The Art of Manliness - #181： The Geography of Genius

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast i want to start

00:00:18.560 off the podcast by saying i'm sorry to you all sorry for the bad sound quality on these last

00:00:23.540 few episodes i found out what the problem was i've corrected it it shouldn't be a problem but

00:00:27.920 it shouldn't have happened in the first place so sorry for that and also give you a heads up i've

00:00:32.400 been working on some technology that will hopefully improve the sound quality of my guests

00:00:37.180 so being someone who doesn't have a professional studio doesn't have the budget to fly people out

00:00:41.120 i have to rely on skype but skype as you all know can be some people can sound like they're talking

00:00:45.760 in a tin can but i think i've found something that will solve that and make that part of the audio

00:00:52.240 sound a lot better so look for that in the next few months hopefully we have that ready for you

00:00:58.060 as always we're trying to improve the show we take your feedback seriously and we're doing all we can

00:01:02.940 to give you a good quality product all right so without further ado uh let's talk about today's

00:01:07.400 podcast so throughout human history there have been these pockets of genius that have just flourished

00:01:12.640 in the world uh there was ancient athens where you had plato socrates aristotle all in a very short

00:01:19.160 time period you know come out and along with other greek thinkers uh edinburgh scotland during

00:01:24.480 the enlightenment produced a lot of great thinkers that influenced uh the modern world you had you

00:01:29.700 have silicon valley today you have uh vienna during the 1900s you have renaissance florence so what was

00:01:37.020 it about the the time and the place why do these pockets of genius flourish during this during these

00:01:43.020 different periods of time well my guest today wanted to find out the answer to that his name is eric

00:01:47.280 weiner he's the author of the book the geography of genius and what he does in the book is he goes

00:01:52.360 on this whirlwind tour of the entire world to find out what was it about these places that allowed

00:01:58.220 genius to thrive and what we can learn from these places a fascinating read it's entertaining it's

00:02:04.620 super funny uh but at the same time enlightening so today on the show eric and i discuss the geography

00:02:10.020 of genius and what we can learn about creativity and genius from these different uh pockets of

00:02:16.520 creativity throughout time and uh cultures so without further ado eric weiner the geography of

00:02:21.580 genius eric weiner welcome to the show thank you happy to be here so you're the author of the book

00:02:34.300 the geography of genius where you go on this worldwide tour of genius clusters clusters that

00:02:38.640 have popped up throughout human history before we get into the tour and the places you visited let's

00:02:43.400 talk about the topic of genius first i thought it was interesting you began the book by saying in

00:02:47.360 the modern world we are suffering a genius inflation what do you mean by that well what i mean is that we

00:02:54.900 we toss around the word a bit promiscuously you know everybody these days is a genius and we have

00:03:02.060 marketing geniuses and football geniuses and political geniuses maybe not so many political geniuses this

00:03:09.700 season but uh in the past we've had political geniuses and and we all want our children to work

00:03:14.760 to be little einsteins and little mozarts and um that's not the way the word was you know originally

00:03:21.960 used um at least for the last few centuries it's really meant you know someone who rises to the

00:03:28.440 very top uh of creativity really and that's what i'm talking about i'm not talking about genius as a

00:03:35.600 smarty pants or someone with a high iq i'm talking about people who really change the way we see the

00:03:41.540 world with their creative innovations you know an einstein or a mozart or a freud uh and so

00:03:49.220 yeah we i think the word has been a bit diminished in recent years this is interesting um in the beginning

00:03:55.720 of the book you talk about how there's a small group of academics who studied genius the very

00:03:59.700 scientific approach can you tell us how this study of genius began or i mean who is the father of

00:04:05.100 genius science if you want to call it that uh well i think that would um probably be sir francis

00:04:11.400 galton um we're going back to the mid 1800s here and he was a very odd british scientist and

00:04:19.680 nobleman and uh and he wrote a book called hereditary genius right and it was the first really scientific

00:04:28.980 in quotes approach to the subject before creative genius was just a sort of romantic idea people

00:04:34.840 had but no one had thought to really try to measure it and study it and he did he got a lot long though

00:04:40.640 uh he really concluded that genius was almost entirely hereditary when in fact now today we know

00:04:47.140 it's not uh but he at least started the ball rolling with an attempt to sort of empirically measure

00:04:53.200 this thing called creative genius uh you know and to to try to put numbers to it and therefore to

00:05:01.140 explain it i guess from then on a lot of the genius was genius study was focused on the individual uh

00:05:07.320 there was a fellow by the name of um his last name was simonton simonton dean simonton university of

00:05:13.840 california davis uh who unlike galton is very much alive and kicking and uh he really got this field

00:05:21.660 called historiometrics going uh which is again studying history through statistics

00:05:27.340 and he's a numbers guy who's taken that numbers approach and he's he's really looked at these

00:05:35.840 genius clusters as i call them certain places in certain times in history that have flourished

00:05:40.980 creatively and you know what was in the water back then well dean simonton has spent the better part of

00:05:45.940 the last 50 years studying you know what was going on all right so uh you took this idea that you had

00:05:53.160 and you actually went to go visit these genius clusters to find out what was going on and the

00:05:58.740 idea was that it's not so much the geography of the place but there's a culture in that geography in

00:06:02.940 that area that's embedded in these areas that foster genius it is i mean that's what i mean by the

00:06:09.160 geography of it's not you know oh whether mountains or not i mean that's part of the equation but really

00:06:14.440 it comes down to culture it comes down to you know you get two or three people together and you

00:06:19.320 have a culture and you get two or three thousand together you definitely have a culture and in

00:06:23.500 these places there was a certain culture that i think really made genius more likely you know we were

00:06:32.040 so stuck to this myth of the genius as this solitary individual um fighting against the odds and in

00:06:42.200 in persevering and that's yeah that's part of it but that really misses the whole important part of

00:06:48.400 the puzzle which is they did this in certain places at certain times their timing was good

00:06:54.380 uh the place they were in like mozart in vienna of the 1700s was you know conducive to their

00:07:01.400 particular genius and that's important okay let's talk about some of the places you've visited for

00:07:06.380 example you start off going to athens and you didn't go there to study modern-day athens but you

00:07:11.780 were there to figure out what happened in ancient athens during this very small period um a lot of people

00:07:17.760 think that the classical era where there's all this flourishing was very long but it was actually

00:07:21.960 really short right and they always are by the way these golden ages never last very long and that was

00:07:28.220 true of athens as well yeah so how did this small city state in greece and like you describe athens as

00:07:33.280 this dirty inhabitable place it's not that great yet it was able to come up during this time period

00:07:39.220 where they produced lots of geniuses like aristotle plato sacred socrates and a bunch of other thinkers

00:07:45.980 and scientists well um you're right that it was it was as i say in the book a dump um it was not a

00:07:52.240 very nice place uh and so we should just disabuse ourselves with this idea that genius requires

00:07:58.800 paradise in fact paradise if it existed would probably be the least creative place in the world

00:08:03.880 because you would have nothing to push against you would have no need to be creative um and ancient

00:08:08.920 athens was not paradise by any means but they had a few things going for them um uh they drank a lot

00:08:14.960 of wine uh which is no small thing but they they watered it down they diluted it five parts water two

00:08:20.880 parts wine um and so they were able to sort of maintain a low level buzz throughout the evening when

00:08:28.580 they held these symposia which means literally drinking together and they discussed and that's

00:08:34.460 sort of on the ground level something that happens in all these creative places there's conversation

00:08:39.560 going on slightly but not too inebriated conversation and it's conversation of people

00:08:45.480 from different backgrounds and it's energized and it's you know at times can get a bit nasty but

00:08:52.140 no hard feelings you know it's it's all everything's allowed that's what happened in athens

00:08:57.540 and they also walked a lot uh in fact they did a lot of their philosophizing while walking um

00:09:04.740 and they were not sedentary the way we are and i think that's a good thing in fact there have been

00:09:09.900 studies that show that we're more creative when we walk even 15 minutes on a treadmill never mind

00:09:15.520 in the beautiful outdoors in the greek countryside simply being on a treadmill for 15 minutes will make

00:09:21.460 you more creative um i mentioned those two the wine and the walking as important but not the

00:09:27.300 most important factor i would say the most important factor was their openness they were open to the

00:09:32.720 outside world and in fact they borrowed or stole depending on your perspective a lot of the ideas that

00:09:39.220 we now associate with them whether you know it's theater or statue making they they imported these ideas

00:09:46.660 and then they perfected them and and so they had they were able to sort of absorb and then all these

00:09:55.080 foreign ideas and foreign concepts and then improve upon them and that's what all these places do they

00:10:01.720 don't create something out of nothing they borrow from other places and why did the fountain of genius

00:10:06.060 run dry in athens why did it end in a word arrogance i think i think that's what happens to all these places

00:10:12.220 um they they get their success leads to arrogance and once you're arrogant you're no longer ignorant

00:10:19.460 and ignorance is actually one of the most important ingredients in creativity never mind creative genius you

00:10:25.340 have to know that there's something you don't know right you have to be open to the possibility that

00:10:30.200 there's something to learn and the greeks the athenians in particular uh became pretty cocky um which 1.00

00:10:37.940 annoyed their neighbors and ultimately i think led to their demise as a as a great place they also just sort

00:10:44.920 of in a way if you if you stop importing as they did eventually you you you're like a in your

00:10:51.240 kitchen cabinet you know you have so many ingredients and you can make various dishes with

00:10:55.900 them but if you stop importing new ingredients you're going to run out of new combinations and

00:11:00.520 new new dishes to make and that's what happens as well hubris which is a greek word which was a

00:11:06.440 which was a crime against the gods too which was a big deal back then it was you know that's sort of

00:11:11.760 what kept them in check for a while they they did not it was considered very bad to engage in hubris

00:11:18.160 excess pride and arrogance and then all of a sudden it was okay and oh and by the way they became foodies

00:11:24.080 at some point you know they were during the golden age they were they were like anti-foodies they

00:11:29.200 believed in very simple meals low caloric intake uh kind of bland food uh and then they became foodies

00:11:37.280 and started you know shopping at williamson sonoma or whatever the equivalent was back then and

00:11:41.920 i'm not saying there's a direct cause and effect there but it's interesting that as they became

00:11:46.080 into more into food they lost their creatives interesting so the next place you visit is a

00:11:50.960 chinese city and excuse me if i don't pronounce it right is it hongzhou hongzhou hongzhou hongzhou

00:11:56.720 all right so it's a chinese town it's from an eastern culture and i like how you put that in there

00:12:00.080 because i feel like here in the west we have this idea of creative genius being you know you have to create

00:12:05.680 something new novel you create something from nothing but in china and in the east they had a

00:12:11.280 very different idea of creative genius they did and to some extent still do have a different idea

00:12:17.200 and that is that um all creativity must be based on tradition that and it must be useful you know as

00:12:24.960 you say we're in the west we're really focused on on this idea of novelty and newness that you know

00:12:31.440 something must be really novel in order to be considered creative um and the chinese see it 1.00

00:12:36.880 differently you know something must be useful in order to be creative yes it must be new or new enough

00:12:42.880 but they don't really live under this illusion that you know that you can create something out of

00:12:47.840 nothing um and that's very much a western idea you know the latin ex nihilo means literally from

00:12:53.920 nothing that's the way god created the earth and heavens was from nothing in the chinese mythology

00:12:59.520 there was always something there was never nothing and so it becomes a job of a creative person to kind

00:13:05.520 of rearrange the stuff that's already there and perhaps new combinations but not to create something

00:13:10.640 from nothing so it's it's it's a it's it may sound you know esoteric and metaphysical and it is on one

00:13:17.360 level but it also has a very practical side that you know that everything you create must be linked to

00:13:23.520 what came before right i guess one of the other factors too that you um you see in all these places you

00:13:30.240 visited hung joe was going through some there was some political turmoil turmoil going on yep these places

00:13:36.400 are never like placid and completely stable there's always a bit of tumult not all-out war actually

00:13:42.560 think that's bad for creativity but uh political intrigue um or just just some churning of society uh

00:13:51.680 it's you know graham green once said of switzerland maybe this is a bit unfair but he said it anyway 500

00:13:57.040 years of peace and stability and what have they brought the world but the cuckoo clock um his point in

00:14:02.720 in fact the cuckoo clock was invented in germany so they're not even that but i guess his point is

00:14:06.320 that you know you need to live in interesting times and that means a bit of turmoil and even

00:14:12.480 chaos at times which is actually good for creativity i think that's interesting because i think there's a

00:14:16.480 popular idea about creativity and genius you know you read these blog posts and books and magazines

00:14:21.600 articles how to be creative it's it's all about finding your little space and having your routine when

00:14:27.040 it makes and everything's peaceful and calm and what i found is but the research shows that it's

00:14:31.520 actually that's not going to help you you actually need a little chaos in your life for creativity

00:14:35.680 right and you know and and i think that's important and that's why you know all these attempts to sort

00:14:39.840 of create the next golden age you know often governments are trying to create the next silicon

00:14:44.480 valley or wherever and they tend to fail uh one reason well one reason is you can't really create

00:14:49.440 one of these places they grow organically but the other reason is that you know government trying to

00:14:55.120 mandate creativity is like trying to schedule spontaneity you know it's kind of a contradiction

00:15:00.080 the next place you visit is florence to study the renaissance era and what i thought was

00:15:05.040 interesting from this this chapter was that about the art i think a lot of us modern westerns think

00:15:10.560 that for art to be pure and truly art it has to be unsullied from money i mean it can't be connected

00:15:17.360 to it but it seems like most of the great art that came from florence all these great innovators

00:15:22.480 they they were created for commercial they were created as commercial products in a way they were

00:15:27.200 created as commercial products and they were backed by uh one family in particular the medici

00:15:33.200 um and you're right that's what i try to do in that chapter is to to show that the world of money

00:15:39.120 and the world of creativity are connected you know florence like many of these creative places it didn't

00:15:45.360 have a lot going for it it was malarial infested it it uh didn't have a port it didn't have a lot of

00:15:51.360 natural resources but they used their ingenuity and they developed the cloth trade um by importing

00:15:57.760 dyes from around the world and and and becoming really perfectionist and creating the best cloth they

00:16:05.040 could and that led to banking which led to this family the medicis and they had this sort of almost

00:16:12.640 just really intense love of beauty and they wanted to create it they didn't want to be patrons for the

00:16:18.800 reason people tend to do today which is to look good or to feel like you're doing your share they

00:16:24.320 they actually uh were into art and beauty for its own sake and they had they were very good at at

00:16:31.600 talent scouting and picking out the the artists that were that showed the most most potential

00:16:37.600 like a young michelangelo or young leonardo and and backing them there was a whole system of

00:16:43.360 apprenticeship in a way for and this is always the case for these places for for talent

00:16:48.640 to blossom you know and and that's what happened in florence i think it's interesting because

00:16:52.640 there's some parallels to today i mean you hear people talking about you know cities trying to

00:16:58.160 create centers of creativity and they often do this by throwing lots of money at it at the problem

00:17:02.400 right so they want to create you know programs that attract creative types um they create these

00:17:08.320 centers where people can do hackathons and things like that but it often doesn't work so my question

00:17:13.200 is does the money come first or does the creative creativity come first and then the money i guess

00:17:18.400 yeah that's a good question i mean you need to have some money and some resources right or

00:17:23.520 you know if you're you know if you're just uh let me put it this way um if you're starving you're not

00:17:33.120 going to create much art so the idea of this truly starving artist is is a myth you know the starving artist

00:17:38.240 doesn't create anything um you know uh anything but their own misery really um so you need some but then it's

00:17:47.840 what you do with the money um you know do you deploy it in a smart way in a way that's likely to lead to

00:17:55.680 genius and and you know you look at some countries in the persian gulf and elsewhere they have lots of

00:18:01.200 money but not lots of creativity um because you can't you know you can't just buy a culture and

00:18:08.240 import it you've got a it has to be more organic than that also what i thought was interesting from

00:18:12.960 from this era was the role of the i guess it's called bottega bottega is that how you pronounce

00:18:16.640 it bottega yes it means literally workshop yeah these sounded like they weren't just they sound

00:18:21.920 like like sweatshops of art almost art sweatshops yeah i mean they were rough and tumble places where

00:18:27.520 there were chickens running around and rabbits which they used for various purposes and and uh it

00:18:32.800 was more like a sweatshop than an artist studio as we might have this romantic notion but yeah and they were

00:18:39.200 they were essential to the creative ecology of the place really right so they're getting that chaos

00:18:44.640 aspect again and i also thought it was interesting that you talk about the master artist would let

00:18:49.120 their apprentices work on their art so it was very collaborative um they made art that was very

00:18:54.960 collaborative in the bottega it was i mean and you think about it like there was this artist named

00:18:59.120 verrocchio who ran a workshop certainly prided himself on being good but you know he let a young

00:19:06.160 you know 17 year old uh one apprentice in his shop paint uh one part of his painting called tobias and

00:19:14.160 the angel uh and a 17 year old was named leonardo da vinci right who was not yet the renaissance man

00:19:20.240 the famous man we know but it shows there was enough trust there they were collaborative they were also

00:19:25.520 competitive at the same time it was that that mix that you always see um and you know like leonardo

00:19:32.000 davinci and michelangelo they were very competitive michelangelo was younger he was more the upstart

00:19:38.160 and this really pissed off leonardo um but it somehow this this competition actually brought

00:19:43.680 out the best in both men then you move to scotland to edinburgh and i don't think a lot of people

00:19:48.320 understand particularly in america don't really understand the influence that scotland had on america

00:19:53.920 and its founding i mean all the founding fathers read these thinkers that came from scotland like adam smith

00:19:58.320 and other others like him some of them traveled to scotland like benjamin franklin was a visitor to

00:20:03.520 edinburgh yeah yeah so what happened in edinburgh during this enlightenment era that that fostered

00:20:08.480 this genius output well i they had they had a chip on their shoulder which is actually interesting

00:20:13.920 because they had just sort of lost their independence to england uh they were you know certainly on the

00:20:19.200 edge of the world you know way up there north and small city and they wanted to prove they were

00:20:24.320 every bit as good as people in london or paris and that motivated them and their particular skill

00:20:30.720 i think and i think they still have it to some extent today is combining the theoretical with the

00:20:34.720 practical so this manifests itself mostly in in medicine for instance a lot of you know the early

00:20:41.440 forms of anesthesia and other medical advances were made there and it kind of makes sense because

00:20:45.520 medicine is you need to have a theory you need to know how the body works and understand chemistry and

00:20:51.040 other conceptual ideas but you also it needs to be practical there's a practical goal here to make

00:20:56.160 people well prevent them from getting sick uh and the scots were very good at this improvement they

00:21:02.240 always try to improve things um so adam smith was there at the time he's the founder of modern economics which

00:21:08.320 is a social science and theoretical but also practical right economics is about creating the wealth of

00:21:15.120 nations to borrow the title from his book you talk about the practice of flighting flighting f-l-y-t-i-n-g

00:21:22.880 nasty it sounds like the definition i was given as the ritual humiliation of your opponent through verbal

00:21:29.040 violence this sounds brutal but uh and i the historian who told me about it uh i said well he said the ritual

00:21:37.760 humiliation of your opponent through verbal violence i said it really sounds nasty and he says oh it is

00:21:42.560 with a gleam in his eye you know and and it's this idea again that you can have this conversation

00:21:48.800 that is you know gloves off kind of nasty and honest you know nasty in an honest way or honest in a nasty

00:21:56.640 way if you will uh so everything is on the table you say what you're thinking but then afterwards you all

00:22:02.560 head down to the pub for a pint or five because there are no hard feelings and that's that's kind of

00:22:09.200 important to be able to have an open conversation but to not get so personal that you make enemies

00:22:15.520 and the scots were particularly good at this that's really interesting i guess we don't really have

00:22:20.160 that much today i guess some people would say social media is that but you can duke it out there but you

00:22:25.680 don't have the beer afterwards you just no they don't and you don't have the intimacy that you know

00:22:30.880 their true intimacy on social media that these places like Edinburgh and Hafton's had where

00:22:35.600 you know these geniuses were friends with one another not always there was competition

00:22:40.560 but often friendly competition like Adam Smith and the philosopher David Hume best buddies didn't

00:22:46.240 always see the eye to eye they disagreed on on religion for instance Hume was an atheist Smith wasn't

00:22:52.240 but they were able to live with these differences uh and i wonder if we able to do that as much today

00:22:58.720 or we tend to demonize our enemies and then you go to Calcutta and i were i really wasn't aware of the

00:23:04.000 genius cluster here um the flourishing of genius that happened in Calcutta India

00:23:08.480 on the late 19th and early 20th centuries can you tell us a little about what happened during this

00:23:12.800 time well that's why i included in the book because it was so unknown and and outside of

00:23:18.640 Indian circles really and therefore surprising we're talking the late 19th early 20th centuries

00:23:24.800 uh and it was it's now known as the bengal renaissance named after the bengalis the ethnic group

00:23:29.920 that's predominant in calcutta and you saw i mean you saw more books published at that time than any

00:23:36.320 city in the world except for london you saw the world's first non-westerner to win the nobel prize 1.00

00:23:41.440 for literature rabindranath tagore and tagore was kind of a renaissance man he was a poet and essayist

00:23:47.520 and educator and activist and there were scientific advances there uh and there was a lot going on and

00:23:56.000 um you know it was really this convergence of english culture and indian culture um that

00:24:02.720 produced kind of third culture that was remarkably creative uh and not that well known i guess there's

00:24:09.280 that chaos aspect again um you got the combination of different cultures even calcutta itself it's a

00:24:15.040 very chaotic city with lots of people anyone who's been to any indian city especially calcutta now known

00:24:19.760 as kolkata is um yeah i mean just think that the visual that the stimuli that the that your senses

00:24:28.960 are bombarded with just walking down an indian street for one minute is remarkable uh it has been for 1.00

00:24:35.440 some time and i think you know we now know psychologists know that this kind of stimulation varied stimulation

00:24:43.760 not being stimulated by the same thing but by different inputs leads to creativity and an element

00:24:50.320 of chaos as you say um that uh you know in order to get from an old idea to a new idea you need to

00:24:57.760 enter through a chaotic state and that's true literally true of your eeg in your brain you know

00:25:03.520 when they hook up they actually hooked up rabbits brains to eeg machines and then introduce them to a

00:25:08.400 bunch of odors some they were familiar with others they weren't when they were introduced to a new odor

00:25:13.200 their eeg got all chaotic and entered what the one neuroscientist called an i don't know state

00:25:19.680 and i think being in a chaotic setting triggers something in us it triggers that i don't know

00:25:25.840 state and once you say well hmm i don't know maybe it's another way you've really opened the door to

00:25:30.960 creativity right in calcutta you talk about there's that theme of talking face to face they have this

00:25:36.000 thing called the ada i think it's what it's called yep and that the ada was their symposia or their

00:25:42.000 flighting you know it's it's a particularly vengali kind of conversation that i love that they give a

00:25:47.280 name for it uh but it's it's unstructured you know i said to one indian woman you know a friend there

00:25:54.720 uh well is there an agenda at ada and she said oh no an agenda would kill in ada um because the

00:26:01.280 whole idea is it's free-flowing uh it doesn't always lead anywhere i gotta be honest but but it's

00:26:06.640 this idea that they value conversation enough to give it a special name and to set aside some time

00:26:12.400 to just we would say shoot the breeze today but it was more than shooting the breeze because they

00:26:17.280 were against some pretty deep subjects sometimes sometimes they talk about cricket you know but

00:26:22.880 again this idea of open-ended conversation is important then you highlight vienna which

00:26:28.400 interestingly had two golden ages of genius a double dip yeah i call it it sounds like the double

00:26:34.720 dip of genius should be a bed and jerry's flavor maybe they'll pick up on that um uh yeah because 0.96

00:26:41.920 all the other places are kind of one shot and that's it and vienna was fascinating because you

00:26:47.280 had the vienna of like say roughly 1780 when you had uh mozart and haydn schubert and beethoven was

00:26:54.960 coming along soon you know this musical explosion really that was taking place and then you know in

00:27:01.680 the 1800s not that much happened there but then in the late 1800s around 1900 all of a sudden you

00:27:07.120 had another explosion of genius but this time in many more directions you had sigmund four he was

00:27:12.000 probably the best known character to emerge for that milieu and you had an artist named gustav

00:27:16.960 clint and you had oh my incredible amount going on so much of our modern world came out of

00:27:22.400 the ideas that were talked about and developed in vienna of 1900 um but it was unusual i mean in that you

00:27:29.920 had this double dip um i i think they were different one was musical and one was more

00:27:34.960 interdisciplinary um but um you know we don't think about vienna and genius that much we might

00:27:41.120 think of paris or london but vienna probably shaped the way we are more than those other cities i would

00:27:46.160 argue and we're seeing a lot of the same factors in play in vienna uh with the political turmoil because

00:27:51.680 i guess they they changed political hands a lot during their their time during their existence

00:27:58.880 it changed hands you're right under the ottomans and then not and it um it also was on kind of the

00:28:05.520 crossroads um of east and west during the cold war you know it was the sort of spy capital of europe

00:28:12.800 um and it again was a city of immigrants especially during freud's time i got i mean

00:28:18.800 ford was an immigrant and probably a huge percentage of the of the city was from elsewhere

00:28:24.320 from the austro-hungarian empire and all kinds of places and that's something else i found these

00:28:29.520 places uh these creative places all had a fairly open immigration policy and they allowed in outsiders

00:28:36.800 and their ideas right then then the outsiders you they that they bring us new ideas but they also

00:28:43.040 the outsiders you kind of allude to this in your book they they have a chip on their shoulder a bit

00:28:48.160 well yeah i think there are two things going on one is the immigrant you know why are immigrants 0.57

00:28:52.480 so successful one reason is and this is the more conventional reason i guess is they have something

00:28:57.040 to prove right they they're hungrier they want it badly they're motivated that definitely explains

00:29:03.600 their success but what about their creativity and that i think is that they they see the world

00:29:08.640 differently from everyone else they're coming from a different orientation and yet they're

00:29:14.640 accepted this is sort of the key they have to be accepted into the new place you know african americans

00:29:22.000 in this country during times of slavery were outsiders but you didn't see many geniuses emerge in that

00:29:26.880 community because they weren't accepted enough again they were truly outside the system uh an immigrant 1.00

00:29:31.840 like freud who was jewish in vienna was accepted to an apple to a point you know he was he was what i call

00:29:38.320 an insider outsider and uh and that's that sweet spot i think for creative people they they're outside

00:29:45.040 enough to have a fresh perspective but inside enough so that their ideas resonate all right

00:29:49.120 finally you come back home to america to visit silicon valley which has been the hotbed of

00:29:53.200 technological genius what's going on there that's different from some of these other places you've

00:29:57.600 visited well it's a bit of an outlier in some ways first of all the chapter's not over on silicon

00:30:02.800 valley right it's still unlike these other places i visit are historical and you can look back and

00:30:06.800 say ah that was good what's going on it's silicon valley still writing its story right that's

00:30:11.680 number one um it also all every other place i looked at every other golden age i can think of

00:30:16.640 really was an urban phenomenon began in a city and silicon valley began in farmland essentially it was

00:30:25.200 known as the valley of heart's delight in the prune capital of america you know and and that makes it

00:30:31.280 unusual um it's also in to some extent it is like these other places it's like athens and that it

00:30:39.040 borrows a lot from outside not all that much was invented in silicon valley not the cell phone you know

00:30:45.520 not the venture capital i even think the mp3 player was invented elsewhere have to check on that um so what

00:30:52.800 does it do it it picks the good ideas the venture capitalists hopefully back they don't always do it of

00:30:59.120 course but hopefully they're trying to back the projects with the most potential uh and then

00:31:04.160 there's a sort of system to move to perfect the ideas sort of like the greeks um and and so to

00:31:11.520 some extent it's like those other places but it's different in that they're they're not really creating

00:31:15.360 something for all time and steve jobs pointed this out actually in an interview he was asked to

00:31:20.880 compare you know silicon valley with renaissance florist and he said well in renaissance florist

00:31:24.720 we're trying to create art for eternity that will be for all time and we're creating something that's

00:31:29.760 only good until the next upgrade you know so there is that difference there i guess also in these other

00:31:35.040 places it seems like there's some intimacy going on the face-to-face contact um it seems like in

00:31:39.600 silicon valley from my perspective it's a little weaker than that there's connections and lots of

00:31:44.640 them but not really strong connections i'm not so sure about that it's i mean on the one hand you would

00:31:49.520 think like have you ever asked you i wondered why silicon valley continues to exist i mean it

00:31:54.000 really it technically it should not exist because they're they're making products there and selling

00:31:58.640 products there that essentially come with this message you can be anywhere you don't have to be

00:32:04.480 in the major city you can be anywhere be with our digital technology skype whatever it is yet all

00:32:09.840 these people who are telling us this tend to live in one place silicon valley so i actually do think

00:32:14.480 face-to-face contact does matter even in the valley um you're right that that may be changing

00:32:19.920 i'm not sure um but it's kind of a miracle that it in and it shows something about the persistence

00:32:25.600 of geography and the importance of place in our culture that that it still exists at all so what's

00:32:30.960 the future of genius could a town take this or a nation state take this your what your research

00:32:35.440 you've highlighted and said here's the blueprint for well if if i have the blueprint i wouldn't be

00:32:40.000 talking to you now because i'd be on my yacht in the mediterranean sipping a drink with an

00:32:43.840 umbrella in it um that that's the fact you know and so i'm not going to tell you that i've got the

00:32:49.680 formula and you know for 9.99 it can be yours um but i think there are things there's just some

00:32:56.720 things you can do to like make it more likely you know have an open society where a new idea people

00:33:04.480 with foreign ideas are not automatically rejected i mean north korea is not going to be the next place

00:33:10.240 of genius it's not because they're not hard-working or have good genes it's because it's not an open

00:33:14.400 system um you know you can have places of conversation encourage the kind of scottish

00:33:21.520 flighting or the greek symposia or the bengali ada have places where people from different walks of life

00:33:28.320 that can come together um be good at discernment you know uh don't just come up with lots of ideas

00:33:35.120 be willing to separate the good ones from the bad ones um that's one of the keys of creativity i

00:33:39.840 think so i'm i sort of even though i'm hesitant to tie things up in a bow i like to present the

00:33:46.720 small bow at the end of the book and i call it the three d's diversity discernment and disorder

00:33:52.320 and we've sort of covered those here i think you know diversity of ideas not just ethnic diversity

00:33:57.280 discernment again you don't want to just be a magnet for talent you have to be a colander that

00:34:02.240 separates things out and that disorder that sort of chaos that we talked about and um all

00:34:09.920 these places i investigate in the future all these places i think creative places will have those three

00:34:15.440 d's but there's i have to be honest there's always that element of mystery there's like

00:34:20.800 why here and not there what's that extra spark um you know it's like my publisher said i'm like i

00:34:28.640 asked him what the secret to a best-selling book is he's like if we knew that we'd make every book a

00:34:32.400 bestseller um if we could create these places of genius we would and hundreds of places have tried

00:34:39.840 to replicate silicon valley and they've all failed yeah it has a little bit more of that roman genius 1.00

00:34:44.480 right yeah yeah and um and there is there's just kind of a boldness too in these places it takes cuts

00:34:53.600 you know ultimately ultimately ultimately it's it is a courageous act it can i even say there's a

00:34:59.760 little bit of manliness involved i want to throw that in yeah for sure yeah yeah in the best i assume

00:35:04.720 you're using the word in the best possible exactly yes yeah the greek way the roman yeah that it just

00:35:09.440 occurred to me now because i'm the art i'm on the art of manliness that and women can have this trait 1.00

00:35:14.800 too but it's a sort of it's a sort of boldness to say you know what i'm going to put my chips down

00:35:19.200 here and and i think we've we've lost that a lot of ways because like say you're hiring someone to

00:35:25.280 do job x you tend to just come to just look for someone who's already jumped done exactly job x

00:35:30.640 somewhere else where's the risk in that you know in the renaissance they would place bets on

00:35:35.760 like you know the pope at the time wanted to have the sistine chapel painted he chose michelangelo

00:35:40.800 unlikely choice because he was a sculptor mainly then very little painting but he said i think you

00:35:47.040 got talent kid come you know do some ceiling work for me and now it's the sistine chapel so

00:35:52.560 if that's not manliness i don't know what is i like that i like that a lot eric it's been a great

00:35:56.960 conversation where can people learn more about you and your book uh well i've got a great website eric

00:36:02.000 weiner w-e-i-n-e-r books.com all one word eric weiner books.com i encourage people to tell me about

00:36:08.880 which places sparked their creativity um to write to me there and uh and support your local bookseller go to

00:36:16.400 your local bookstore and pick up my book um and uh i can't guarantee you'll walk away as a genius but

00:36:22.640 you'll have fun i think well i love the book thank you i appreciate that eric weiner thanks so much for

00:36:27.280 your time it's been a pleasure thank you so much my guest today was eric weiner he's the author of

00:36:31.520 the book the geography of genius uh you can find that on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere uh you

00:36:36.320 can also find out more information about his work at eric weiner books.com

00:36:39.680 well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice

00:36:47.040 make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com and if you have

00:36:50.560 enjoyed the show got something out of it i'd really appreciate if you give us a review on itunes or

00:36:54.560 stitcher as always appreciate your continued support and until next time this is brett mckay telling you to

00:36:58.640 stay manly

00:37:09.520 you

The Art of Manliness - March 08, 2016

#181： The Geography of Genius

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