Human Intelligence

Naomi Alderman wonders at lady-in-waiting, writer and all-round entertainer Sei Shōnagon, who wrote The Pillow Book over a thousand years ago in the Japanese imperial court. The Empress and her entourage lived in a closed world, glimpsed through half-shut blinds, while political machinations went on all around them. Poetry and wit were highly prized; and Sei Shōnagon was unmatched. In dark times,...

Naomi Alderman investigates the eccentric brilliance of Diogenes. He was a ‘cynic’ philosopher, which originally meant ‘dog-like’, and wanted to teach us that humans could learn from dogs and the simple authentic manner in which they went about their lives. Diogenes was sharp, hilarious, downright rude and a menace in the market place. Special thanks to Dr Robert Cromarty, Classics Master at Welli...

Naomi Alderman meets Peter Ramus – a teacher determined to simplify and systematise the teaching of difficult things. He spoke his mind and thrived on stirring up trouble. Ramus was behind one of the most important learning devices in history. A system of organising knowledge that helped overthrow the primacy of Aristotle in medieval universities and allowed everyone to access ideas, regardless of...

Mary Somerville was a brilliant polymath who found time to correct the work of Isaac Newton whilst looking after her infant children. Naomi Alderman investigates her extraordinary work ethic and expansive interests. Somerville's writings, across a range of disciplines – maths, astronomy, botany, geography – became essential reading for those learning science, and helped to define what a scientist...

Naomi Alderman explores one of the greatest minds of the medieval world and in the history of Jewish thought. His work, The Guide for the Perplexed, is among the most influential works of medieval philosophy. In his efforts to reconcile faith and reason, Maimonides was having parts of the Enlightenment in his head 600 years early. Special thanks to Rabbi Dr Raphael Zarum, Dean of the London School...

The modern world is inconceivable without this son of a blacksmith and his meticulous, relentless brain. Naomi Alderman meets the mind behind huge scientific advances – who made breakthroughs in the understanding of electricity, changed the technology by which we live and contributed to our theoretical understanding of the forces underpinning the universe. Faraday also devoted his life to spreadin...

While in prison, Malcolm X read furiously after lights-out and changed his entire life trajectory. Naomi Alderman looks at his extraordinary capacity for learning. Prominent as a black nationalist, skilled orator and remarkable organiser in the black freedom struggle in mid-20th century America, Malcolm X was, above all, a learner – a thinker prepared to change his mind. He left hustling behind fo...

Luther's vivid, wild words – powered by new printing technology – set in motion a chain reaction that split the Catholic Church, powered the Reformation and changed the world forever. Naomi Alderman meets this determined thinker. Famously, Luther walked up to a church in a backwater town and nailed his Ninety-five Theses to the door. The son of a metal smelter, he knew how rough and dangerous life...

Mary Wollstonecraft argued with passion and moral certainty in her great work, A Vindication of the Rights of Women. Naomi Alderman meets the first modern woman, who lived the ideas she espoused – travelling to revolutionary France, living unmarried to her lover, arguing, debating, persuading and showing, with the quality of her arguments, the justice of her own cause. She died tragically young, g...

Washington may be better known as a man of action rather than ideas. However, he gave the world one idea of huge power, an idea that was also about power. As a military General, Washington won the American War of Independence. Then, as the first ever US president, he helped establish a nation and guide it through its early life. And then he did something extraordinary – he voluntarily gave up his...

The ancient Athenian Socrates encourages us to think about what are the most important things in life and to bring real clarity to the ideas, concepts and beliefs that we use every day. He was persistent, brilliant, possessed of an intellectual curiosity and rigour that few have matched. Naomi Alderman explores the mind of this mercurial and fleeting figure – he has left us with no written work an...

Naomi Alderman introduces her series dissecting the minds of brilliant thinkers from the past; examining the myriad ways in which humans think – the messy magic behind ideas that shaped the world. Unlike Artificial Intelligence, human intelligence is a flesh and blood pursuit. It is shaped by character, opportunity and circumstance, and fuelled by ego, mania, tenacity and eccentricity. Each episod...