Helen Lewis: The Dark Side of Genius

In "The Genius Myth", the journalist delivers a sharp, funny takedown of our obsession with "brilliant" men, showing that behind every so-called genius is a crowd and a big PR machine.

0:00— Introduction
1:36— The Genius Myth
7:20— How dead geniuses fueled national myths
11:30— Thomas Carlyle and the Great Man theory
18:18— Are inventions inevitable?
23:22— Francis Galton and eugenics
33:35— Pro-natalism and declining fertility rates
37:14— William Shockley
48:00— Shakespeare and The Beatles
57:22— Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner, and the gender dimensions of genius
1:03:50— Lewis’ Jordan Peterson interview
1:07:18— Germaine Greer and second wave feminism
1:11:05— The gender debate in the UK vs US
1:14:14— Elon Musk’s rise and fall?
1:20:57— Do geniuses have second acts?

https://reason.com/podcast/2025/06/04/helen-lewis-the-dark-side-of-genius/

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Today's guest is Helen Lewis, a British journalist and podcaster who is a staff writer for The Atlantic. Her new book is The Genius Myth: A Curious History of a Dangerous Idea, and it explores how the definition of what it means to be a genius has changed radically over the centuries, how it became linked to all sorts of weird biological theories, and how Elon Musk has come to personify genius in our time (and whether his failure at the Department of Government Efficiency spells the end of his genius moment). Lewis and Reason's Nick Gillespie also talk about The Beatles; William Shockley, who turned to racial science after winning a Nobel Prize for helping to invent the transistor; and her notorious 2018 interview with Jordan Peterson for British GQ, which has racked up over 70 million views.

Video editor: Ian Keyser