WILLIAM SHATNER: From great thinkers
to revolutionary inventors...
...to brilliant artists...
geniuses have used their mysterious powers to shape
the course of human history.
Genius.
It's a word we use to describe
extraordinary individuals whose intellect or abilities
go far beyond the norm.
But is genius a special quality
that only a select few are born with?
Or, can it be unlocked in anyone's brain,
at any time, with the right key?
Well, that is what we'll try and find out.
♪ ♪
SHATNER: In this suburb located
seven miles from downtown Los Angeles,
lives Kashe Quest.
Although Kashe is similar
to other three-year-olds in some ways,
her mental abilities are astonishing.
Some experts have even claimed that she is a genius.
SUKHJIT ATHWAL: Let's do a few elements.
-Are you ready? -Yeah.
All right, what's this one?
-Chlorine. -Chlorine. What's this one?
-Helium. -Helium.
What's this one?
-Beryllium. -What's this?
KASHE: Copper.
You got to take turns.
SHATNER: Since the age of two, Kashe has been able
to visually recognize and memorize
the elements on the periodic table,
and all 50 states on the map,
which the vast majority of children her age cannot do.
In fact, Kashe is the youngest person ever admitted into Mensa,
the most prestigious high-intelligence society
in the world.
But is it really possible
for someone who is only three years old
to qualify as a genius?
ATHWAL: Very early on, she was just always keen to learning.
She identified all, you know,
basic preschool skills
at 18 months, which were shapes, colors,
numbers, letters and sounds.
Once we started reading her books and doing puzzles,
we just realized how much she was actually retaining.
Show Mommy South Africa.
Kashe is a toddler with gifted abilities.
There it is!
Our pediatrician did say
she's doing a lot of things that, in her history
of being a pediatrician,
she has not seen other children do.
Show Mommy Indonesia.
And that's what led us to get her tested
to identify her IQ.
There it is!
And we found out that her IQ was 146.
SHATNER: According to experts,
an IQ, or intelligence quotient,
higher than 140 qualifies as genius-level.
For decades, scientists have used various kinds of IQ tests
to try and unravel the mystery of what makes
someone a genius.
DARRIN McMAHON: The basis of
what we call the IQ test was developed
by a French psychologist by the name of Alfred Binet,
at the beginning of the 20th century.
That original diagnostic developed by Binet
was then taken by the American psychologist
Lewis Terman at Stanford.
He does this big study around San Francisco
where they just administer the IQ test to school children
and he tries to weed out anyone below an IQ of 140,
which he identifies as the genius level.
SHATNER: There were two boys
who participated in Terman's study who would go on to win
the Nobel Prize in Physics when they grew up.
William Shockley and Luis Alvarez.
But curiously, because their IQs were less than 140,
the study did not consider them
to have genius-level intelligence.
McMAHON: It just goes to show you that
genius and intelligence are not the same thing.
You can have a high IQ, but not necessarily
have all the other kind of skills that are necessary to...
to produce great things.
RAMANI DURVASULA: The big problem with this word "genius"
is that nobody agrees upon the definition.
All we do know is when we hear it,
we know that the person, who is a so-called genius,
is in possession of abilities or skills
that are far beyond the pale of what most
ordinary human beings possess.
SHATNER: But if an IQ score
doesn't answer the question of what makes
someone a genius, then what does?
What is the common trait, or combination of traits
that allows geniuses to make
such important contributions to society?
Some experts believe
that a clue can be found by examining both
the role that geniuses have played in history
and how our perception of genius has changed over time.
DEAN SIMONTON: Genius is
a term that actually goes back to ancient Rome,
and therefore, it's acquired
a lot of different meanings in 2,000 years.
If you look at a lot of historical examples
of geniuses like Aristotle and Plato,
Isaac Newton, Beethoven and Albert Einstein,
these are people who are making
very important, highly valued contributions to our...
our culture, to our civilization.
We're talking about science,
literature, something that is valued by the culture,
an artistic masterpiece, an absolutely
incredible contribution
to a major area of achievement.
McMAHON: We need to be cautious about thinking of genius
as a universal trait.
Genius is less a quality inherent in people...
...and more a label that we apply to people of supreme
intelligence or creative capacity or productivity.
And the criteria that we use
to apply that label change.
Different skills, different gifts, different capacities,
they change from time to place and have changed over history.
SHATNER: Our understanding
of the nature of genius has clearly evolved.
And will continue to evolve in the future.
But there's another question about genius
that has been debated for centuries.
Do some people come into the world
already possessing genius
or is it developed after birth?
One dominant idea that evolves around genius,
is that genius is born, not made.
The great kind of test case in this regard is Mozart.
Mozart is a child prodigy,
he has genius from the beginning,
and he carries that out throughout the rest of his life.
And so to contemporaries, he seemed to confirm
this belief that genius is just there.
Either you have it or you don't.
Looking at the other side of things,
we know that his father was a music teacher,
and the he surely clocked the requisite 10,000 hours
of training and practice to make him the prodigy that he became.
So there is this kind of idea now that just intelligence
is not enough, so there is a big debate about this.
But we don't know. (laughs) That's what makes it a mystery.
SHATNER: Today, there are some experts who believe
that genius is a special quality
that certain individuals are simply born with.
But not everyone agrees with that theory.
In fact, at Johns Hopkins University
in Baltimore, Maryland,
a program has actually been instituted
for the purpose of developing geniuses.
It's called CTY, or the Center for Talented Youth.
DURVASULA: CTY or the Center for Talented Youth
identifies gifted youth
and gives them all kinds of enriched
educational experiences, higher level coursework.
Things that are typically at a higher level
than what a child would be receiving at school
in that particular grade or age level.
With the idea being that because these children
are such talented children, that they need
this enrichment to be able to cultivate them
so that they can sort of reach their fullest potential.
Some of the famous alumni
of CTY include Mark Zuckerberg,
Sergey Brin, who was the cofounder of Google.
So clearly, some of the people who've come out of this program
have shaped society in rather permanent ways.
SIMONTON: Our civilization, our culture, is pretty much
defined by our geniuses in the past.
And when a society
loses its geniuses,
when it stops producing its geniuses,
it descends into a dark age.
And so that leads to the question,
what are some things we should look for to identify
geniuses or potential geniuses?
And what can we do
to encourage the emergence of genius because
genius is an important thing to cultivate.
Is it true that real genius can only blossom
when someone receives the proper attention?
It's an interesting notion, but it also makes you wonder,
what happens when a gifted person
doesn't receive the right kind of guidance?
Perhaps a clue can be found in the story of a man
who many believe to be the embodiment
of evil genius.
SHATNER: A 16-year-old math prodigy
is invited to attend Harvard University--
one of only a handful ever to be admitted so young.
As an adult, he goes on to become a brilliant
and distinguished mathematics professor.
His name is Ted Kaczynski or,
as he's better known today,
the "Unabomber."
LIS WIEHL: Ted Kaczynski was
a brilliant man, a wunderkind when he was a child
who turned all that brilliance and genius towards evil.
(sirens wailing)
REPORTER: The Unabomber has been spreading terror
one small bomb at a time for 17 years.
WIEHL: From 1978 until 1995,
Ted Kaczynski bombed universities,
tech centers, an airline.
Three people died and 20-some were maimed
over the time.
And he would transport
the bombs in different ways.
Some he mailed
and others, he would actually deliver it, leave,
and then sit back and wait for the reaction.
He kept the nation in suspense and fear.
People were afraid of opening mail.
MOSS: The term "Unabomb"
comes from the code word given to the case
because the initial few bombs appeared to have something to do
with either universities or with the airline industry.
Now, later there were other targets, but by then
the code name for the case had already been chosen.
SHATNER: But what led Ted Kaczynski
down such a dark path?
Many researchers believe it traces back
to when he was identified as being
exceptionally intelligent when he was very young.
Ted Kaczynski, uh, is a very interesting
case because evidently
he was a pretty well-adapted kid in elementary school,
and actually was considered to be something of a leader.
And then, somebody got the bright idea
that he should take an IQ test.
He did, and got an IQ score of 167.
You have to have 140 to be defined as a genius.
So, what's 167?
That's one out of a million people.
It was recommended by the school
that he skip a grade when he was only ten years old.
So to skip from fifth to seventh grade.
The problem with it is
he was with older kids that he didn't know.
He became more and more socially isolated.
David, his younger brother,
reports that at one point, Kaczynski was
being very mean to him.
And Ted says, "Sometimes geniuses can be sadistic."
He was acknowledging
that as a genius, he could be bad,
sadistic, and he could work that genius for evil.
SHATNER: Ted Kaczynski graduated from Harvard in 1962,
at the age of 20.
He then pursued his PhD at the University of Michigan,
where he did groundbreaking work
in the field of mathematics.
PUCKETT: One of the hallmarks of his intelligence
was in the late '60s.
He won an award for his dissertation, in fact, his PhD
in Mathematics at Ann Arbor in Michigan,
because he solved a theorem that had been thought
unsolvable for decades by mathematicians.
He solved it, and published it.
WIEHL: From Michigan, then he went to Berkeley
to teach mathematics.
He was the youngest assistant professor
that the mathematics department had ever had.
But the students hated him, absolutely loathed him.
He didn't have any class hours, he wouldn't talk to them.
I mean, he was very disdainful of everybody.
PUCKETT: His genius was in everything
but social commerce with other people.
He wasn't able to negotiate
the social world with other people.
And so, he grew convinced
that he had to get away from people, away from society.
SHATNER: In 1969, Kaczynski
suddenly and unexpectedly
resigned from his position at Berkeley.
He then withdrew from society by moving to Lincoln, Montana,
where he lived in a small cabin
that did not have running water or electricity.
WIEHL: The cabin was just this rustic place off the grid,
8 by 12 feet,
but that was his getting off the grid,
and getting so far away
from civilization, everything.
PUCKETT: He was very happy when he first moved to the woods.
He wrote rapturously about it,
about how beautiful it was.
But then, planes started flying overhead.
He noticed motorcyclists riding through the forest
and disturbing the nature that he was glorying in.
It turned to bitter hatred
of the technological society.
He viewed technology as evil,
as the evolution of technology as evil,
and the technical class as perverting the human spirit.
MOSS: What he discovers is,
he can't get away from society even there.
The society that he's trying to escape
is closing in on him anyway.
And there's nothing he can do about it,
so he strikes back.
PUCKETT: He had taught himself bomb making.
He ended up creating chemical mixes,
melting his own components, and casting them
and putting them into the devices,
carving wood to make specific trigger switches.
He was a brilliant criminal in that
he was able to expertly
exclude anything identifying himself, any hairs,
any fibers, any fingerprints.
He was unlike any bomber that we had seen before.
SHATNER: In 1978, Kaczynski carried out his first attack,
by mailing a parcel containing a homemade bomb
to Northwestern University.
It was the beginning of a reign of terror
during which he carried out a total of 16 bombings
over the course of nearly two decades.
For Kaczynski, these attacks were not random killings
but rather targeted strikes against the institutions
he believed represented technological society.
His purpose was to-to wake people up
to the dangers of technology.
He would not have been able to promote his views
if he had not gotten the attention of the media
and the government and law enforcement,
by killing people
with his bombs.
That was his goal.
SHATNER: In 1995, Kaczynski wrote an anonymous 35,000-word
anti-technology manifesto
that he demanded to be published in major newspapers.
Ironically...
it was a decision that would lead to his undoing.
PUCKETT: Ted's brother, David, had read the manifesto and
phrases jumped out at David right away
and he had to try to push them down,
"It can't be, it can't be."
There were phrases that appeared in the manifesto
that were unusual spellings that appeared,
that were unusual,
and David recognized it.
The upshot was that finally David and his wife
went to an attorney in D.C. and said,
"We'd like to approach the FBI."
SHATNER: On April 3, 1996,
FBI agents finally arrested Kaczynski
at his Montana cabin.
He was found guilty on all counts
that were charged in the indictment.
Had the "Unabomb Manifesto" not been published,
it's my view that we probably would still be looking
for Theodore Kaczynski.
WIEHL: Ted's evil genius helped him build bombs
that nobody could trace.
And yet, the evil genius needed to be fed with hubris
and acknowledgement,
and that ultimately was his downfall.
The life of Ted Kaczynski tells a cautionary tale
of a brilliant and educated mind gone bad.
But fortunately, genius comes in many different forms,
like in the case of two bicycle repair men
who managed to change the course of human history.
SHATNER: Witnesses gather to watch the final test
of a revolutionary new flying machine
invented by brothers Wilbur and Orville Wright.
CHIP WALTON: Orville took his position in the cradle.
Wilbur was on the right wing.
They started the engine.
And lo and behold, 40 feet down the rail,
the aircraft lifts up.
They flew 120 feet in 12 seconds.
12 seconds that changed the history
of mankind forever.
SHATNER: The successful test
of the Wright brothers' flying machine
was a watershed moment in human history.
The 12-second flight proved that sustained, controlled,
powered flight was, in fact, possible.
For the Wright brothers, this achievement was
the fulfillment of a childhood dream.
SHILO BROOKS: One of the most
extraordinary things about the Wrights
is the fact that they were two ordinary people
from a middle-class family in Ohio.
Their father was a bishop, and he was a voracious reader,
and so there were books in the Wright household
of all sorts.
Their mother was a sort of mechanical wiz.
She loved fixing things, building them toys,
and so they got
a sort of taste from her,
a kind of mechanical taste.
COLLINS: The story of the Wright brothers
actually started 25 years before Kitty Hawk
when they were seven and 11 years old...
...when their father brought home
the toy flying machine built by a Frenchman
Alphonse Pénaud.
This was powered by the force of a twisted rubber band.
And that really amazed the Wright brothers
'cause they had never seen a toy flying machine in their lives.
Being curious, they played with it and they broke it,
but they didn't just throw it away.
First they repaired it,
but then they started to reproduce the toy themselves.
SHATNER: The Wright brothers chose to pursue their dream
of taking flight,
not by attending a prestigious university but rather
by opening a small bicycle shop
in 1892.
BROOKS: The Wrights owned the Wright Cycle Company
in, uh, Dayton, Ohio, and they were
bicycle salesmen, uh, and-and repairmen.
They were always curious,
technically minded, motivated young people
who built a bicycle shop and made a profit
in order to put money into test flights.
At one point, Wilbur says the problem
of flight is actually a thousand problems.
First, you have to raise the money to solve the problem.
Well, that's a very different disposition
than the technical mind who can
figure out the, uh, the equations for air pressure
and lift and these sorts of things.
And that is a very different mind
than the mind that's interested in fashioning actual parts
from muslin and wood, and building a motor
and propellers and these sorts of things.
And what really gave the Wrights
the impetus they needed to solve
all of those problems
was that they were relentlessly curious about the world.
And if someone said that something couldn't be done,
they thought, why not?
SHATNER: In 1899, the Wright brothers performed
their first flight experiment
by testing a rudimentary kite flyer.
They also looked to nature
for clues on how to solve the problem
of powered flight.
They saw all these examples in nature of flight,
the butterfly, the dragon flies,
the buzzards and vultures.
And they found that there were two methods of flight:
the fast wing beaters,
and then the soaring birds.
They patterned their machine after a particular bird,
the turkey vulture, which was a very good soaring bird.
They would read books about animal locomotion
and look at birds' wings.
And people were like, "What are those guys doing?"
But they were looking at the way the birds twist their wings.
Because neither of them went to college,
the Wrights benefited
from breaking the chains
that might have otherwise have bound their minds.
SHATNER: The Wright brothers took these unconventional
observations of animals flying in nature,
and applied them to their flight experiments.
This innovative approach
would prove to be a stroke of genius.
WALTON: The major breakthrough
that the Wright brothers discovered was,
the curvature of the wing
has a dramatic effect on the ability
to produce lift.
Wilbur one day was in the bicycle shop
and he held a bicycle
inner-tube box, and as he twisted the ends of the box,
he had an aha moment
and realized that the box ends move
very much like the wing tips of the birds.
He integrated that idea into what he called wing-warping
and the wing design that we see on the 1903 Wright Flyer.
The Wright brothers always said
when people asked them, "What got you interested in flight?
What made it such that you wanted to solve
the problem of flight?
Why did you persevere through all your failures?"
They would say,
"We did it for fun. We were having fun."
And then they would say, "We were frustrated
"that a lot of smart people thought flight should work...
"...and it didn't work.
And we wanted to know why, and we wanted to fix it."
SHATNER: The Wright brothers' incredible innovations
allowed them to solve the centuries-old mystery
of powered flight.
In fact, so much of what we take for granted today,
from commercial airlines to space shuttles,
can be traced back to these
two ordinary brothers and their unlikely stroke of genius.
There were many people before the Wrights
who attempted to create flying machines.
You can think about people like Leonardo da Vinci.
You can think about
Edison who was interested in the problem.
Alexander Graham Bell.
The genius of the Wright brothers
is what they had was a gumption to say, "Why not us?"
They became consumed with solving a problem
and I think is a kind of testament
to the geniuses that they are.
Could it be true that, like the Wright brothers,
we are all put on this earth
with the capability to do something extraordinary?
It's an inspiring thought, and suggests that each of us
has our own unique brand of genius.
For instance, there are certain individuals
who have the ability to perform
incredible mental feats that virtually no one else
on earth can do.
SHATNER: In this small town just north of Milwaukee,
stands the Treffert Center, a state-of-the-art facility
dedicated to the study of people
who can perform extraordinary mental feats
such as the ability to play any song
on the piano after a single listen...
...and identifying the day of the week
for any given date in history.
Like, if I'm looking at the year 1985,
May 15 here.
-It was a Wednesday. -And which part...
SHATNER: The individuals who possess these incredible gifts
have a rare condition that is known as Savant Syndrome.
JEREMY CHAPMAN: Savant Syndrome is
a spectacular condition in which an individual
who has significant mental impairment...
...also has some sort of an island of genius
that stands in stark contrast to their disability.
It's commonly associated with autism...
...but it can be other types of neurodevelopmental
or intellectual disabilities.
There are a number of different savant capabilities
that we see.
Anything from music
to art, to mathematical or calendar calculation
can be a savant skill.
March 27, 1947.
That was a Thursday.
(laughs) That's so cool.
Um, how about March 27, 1974 then?
A Wednesday.
CHAPMAN: Ben Wilson is a calendar calculator.
You can ask him
what day of the week was it on such and such date
in the past or future.
March 18, 1837,
which was a Saturday.
He estimates he has about a 500-year span
that you can ask him about, and he can tell you
that was a Tuesday, that was a Wednesday.
April 28, 1758,
which was a Friday.
It's pretty amazing.
SHATNER: According to statistics gathered by the Treffert Center,
there are nearly 300 people
who are known to have Savant Syndrome...
...including Stephen Wiltshire, who uses
his photographic memory to draw landscapes
by hand...
and Derek Paravicini, a renowned pianist
whose ability to identify musical notes
is so precise,
experts have said that he has absolute perfect pitch.
CHAPMAN: The most mystifying elements of savantism are
the speed with which they can do what they do,
the accuracy with which they can do what they do,
and the automatic nature of it.
It takes no effort.
They can't articulate what it is they are doing;
they just say, "I don't know, I just saw it."
SHATNER: One of the most notable savants in modern times
was Kim Peek,
who served as the inspiration for Dustin Hoffman's character
in the 1988 blockbuster film Rain Man.
Before he passed away in 2009,
Kim had memorized the complete text
of more than 12,000 books.
But what allows
these unique geniuses to perform such astounding mental feats?
Some experts believe that one reason may be that savants
are able to tap into the power of the human brain
in ways that the average person cannot.
HEATHER BERLIN: One of the theories
of how genius is working in the brains of savants
is that you have
the sort of compensation in the brain of a disability.
So if you think about other kinds of disabilities,
like someone who is congenitally blind,
what happens is they start developing
an extraordinary ability
to hear things because
the hearing parts of the brain,
they kind of take over those visual areas
that aren't being used
and have a greater sense of hearing
than a person who can see.
So if you think about a similar concept with savants,
there might be certain areas that are kind of
utilizing other parts of the brain
that aren't being used as much.
SHATNER: Could it be that savants
have extraordinary abilities
because they've activated areas in their brains
that are normally under-utilized by other people?
It's just one of the possible factors
that scientists are exploring
when it comes to this rare form of genius.
CHAPMAN: Savant Syndrome is such a mysterious thing.
You have people who can do amazing things...
...and we don't know how that works.
One of the main reasons
that we study savants is to learn about
their special and beautiful talents and gifts.
And it suggests that we may have a lot of untapped
potential lying dormant in all of our brains that's unused,
and imagine
if we could find a way to systematically access
these savant skills,
how many amazing things we could produce as humankind.
Do our brains have extraordinary powers
that most of us simply don't understand how to use?
Untapped potential that could transform us
instantly into a genius?
Perhaps the answer can be found by examining
the story of a man who became a genius
by sheer accident.
SHATNER: 32-year-old furniture salesman
Jason Padgett is enjoying an evening
singing karaoke with some friends.
But this seemingly ordinary outing
will change his life forever.
PADGETT: As we walked
out of the bar, there was two guys
that had been in there watching us sing karaoke.
They walked out behind us, and one of them
ran up and just smashed me in the back of the head.
I saw like a puff of white light...
...and the next thing I knew, I was on the ground
just being kicked and punched in the head and in the back.
They finally said, "Give me your damn jacket."
And I had on this little $99 leather jacket
and they grabbed it and ran away.
-(siren wailing) -SHATNER: After the attack,
Jason was rushed to the hospital
where doctors diagnosed him with a severe concussion.
He was given instructions to rest and recover.
But in the weeks and months that followed,
Jason realized that the beating he suffered had, somehow,
permanently altered his brain in a very unexpected way.
Right after the attack occurred,
I remember on the way home that night,
everything looking so weird.
Things that looked smooth didn't look smooth anymore.
They looked like there was little tangent lines
around the edges.
Boundaries of objects stood out.
Very quickly I understood that what I was seeing
was mathematically related,
and math describing, you know, how things move,
you know, across the sky and things like that.
I don't even know how I knew. It-it just was-was obvious.
SHATNER: The injury to Jason's brain
had unlocked un uncanny new ability in his mind.
He was now able to see
the geometry of the world around him,
even though he had never seriously studied mathematics.
PADGETT: Before my injury,
I was one of those kids that, uh,
had a very free, kind of silly lifestyle.
Um, I just-- I goofed off a lot.
I would say things like-like, "Math is stupid,"
or that it was kind of useless.
I didn't even finish algebra.
It was such a-a change in my reality,
from the way I was before
to the way I was after the accident.
And so, it was very disorientating.
SHATNER: Jason is not the only person
to develop remarkable new abilities
after suffering a head injury.
In fact, scientists have actually given the phenomenon
a name.
It's called Sudden Savant Syndrome.
BERLIN: Sudden Savant Syndrome
is this phenomena, which is very rare,
where somebody has some sort of head trauma...
...and they suddenly develop an extraordinary ability.
When this happens, brain damage trips up the system.
Those people are perceiving the world
in a slightly different way.
SHATNER: In 2011, Jason sought the help
of medical professionals
to better understand what exactly
had happened inside his brain
as a result of the injuries he sustained.
-DOCTOR: Ready, Jason? -Yep, I am ready. (chuckles)
PADGETT: I went to Finland and they did brain scans
called a functional MRI.
So functional MRIs show
how much oxygen your brain is using and where.
There was a screen in front of me
and they would flash equations...
...real equations, and then they would also flash dummy equations
that meant nothing.
And they would watch and see what part of my brain activated
when I was doing mathematics.
And what they found was that
I had conscious access to parts of the brain
that we normally don't have conscious access to.
Our brains are using calculus, derivatives,
advanced mathematics, and it's all happening
just naturally in the background.
We're all doing it. We're just not aware of it.
And I was forced to be aware of it.
SHATNER: Since becoming a sudden savant,
Jason has used his unique abilities
to create internationally renowned pieces of art.
Because he can see math everywhere,
he is able to draw complex shapes by hand
that are geometrically correct.
Jason has also used his gift
to conduct research in the field of number theory.
PADGETT: I definitely think
what has happened to me is a blessing now.
It's enriched my life in ways
that I-I never would have thought possible.
I never would have thought that I would be excited by math.
SHATNER: Approximately 32 cases of Sudden Savant Syndrome
have been diagnosed to date...
including people such as Derek Amato,
who became a musical savant after hitting his head
in a diving accident.
And Orlando Serrell, who developed the ability
to solve complex calendar calculations
after being struck in the side of the head by a baseball.
These cases of instant genius
have led some scientists to believe it's possible
that we could all have the hidden potential for genius
locked deep within our minds.
I'm absolutely certain that our brains
all have untapped ability.
It's like we come loaded with a certain amount of like
software, like a computer.
It's just a matter of finding a way to tap it.
Would you be willing to endure a head injury
to become a genius overnight?
Well, there are those who believe
you don't have to take that chance
because soon we'll be able to create new geniuses,
not by accident
but by harnessing the power of genetic engineering.
SHATNER: Scientists at the Beijing Genomics Institute
announce the launch of an ambitious new project.
Their goal is to see if genius can be produced
in a lab.
BERLIN: Some scientists
collected the genetic data from 2,000 people
who have a very high IQ,
and they were trying to crack the code of the relationship
between their genome and their intelligence.
If we crack the code of understanding,
say, the neural basis of genius,
then we will have the capacity ultimately to go in
and manipulate people's brains
at the genetic level to make them super geniuses.
SHATNER: Is it possible that
by manipulating certain genes, scientists can
unlock the potential for genius in anyone?
SIMONTON: There have been attempts to see if you
can identify specific genes
that are associated with genius.
It turns out this is a very difficult thing to do.
Most human characteristics are what are called polygenic.
That means they are made up of multiple genes,
and there are hundreds of genes
that are responsible for intelligence,
and these genes will often interact in complex ways
that we don't completely understand.
MICHIO KAKU: The point is that there's no one "smart gene."
Genius and intelligence
is a collection of many genes, many attributes
that collectively create this supernova
that change the entire intellectual landscape.
So, I think that we are far from being able to create
a race of super intelligent
genetically enhanced people.
SHATNER: Perhaps another reason
why genius is so difficult to engineer
is because it remains an elusive, intangible quality
that takes many different forms.
DURVASULA: One way to view genius
is to just notice all the different facets of it.
There is not just intellectual genius
but musical genius, athletic genius or what we call
kinesthetic intelligence, or social genius.
Ultimately, we really don't know what makes a genius.
However, people who have extraordinary abilities,
whether that's intellectually...
...socially, creatively,
we do have this sort of fascination with them.
We often view genius as a superpower
'cause we make the assumption that a genius
could help all of humanity.
McMAHON: It's very clear
that human beings believe that geniuses
are exception to the ordinary laws of nature,
uh, or of humanity.
That they can do
what ordinary human beings can't.
Geniuses are the X factor that we need in the world.
Geniuses give us inventions.
They give us great art.
They give us insights that we wouldn't have otherwise.
We don't want to strip the world
of magic, of mystery,
of the capacity to suspend the ordinary rules.
And this is what geniuses give us.
Just imagine a world full of geniuses.
(hisses) It's certainly intriguing.
But is it really possible?
Perhaps, instead of using technology
to engineer brilliance, we should simply appreciate
that true genius is special, unique, extraordinary,
one of mankind's greatest mysteries that remains
unexplained.
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