Hello, I'm Craig Wright, now, Professor Emeritus of Music at Yale. Some of you may know me from my Coursera course, Introduction to Classical Music, which I'm pleased to say has had more than 200,000 participants joining. But how did I, as a music professor, come to the topic of genius? Well, I came to this exploration of genius through the study of genius Mozart and his autograph manuscripts, studying them around the world. Curious about Mozart, I then started looking at the drawings and sketches of Leonardo da Vinci, and then started reading about Albert Einstein. I saw common modes of thinking among these three geniuses. Well, if you're going to pursue the sciences, what one person is the only person to have won two Nobel Prizes in two different scientific fields. Well, that took me to Marie Curie. But why supposedly so few women geniuses? Virginia Woolf offered an explanation. Then onto other marginalized figures such as Frederick Douglass and even those with so-called disabilities, such as Yayoi Kusama, Beethoven, and Van Gogh. Eventually, I started, of course, UDL called exploring the nature of genius, which I taught for some dozen years. During that time, I wrote a book, "The Hidden Habits of Genius". Now, I bring that Yale genius course to you online as The Nature of genius. I will be joined in this course by several colleagues from Yale who will provide insights into areas in which they are specialists. First of these is Lauren Summers. Lauren and I have worked together over the years at the Yale Alumni Academy. Lauren is a great interviewer better than I, and thus she will be introducing most of our guests in our course. These guests include Yale Professor of Astrophysics, Meg Urry, yes, a real rocket scientist, on the issue of women, genius and gender, and inclusion generally. Here's a quick excerpt from Meg's interview. This idea that we live in a meritocracy where geniuses will just float to the top and all will be well, and I worry a lot about all the untapped genius that's out there. The brilliance, the ideas that the solutions to today's problem, particularly if we're talking about stem, technical scientific issues, are staring us right in the face all the time. Big problems from climate change to pandemics and beyond. We need all the talent that's out there. We'll also be joined by Director of Admissions, Margit Dahl, discussing the subject of how we can judge and encourage the best young minds of today. Also by psychiatrists at Yale Medical School graduate, Dr. Eileen Jennings, on the question of genius and prodigies and the pros and cons of gifted programs. Finally, by Yale alumnus, Roger McNamee, a founder of private equity firms, Silver Lake partners and Elevation Partners, and a philanthropist who will discuss the topic of genius, money and innovation. As you might expect in a course on genius that emphasizes Western culture, we will meet the usual exceptional suspects. Historical figures such as the aforementioned, Mozart, da Vinci, Einstein, Marie Curie and Shakespeare, and then Nikola Tesla, down to the late Nobel Prize winning author, Toni Morrison. Of course, we will come to know some geniuses of today, not only well-known tech entrepreneurs such as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Bill Gates, and pop artists Kanye West and Lady Gaga. But also less well-known scientists such as Katalin Kariko and Jennifer Doudna. Geniuses from industry, the arts, the sciences, and political ideology. They'll all be here. But the point of this course is not only to explore past accomplishment, acts of genius, but also to use what we learned from our geniuses so as to make our own lives better, release the little bit of genius in all of us. Here's how our colleague, Dr. Eileen Jennings, frames the issue during her interview. Why do this course? It isn't to tell stories about interesting people in the past who did wonderful things that we now call geniuses. I think the point of this course is that we need geniuses. We need creative solutions, we need innovation. We need to fix things that are broken with technologies and ideas and methods that we just simply don't have right now because they're not working. That is something that we all need to address on an individual level or a global level. But certainly throughout history, geniuses have a way of fixing things. Geniuses can catapult evolution. The ideas that come from geniuses and groups of geniuses can lead to remarkable change in a fairly short time. For study the geniuses and then apply what we learn, that's our aim. Every course should have both a clear goal and a clear path to that goal. Our path will come in three parts. Part 1, Week 1. What is genius and what genius is not? Part 2, Weeks 2, 3, and the beginning of four. What makes genius, what modes of thinking does the genius employ? Part 3, the conclusion. How can we emulate the genius? How can we adopt these modes of thinking to allow us individually and collectively as a society to work more efficiently and more humanely? At the end of each lesson in our course, we'll come assessment questions designed not only to test your knowledge of the information presented, but more importantly, that asks you to use this information and your own life experiences to engage in practical exercises of critical thinking. Will this course make you a genius? No, at least not immediately. But it will help you think about your strengths and weaknesses. How you raise your children, choose the schools they attend, spend your time and money, and vote in free elections. Perhaps find your own passion or obsession as these geniuses found theirs. But for this to work, first, we have to consider what genius is. Let's get started.
