The Know-it-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World

by A. J. Jacobs

  Los Angeles

  The Britannica quotes the following joke: The suicide rate in Burbank is so low because living there makes suicide redundant. Well, it's better than the Japanese gag about the monkeys and the moon.

  Louis XIV

  Louis XIV was not a particularly likable character. Here was a man with a Trump-sized ego who poured the nation's riches into building a palace while French peasants ate clumps of dirt for dinner. But Louix XIV had one thing going for him: he tried to ban biological weapons.

  According to the Britannica, an Italian chemist came to Louis XIV with plans for the first bacteriological weapon. Louis XIV refused. He never developed the weapon, never used it against other European nations. But even more impressive, he paid the chemist an annual salary to keep the bioweapon a secret from the world.

  Good for you, Louis. Tres bien. He was abiding by the Geneva Convention 250 years before it was created.

  It was a nice idea, but of course, no one--not even the divinely appointed Sun King--could keep bioweapons a secret forever. Information has a way of getting out. Which is good when it's the perfect recipe for oatmeal raisin cookies, but bad when it involves death by chemical asphyxiation.

  And now, I live in a world where some horrible bioweapon may soon infect our subway system, and the Homeland Security Department warns us every couple of hours to duct-tape our nostrils. These thoughts about the inevitability of bioweapons depress me. The Louis XIV entry has set me off on a dark and disturbing train of thought. I've got to cut it off. I've got to suppress it just as Louis XIV suppressed primitive bioweapons. Julie's right: embrace optimism. Remember, life expectancy was thirty years in the time of Louis XIV. So I'm lucky to be breathing at all.

  LSD

  Lysergic acid diethylamide is derived from the ergot fungus on grain, especially rye. It can be absorbed readily from any mucosal surface, even from the ear.

  This makes me nervous. I know it's irrational--I don't have a kid yet, I may never have a kid, but what if I do and he starts dropping LSD? What if he starts stuffing his ears with hallucinogens?

  The thing is, I now have regained a handle on some of those questions my kid may ask me. I know how hot the sun is (ten thousand degrees on the surface, 27 million at the core). I know how airplanes fly (Bernoulli's theorem). I even know the answer to that old chestnut "Why is the sky blue?" (dust in the atmosphere scatters the smaller blue rays of the sun).

  But I realize that's the easy stuff. What about sex and rye fungus and rock and roll? I used to laugh at the Tipper Gore types and their conniption fits about naughty lyrics or recreational drugs. Now I kind of see their point. What should my yet-to-be-conceived kid be allowed to watch? Are those threesomes on MTV's Real World okay? And do I have to stop cursing around the house? And how can I stop him from taking ecstasy while visiting random colleges? I know how that ends up.

  A friend of mine recently told me that parents at bar mitzvahs nowadays are forced to hire extra security to keep an eye on the kids. The reason: oral sex. It's so rampant that unless you watch these thirteen-year-olds closely, they'll slip off to a corner and drop their pants. At the rate things are going, my kid will lose his virginity as soon as he stops breast-feeding.

  If Julie ever gets pregnant, I'm buying a leash for the kid and not removing it till he gets his master's degree.

  Luciano, Lucky

  Even before reading the Britannica, I knew quite a bit about the history of the mafia. I knew, for instance, that Luca Brazi sleeps with the fishes and that Tony Soprano should have spent less time at the Bada Bing and more time working on his marriage.

  Okay, so I could use a little help.

  Happily, the Britannica is packed with colorfully evil real-life mobsters. Perhaps the best tale--worthy of Mario Puzo himself--is that of Lucky Luciano. A native of Sicily who moved to New York City as a kid in 1906, Lucky was a precocious little menace, already mugging and extorting at the impressive age of ten. In his teens and twenties, he broadened his skill set to include bootlegging, prostitution, narcotics--classic mafia stuff. He earned his nickname, Lucky, both for evading arrest and for winning at games of craps. Not to mention his luck at being one of the only mafiosi to live through one those notoriously unpleasant "one-way rides." In October of 1929, Luciano was "abducted by four men in a car, beaten, stabbed repeatedly with an icepick, had his throat slit from ear to ear, and was left for dead on Staten Island."

  After shaking that off, Luciano killed his boss Joe Masseria at a Coney Island restaurant, and by the early thirties, he had been promoted to capo di tutti capi. The fun ended in 1936. Luciano was busted for his brothel and call girl empire, and sentenced to prison for up to fifty years. Still, he continued to rule from his prison cell.

  So far, we've got a lively if slightly standard mobster yarn. But the next part is where things get interesting. In 1942, the luxury liner Normandie blew up in New York harbor as it was getting converted to military use for World War II. Sabotage was suspected. The Allies needed New York harbor to be safe, since key provisions were shipped through there. So navy intelligence made the trek to Luciano's prison cell and asked his help. Luciano--who still controlled the waterfront and the longshoremen's union--gave the orders. Sabotage on the docks ended. As a reward for his war efforts, Luciano's sentence was commuted, and he was deported to Italy, where he kept himself busy with drug trafficking and smuggling aliens to America. He died of a heart attack in 1962.

  I love this tale--the heartwarming friendship between the navy and the mobster. I guess the moral is that sometimes, for the greater good, you have to suck it up, hold your nose, and ask for help from the dark side.

  lumbar puncture

  Lumbar puncture is the official name for a spinal tap. This is a good way to sound pretentious, especially if you're referring to the beloved Rob Reiner mockumentary. I've collected many, many ways to sound pretentious--some of which have actually leaked into my everyday language. At work the other day, I made unironic use of the phrase "died without issue," a phrase I'd never heard of six months ago (it means died without kids). In case you too want to sound pretentious, here are five strategies that could come in handy:

  1. If someone asks you the time, respond with this quote from Valery: "Anyone can tell you what time it is. But who can tell you what is time?"

  2. Call cottage cheese by its alternate name, "Dutch cheese."

  3. After a long flight, complain about "circadian rhythm stress" (what your hayseed friends call "jet lag").

  4. Refer to the Vietnam War as the "Indochina Wars."

  5. Do not use the word "bildungsroman" when talking about a coming-of-age novel. Yes, it's pretentious. But it's not really pretentious. Try these: Kunstlerroman, a novel that deals with the formative years of an artist. Erziehungsroman, a novel of upbringing. Entwicklungsroman, a novel of character development. "I think Harry Potter is a fabulous Kunstlerroman!"

  Lumiere, Auguste and Louis

  Two French brothers who owned a camera factory. In 1895, they made a film called Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory--an aptly named documentary that shows workers shuffling out the door of the factory. It's considered the very first motion picture. Which gives me Movie Idea Number Four: Do a remake of Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory with Hollywood's A-list stars playing the workers. Tom Hanks, Russell Crowe, Tom Cruise all filing out a door, wearing black hats--box office gold!

  M

  Madonna

  The Britannica just added Madonna to the edition this year, and you could tell the editors wrote the entry while wearing one of those sterile full-body suits people use when containing an Ebola outbreak. It's wedged in between write-ups for the first Madonna and British legal historian Thomas Madox, and contains sentences like this one: "Her success signaled a clear message of financial control to other women in the industry, but in terms of image she was a more ambivalent role model." In Britannica-speak, that roughly translates to: "Madonna is a whore. A very dirty whore."

  The en
try did teach me some Madonna facts, including her middle name (Louise) and that she was a member of Patrick Hernandez's disco revue in Paris. Not that I know what that is, but I'll be sure to bring it up next time I see a Madonna video.

  Whenever that is. Reading about Madonna makes me miss pop culture. I'll get back to you someday, pop culture. I promise. It's just this Britannica is so damn long. Did they have to cover every single Nobel Prize winner and African canyon and South American capital? Couldn't they have left out a few? Who would have noticed?

  Mahler, Gustav

  He had a mother fixation that manifested itself in a slight limp he unconsciously adopted in imitation of his mother's lameness. The man most in need of therapy in the Britannica so far.

  majuscule

  Everyone keeps asking when I'm going on Jeopardy! And I have to say, I'm starting to feel pretty good about my chances. I've been watching my old pal Alex Trebek give the clues and I've made huge strides in my ability to shout out the proper questions before the contestants (especially if I use the pause button on my TiVo).

  In fact, I may just be too smart for my own good. The other night, I watched Alex give the following $100 clue: "This is another term for uppercase characters, such as the ones that start a sentence."

  I knew that. Easy. "Majuscule!" I shouted out, confidently. "What is majuscule!" "Majuscule" is the official name for uppercase letters and "minuscule" is the name for lowercase letters.

  One of the contestants twitched his thumb and rang in. "What is capital letters," he said.

  "Correct," said Alex.

  Oh, yes. That's right. Capital letters. I should have known that. I was reminded of that woman at the Mensa convention who kept saying "interstices" when the word was "gap." I felt like a tool. But also, quite superior.

  If I am eventually going to try out for Jeopardy! I figure it'd be good to get some advice from an expert. So I track down one of the all-time big money winners, a five-time champion named Dave Sampugnaro, who I found on the Internet (his e-mail handle is jeopardyboy). He agrees to meet me for coffee. Dave is a nice man with a goatee, wire rim glasses, and an abundance of nervous energy that, during our meeting, keeps his leg bouncing and his hands busily twisting a straw wrapper. "I haven't read the entire encyclopedia," he tells me when we sit down. "But when I was five I read the Information Please Almanac."

  Nowadays, when Dave isn't at his day job--he works at IBM--he spends his time collecting. He collects antique license plates, soft drink thermometers, presidential signatures--and most of all facts. The man is a fact machine. Our meeting is like a boxing match with factoids.

  Dave tells me that Ulysses S. Grant's wife was cross-eyed and posed for paintings only at a concealing angle. I counter with my classic about Rene Descartes and his cross-eyed fetish. He responds with the nugget that James Buchanan was nearsighted in one eye and farsighted in the other, so he'd look at visitors with his head cocked to the side. I rally with a bit about a cousin of James Buchanan who invented a submarine that allowed him to walk on the bottom of the Mississippi River, where he found a fortune in lead and iron. After which he pounds me with the fact that Abe Lincoln was the only president to hold a patent--it's for a device that lifts boats over levees.

  The conversation is fast and wide-ranging and slightly exhausting--but exhilarating. No eye rolling here. No awkward silences. Dave loves facts as much as, maybe more than, I do, and he's just bursting to spout them and drink them in.

  Dave warns me that Jeopardy!'s not an easy experience. "I was so nervous in the greenroom, I was shaking. I tried to pick up a glass of water and I was spilling it everywhere." And that's if you get on. Dave tried out no less than seven times over eight years before getting the nod. Hopefuls have to take a ten-question test, then a harder, fifty-question test, then have an interview with the producers to see if they are camera-friendly--and even if they pass those they might not get called.

  There aren't too many secrets to success, Dave says. Go with your first instinct when answering clues. And be passionate about knowledge--you should never think of studying as a chore. Facts are your friends.

  Speaking of facts, he's got plenty more: "You know, at one time there was only one bathroom in the White House and the president had to wait his turn if someone was in there."

  When I get back to my office, I start to think about Dave's eight years of auditions. Jesus. I figure I better start now. So I call the Jeopardy! publicist to see when the next auditions might take place--and that's when I get an unpleasant surprise. The publicist says that I'm no longer eligible, since I've met Alex Trebek. What? It's not like Trebek and I play Yahtzee every Saturday afternoon. I doubt he'd recognize me in a lineup of other skinny white journalists. And I, for one, mistook him for a Mexican gardener. Doesn't matter. Jeopardy! is The New York Times of game shows, and there can be no appearance of impropriety. As far as they're concerned, my two-hour interview with Trebek put me in the inner circle next to his wife and mother and Merv Griffin. Answer: This is hugely frustrating. Question: What are the overly strict Jeopardy! rules?

  Maybe I should look into Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. I can win more money and no one will see how bad my handwriting is.

  mammals

  Elephant copulation lasts twenty seconds. That should make a lot of men feel better.

  Mann, Horace

  In his final speech, the educational reformer told students: "Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity." Good wisdom. Great wisdom even. I have to remember that.

  manure

  The Britannica isn't a Farrelly brothers movie, but it does have more than its fair share of scatology. And thank God for that, because I desperately needed to expand my knowledge of waste products.

  You see, when I married Julie, I became uncle to her brothers' kids--four adorable, squeaky-voiced children under ten. Not having much experience with the Nickelodeon crowd, I initially had some trouble connecting with them. But then I hit upon a secret. Two words, to be exact. My entire relationship with my nieces and nephew was forged with the phrase "monkey poop." For five years, I have worked this phrase into every conversation I have with them.

  "What would you like for your birthday?" I'll ask Andrea, age seven.

  "Gameboy pinball!" she says.

  "Well, I was thinking of getting you fifty-seven pounds of monkey poop. Would that be okay?"

  "Nooo!!!" she'll scream, running away. "No monkey poop!"

  My monkey poop joke has been my biggest hit, my equivalent of Bill Cosby's dentist routine. I think my nieces and nephew were just happy to have found an adult who is less mature than they are. And yet, after five years, even something so brilliant as monkey poop began losing its freshness. I needed some new material. The encyclopedia was there to help.

  One Sunday, all the kids and their parents made one of their day trips to the city, and used our apartment as headquarters.

  "What's for lunch?" I ask Natalia, age nine.

  "I dunno," she says.

  "You think Aunt Julie will be serving whale poop?"

  "Whale poop?" she asks.

  "Yeah, whale poop is delicious."

  "Uh-huh."

  "Seriously, a lot of people do eat whale poop."

  "Yeah, right."

  "You don't believe me?" I take out volume A, and turn to ambergris. I show Natalia the definition: a foul-smelling substance found in the intestines of whales that, when dry, takes on a sweet aroma, and is used in spices and perfumes. She is duly impressed. She runs into the kitchen.

  "I'd like some whale poop, please! On French bread!"

  Who said the Britannica doesn't have practical knowledge? This is killer material. Next, I impress my nieces and nephew with stories about fossilized dinosaur poop (it's called coprolite). I segue into the best method for storing manure (stack it, so that it doesn't leach nitrogen), which wasn't quite as big a hit. But I redeem myself with the casebearing beetle. When it's threatened, it pulls its legs inward and disguises
itself as caterpillar droppings.

  "Everybody, pretend to be caterpillar poop!" I shout.

  We all drop to the floor and pull in our arms and legs.

  "Hey, are you by any chance caterpillar poop?" I ask Natalia.

  "No, it's me! Natalia! Fooled you."

  Julie's sister-in-law Lisa walks into the room to see the five of us on the floor in little balls.

  "What's going on here?" she asks.

  "Shhh," says her daughter, Allison, age five. "We're pretending to be caterpillar poop."

  Lisa looks at me. She is not amused.

  "I thought we discussed this. We would not be making monkey poop jokes anymore."

  "But this is caterpillar poop," I say. "Totally different."

  masochism

  The term "masochism" was derived from Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, an Austrian novelist who wrote extensively about how he enjoyed being beaten and subjugated. Poor Masoch. He's no Sade. Everyone still talks about the Marquis de Sade--his works are read, movies are made about him, biographies glorify his memory. But Masoch gets nothing, except the sullying of his family name. On the other hand, if anyone likes being ignored, it's probably Masoch. Pay no attention to me! Yes, ignore my writings! Just tarnish my name!

  If the Britannica has taught me anything, it's to be more careful. I don't want to turn into an unseemly noun or verb or adjective someday. I don't want to be like Charles Boycott, the landlord in Ireland who refused to lower rents during a famine, leading to the original boycott. I don't want to be like Charles Lynch, who headed an irregular court that hung loyalists during the Revolutionary War. I can't have "Jacobs" be a verb that means staying home all the time or washing your hands too frequently.

  mechanics

  Two days ago, as I was tapping a golf ball around the Esquire art director's office floor, I wondered to myself: Why do golf balls have all these dimples? And here's the answer: the dimples create turbulence around the ball, which reduces the drag as it flies through the air. (Some scientists also think that bathing suits with rough surfaces help make swimmers go faster, but this is still controversial.) Sometimes the Britannica has exquisite timing.