unmolded clay done by a artist prodigy with terrible visual spatial skills essentially.

• 36:25Speaker 02

  I love it.

• 36:26Josh Clark?

  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, he essentially claimed responsibility. There's another very famous prodigy, uh, whose name was Winifred Sackville Stoner Jr. And her mom was Winifred Sackville Stoner Senior and her mom claimed responsibility for her child's prodigy. We'll talk a little bit more about them, but parents do play a huge role, even when, even if it's not quite as far as some of them boast.

• 37:03Speaker 02

  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. Um, 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, that, you know, find a local municipal golf course where 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, uh, if you look at the parents and 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 like masters in that thing to help teach that kid.

• 37:47Josh Clark?

  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, you don't teach that. That has to exist already.

• 38:03Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 38:04Josh Clark?

  Then that the kid has to have access to those teachers. And like you said, these aren't Joe Schmo 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 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.

• 38:41Speaker 02

  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, I don't know at 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 was like 16 years old and can play everything. Like, I mean, he's, he's not just a guitar guy, but he can, he plays on his records with his band Mammoth. He, 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.

• 39:23Josh Clark?

  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.

• 39:31Speaker 02

  Well, no, I mean, that is kind of funny.

• 39:33Josh Clark?

  Well, Mozart's father is, he was a music teacher as well. Or musician.

• 39:38Speaker 02

  And his name was Eddie Manhalen.

• 39:40Josh Clark?

  Ironically, right. So, yeah, if you have, like you said, a built in family member already that's, that's 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 he-

• 39:57Speaker 02

  Oh, I didn't know that.

• 39:58Josh Clark?

  He, yeah, Picasso just excelled way beyond his father very, very early on. I think his father also kind of took that a little personally. Seems like the type.

• 40:08Speaker 02

  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 Blaise Pascal, the French math prodigy. He was born in 1623 and at the beginning of his schooling, his dad, very famous mathematician, Etienne Pascal, said, "I want my kid to learn more than math and math is, is so interesting. If he gets a hold of these math books, he's, 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

• 40:50Speaker 02

  somehow that was in English, even though he only spoke French. And he was so smart and such a prodigy, he translated that and reinvented parts of that, of like geometry in that book that weren't in the book.

• 41:04Josh Clark?

  Right, yeah, he also came up with probability theory later on, like he, 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 is a very good example of that.

• 41:29Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 41:29Josh Clark?

  Self-taught musician on all sorts of different instruments. And his parents did not have the resources to buy him all of these things. There was another guy from the turn of the last century named Srinivasa Ramanujan. And he was very poor in India, came from a very poor family. And he, like Blaise Pascal, got his hands on an outdated math book and just taught himself math and became, he ended up studying at Cambridge.

• 41:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. I mean, there are definitely those examples. But there are also, on the other side, like, plenty of examples of, you know, the nurture thing going in a bad direction.

• 42:09Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 42:11Speaker 02

  Where the parents have, and I know Julie didn't cover this, but in our book, we covered, do you remember who wrote that chapter, by the way?

• 42:19Josh Clark?

  I think it was yours.

• 42:21Speaker 02

  I think it was, too. It was so long ago, I don't remember.

• 42:24Josh Clark?

  I know what you mean.

• 42:25Speaker 02

  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 Todd Marinovich.

• 42:32Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm.

• 42:32Speaker 02

  Who was a prodigious quarterback. And another, you know, example is Jennifer Capriati, the tennis prodigy. Like, they were kids who were both excelling to the point where they were young teenagers in 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 they're parents.

• 43:08Josh Clark?

  You know, I was reading today about Venus and Serena Williams and their tennis prodigy status, I guess, but.

• 43:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:17Josh Clark?

  Richard, their father, Richard Williams, he had Venus turn pro at age 14 because the USTA was about to release the Capriati rule, which was like, you can't turn pro after a certain age because Jennifer Capriati 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 66 and almost beat number, the top seeded player at her first professional tournament. Age 14.

• 43:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, boy, those Williams sisters were fun, or still are fun to watch. I didn't see that movie, did you, King Richard?

• 44:01Josh Clark?

  No, I didn't.

• 44:03Speaker 02

  Okay, moving on.

• 44:05Josh Clark?

  Yeah, we have nothing to say about it then, apparently.

• 44:08Speaker 02

  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 flame out and go down a bad road. Some go on to have, you know, great careers doing their thing. Like you mentioned Mozart, obviously. But some go on 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 10 years old.

• 44:48Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 44:48Speaker 02

  And you're just an adult who can play the piano really well. And all of a sudden, you're not special anymore. And you can, that can lead to a big fall.

• 44:54Josh Clark?

  Yeah, yeah, it can. Because you're essentially, especially at the early on in the 20th 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 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 Fischer. 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.

• 45:37Speaker 02

  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 40s, was playing competitive chess by the age of eight and won the US Open at 14, and became the youngest international grandmaster at 15 years old in 1958. 15 years old in six months. But when he, 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.

• 46:19Josh Clark?

  Yeah, yeah, he, he- I don't know if he had a blog or something like that, but after nine 11, he like, he publicly celebrated it on his blog. Like he,

• 46:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:30Josh Clark?

  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 not, you're not useful anymore, not adorable or noteworthy. I think also he clearly had some mental health issues that were

• 46:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:52Josh Clark?

  Probably going to emerge either way, but

• 46:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 46:56Josh Clark?

  Being a child prodigy and just it's such a weird way to grow up that could not have helped at all.

• 47:02Speaker 02

  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 12 years old.

• 47:12Josh Clark?

  No.

• 47:14Speaker 02

  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 that you can foster that, I think, besides saying you're going to Harvard at 11 and you're going to be in the newspapers for that. The case of Elizabeth Benson, she was a 214 plus IQ kid who went to college at 12 and graduated and disappeared. And later on, there was one of those like, where are they now articles? And, and this is no shade at 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.

• 47:57Josh Clark?

  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 214, it has a plus next to it, which might as well be an asterisk. She scored perfectly on an IQ test. And the reason that plus is there is because they imagined she could have kept going, but they ran out of questions.

• 48:27Speaker 02

  You better get a question.

• 48:28Josh Clark?

  Yeah, so she and she even considered herself in the 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.

• 48:39Speaker 02

  Right.

• 48:40Josh Clark?

  Um, but yeah, she's, 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 your fields of interest, like Mozart, like John von Neumann, like Pablo Picasso, the best you can hope for is to lead a normal life as an adult.

• 49:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:01Josh Clark?

  You know?

• 49:01Speaker 02

  I keep, I keep thinking you're gonna say Jon Bon Jovi every time.

• 49:04Josh Clark?

  I know. I keep wanting to call him Johann, too, and it's not.

• 49:08Speaker 02

  Oh, interesting.

• 49:09Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 49:09Speaker 02

  Uh, you, you mentioned Winifred Sackville Stoner Jr. early on. She was a language prodigy, uh, in the early 20th, 20th century. Um, probably most famous for, uh, in 1492, Columbus, Sail the Ocean Blue, was written by Winifred Sackville Stoner Jr. But her mom was one of those parents that really, really pushed her, apparently.

• 49:31Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm.

• 49:32Speaker 02

  Uh, and gained a lot of fame, like the mother did. She wrote books about, it was sort of like, uh, Royal Tannenbaum's when, um, Ethelene Tannenbaum, you know, talked about her prodigious family of, of children.

• 49:45Speaker 02

  And I think we mentioned the Tannenbaum's in the book, of course.

• 49:47Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 49:47Speaker 02

  Because I wrote that chapter.

• 49:49Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 49:49Speaker 02

  And that's one of my favorite movies.

• 49:50Josh Clark?

  It's so good.

• 49:51Speaker 02

  Uh, the mom gained a lot of attention and, uh, was on the, like, the lecture circuit and stuff like that. And the, the daughter was like, you know, "Take my advice, dear mothers. Spare your children from so-called fame, which easily, easily turns to shame, and be happy if you have a happy, healthy, contented boy or girl."

• 50:09Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm.

• 50:10Speaker 02

  Amen to that.

• 50:11Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it's great advice. Great advice. So if you have a child prodigy, uh, on your hands, tread carefully. Consult experts. Maybe get in touch with Ellen Winner. I'm sure she'd be very happy to, to speak with you and tell you what not to do. And so there you go. That's our annual dose of advice for the, um, parents of child prodigies.

• 50:33Speaker 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 tightrope you're walking there. So, you know, I get it.

• 50:49Josh Clark?

  Yeah, for sure. Yeah, it's not a position I would necessarily want to be in, but-

• 50:53Speaker 02

  Heck, no.

• 50:54Josh Clark?

  You got some really great fodder for your, your annual Christmas letter that you send out with your Christmas card.

• 50:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure.

• 51:00Josh Clark?

  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.

• 51:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, I've only known one person in my life that does that, and that is, in 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 like that.

• 51:25Josh Clark?

  That's a very Sohio thing to do.

• 51:28Speaker 02

  Oh, is it? Okay.

• 51:28Josh Clark?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 51:29Speaker 02

  I get it.

• 51:30Josh Clark?

  Before we go on to listener mail, Chuck, I just want to point out a couple of, at least one good band and album name, Rage to Master.

• 51:39Speaker 02

  Oh, very nice.

• 51:41Josh Clark?

  And then I think you could make a pretty good Bon Jovi tribute band with Johann Bon Jovi.

• 51:46Speaker 02

  Right.

• 51:48Speaker 02

  Or John Bon Yohe.

• 51:50Josh Clark?

  Yeah, there you go. John Von Newman. No one would get that except for Stuff You Should Know listeners.

• 51:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's true.

• 51:57Josh Clark?

  What were you gonna say? Because I want to hear-

• 51:58Speaker 02

  You know what I, you know what I was gonna say.

• 52:01Josh Clark?

  You, you say it.

• 52:02Speaker 02

  Bada Bing, bada Boom, Bon Jovi.

• 52:05Josh Clark?

  And there Chuck has unlocked listener mail.

• 52:10Speaker 02

  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 in Mozambique." Elon Musk even corrected this in one of his weird 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 because it's so important globally. As 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. Chavez.

• 52:52Josh Clark?

  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 [email protected].

• 53:19Speaker 00

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 53:34Josh Clark?

  Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability and it starts with a great deal on an off-road-ready Tacoma or half-ton Tundra, two of Toyota's longest-lasting trucks, combining power for work, tech for adventures, and style in between. And they're built on a reputation for quality and reliability, which is why Toyota trucks are known for holding their value, which could mean big savings when it's time for your next Toyota. So get a great deal today and a great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com for more. Toyota, let's go places. Introducing Voices of VivGart. VivGart is also known as its generic name, F-Gart Tigamod Alpha F-Cab. And this new show features firsthand stories from people living with a rare disease.

• 54:16Josh Clark?

  Hosted by Andrew Stratton, these perspectives highlight that life is more than a moment, a condition, or a tough day. Living with a rare disease can be challenging, but it does not define the Voices of VivGart. In these episodes, they share their stories, from diagnosis to working with their care team on their treatment plan. Listen to Voices of VivGart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everybody. I am here to talk to you about Dude Wipes, who offer fragrance-free wipes that are made with 99% water and plant-based ingredients. So they're gentle enough for sensitive skin, but they're tough enough for even the worst messes. Water cleans better, and Dude Wipes Flushable Wipes deliver textbook freshness and ultimate clean.

• 54:57Josh Clark?

  And just like human body molecules, Dude Wipes are made with 99% water, plus they're plastic-free. Dude Wipes give the best clean pants down. Dude Wipes, available at major retailers nationwide.

• 55:09Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.