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

by A. J. Jacobs

  In Pavlik, I saw the worst qualities of myself as a twelve-year-old. That was the age when believed I was the smartest boy in the world. And like Pavlik, I decided I knew far more than my dunderheaded parents. Plus, like Pavlik, I was a Marxist. Somehow, I had gotten my hands on The Communist Manifesto. I understood maybe 14 percent of it, but I did like the catchy saying at the end about throwing off chains. So I declared myself a communist.

  Some of my childhood intellectual endeavors make me proud--my analysis of Andrew Lloyd Weber's Starlight Express comes to mind. That didn't hurt anyone, and I think I might have been right. But this communist phase makes me cringe. I was so thoroughly convinced of my correctness. Embarrassingly so. I couldn't believe my father worked for a capitalist law firm, exploiting secretaries by giving them only four weeks of vacation a year. If there had been proper authorities, I might have called them and denounced him.

  Occasionally, I'd engage my father in a debate. I remember one on the beach in East Hampton, as we walked collecting beach glass. My dad said that Marxism was a nice theory--it would be great if there were no poverty and everyone cooperated. But in reality, communism just didn't work. In reply, I gave him one of the half dozen lines I had memorized. It could have been about how communism would cause the "withering away of the state" or that capitalism contains the "seeds of its own destruction." Something like that.

  My dad tried to get me to clarify by asking reasonable questions. It soon became clear to both of us that I didn't really understand what those catchphrases meant. Which only got me angrier and more self-righteous. So I repeated my catchphrase, told him that he should read The Communist Manifesto, and then stomped off the fascist beach. At the very least, I thought to myself, he'll understand when the revolution comes.

  I'm not sure what Pavlik's motivation was. But I'm pretty sure, looking back, that this was the intellectual version of our heated games of Wall Ball. My dad had far more knowledge and life experience than me. But if I could just beat him at one thing--if, say, I could overthrow the socioeconomic system he was a part of--wouldn't that be something?

  Mosconi, Willie

  "When his father forbade him to play pool, hoping that he would pursue a career in vaudeville, young Mosconi practiced with potatoes and a broomstick." I like the image of a dad hoping his son will pursue pie-inthe-face humor. But I am also impressed that pool champion Willie followed his dream by using misshapen vegetables. Another inspiring overcoming-odds story.

  motion

  Julie and I drive down to New Jersey for a little suburban Saturday (we buy lower-temperature gas in the morning, at my suggestion). We're going to visit Julie's brother Eric and his wife, Alexandra. As always, we start the day playing mixed doubles with them at their tennis club.

  Eric is infuriatingly good at tennis. It reminds me of that fact I read about in the intelligence section--the higher the person's IQ, the better he or she is at the thirty-five-yard dash. Maybe the same holds true for tennis. It seems that nature hasn't heard that you're not supposed to put all your eggs in one basket.

  Making things worse, Eric is one of those types with a closet full of the proper equipment. Today, he's arrived at the court in his white-collared shirt, white shorts, and white wristbands, all with a tasteful blue trim. He takes out his latest tennis racket, which is made from some material usually reserved for NASA's Mars exploration vehicles.

  We begin our pregame leg stretches.

  "You up to L yet?" Eric asks. "For 'loser'?" He chuckles. "You must have read about aces in the A section. You'll be seeing a lot of those."

  "Leave my husband alone," says Julie.

  "I'm okay, sweetie," I say. I turn to Eric. "After I'm done with you, you're going to need Vladimir Nabokov to give you some lessons."

  "What?" Eric says.

  "Nabokov was a tennis teacher before he became a writer. He also appeared as an actor some German movies."

  "Well, you're definitely not up to T for 'trash-talking,' " says Eric.

  "I thought that was very good, A.J.," says Julie.

  Julie doesn't actually believe my Nabokov trivia was an appropriate comeback, but she knows what it's like to be tormented by Eric. She endured a childhood of it, including one particularly vicious fight over the merits of Burger King versus McDonald's.

  Regardless, I am feeling more confident than usual. I've come up with a bold new strategy. I've been brushing up on the physics I learned in the Britannica, visualizing the mechanics of flying spheres, and I've semiconvinced myself that this will make me a better player. I will see the court in angles and forces and arrows. I will be Master of the Natural Laws of Tennis. I will turn knowledge into power, specifically a powerful forehand.

  As we warm up, I tell myself to be aware of the Magnus effect. The Magnus effect is what causes tennis balls with topspin to dive downward. It's actually a special case of Bernoulli's Theorem which we can thank for keeping airplanes aloft, and has to do with a greater pressure on top of the ball than under it. Every time the ball comes to me, I watch that yellow fuzzy projectile spin, understand what's going on, and thwack it back. I am doing it! The Master of the Natural Laws of Tennis is in the house! I am playing as well as--if not better than--my impeccably dressed brother-in-law.

  "Nice shot, A.J.!" Alexandra says, after one of my down-the-line Magnus-enhanced forehands.

  When the match begins, Julie and I jump out into an early and somewhat surprising lead. We're up 2-0. This causes Eric to walk and talk very briskly.

  I keep focusing on my beloved Magnus effect. But I'm not forgetting about the parabola of the lob, discovered by Galileo himself. I'm not even forgetting about how gravity is stronger toward the Equator, so the north side of the court should have a little more bounce. Okay, well, I'm trying to forget that one, because that's probably not going to help me. And I'm trying not to get caught up in the Coriolis effect either, which says that a projectile moving north will drift to the east because of the earth's rotation. That won't likely have a huge effect on my ground strokes. But still, the Master of the Natural Laws of Tennis is thwacking back forehands and backhands, visualizing the projectiles in all their Newtonian splendor. We are winning! After one of my knowledge-enhanced forehands, Eric dumps his volley into the net.

  "Eric!" shouts Eric.

  That's the word I've been waiting to hear. A sure sign that my Harvard-educated, wristband-wearing, cavity-free brother-in-law is pissed as hell at himself. There's no other thing I'd like to hear, with the possible exception of "the pregnancy test is positive."

  That makes the game worth it. And that, sadly, is also the highpoint of Julie's and my own parabola. Because, in the end, Eric and Alexandra beat us. As much as I try to keep in mind the Magnus effect, I eventually fall under the sway of my Piss-Poor Backhand effect. So be it. We have had our moment of glory among the yellow spheres.

  motion picture

  The first true talkie wasn't the The Jazz Singer, which the Britannica dismisses as "essentially a silent picture with a Vitaphone score and sporadic episodes of synchronized singing and speech." The first 100 percent talkie: The Lights of New York, in 1928. More myth shattering, courtesy of the Britannica.

  Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Academy of

  This is the organization that gives out the Oscars. I know this well, seeing as I spent several weeks every year at Entertainment Weekly writing breathless articles about who was going to win those little gold statuettes. In fact, I have firsthand knowledge of the Oscars.

  It happened in 1997, right after the movie Shine--the one about the schizophrenic pianist--came out, to much critical acclaim. The actor who played the pianist as a young man was named Noah Taylor, a gawky-looking Australian fellow with a pageboy haircut and thick black Kissinger-style glasses. I'm sorry to report that I also had a pageboy haircut and thick black Kissinger-style glasses, not to mention his narrow face and prominent nose. I looked like Noah Taylor's clone, or at least his older brother.

  I found out tha
t Noah wouldn't be attending the Oscars, so I decided to go in his stead and write an article about it. It would be an undercover investigation of what it's like to be a movie star. My conclusion: it's pretty damn good.

  At first, I was worried that my little ruse wouldn't work. But as soon as I stepped out of the limo in my rented tuxedo and onto the red carpet, the cameras started snapping. The crowd shouted, "Noah! Noah!" the paparazzi jostled, fans demanded my autograph (I wrote, "Shine on!"). I was touched by how many supporters were outraged that I didn't get a nomination. "There's always next year," I said in my fake Australian accent, which sounded remarkably like the Lucky Charms leprechaun.

  I gave interviews to eager reporters (I said I wanted to do a big disaster movie next). Chris Farley told me he was a fan. I got so cocky that I went up to Geoffrey Rush--the costar of Shine, and a guy who actually knew what the real Noah Taylor looked like, and said perkily, " 'Ello, Geoffrey! It's me!" I've rarely seen anyone so dismayed. It was clear he had no idea who I was, or who I was pretending to be. He backed away slowly.

  In any case, having written about them and attended a ceremony, you'd think I'd know a thing or two about the Oscars. And yet, I realized I don't even know what the word "Oscar" refers to. I'm constantly being surprised by my ignorance of the most obvious things, those things that are right under my prominent nose. Why didn't I ever bother to look up the word "Oscar"? Why didn't I even think about it? It turns out--according to the Britannica CD-ROM, which I dipped into at the office today--there are competing theories as to the origin of the name Oscar. Some say the academy librarian came up with the name, because the statuette looked like her uncle Oscar. But Bette Davis liked to take credit, saying the "backside" of the statue looked like her husband, Harmon Oscar Nelson. "Backside" is Britannica-speak for "ass."

  Mozart

  When he was thirteen, he heard the secret song of the Sistine Choir and copied it out from memory. I need a memory like that. Maybe he used Dave Farrow's memory techniques.

  mule

  Julie's not pregnant. My Seattle trip was a failure. Three thousand miles and way too much money for nothing. When this kid comes, he'd better appreciate what we're doing for him. If he comes. I see the word "sterile" in the write-up of the mule (offspring of a male donkey and a female horse) and the hinny (a female donkey and a male horse) and it kills me.

  Mussolini, Benito

  I wasn't totally ignorant about Il Duce. A few years ago, I had done some cursory research on the fascist dictator for a TV show I worked on. At the time, my friend Rick and I were writing freelance scripts for something called Celebrity Deathmatch, which was one of MTV's more sophisticated offerings. It featured clay figurines of famous people beating each other up and playfully ripping out each other's internal organs. The first match was between Hillary Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. But by the time I got there, the show was running out of both celebrities and new types of internal organs to pluck out (the kidney had been removed far too often, I was told; try the spleen or pancreas). Rick and I were assigned to write a match between two Italian stallions: goose-stepping tyrant Benito Mussolini and Oscar-winning actor Roberto Benigni. So I dutifully read up on Mussolini. I remember being dismayed to learn that he started his career as a journalist. My profession already falls between telemarketers and international weapons dealers in the list of least respected career choices; we don't need murderous World War II leaders on our team. In any case, that's what stuck in my mind. (By the way, in case you're wondering, the death match ended with a stunning upset: Benigni won by tossing Mussolini in the air like a pizza pie. I told you. Sophisticated.)

  The Britannica gave me a whole new look at Mussolini. Namely, I got a fascinating insight into a bizarre theme that ran through his life: mistresses.

  Mussolini grew up poor, his family crowded into two rooms on the second floor of a small, dilapidated palazzo in the town of Predappio. His dad was a blacksmith who, the Britannica says, "spent most of his money on his mistress. The meals that were eaten by his children were meager." So Benito must have had some serious issues with Papa Mussolini. And he must have thought that a mistress was a high-heeled incarnation of evil itself. Here was this strumpet drinking pricey Chianti and wearing gold earrings, while Benito was lucky to get a few strings of vermicelli for dinner. An angry young man, Mussolini spent his youth getting into trouble and stabbing fellow students at his school with his penknife.

  Then, in 1909, when he was twenty-seven, Mussolini fell in love with a sixteen-year-old girl named Rachele Guidi. Where'd he meet Rachele? On a blind date? At a boccie game? No, he met Rachele because she was the daughter of his father's mistress. Jesus, those are some twisted family dynamics. Marrying the offspring of your father's wicked mistress? (Rachele was a daughter from the mistress's deceased husband). I would not want to do the seating arrangements at that wedding. If there was a turn-of-the-century Italian version of Jerry Springer, the Mussolinis would have been prime guests.

  You wonder if Mussolini, who in his spare time went on to create worldwide havoc and oppress millions, might have learned from his childhood that mistresses are hurtful and wrong. Nope. At the end of his life, when he was strung up by his heels at a gas station in Milan, who was strung up alongside him? His mistress Claretta Petacci.

  I wanted to know more about Claretta. I wanted to know if there was something kinky going on there, too, like maybe she was the cleaning lady of his father's mistress. I gave into temptation and went on Google, the Britannica's less trustworthy rival, but one that, admittedly, does have a fact or two not found in the EB. Google didn't turn up much on Claretta, but I did find something very strange: Mussolini had another mistress in the 1930s. This woman, named Margherita Sarfatti, came to the United States to try to get Benito some good PR; she eventually got a job as a pro-fascist columnist for the Hearst newspaper chain. And here's the really startling part: she was Jewish.

  I guess my point is, Mussolini had some serious relationship issues, for which we can probably thank his father. Try as you might, you can't escape your upbringing; fascist dictators don't fall far from the tree. I'm happy to report my father never squired a mistress around New York. His mistresses were reading and knowledge and big thick books. So I've inherited that weakness--but at least I'm not breaking any commandments, banning free elections, or making staccato speeches.

  mutualism

  The relationship between two species in which both are benefited. Thank God. I needed a dose of goodness. It hasn't been easy, reading about the natural world. I knew it was a jungle out there, but I didn't know the jungle was quite so violent, bleak, dangerous, deceitful, and cutthroat. Over the last few thousand pages, I've read dozens and dozens of brilliant and creative ways that animals have figured out to kill one another. There's the anglerfish, a fish that snags its prey with its own little fishing rod that comes out of its back. Not to be confused with the archerfish, which knocks its prey off overhanging branches with a stream of spit. Or the ambush bug, which traps butterflies with pincers and sucks out their bodily fluids. And that's just a tiny sampling of the As.

  I was particularly disturbed to read about the cuckoo. I knew from Cocoa Puffs commercials that the cuckoo might have a personality disorder, but I never imagined the depth of its depravity. The cuckoo is what is called an aggressive mimic. The female cuckoo surreptitiously lays her eggs in the nests of other species. The unsuspecting mom of the other species--who is fooled because the cuckoo eggs look like her own eggs--will hatch the baby cuckoo, which proceeds to murder its adoptive brothers and sisters by pushing the other eggs out of the nest. The prick.

  So you can see, it can get upsetting. Which is why it was so good to arrive at mutualism. Finally, some happy stories in nature, like the sweet tale of the intestinal flagellated protozoans and the termites. The protozoans live inside the termites' stomachs. The two species would never survive without each other, but together, the termites eat the wood and the protozoans help digest it, and they live happily
together. The end. Or take the wrasse, a cleaner fish that does a little dance to tell the big fish it's time for some dental work. And the big fish relaxes, opens its mouth, and lets the wrasse eat its leftovers.

  I need to focus more on this side of life. As Julie always reminds me, I have to fight my tendency toward pessimism. In general, I don't just see the glass as half empty, I see the glass as half empty and the water as teeming with microbes and the rim as smudged and the liquid as evaporating quickly. Julie is always telling me to look for the good in the world, and she's right. The Britannica is a perfect test case. Since these thirty-two volumes present all of life--from the incomprehensibly horrible to the inspiringly wonderful--I just have to find the wonderful and celebrate that. Yes, I realize that for every happy partnership, there's a thousand bugs ejecting toxic saliva at their prey. Still, I'd rather be deluded than depressed.

  myrrh

  So that's what myrrh is. Frankincense I knew, and gold I was familiar with, but myrrh always mystified me. It's a substance obtained from small trees and was used both as incense and to relieve sore gums. And that's it. I'm finished with the Ms. I have ingested thirteen of the twenty-six letters finished--I should know 50 percent of all knowledge.

  Actually, more than 50 percent. The Britannica frontloads its letters, so the As and Bs and Cs are longer than they deserve to be--not to mention that the second half of the alphabet has Q, X, Y, and Z, which each comes in at barely longer than a novella.

  I'm having doubts aplenty. I'm worried, in particular, about my science knowledge. I can follow everything up to the 19th-century mechanistic view of the world. But once the leptons and wavicles start coming in, then I'm lost. Then the words go in one eye, out the other. I could just as well be reading a TiVo instruction manual in Macedonian. This is more proof I was born in the wrong era. I would have done a lot better in Goethe's time.