The Origin of Genius and the Birthday Party

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The word genius originated from the Romans to describe an extraordinary person who is closer to the gods than mere mortals. Originally, genius referred to the attending deity assigned to a person at birth. This deity bore witness to the emergence of their soul, the divine spark within them. The idea of celebrating birthdays with a cake offering and ritual hymn comes from the ancient practice of honoring one's attending deity on the day of their birth.

In this show you'll hear the first episode of a documentary series I made for Himalaya, an audio service devoted to inspirational and educational content that asked me if I had any ideas for a book that I had yet to pursue, and sure enough, I did. The series is all about the difficulty of defining the word "genius," and out of that launching point it goes deep into the science of human potential and the history of the both the word and all the ideas we have attempted to understand and express when using it.

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Exploring Genius Audio Documentary