Transcript

Genius Is OVERRATED | Helen Lewis on Why We Crave ‘Geniuses’

From Ryan Hawk · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

· 55 min · 11,750 words · 110 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "Genius Is OVERRATED | Helen Lewis on Why We Crave ‘Geniuses’", an episode of Ryan Hawk published October 11, 2025 (55 min, about 11,750 words). It mentions 14 people, works and ideas, including Renaissance, Helen Lewis, Light bulb, Genius myth, The Genius Myth: A Curious History of a Dangerous Idea.

What this episode is about

The discussion explores the concept of genius, questioning whether it is a label determined by objectively measurable achievements or influenced by societal perceptions. Highlighting the importance of competition and the value of hard work, it examines historical figures like Stephen Hawking and Shakespeare to illustrate that genius often emerges from dedication and context rather than mere talent or IQ.

Key takeaways

  • Genius isn't just achievements; it's a cocktail of timing, society, and quirky charisma.
  • Ambition seeks the cutting edge; until you find it, rivals are great GPS systems.
  • Stephen Hawking: IQ is for the scoreboard, while life's achievements are real hall-of-famers.
  • Shakespeare's genius wasn’t just talent—it's an encore driven by theater shortages and Puritan boredom.
  • Luck, legacy, and legend: Shakespeare’s King Lear almost ghosted through history.

Who speaks in this episode?

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 10:00: Helen Lewis, Renaissance
  2. – 40:00: Craig Brown, Glastonbury Festival, Toxic productivity
  3. – 45:00: Helen Lewis, Renaissance, The 48 Laws of Power
  4. – 50:00: Light bulb, Ant-Man, Menllo Park
  5. – 55:00: Genius myth

Notable quotes from "Genius Is OVERRATED | Helen Lewis on Why We Crave ‘Geniuses’"

  • Why are all the people really you've heard of in the Renaissance, are they working in Florence during that time? And he says, well, you don't just have to be Leonardo, you also need Florence. And I think that's a really.
    about Renaissance · at
  • The reason I do it is to push my edges and be try to hang for an hour with Helen Lewis. Like I don't know if I can do that but I like to challenge. I like the idea of regularly…
    about Helen Lewis · at
  • Done more experimental things. And then he did this incredible performance at the Glastonbury Festival with a vocal of John's. And it was really haunting because there, John is…
    about Glastonbury Festival · at
  • Well, one of the ones I things I've been thinking about in my career is about the relationship like sort of toxic productivity if you see what I mean.
    about Toxic productivity · at
  • Where we're learning. I think that's that's what I'm trying to do. But it's but Robert Green said this in the 48 laws of power and on this podcast. Do not speak unless you can improve upon the silence. And I think this is advice I give.
    about The 48 Laws of Power · at
  • Interested in creativity because there's a couple of different lessons that come from it. One is that the light bulb is not a kind of conceptual innovation of Edison's, right?…
    about Light bulb · at
  • Unsuccessful screenwriters or writers you know but I had an idea you know I had the idea for you know Ant-Man and you go oh was it that the man should be an ant. Okay lots of…
    about Ant-Man · at
  • A part of a great team. Helen, before we run, one more question. based on everything like in the genius myth, somebody who's a little bit earlier in their career, let's say…
    about Genius myth · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

  • Helen Lewis — Person · 2 mentions · first at
  • Craig Brown — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Thought there was something intriguing about the Beatles success that they kind of they were finite. And Craig Brown, the novelist, says this to me.
  • Humphry Davy — Person · 1 mention
  • Robert Greene — Person · 1 mention

Books & papers

Companies & orgs

Concepts & topics

Places & events

  • Glastonbury Festival — Place · 1 mention · first at
  • Menllo Park — Place · 1 mention · first at
    And about what he was interested in and the conditions. It might also be about that laboratory in Menllo Park that he had because he was working with re other people who were…

Full transcript with timestamps

Is genius a label that we award based on objective achievements or is it a kind of social category that has all these other influences too? If you are a really ambitious person who has a particular field in mind, where do you find the coolest, most interesting, bleeding edge of that happening and can you find a way to put yourself there? Having rivals is really good for you.

They're going to force you to think a little bit differently. They're going to force you to work a little bit harder. Why did Stephen Hawking think IQ tests were for losers? Steven Hawkins point essentially was, "What does it matter what my IQ is? What matters is what I've done with my life and what I've come up with." If that anyone deserves to be called a genius, it's him.

What can I take from that story and apply to my life? We don't really tend to call those people geniuses because they're just a bit too normal and we sort of demand a level of oddness and specialness. We have this kind of cultural baggage to the extent that unscrupulous people now try and exploit it. It's a very good and sobering reminder of the fact that smart people don't always prosper.

Helen, it is awesome to have you here on the Learning Leader Show. Welcome. Thank you very much.

I want to start with Shakespeare. Um, he died in 1616. He's 52 years old. He was kind of popular then kind of but not like an icon at the time. What happened after his death that has made all of us call him an icon and a genius?

Yeah, I love the story of Shakespeare because I think there's somebody that I think almost all of us would agree is exceptionally talented. I mean if you look at him in relation to the other dramatists of his era I think he's head and shoulders above them even though there were other brilliant people writing at the time in terms of the number of words and phrases that he coined the psychological complexity of those plays the way he wrote a story of England through the history plays. So you know I I say in the book if there anyone deserves to be called a genius it's him. But it is interesting to me that he dies as uh you know a a relatively celebrated. He certainly didn't you know die in obscurity or forgotten but he died as a a successful man of his age. Right? There was I think less idea that this was a kind of passing of one of the immortals in the way that you get sometimes later when

people die and people already think well this is you know somebody who's going to impact all of history. It's not really a way that people are thinking about him. So you get, you know, you get a couple of his friends put together a very expensive edition of his plays, the first folio, and we're very lucky that they did because that's the only way that a couple of the real bangers end up surviving. But and you know, he he potters along and then what happens is in the next uh let me think when this would have been uh yeah, about 50 years later um England has a revolution. The king is deposed, Charles I. Then then the Puritans are in charge for a decade and the theat's all closed because Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans do not think that it's good for people to be going to the theater. They should only instead be going to church. And then England get this is one of the very oddest bits of English history which

almost never happens in revolutions which is that people get bored of the kind of slightly joyless Puritans and their insistence on plain clothing and not going to the theater. and the heir of the original king whom they all hated enough to have executed 10 years earlier is in France and they go would you like to come home and be king again? We we yeah you we sort of think that whole thing was a bit of a mistake. So Charles II arrives a great pleasure seeking king um perpetually kind of broke and borrowing from the king of France. But one of the things that he does is he loves the theater. I mean specifically he loves actresses a couple of his mistresses including now actresses. And so the theater is suddenly revived in London. And but they have this big problem which is that they don't have enough plays to meet demand because no one's been writing them. And so they in the way that I think people would now

complain about the Marvel films, they turn to existing IP. And that's the cannon of Shakespeare plays. And so there's this immediate swelling of people wanting to put on Shakespeare plays who's, you know, a writer from 50 years ago that people still kind of vaguely remember. and and they get rediscovered at that point, but they're not at all, and I think this is really important, treated with any kind of reverence. You know, they put people on wires, they put an orchestra in them. Later on and in the next century, they change the tragedies to have happy endings. You know, they make them very thoroughly of the time. And Shakespeare gets renewed in this sense. And that's something that happens with with playwrights is they only live in a performance tradition. So Shakespeare gets, you know, kind of acclaimed more into now this this genius basically.

It's wild how that works. But part of it is that somebody needed to gather his work, right, and then present it and share it. So, it's like there's luck. There's like a good bit of luck involved in somebody becoming quote a genius.

Yeah, I think that's the thing that's really important to note. I'm pretty sure, let me get this right. It's King Lear, I think, is one of the ones that we wouldn't have without the first without the first folio. Um, and I think it's, you know, that the fact that that only exists because a couple of people knew him personally and cared about him enough um to save that stuff is it kind of it slightly tugs at your heartstrings, right? To think that these plays that are so important to our culture that so many school children will have learned kind of almost didn't survive. And and one of the ways you can tell that that people in the past at that time thought rather differently about playwrights is the fact we have very little biography of Shakespeare.

You know, we know a little bit. We know that he married. We know that he had um a child Hamnet who died. We know that he seems to have lived some of his life in London and some of it in Strapford upon Haven. But there's just there's whole big chunks of it that are just really quite you know patchy and to this day you know we have a couple of his signatures that survive and that's really it in terms of manuscript. So, you know, it is fascinating to see that people kind of, you know, and I think a century later just had to had to fill in all of those blanks. As soon as Shakespeare became that post-restoration in demand playwright, people were really hungry to hear about him too. And this kind of comes back to my idea of a myth around somebody. So instantly you get this kind of like who is Shakespeare?

Who is this guy whose plays we really love? People really really want to know. I always maybe this to a fault um Helen but I want to take I think these are your books the is so cool when it comes to the storytelling and I think there's also practical application elements throughout

and I want to focus on that for a minute. So we learn about Shakespeare, we learn about there's a little bit of luck involved. He was still um uh exceptionally talented and produced some amazing work that that has stood the test of time. But if I'm today working to build a career and I don't know if I need them to say I'm a genius, but you know I I I want to I I want to do well, I want to put a positive dent in the world, what can I take from that story and apply to my life to make it useful? I think one of the most obvious things that comes up throughout the book is this Brian Eno's conception of seniors which he sees as a counterpart to genius. It's the idea of places that are unusually productive, creative, you know, hot places to be. And it's very telling to me that Shakespeare was a grammar school boy from Warikshire from the middle of England. And what he did as soon as he could was he moved to

London because London was where the theaters were. London was where the other playwrights were. And one of the early verdicts that we have on Shakespeare is this um this damning verdict by one of his other uh rivals which is he called him an upstart crow beautified with our feathers, right? Which is a kind of one of those great uh writer on writer violence bits where it's just like oh you're getting a bit popular. Um but that but the point about that is that having rivals is really good for you. I remember Serena Williams once saying this that she wanted to play tennis against really good people because that was the only way that she could really achieve her full potential.

And all the way through the book I just kept finding these examples. So medieval universities are another one of them, you know. Um there's a guy called Muro who's a monk. He didn't make it into the book in the end, but he just sits in a monastery somewhere and writes to all the most interesting people in Europe at the time that all this stuff was going on. He was a kind of center of a web of connections. There's an art dealer who connected lots of the impressionist paintings duran rule. You know, there are these collaborative circles that are really interesting. There are these times and these places. And I think that's my, you know, Paul Graham, the tech investor, writes about this in an essay about why did Milan not produce a genius as great as Leonardo da Vinci?

You know, why are all the people really you've heard of in the Renaissance, uh, are they working in Florence during that time? And he says, well, you don't just have to be Leonardo, you also need Florence. And I think that's a really good way a lesson for people to take away which is if you are a really ambitious person who has a particular field in mind where do you find the coolest most interesting bleeding edge of that happening and can you find a way to put yourself there

it it's really speaks to me about I think of this when it comes to I c certainly geography uh plays a role I would view it too about the people that you surround yourself with are you you you got to put yourself in rooms where you feel like the dumbest person in there. I I mean that's actually what this podcast kind of is. Like I want to be I told you before we started recording like part of the reason I do it is to push my edges and be be try to hang for an hour with Helen Lewis. Like uh I don't know if I can do that but I like to challenge. I like the idea of regularly putting yourself in rooms with people who are going to force you to rise up. They're going to force you to think a little bit differently. They're going to force you to work a little bit harder. I think if you that's that's what I take from this, Helen, is is how are you or what are you doing to put yourself in those rooms to

be surrounded by people that just force you to up your game? Yeah, I think it's something that is, you know, even when I would say our our politics is quite anti-establishment and anti-institution at times, some of the most interesting people are actually creating institutions, creating connections. I'm thinking about somebody like the tech investor Peter Teal, not somebody I'm politically sympathetic with, but his idea of creating fellowships for college dropouts is a really interesting answer to the question of, you know, what like what does the kind of right training ground for people look like? Now, how can I create something that encourages the what I want to see in the world? And just to take a completely opposite end example, last year I was in Austin in Texas. And now Joe Rogan is known to most people as um you know, one of the most successful podcasters in the world.

He's also loves standup comedy. And about two to three nights a week, he goes and performs stand-up comedy in Austin to a room of about 300 people. So, he has his own venue there that he's invested in, the comedy Mothership. And not only does that is that interesting to me that he is somebody who pursues something for the love of it. You know, he still wants to get up in front of people and and and risk failing, which I think is always a really good uh instinct to embrace, but also that he created an institution because as he saw it, and you'll hear people like Shane Gillis, who's very successful comedian now, talk about for a while if you were a stand-up, your options were LA or New York. And both of them had a particular type of progressive politics and which not everybody shares. And so for those more right-wing or heterodox or whatever you want to call it comedians, there wasn't really, you know, they just, we

love to have this idea that some people are just simply so talented that, you know, talent will out and they will succeed on their own. Actually, if you look at something like Austin and Kun, the comedy mothership, you begin to see the importance of of an ecosystem because there's a whole load of com comedians who've come out of that. So Shane Gillis being one of them, Tony Hinchcliffe and his incredibly successful podcast Kill Tony with another. And the fact that they can go and you can live and work and make a success out of yourself in this scene has been really important to Joe Rogan advancing the type of comedy he likes to do and he likes to see. And I and I you know I really do respect that. I respect people who go out and create an institution that is creates more of what they want to see in the world.

I do too. I think it's it's awesome um to the fact I've heard Joe talk about not only going on stage but being physically in the back rooms with guys like Tony and Shane Gillis like I'm a huge stand-up comedy fan so I love studying I think it's some of those those people are I had Nikki Glazer on recently and and some of them are like the modern-day philosophers the way that comedians view life and are able to put a twist on it to make you go, huh? And laugh at the same time. It's brilliant. But I think um it is cool to see what he's built down there in Austin. So, I am curious. Another guy who spent some time in Texas that you've written about in your recent book quite a bit is Elon Musk. What's the difference? I'm going to start though with this. What's the difference between a guy that I'd never heard of before reading your work named Tim Berners Lee and Elon Musk?

That's Yeah. Yeah, I mean Tim Berners Lee built um he developed the worldwide web, the protocol in which the whole of the internet is built. So you can argue that without him we're not here. Um you know he just the the fundamental sort of architecture of how things work online really owes a great deal to him. But I find him funny because you know he's had great deal of recognition. He has a nighthood here in Britain. I'm sure he has many honorary doctorates. You know he's he's he's succeeded by absolutely any metric. But he is just a kind of regular guy in the sense he's I mean obviously incredibly smart on the top few percentiles of smartness but he's you know he just he lives a very ordinary life um and and and seems to be very happy with that and I just draw a parallel between him and somebody like Elon Musk who I think is very invested in the idea of living a big public life of making public statements of having

political opinions about how he thinks the world should be constructed of thinking that there is a kind of race of special people. I mean the way that Musk talks about his um his natalism, you know, he's on what is it like 14 children and counting is that you know his genes need to live on. Smart people like him need to have children. There is a kind of sense of that he is of a of a special nature that I don't think you find in some of the more humbler or unassuming um kind of people who have equally impressive levels of achievements. And one of the things I do worry about is that we overrate, you know, the I would say narcissists is a bit harsh, but the self-promoters, I guess. And the way that I kind of usually sum it up is the fact that, you know, Elon's kids are called things like Romulus Sergus and X AE Ash 12. And then Tim Berners Lee's kids are called like Alice and Ben, right? He's just he's

just somebody who has not, you know, has not decided to paint himself as a kind of world historical figure. and and as you say, if you hadn't heard of him, that's really interesting to me because he definitely deserves a huge amount of credit and inspiration. He just has is relatively personally quite modest about it. And and I think the thing is we we we don't really tend to call those people geniuses because they're just a bit too normal and we sort of demand a level of oddness and specialness in in who we attach that label to.

I noticed that as a as a theme in your book. Why is that? Like you're you're so right though. Like we don't want the genius to be norm. we actually want them to be really weird. Why? Why? Why? Why does that need to be part of the narrative?

Well, maybe you've got alternative theories, but the couple that I'm wrestling with is that, you know, I think there's a simple fact that lots of people of high achievement have got kind of slightly quicksotic personalities, whatever it might be. You know, the romantics were very attached to the idea of, I guess, what we now call bipolar disorder. Um, that was that was linked to creativity. And there was a theory in the 20th century in psychology that um creativity was a kind of a mild form of psychoticism. Um and you know these are contested theories but I think they the reason that they took hold is they kind of intuitively appeal to something in us. I think it feels right that people who achieve something special we want them themselves to be special. We want you know and we want to hear that they were child prodigies or that they only sleep 4 hours a night or whatever it might be. The problem is that obviously

we have this kind of cultural baggage to the extent that unscrupulous people now try and exploit it. Y

um and I think you see a very obvious example like in Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos, the blood testing startup who sort of essentially styled herself as a mini Steve Jobs because she knew that was a template for what people considered a startup investor to look like. You know, the polar neck, the deep voice, the kind of showmanship. And the thing is that it worked in the case of Steve Jobs because what the back of that was the iPad and everyone loved it and the iPhone these incredibly this beautifully designed products backed up by an incredibly impressive supply chain. And what she had unfortunately was a machine that did entirely failed to work. But she in her pomp got the most incredible list of investors in that company including people like Rupert Murdoch who you'd think would be quite difficult to you know not did not what's the phrase my mother used to say didn't come up the Mury on a bike you know like not easy to

kind of seduce with sort of sweet stories hard-headed business people but they all believed in her they kind of essentially fell for it and the same thing with someone like a Sam Bankman Freed of FDX you know he looked like what we thought a maths prodigy should look like with the messy hair and the slightly strange lifestyle and he was going to go and live you in uh in the Caribbean on an island. And the thing was that you know some of that people from that template were organically successful. He unfortunately was standing on top of a huge financial house of cards but I think he for a while fooled people cuz again it was what the boy wonder looked like. That was what he looked like. Is genius a label that we award based on objective achievements or is it a kind of social category that has all these other influences too?

Yeah. Um you you talk about another uh person named Francis Golton. Um what what can we learn from studying Francis Golton?

Uh the Victorians were often very weird indeed I think would be my my main takeaway from his story. He is um he is just an like one of those eccentrics that you find uh in the history of science. I think a really fascinating guy. Uh he's a half cousin of Charles Darwin. Um, and so he's working it around the same time as the theory of evolution by natural selection is kind of really affecting how people think about the world. So the one of the things that's really interesting about Darwin's work is it's a real challenge to the kind of Victorian religious worldview, right? That that um class is set out by God and people are kind of, you know, ordered in in creation and rich people are destined to be rich and poor people destined to be poor. So there's lots of ways in which Darwin's ideas were profoundly challenging to Victorian society. That's not where Golton comes. Golton is a is a traditionalist and a conservative and he

is an incredibly brilliant man. He develops several concepts that you know modern statisticians still use. This incredibly brilliant brain. But I would say from having read the biographies of him, some of his letters and journals almost completely without empathy for other people. So Darwin goes and travels and sees a slave market and comes home and becomes an abolitionist. Francis Golton sees a slave market in Constantinople, now Istanbul, and says, "Well, everybody seemed very happy. They were dancing and and singing, so, you know, doesn't really think there's a problem with slavery." That's kind of gives you that idea of his mindset. He's obsessed with kind of categorization.

And he writes this book called Hereditary Genius, which is an attempt to find out if genius is inherited and how common it is in the population. And he he classifies all of uh history into these these lettered groups essentially. And what comes out of that is the idea that genius is pretty rare. It's concentrated in families. He thinks that means it's very heavily influenced by inheritance. And there's an immediate backlash to the book from sociologists, this field is just kind of really being born at this time who say, well, hang on a minute. There's quite a good reason why if you're the son of a judge, you might also become a judge. Other than positing the existence of some kind of special, yeah, I guess they wouldn't really have thought about it in terms of genes at this point, but you know, positing some kind of genetic inheritance of judgeness. Um it might be also that your father encourages you to

a career in the law and asks his friends if they could get you a job. And so it starts up this pushpull which I think we still have with us today about how much of uh you know how much are they kind of nepo babies essentially like how much is that a useful frame to look at the the world and look at genius versus how much do we just think that this is a kind of random lightning strike in the population. And then the other outcome of Golton's work of course is that he's the uh coiner of the word eugenics which is the idea that the human race needed to be kind of selectively bred both for high intelligence at the top end but also to stamp out what they would have seen as the bottom end. You know um the American classification was morons, idiots and imbeciles. And that had a direct influence in American policy, you know, about um the very famous Supreme Court case of Buck versus Bell about sterilizing somebody with a

low IQ because it was seen at the time that that was a reasonable thing that would actually, you know, that was that was going to improve the American breeding stock essentially.

God, there's so much I know it's a it's such it's such a fascinating question because, you know, I I think IQ is a really interesting subject. Um, and it it makes people really nervous because it's some it invokes incredibly big ideas of kind of innate human worth, I think, is where people feel that it's going.

Um, and it's so bound up with in American context specifically with a with a kind of feeling of racism and racist history that people are nervous of it. But again, it is something that is really worth studying. One of the things I think I found mind-blowing to find out about IQ when I studied this book is the Flynn effect which is over the course of the 20th century the average IQ had to be you know benchmark had to be moved because people got smarter which I think is lovely like it's a one of those really great stories about you know if you have proper childhood nutrition and good universal schooling you can make your population smarter and everything that we now know says higher IQs are correlated both with better jobs educational achievement but also but more healthy years. A smarter population is one that's making better decisions about themselves. So these aren't, you know, these don't have to be

topics that we kind of shy away from. There are interesting ways to discuss them that don't lapse into being deeply reactionary.

You um Why does Stephven Hawken Hawking think IQ tests were for losers? I really like that quote. Yeah. someone people are kind of obsessed with sort of finding out like

you see it all the time. I don't know how much time you spend on X uh formerly Twitter, but you see it all the time, right? Okay. Well, but you see it I mean I see it all the time. Maybe this is just my feed about kind of talking about high IQ people and these are high IQ and actually

Yeah. Okay. So, so I think it definitely helps to be to be smarter, right? You are not going to complete a college degree if you have an IQ of 60. like these there are some things that are true but actually at the top end it it just doesn't it is not a kind of you know for every one IQ point equals one success in life um and that was one of the stuff that I found quite humbling to study was actually about the really super high IQ societies and actually how often they become a home for people who really feel quite broken and outsiderish really um but but Steven Hawkins point essentially was what does it matter what my IQ is what matters is what I've done with my life and what I've come up with. And I think he was trying to address that idea that you see in the some of the IQ obsessives, which is I've got an IQ of 180. Everybody should listen to me while saying things that are completely bats. You know, um

for as one example, so Christopher Langan for a while was known as the guy with the highest IQ. Uh he features in Malcolm Gladwell's book outliers. So he has got a cognitive theoretical model of the universe that he thinks um could overturn Einsteinian physics. Uh and he writes about this on Facebook and on his Substack. And he also thinks that George Bush did 9/11 to stop people finding out about his cognitive theoretical model of the universe. And you just go okay I mean Okam's razor says probably not but I'll bear that in mind. But but what you won't see in his career is like a history of overt achievement and and Malcolm Gladwell writes quite sympathetically about why why this might be. But it's a very good and sobering reminder of the fact that smart people don't always prosper. You know, it's not enough to have a really high performing engine. You need the kind of gears and stuff that connects that to the wheels

on on on the road is the way that I tend to think about it. Okay, Helen, I got to do a small departure because you brought up that thing about the George Bush conspiracy thing. Um, yeah. Okay.

And maybe you can play along with me and educate me because I'm because you've probably thought about this or maybe if you haven't, then you'll think in real time. So, the conspiracy theory thing is is rampant, especially over here uh where I live in the States. It's just everywhere. It to me, it's exhausting. And when I've sat in rooms with some of those, the feeling I get is it usually stems from some sort of insecurity. And they want to prove to me that they are so superior and smarter than me that they know all of this crazy stuff, you know, even something as stupid as somebody saying the the moon landing isn't real, even though we went six times, right? 12 guys, all the stuff, whatever. and how dumb I am for actually thinking like that stuff happened or whatever the other cons there's a million of them right you know lizard people all this stuff and I'm just it I found that it usually come from somebody

that seems to have some deep deep insecurities and need to show me that they are smarter than me now that statement I just made is very judgmental I don't like being a judgmental person I'd rather approach you with curiosity than judgment So, I'm just putting all that out there because I want to hear from you. Like, you've studied geniuses, quote, you've probably think about this a little bit. When I say all of that, what what do you think?

I think Yeah, I've been thinking about this a lot. I've just been reading um Julie Brown's very good book about the Jeffrey Epstein case. So she's the Miami Herald reporter who uh really broke open the story again after that very first plea deal that Epstein received in 2000 in the 2000s which was I think now undeniably corrupt. Yes.

You know just something to have the charges reduced in that way is would not have happened to somebody who wasn't as rich and as powerful and connected as he was. So in some ways like that is a conspiracy that is true, right? That rich powerful people do get what they want and they don't get treated the same as a poor person who you know is caught shoplifting or whatever.

Real quick, that is one of the reasons why conspiracy theories are a thing and they're alive is because every once in a while they're true. Every once in a while they they they are correct. And so that's if they weren't then they wouldn't be a thing because they're just like, "No, that's dumb. That's dumb. That's dumb." I still think most of them are, but yeah, every once in a while, yeah, one of them is correct.

Yeah. And Naomi Klein writes this about this in Doppelganger, which is a very good book about Naomi Wolf's descent into conspiracism, saying that the line between investigative journalism and conspiracism is often not as stable as you would like to think it is. And and that's why I you know but there's a difference between Epstein and KQAnon which was also essentially another kind of child abuse themed conspiracy but that one just didn't you know just did not have the factual support behind it. But I think you're right there is something about that. So, some of it is definitely a kind of I I'll prove more than you pencileneck kind of pointy-headed whatever you like other insults elite kind of people, right?

Like that you would look down on me for believing this. Well, you know, you're not so smart. The other thing I think when they did a study about which personality traits are most correlated with conspiracy thinking, the one that came out top was narcissism. And I think that's really important too because it's a bit like oh the sheeple the NPCs the other people think this but I alone have seen the truth. It positions you as the protagonist of reality like you're the one who's seen seen through this kind of stuff. So I think that's very seductive to people definitely.

Um and you know that I Why is that seduct I mean I hate that so much but you're you're a thousand% right. Why is that seductive to be a narcissist and to to feel like I have to prove that I'm smarter than you because I believe this crazy thing that is obviously not true when they're just wrong.

But but but the point about that is that everybody else is has just been taken in and that you think has taken at face value the official story, right?

And you're therefore, you know, I understand this impulse as somebody who does a bit of borderline adjacent investigative journalism. There's something like exciting about that detective story aspect of it.

Yeah. Um and I think that the way that the internet works, I think my colleague Derek Thompson wrote about this once was that it is a confirmation bias engine. If you believe something already, you can go online and find support for it. And it also induces this kind of um this way that kind of paranoid schizophrenics think about stuff where they just see far too many connections between stuff. I think that's how I I don't know about you, but when I see conspiracy stuff online, it's just like putting to overactive pattern matching essentially.

And the internet is very good. It can, you know, you can watch a threeminute Tik Tok in which someone presents to you five out of context facts and suddenly links them together in this kind of red string in the court way that is superficially incredibly incredibly appealing. And you don't really know whether those facts are true or if they relate to each other. You've just been kind of sold a a story. It's a prestige. Um, so I think that I think the interaction between conspiracism and the internet is is kind of fascinating. The thing that's a problem, this is a a detour, sorry. I interviewed a really great scholar of authoritarianism called Karen Stenner a couple of years ago and she was researching conspiracism and she had this theory essentially I'll render it as wouldn't it be good if we could get people back to good oldfashioned 1990s style conspiracy depoliticized conspiracy theories. Right? The problem

with something like Qanon is you say it's the Democrats who are drinking blood, right? It's your political opponents. What was great about like the Chupacabra or do you have crop circles in America or is that were just a British one?

Yeah, I think so. Yeah. I mean like Iowa I imagine probably had was had some great crop circles but stuff like that or like you know lay lines or like Area 51 you Roswell like these were kind of there was obviously an ambient conspiracis of that kind of XFile style in the 1990s but it wasn't and that's why you should go and shoot up a pizza restaurant right like there wasn't any action that you had to take as a result of it and I did think that was quite I just sort of thought yeah maybe we should all get back try like let's encourage people to get back into UFOs again right the good old days of conspiracy theories.

Yeah. Just like could bring back the big bring back Bigfoot and the Log Ness monster. It just it was really harmless. Just look like cryptids were just, you know, there was a lot of a lot of time you could spend in your local woods looking for Bigfoot and you you're getting out in the fresh air. It was very healthy.

Yeah. Yes. I'm with you. I'm with you. Sorry. I I know I led us down that path, but it's just you could probably tell it's a little bit of a sore subject in my private life with some of my friends. Um, but I I actually though do think one of the things I am proud of and I think hope all of us can do this is just because somebody is that way, I don't think you should remove them from your life. I mean, I guess there are some cases maybe you should, but I like the fact that I have a real wide variety of friend groups and people I regularly will talk to and hang out with that I'm like, "Dude, what are you talking about?" And we can say this to each other's face like, "You're insane." you know, I I still can have love for them and and try to again, even though I just was judgmental there, I try to approach them with some levels of curiosity because I still am curious about I wonder how you got that way or I wonder

how you view the world that way. That is is still fascinating to me even if I am like on the other end of the spectrum of where they're at.

Oh, no. Totally. And it's you put your finger exactly on the reason why I became a journalist because that realization that other people are different from you just down to a kind of just even the way that their brains work that they just they just have instinctive visceral responses to things in a different way to you. Like I was thinking about the fact that that so there's a there's an autistic trait which is called justice sensitivity which is where you just can't bear injustice. You're very highly alert and attuned to it. And I thought that's really interesting. If you think about that being unequally spread throughout the population, it does explain why people react to stories of corruption very differently. Right? For some people, it clearly doesn't bother them.

They think, well, everybody's kind of corrupt, you know, like it. But other people, the idea that the world isn't fair is really politically motivating to them. And that, you know, that comes across in stories about you might get about migrants, for example, like why are migrants entitled to social security? What about Americans? you know that these are not that fundamentally people are just feeling things at different levels. They're affected by them. And and when you start to realize that not everybody has the same responses to external stimuli as you, that's kind of always always fascinating. I mean, I imagine it's part of the reason why you do what you do is just

finding out that other people just don't start, you know, they're not even looking at the same map you are basically. I I I love that. I find that I don't find it frightening. I find it kind of mind-blowing in a good way.

Yeah, I agree. I I I uh I am genuinely fascinated by just the stories of people and what makes them the way they are. I I I like learning about upbringings and parents. Maybe because like I'm I I am one and I I want to like set my children up to to to do well and to do good and and but I I am fascinated by all of that stuff. One of the things that um I'm a huge fan of is uh this is again we're going on another direction here but um you've written about them is the Beatles, right? And I um

I've studied a lot, listened a lot, watched all the documentaries, all that stuff. What you've uncovered the secret of their success. What what is it?

I mean well there's quite a lot of secrets of their success and number one is definitely be very good at songwriting. I think that's uh but well one of the things I was found when I was reading there's a there's a strange old book by a guy called Hans Eisening who's was a psycho a psychologist in the 20th century a lot of his research is now questioned you know he did a lot of psy psychology IQ genius research he also did a lot of research into smoking and heart disease and because that's medical research that's been looked at again and some of it's been found to be unsafe I suspect the same would be true of his other research but he wrote this very quirky book called genius in which he said he had a portrait of the genius and all these things. He had to be male obviously. But one of the things he said was you should either die before 30 or live, you know, past 80. And I thought that's really interesting. Why is that?

And so many of our templates of genius are essentially, you know, taken too soon.

So that's like um an Amy Winehouse, a Kurt Cabain, a James Dean, a Rudolph Nurv because the, you know, or to go back to the romantics, you know, a Keats or a um a Byron because then the idea is it it sort of tortures you about what you could have had. you know there's not enough jobs left. Yeah, exactly. What would he do be doing now? Like he's you know what other what we what have we been robbed of basically by their early death versus his other model which is the kind of you live long enough to inspire the next generation who kind of make a pilgrimage to you become the father or mother of the nation you know I think you see that maybe in somebody like um Chinura Chabi or Baklav Havl or I'm sure they're like great old American writers you know. Yeah, just or Tom Lara as example of somebody who died recently, you know, somebody who the next generation just you would hear them talking about him all the time and

today's successful artists would kind of talk about the tradition he created and yeah, but the bit in the middle is just a bit kind of like it's not, you know, it's just sort of normal and regular and expected. You you know, you neither tragically gone too soon nor nor venerable. And so the interesting thing about the Beatles to me is they had that very very short performing career and slightly longer but still very short recording career and then it was over you know and and then in 1980 John Lennon is shot you know and he's only in in his 40s at that point and then there will be no more Beatles music ever but at the same time what you have is Paul McCartney and to a lesser extent George and Ringo living on and becoming the kind of you know McCartney has has recorded with much younger artists. He's done more experimental things. And then he did this incredible performance at the Glastonbury Festival with a with a

vocal of John's. And it was really haunting because there, you know, John is frozen in time. He's never going to get any older. But you have, you know, McCartney on stage with I think Springsteen, you know, like people like like he's he's still living on. And so I thought there was something intriguing about the Beatles success that they they kind of they were finite. And Craig Brown, the novelist, says this to me. Sorry, the author says this to me about, you know, the Rolling Stones just kind of go on and on and on playing the hits, but there's there's never as much of the Beatles as you want. And emotionally, that's yeah, that makes it that kind of gives it that bittersweetness that I think so many genius stories have in them.

H So, let's get practical with this one. Yeah. So, you're building a business, you're building a career, you're you're working to sustain excellence over time, right? again, you want to do well, you want to do good, you want to put a positive dent in the world. What do you take from that finitness of the Beatles that that you could implement into your life?

Well, one of the ones I things I've been thinking about in my career is about the relationship like sort of toxic productivity if you see what I mean. Yeah,

I think if you work in any number of creative fields, the incentive now is to be producing, producing, producing, broadcast, broadcast, broadcast. And that has got often quite big immediate commercial rewards. You know, if you run, you know this from running a podcast, right? You have to hit the schedule. We absolutely have to hit the schedule. But I'm sure that you know there'd be pressure to be like, well, why not put them out more regularly, more content? You know, you've got kind of constantly got to be you'll do better in the YouTube algorithm if you publish more regularly, right? there is

yeah right completely a thing um and and then just to be pumping out constantly like a fire hose of content now the two things about that is that's neither very fun to do as a creator nor do I think it provides you with your like you're not making your best work at that point by definition because you have no time to stop to think to be reflective to to choose your guests with care choose your topics with care and so one of the things I think when you're in at the beginning of your career and starting out you will want to say yes a because you want to try things out. You want to be open to opportunities. And then there comes a point hopefully if you've had a bit of success where the most important thing you can say is no.

And I and I think that's something that I'm a kind of natural people pleaser. I'm a bit of a workaholic. And so my instinct is always just to say yes to things. But my the way my husband always puts it to me is like the idea of the kind of opportunity cost. Well, if you say yes to this, then you will have to have less time for that. And you have to be more jealous of guarding your space. And the way I kind of think about it is that I don't want to put out anything under my name that I'm not really proud of that, you know, whether people like it or not, I can't control. But can I say honestly that was the best I could do. I didn't cut corners. I thought it needed doing and I thought it needed saying and I've done it as as honestly and best as I can. that's that's the metric by which I should judge myself you know and and and at that point you you sort of let go of the success aspect of it and you say well I can only make

this good and everything else is just you know in the hands of the gods basically and I think that's a is I think that's I mean have you do you struggle with productivity like in either direction

so one of the things that I've been advised by all the people now who are in the podcasting world and podcasting space are so I release every Sunday at 7:00 p.m. and I have for 10 and a half years that I've been advised and others have taken this advice is you have you know do two or three a week that will increase your rankings in the algorithms on Apple and Spotify and I've actually some of the shows I like have done that or even gone daily which seems insane to me and I ended up like actually stop listening in a weird way even though I really like the show and they give me more of it and then I I I I don't even listen anymore. Isn't that bizarre? It's like so backward.

No, I think that's exactly right cuz the world we do not have a like we went from a period of scarcity, right? Like one of the things I have in the book is that Leonardo da Vinci owned like a hundred books and that made him one of the best read people of the Renaissance and like now we just live in this glut of content.

So actually somebody who promises you everything that I put out you will enjoy. Like there is all killer no filler is actually now a much more powerful thing. I think

that well it's just it's harder too to keep an the quality bar as high as it is if you're going to increase the quality or I'm sorry the quantity so much.

So to me I'm like my desire is to have the Helen Lewis's and the Tim Ferrrises and and the I want to increase the quality bar of my podcast not the quantity. And that means being very um uh I got to be very curious and careful about the guests. The selection process is really narrowed down. I mean, I'm pitched, you know, hundred a day. And so, it's just choosing the people that I'm deeply curious about can have these types of conversations where they're a little bit messy, you know, but that's where we're learning. I think that's that's what I'm trying to do. But it's but Robert Green said this in the 48 laws of power and on this podcast. Do not speak unless you can improve upon the silence. And I think this is advice I give.

Oh, that's great. Yeah. But this is advice I give to people in their leadership careers if they work in corporate America. So many people get in meetings and they're like, I got to talk. I got to show how smart I am. I'm going to And so they just like vomit all over the meeting room um with a bunch of random garbage instead of saying, "Wait a second, wait until you actually have something of value and use that will improve upon the silence, that will make the room better, that will help out your colleagues so that when you speak, people are like, "Oo, Helen spoke up.

Let's we got to listen to her cuz she's just not just like throwing all this garbage out all the time." Cuz we've all been in those meeting rooms. at least those of who worked in like the corporate world

where it's just like blah blah blah blah blah the whole time and then you have that person or two who they wait to speak until they have something to add and then everyone just stops listen to them and you end up doing what they they say and I think like that's hard but I think it's something to strive for. I actually learned that from my dad. My dad's still that way to this day. Like he doesn't he's definitely not the loudest guy. He definitely will have not the most words said at the family gathering. We're about to have one in a couple days. So I'm like already thinking about it. But when he talks, we we'll all go like this. Oh yeah.

Uhhuh. Yeah. And you're like, "Oh, I need to be like that." You know, like I want to be that guy. So anyway, I think that's similar to what you're talking about this finitness of we're taking all the way back to the Beatles that you can be that way in your career. we in your career, you can be that way in your life with your family and with people in general is like how can we add value to this space. We don't just need to just to be yapping the whole time.

It's a level of discipline, isn't it? That's the thing. Like I I think about that about uh you know, every time you commit to a big project, you've said no implicitly to a load of other things. So, it's really scary to make that decision.

Yeah. But ultimately, if you try and just scattershot around, it's you know, it may be superficially successful, but in the long term, I don't think it I don't think it's sustainable because I think what you see with those podcasts is you go very very intense schedules is that they often burn out. They just can't do it and they don't and and you also get the sense they're not enjoying it anymore. It's a real grind.

Um and so like is that a really at that point like a lifelong or sustainable career? Most novelists you've heard of or film directors, go and look at their Wikipedia page and see how often they produced something and you will often find out that someone's reputation is founded on you three films that they made over 20 years. I mean, I think that's maybe harder than it was now, but I think we can sometimes overestimate just like the amount of content that you need to pump out in order to be successful. Um, and I think all of the superficial incentives in our culture are towards just maximizing yield. And actually, you are the only person really who cares about maximizing your quality.

You have to be your own quality controller. The the other part to that though, Helen, though, is I know there's some studies on the fact of the people with the best ideas usually stem from the people with the most ideas. Now they might have to publish all of those or they might not that might not have to be for others to see all of them but even Edison who you write about right lots of ideas a lot of the inventors a lot of the writers a lot of the artist have tons of ideas and then a few of them break through and we don't really remember all of the other ones. So how do you balance out this quantity in order to get to the quality because most of us that's what we need to do.

Yeah. uh when I was reading the story of Thomas Edison, I think it's one that's worth studying for anybody who's interested in creativity because there's a couple of different lessons that come from it. One is that the light bulb is not a kind of um conceptual innovation of Edison's, right? Everybody had had the idea of the light bulb, the idea of burning a filament in a vacuum. Back to Humphrey Davy in the previous century, what was incredible about what Edison managed to do was he managed to make it work. So, first of all, he managed to get a really tight vacuum seal and find a really good material for the filament.

And that sounds kind of boring compared to the idea of coming up with something, but it's really it's really not the you know, Leonardo da Vinci had a hell of a lot of incredibly good ideas, including one for a kind of helicopter, but he wasn't able to put most of them into practice. They weren't, you know, achievable by the technology of the time. So there's that aspect to it which is that we underrate kind of the logistics the quartermaster kind of side of things just making things work. You see it all the time in kind of unsuccessful screenwriters or writers you know but I had an idea you know I had the idea for you know Ant-Man and you go oh was it that the man should be an ant. Okay lots of people can have that idea but not everybody can write that screenplay and have it produced. So that you know the idea of actually having to put rubber on the road I think is a really big part of the Edison

story. You could say the same about his role in the creation of the New York power grid. You know, electricity is a kind of interesting quirk unless you can find a way to make people pay for it and reliably deliver it. So that comes out of it. And the second thing is that he he was one of those inventors who had a really hot streak and which lasted for unusually long time, but he also had a pretty unsuccessful middle age. Um and and one of the things that might be that may be about just the timing of his life and about what he was interested in and the conditions. It might also be about that laboratory in Menllo Park that he had because he was working with re other people who were really brilliant on problems that they all cared about you know and if you look at the log book you can see that other some of his assistants names are on some of their biggest breakthroughs. So they were a collaborative effort. So yeah he had

lots and lots of ideas but the important thing is that he was able to put as many of them into practice as he could because of the way that he surrounded himself with people with complimentary skills. Again, uh we get back to the importance of being surrounded by uh others who have high quality bars, excellence, ambitious. Um interesting that his name comes through and I like that you write about the fact like we talk about these light bob light light bulb moments like these oh these ahas but in reality the light bulb that's not how it happened. It was this slow incremental highly contested creation. It wasn't just oh the light bulb and it just it life is just it what it tells me is

life is just so much more messier and then somebody gets a hold of the story and they clean up

the mess. But in general when you meet people or when you see them there's usually a bit of mess to them. And I think that's good. I think that's inspiring because what it shows me is that's possible, right? It's possible for me and you to go and do whatever that thing is because we're like, "Oh my god, I'm a mess. I have this and I'm dealing with this." And it's like, yeah, so were all the other people who created the big things, you know?

Yeah. I I think it's a much more empowering version of the story, right? because you can't um ultimately affect the hands you were dealt in terms of your uh innate strengths and aptitudes and weaknesses and the upbringing that you had. What you can do as an adult is make choices that ma maximize your ability to do good. You know people sometimes ask me why are you not on Substack? Why are you not writing a newsletter? Why haven't you gone independent? And the fact is that working at the Atlantic allows me to be the best possible writer. you know, they have got the resources not only to send me interesting places, but also to provide me with the legal support I need to write about very powerful people who might sue us, you know, um the editorial integrity to have a second pair of eyes on something saying, "Have you really nailed down that fact?" Like, "Is that like definitely not you just handwaving

things that are true?" Sharpening everything up. And also the other thing I really like about working and and it's been true the places I've worked is is a feeling that there are people who I don't want to let down.

You know, colleagues that I want their good opinion. You know, I I I work for the Atlantic in in the US and you know, Jeff, who's our ultimate editor there, has has made a series of really brave calls and fundamentally I I would like him to respect me. And that sounds kind of creepy and crawly when I say it like that, but you know what I mean? Like you must have people in your life who you just think I want to do work. Maybe it's your kids, you know, I want to do work that they that I will feel like proud of explaining it to them, you know, just finding those people who make you your best version of yourself.

It's the power of being a part of a great team. Uh my backgrounds in athletics, Helen, and this is where I've learned it and try to do the same now in my business is being surrounded by people that I think are better than me, that I think are wiser than me, that are at least better in certain areas. And it forces me to to raise my game. Again, this is a theme of our of our entire conversation. So, I completely get why you would choose even it could be more lucrative and you could make potentially make more money going independent, but the fact that you choose to be around the best of the best and it forces you to raise your game. You want to impress people. I think that's good. I think that's healthy. That's why we want to be a part of a great team. Helen, before we run, one more question. based on everything like in the genius myth, somebody who's a little bit earlier in their career, let's say, you know,

recent college grad or someone like that and they don't really know what they want to do, but they want to leave a positive dent in the world like some of the people you've written about in the genius myth. What are some general pieces of lifecareer advice you'd give to them? Uh I say one of the really good things that comes across in more recent research is that lots of people who have high achievement, you know, they have a hot streak later in their career, but earlier on they do quite a bit of sampling. You know, they try different things and and you know that you're a very good example, right, of somebody who you learned a lot of things from something in a very different discipline that are completely transferable skills.

You know, I always say to young journalists, take the first job at a publication that you think you could learn something from. You know, if it's just a content mill, a slot factory, and they're just you're just going to be pumping out stuff, don't do it. But even if it's in an area you're not wildly interested in, if you think it's a good publication, and they'll hold you to high standards, do it. Because your second job is infinitely easier to get than your first. You know, just breaking in in journalism is is the absolute hardest thing. Moving sideways is less hard. And so, don't stress out too much about is it your dream job? Sample it, see how you go on that. Again, I think that idea of like work out when in your career you need to move from say your default yes to your default no is really important. Um and and and just to go back to what we were saying before, be around people who really care about the

work. I think that's the thing is if you work somewhere where no one really cares, it's very hard for you. You can't care on your own. You'll become infected by the apathy of people around you. And then nothing is more boring than a job that you don't care about. You know, I have periods of my life where I worked really, really hard and I couldn't do that indefinitely, but it was worth it because I felt like it was an important bit of my career and I really wanted to do it well. And I think trying to like having to devote long hours to something just for the money, maybe for some people it's worth it, but you know, you've only got one life really.

Yeah. I just I sometimes think, yeah, what what how would you feel if you just spent all that time just chasing something with the promise that eventually it would pay off and you'd retire at 30 and you then you'd start to live your life and you get hit by a truck. Like don't don't do it. Don't wait for it. Just try just try and and enjoy what you're you're doing right now.

Love it. The book is called The Genius Myth: A Curious History of a Dangerous Idea. At least that's what it's called in America. I know it has different subtitles elsewhere. Uh, it is so well done. As I told you before, I'm on the elliptical rereading it this morning and I end up just being on there forever because I can't stop and that's uh that's not common uh when it comes to

that is that is a great endorsement. Like so good you'll forget you're on the elliptical. That for me as someone who doesn't really love cardio that would that does it for me. Yeah,

it is because it's entertaining and it's like I'm learning and I'm thinking of practical ways to use it. it kind of it hits all the marks and I think that's as someone who's written books and and is in process of doing that. It is so so hard and the good ones like you make it look so easy and that makes me so mad as a writer because it's like oh Helen makes it look so easy but I'm guessing it was a messy process and you struggled and you questioned yourself and it was hard but eventually you know you get there and I think that's that's also inspiring for for people to learn about.

Oh yeah. No, no one if anyone who has fun writing a book is either a freak or is lying to you. Like it's, you know, it it should feel like it's effortless, but it is it is it is a grind. So, um yeah, don't if you want to write a book, don't give up. Don't think you're doing it wrong if if it's like if it's making you go crazy.

Yeah. Yeah. I love it. Well, anyway, thank you so much, Helen. I would love to continue our dialogue as we both progress.

Thank you.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "Genius Is OVERRATED | Helen Lewis on Why We Crave ‘Geniuses’"?

Ryan Hawk (Host), Helen Lewis (Guest).

What is "Genius Is OVERRATED | Helen Lewis on Why We Crave ‘Geniuses’" about?

The discussion explores the concept of genius, questioning whether it is a label determined by objectively measurable achievements or influenced by societal perceptions. Highlighting the importance of competition and the value of hard work, it examines historical figures like Stephen Hawking and Shakespeare to illustrate that genius often emerges from dedication and context rather than mere…

What is mentioned in this Ryan Hawk episode?

14 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Renaissance, Helen Lewis, Light bulb, Genius myth, The Genius Myth: A Curious History of a Dangerous Idea, Glastonbury Festival. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Genius Is OVERRATED | Helen Lewis on Why We Crave ‘Geniuses’"?

The episode runs 55 min; the transcript is about 11,750 words in 110 timestamped sections.

More from Ryan Hawk

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated January 24, 2026.