Helen Lewis on The Genius Myth: why we worship genius and who gets left out
What do we mean when we call someone a genius?
For Helen Lewis, author of The Genius Myth: A Curious History of a Dangerous Idea, the question is not simply whether exceptional people exist. Of course they do. The more revealing question is why certain people are given that label, what their reputations allow them to get away with, and who disappears from the story when achievement is treated as the work of one extraordinary mind.
In The Genius Myth, Lewis follows the idea of genius across centuries, from Renaissance Florence to the rocket launches of Elon Musk’s SpaceX. In this interview, she explains why IQ tests are so seductive, what happens when children are told they are gifted, how tech founders become cult figures, and why the most interesting stories of genius are often the ones told just outside the spotlight.
Do geniuses really exist?
Lewis approaches the idea of genius as something both real and invented. 'Geniuses do exist because we’ve all agreed that they do,' she says. In that sense, genius is like money: a powerful shared belief.
But agreement is the difficult part. One person’s genius may be another person’s fraud, bore or charlatan. We all have our own private canon of the truly exceptional, and the arguments we have about it are revealing. To call someone a genius is not just to praise their ability. It is to say something about what a society admires, rewards and excuses.
That is the territory that interests Lewis most: not just who gets celebrated, but what that celebration tells us.
Are geniuses born or made?
The old argument, nature or nurture, talent or training, runs throughout the history of exceptional achievement. Lewis is careful not to flatten it. People do have different aptitudes, and some forms of talent are visible early. Others arrive later, or only flourish in the right conditions.
But The Genius Myth resists the fantasy that genius is simply a mysterious quality sealed inside a person at birth. Lewis points instead to a wider ecosystem: intrinsic motivation, stamina, patrons, universities, supportive partners, intellectual communities and the people who preserve a reputation after death.
The myth prefers the lone figure in the room, struck by brilliance. Reality is usually more crowded.
Why are IQ tests so seductive?
One of the subjects Lewis explores in the book is IQ: what it can tell us, what it cannot, and why people want it to tell them so much more.
IQ tests, she says, can pick up meaningful signals. They have some correlation with educational achievement and other outcomes. The danger comes when they are treated as oracles: precise, infallible measurements of human worth.
Their appeal is easy to understand. An IQ score appears to offer a single number that can float above your head, quietly announcing that you are cleverer than other people. For those who have felt misunderstood, underestimated or wounded by life, that number can become a form of consolation.
Lewis is interested in both sides of that story: the usefulness of measurement and the emotional hunger that gathers around it.
What is the problem with calling children gifted?
To be called gifted sounds like a compliment. Lewis asks what the label can do to the person carrying it.
Children, she notes, often long to feel normal and accepted. Being told you are gifted can make you feel special, but it can also make you feel separate. It may bring pressure, loneliness and a sense that an ordinary happy life would count as failure.
That does not mean bright children should be left bored or unsupported. Lewis recognises that some pupils need more challenge than their classrooms provide. But she is wary of turning childhood promise into destiny. To grow up happy, capable and at ease is not a disappointing outcome. It is an achievement in itself.
Why do tech founders become cult figures?
For Lewis, modern Silicon Valley offers one of the clearest examples of genius as a social performance.
Founders often need to persuade others to believe in a vision before it exists. A start-up is not just a workplace; it can become a mission. The goal might be colonising Mars, building superintelligence or connecting the world. That kind of ambition can inspire people. It can also become grandiose.
Lewis sees a light side and a dark side in this. Great projects do require conviction, imagination and risk. But when a company begins to resemble a movement, and a founder becomes a prophet of the future, it becomes harder to ask ordinary questions: Is this wise? Who benefits? What happens if they are wrong?
Is genius a kind of PR campaign?
Exceptional talent helps. So does publicity.
Lewis argues that many figures in the canon of genius either promoted themselves brilliantly or were surrounded by admirers who did it for them. Around the famous name, there are often fans, acolytes, editors, archivists, patrons and estates. These people shape the public story.
That does not mean the talent was not real. It means talent alone does not explain reputation. A genius is not only made by what they produce, but by the stories that gather around the work afterwards.
Can believing you are a genius make you dangerous?
Lewis is especially interested in what happens when achievement in one field turns into assumed authority everywhere else.
A person can be a brilliant scientist, artist or entrepreneur without being wise about every subject. Yet the label of genius can encourage a dangerous expansion of confidence. Someone praised for one extraordinary achievement may begin to expect deference on politics, ethics, religion, intelligence or human nature.
The problem is not brilliance. It is the pedestal. Once someone is too high above criticism, they may lose the ability to learn from challenge. For Lewis, that is one of the most reliable ways the genius story goes wrong.
What does Elon Musk reveal about the genius myth?
Lewis describes Elon Musk as one of the figures she wrestled with most while writing the book. She does not dismiss his achievements at Tesla and SpaceX, but she complicates the familiar story of the lone capitalist pioneer.
What interests her is not only whether Musk is a genius, but why so many people need him to be one — and why others are so invested in proving that he is not. The argument itself has become part of the myth.
In Lewis’s view, Musk shows how fame, risk-taking, wealth, technological ambition and constant public attention can distort the way we talk about achievement. The label “genius” can become less a description than a battleground.
Who gets left out of genius stories?
Lewis’s first answer is simple: wives.
Again and again, the official story of genius centres on the name on the book, painting, theory or invention. Just outside the frame are the people who typed, edited, discussed, encouraged, organised, funded, protected and preserved the work.
Lewis does not see this as an attempt to diminish the person at the centre. Instead, it widens the aperture. Great work is often made in dialogue: with partners, pupils, mentors, peers, critics and institutions. Even solitude has a support structure.
One of Lewis’s favourite examples is Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, Vincent van Gogh’s sister-in-law, who helped shape his posthumous reputation by preserving, publishing and promoting the materials that allowed the world to understand him as an artist. Van Gogh’s brilliance remains. The story simply becomes richer when we notice the labour that helped carry it forward.
Why do we still need the idea of genius?
Perhaps because it gives us a way to argue about value.
To say that Raphael, Picasso, Shakespeare, Einstein or Musk is a genius is never a neutral statement. It expresses taste, politics, admiration, nostalgia, rebellion or aspiration. It reveals what kind of achievement we want to reward, and what kind of behaviour we are prepared to forgive.
The Genius Myth is not a simple debunking. Lewis is too interested in brilliance to pretend it does not exist. Instead, she asks us to look more carefully at the word we use so freely. Who benefits from it? Who is harmed by it? Who has been left outside it? And what would we see if we paid as much attention to the conditions around achievement as to the exceptional person at its centre?