Recently I read a review of a documentary about famed American basketball player, Michael Jordan. It referred to Jordan's genius 11 times this caused me to ask, can a basketball player, no matter how good, be a genius? To answer that question first, I, at least, would have to define : is the word genius simply a casual honorific term meaning something very much out of the ordinary. "My daughter's a genius at solving crossword puzzles." Or is it on the other hand, a way of setting up a hierarchy or a scale of exceptional human accomplishment? Average is the norm, then above that good, and then great and then exceptional and finally genius. But again, what exactly is genius at the end of our session, I'll give in detail a definition. But for the moment, let's all think together about the issue of celebrity and genius. First a challenge, I'm going to show you images of 10 contemporary figures, all of whom have been called geniuses by the press in the media. And ask you to divide these people into two categories. You select five whom you think are celebrities, and five whom you believe are really geniuses write down the names of five celebrities in one group and five geniuses in another. It's your decision here are the 10 in no particular order Kim Kardashian, Kanye West, Yo-Yo Ma, Elon Musk, Meryl Streep, Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Dolly Parton, Lebron James and Jennifer Doudna. Okay, choose your five celebrities. Now let me go on to do the same, but I've thought about this in advance. So I've got my list already finished. Here's my list, compiled using the criteria of my definition of genius that we'll get to shortly. So here are my five celebrities, Kardashian, Ma, Streep, Buffet and James. Let's take them one by one. Kim Kardashian is described in Wikipedia as quote, "A media personality socialite and model," end quote. Has she changed society? Well, let me think about that, will she leave a lasting imprint? Sounds like a celebrity to me. But wait, you might say what about her capacity to attract social media followers and put social media performers and platforms such as Instagram on the map. Maybe she IS a genius, or is she just a celebrity? You decide Warren Buffet. Although the University of Nebraska School of Business has a course called The Genius of Warren Buffett, I at least don't think making money is an act of genius. Money per se is not genius, it's only a facilitator or fuel of genius that can be put into action to change the world. But you may have a very different opinion and we'll discuss money later in our course. Concert Cellist, Yo-Yo Ma I love his playing but he is playing the music that other people compose. Performer Ma I would argue is like a carpenter carrying out the blueprint of the architect. The architect is the genius not the carpenter to make the point. Can you name a single cellist or pianist of the 19th century. You can name, I'm sure many composers who created new music in the 19th century. Beethoven Brahms, Schubert, people such as that. But can you name a performer of the 19th century? They'd be surprised. We forget the performers because in the long run they may be inconsequential. Performers, no matter how good, are celebrities of the moment. The genius is not the performing cellist, Yo-Yo Ma, but Mozart the guy who wrote the music for Yo-Yo to play. And the same thing might be said about actors and actresses and that's why I put Meryl Streep with celebrities. Well, surely we'll get descending opinions and debate on that point and that's all to the good. But I would ask you to consider who's the genius, the performer acting on the stage or on the screen OR the person who wrote the screenplay or the play? We still perform the plays of Shakespeare, but we have almost no idea who his actors were. The philosopher and mathematician may wear their crowns for centuries. The actor seems to be quickly forgotten and the same may be said of athletes, following what I will later call the creative imperative. If there is no creativity, there is no genius. The geniuses are those who create something new and useful and thus we may eliminate athletes such as Lebron James. He is simply playing out the game, thE game basketball, the game that someone else invented. James Naismith is the genius, not Lebron James, but you might disagree with this decision as well and if you do good for you as we will come to see contrary thinking. Even rebellion can be a hallmark of genius. Maybe, in the spirit of contrary thinking, you can think of exceptions to my "no performers and no athletes" rule and indeed let's pursue this just for a moment. Which athletes might have changed society permanently. Think about it for a moment. Here's one and indeed three possibilities. Allow me to show you three images. What do these three famous athletes have in common? Why do these athletes differ from celebrities? Because as film director Spike Lee said in a Netflix interview people like Muhammad Ali used their excellence and in effect moral capital earned in their sport, in this case track, baseball and boxing, respectively, as a platform or foundation upon which to build or to campaign for, to argue for, something better. In this case racial equality and also in the case of Ali to protest a war that most people now would agree was ill advised. So perhaps performers and athletes can be considered geniuses if they move beyond the arena in which they first gained fame and, building on that fame, effect change throughout society. That's just an idea for us to consider. All right, having thought about the celebrities, those false positive geniuses, let's turn our attention now to those whom I at least--and I get only one vote here--perceive to be genuine, yes, genuine geniuses. Here's my group of people that I consider worthy of that title and one or two of these might surprise you. Musk, Gates, West, Parton, Doudna. First a couple of obvious choices. Elon Musk, who else has started his own space company thereby cutting the cost of putting satellites in orbit in half. Who else has revolutionized the automotive industry, thereby holding out the prospect of radically reduced carbon emissions so as to reduce global warming. And did I mention the Boring Company, Solar City in Hyperloop these other ventures, successes or failures. These two are among the exciting transformative initiatives of genius Elon Musk. Bill Gates of course he's the brains behind Microsoft and one of the pioneers of the tech revolution. But there is much more to Gates that will talk about with regard to viruses and global warming later on. Kanye West people think of him as a star of hip hop and rap music and maybe a fashion design. But I think he is a genius strangely for the power of his insightful contemporary poetry. It's the poetry, not the media hype as we will see and of course that might matter here. Some of my grandchildren now study Kanye West's poetry in high school as I once studied Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. Times change. Here's perhaps a surprising genius on my list in my opinion, Dolly Parton. But why? Well we could talk about how she brought country music into mainstream pop music and that was a big change and how she composes her own original songs. But I think from what I read, Parton is remarkable for having encouraged and empowered millions of working class women to have faith in their own powers. And by example, to demand that women get the same credit and the same pay as men, ironic as it may be with all wigs and tits dolly that she calls herself. Parton has made observers comfortable, established an empathy with them. And then after having done so, she has been able to deliver a powerful feminist message, treat women equally. Jennifer Doudna, she and French scientist Emmanuelle Charpentier recently won the Nobel Prize in chemistry. And anybody who wins a Nobel Prize is a genius, at least in my book. Doudna won the Prize for her work on mRNA. and CRISPR, the biochemistry that led us to the recently successful Pfizer and Moderna vaccines against the Covid 19 virus. Okay, I had my list and you had yours. Is everyone furious with me, arguing with me, debating with me telling me why I'm wrong? Good, and my job is done. You're engaged, even angry, and thinking through the issues. But who here is correct? Is there a correct response equally interesting. Who is it that determines who is correct and who is a genius? Well again, you as much as I according to the definitions and standards that each of us sets sometimes. However, genius sometimes seems to be determined by a committee of experts. We've just mentioned the Nobel Prize with its committee. The Macarthur Foundation has a committee that gives out a fellowship that's called the Genius Grant. The Macarthur committee puts money on or backs--empowers--people who may prove to be game changers-- the geniuses of the future. But most of the time it is simply We The People who decide who is a genius. How do we decide, how do we vote? Well, the books, the biographies of famous people, that we buy can be seen, in effect, as a vote for a genius. Of course today we have books about both celebrities and geniuses. But think about this: Do we write books about celebrities who lived over 100 years ago and in the 1920s let's say? In fact, now that I think of it, can you name a celebrity about more than 100 years ago? Here are two images of two people. I'm sure you can identify the one to the left, but what about the one on the right? Think a minute. This person is Rudy Vallee. An early version of Wikipedia once called Rudy Vallee, the first pop idol. He actually was a Yale graduate and a philosophy major but he didn't write his own songs. I repeat, he didn't write his own songs. He was a performer of songs composed by others. Rudy Vallee was a hugely known celebrity in the 1930s. Today, nobody writes books about Rudy Vallee. But they still do and will continue to do so about Albert Einstein as have Walter Isaacson, and my Yale colleague and physics professor Douglas Stone, both have done so in recent years. Art museums are institutions that also allow us to vet or to vote for geniuses. Taste and fashions change and art museums usually also change with the times paintings get bought and sometimes sold de accession it's called. Or they get put in storage in the basement, paintings that were once in the basement get brought up and put in the center, front and center. Puvis de Chavannes, ever heard of him? 100 years ago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York dedicated an entire hall to his works and it's still there. But now everyone comes in and blows right by them, no one knows his name, no one cares about his art really. For 200 years, no one paid attention to this painter. But now I bet you can identify his name, yes, it's Jan Vermeer. Now, every museum in the world would die to have one of his works. But the point here again, the face of genius is not absolute and permanent but changeable relative to time place and culture. Our values change, our heroes, our geniuses change and the easiest place to witness the changing attitudes about genius, and about culture over time, are places like bookstores, concert halls, theater stages, movie theaters and, most readily, art museums. Okay, I promised you this would be fun. So here to end our session, our lesson, if you will, is a fun video in it. You will see the reigning World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen to battle with our mystery guest. Carlsen is on the left and the mystery guest is on the right there playing speed chess. It's a fun game that moves things along quickly. The guest, a middle level player, has two minutes to make his move, Carlsen has only 30 seconds. Who's the genius? >> [APPLAUSE] >> But let's get started, you know the game is on. Okay, so let's, let's go. >> Yes, absolutely. >> So we should, yeah, start the clock. Already right, supposed to--shoot. Yeah. Thing. [LAUGH]. >> A lot of strength there. >> That was quick, that was that. >> [APPLAUSE] >> Well, Carlsen won andis the world's best player at what he does, but he didn't invent the game of chess. He's just very good at it. He hasn't created any new moves or any new strategies. There's no "Carlsen opening" or "Carlsen defense,." Gates on the other hand, has created things. The text of the script for our entire course. Well, it's been written on a Bill Gates Microsoft product Microsoft Word, the images that you're seeing on the slides that come up. Well, again on a Bill Gates creation a Power Point Presentation. I hope you're beginning to share or at least consider my point of view that the thing that separates celebrity from geniuses, creativity impactful change.
