Child prodigies and geniuses | 60 Minutes Full Episodes

we cannot explain what you are about to hear science doesn't know enough about the brain to make sense of Alma Elma deutser is an accomplished British composer in the classical style she is a virtuoso on the piano and the violin and she is 12 years old she's different from other prodigies we have known because at the age of 10 she wrote an opera which demands comprehensive Mastery not just how to play the piano but what is the range of the OBO what can a chist play we don't know how she understands it all it seems that Elma was born that way what is your earliest Musical memory I remember that when I was three and I listened to this really beautiful laabi by Rad and that was when I really first realized how much I loved music and I asked my parents but how can music be so beautiful you remember the melody yes you want me to sing it please those notes of Rickard Strauss ignited a universe at 3 Alma was playing piano and violin when did the composing begin when I was four I just had these Melodies and ideas in my head and I would play them down at the piano um and sometimes my parents would think that I was just remembering the music that I'd already had before but I said no no these are my Melodies that I composed need to be much more I think this past summer in Austria we watched Elma prepare her violin concerto and the premiere of her piano concerto Joi hatori conducts the Vienna chamber orchestra just a clarinet Just a clarinet what I really want to hear is a violin and the clarinette that night the solo was the composer herself and as you listen remember she wrote all the notes for all the [Music] instruments we could see Alma was Liv living a story a story of loss a story of redemption [Music] scales of emotion Beyond a child and yet her vision was almost like [Music] wisdom do you have any idea where this comes from I don't really you know but it's really very normal to me to go around walk around and having Melodies popping into my head it's most normal thing in the world for me it's strange to walk around and not to have Melodies popping into my head so if I was interviewing you I would say well tell me Scott how does it feel like not having Melodies popping into your head it's very quiet in my head I I must [Applause] say but it appears never quiet in hers look what happened when we took a break from filming at the deutser [Music] home never mind the background noise that's just the rustle of lunch this is Idol Elma when she has nothing to do the music flows from its mysterious source as fluently as breath do you feel that there's anything about elma's gift that you don't understand her parents guy and Janie are professors she teaches Old English literature and guy is a noted linguist both of them are amateur musicians we don't understand creativity does anyone I mean um that I think that's the cracks of the mystery where does it come from this Melodies popping into your head I mean it really is a volcano of of imagination it's it's almost Unstoppable it was guy who taught her how to read music I thought I was an amazing teacher because um you know I hardly had to thought it was you I thought it was me I hardly had to say something and you know a piano teacher once said it's difficult to teacher because one always has the sense she's been there before she wouldn't be able to imagine life without dreams and stories and music that's as unimaginable to her as it is strange for other people to think about a little girl with Melodies in her head I love getting a melodies it's not at all difficult for me I get them all the time but then actually sitting down and developing The Melodies and that's really the difficult part having to tell a real story with a [Music] music the story Elma tells in her Opera is Cinderella but it's not the Cinderella you [Music] know it seemed demeaning to Alma that Cinderella was attractive just because her feet were small so she cast Cinderella as a composer and the prince as a poet Cinderella finds a poem that was was composed by The Prince and she loves it and she's inspired to put music to it and in the ball she sings it to the [Music] prince I think that it makes much more sense if he falls in love with her because she composed this amazing Melody to his poem because he thinks that she's his soulmate because he understands her well people can fall in love with composers exactly I think this may be one of those timeses they fell in love with Cinderella in its first production in Vienna there is another composer who had an opera Premiere in Vienna at the age of 11 Mozart people compare you to Mozart what do you think of that I know that they mean it to be very nice to compare me to Mozart could be worse of course I love Mozart and I would have loved him to be my teacher but I think I would prefer to be the first Alma than to be a second Mozart in Israel Mozart joined Alma on stage she played his piano concerto with a cadenza in a cadenza the orchestra stops and The Soloist breaks away in music of her own making it's something that I composed because it's a very early conchetto of mozat and the censer was very simple it didn't go to any different keys and I composed quite a long one going to lots and lots of different Keys doing lots of things on mozat motifs so you improved the censa of Mozart well yes it's a kind of a comet that goes by and and everybody looks up and and just goes wow Robert Igan is a professor of Music at Northwest Western in Chicago he has been a consultant to Alma's education I sent her some assignments when she was six s uh where I I expected her to crash and burn because they were very difficult it came back it was it was like listening to a mid 18th Century composer she was a native speaker a native speaker it's her first language she speaks uh the Mozart style she speaks the style Menders and the names that you just mentioned are the ones that live for centuries yes she's batting in the big leagues and if you win the pennant there's immortality the route to immortality leads through California in December the San Jose Orchestra will stage Cinderella in Alma's American debut she'll be the bell of the ball on the piano organ and violin the piano music teachers say oh you must choose the piano and the violin music teachers say oh you must choose the violin but anyway that's better than the piano teacher saying You must choose the Violet teacher that would be a bad sign that would be a bad sign [Music] yes fortunately she doesn't have to choose this is her composition Violin Concerto Number One it's extremely jolly and very happy and jocular that movement I want to make the people who listen to it laugh and be happy um the first movement of the violent concetto is quite the opposite it's very dark and [Music] dramatic what does a girl your age know about dark and dramatic well yes that's an interesting question because you know I'm a very happy person so I have lots of imaginary composers and one of them is called anonin yellow SN Antonin yellow sink Alma's imaginary composing friend is an insight into the music of her mind Alma told us that she made up a country where imaginary composers write each in his own style of emotion so how many composers do you have in your head I have lots of composers and sometimes when I'm stuck with something when I'm composing I go to them and ask them for advice and quite often they come up with very interesting things even the real world seems magical the Deutch move to the English Countryside to be near a famous School of Music Alma is privately tutored and homeschooled alongside her her sister Helen who also knows her way around the piano and The Treehouse I usually don't ask people your age this question but what have you learned about life well um I know that that life is not always beautiful that there's that there's also ugliness in the world um that's why I I've learned that I want to write beautiful music because I want to make the world a better place we cannot know how Alma deutser channels her music like a portal in time but in a world too often ugly and too often overburdened with explanation it is nice to take a moment and [Music] wonder child prodigies have long been a source of great Fascination we wonder how can so much talent reside in such a young body so much genius in a moment you'll meet Jake a 13-year-old Math and Science Prodigy who's confident he may one day challenge some of the established theories of physics the source of that talent and that confidence comes from our most remarkable organ the one we understand least the brain what is it about Jake Barnett that had him taking college courses at age 8 and getting A's and by 12 doing paid scientific research I and today at age 13 and Honors College sophomore lecturing the crowd at his university science Symposium and do any of you guys want my resume at all the Untied shoelaces reveal either your average teenager or the first Telltale science of the absentminded professor or both let's look at these system of points surrounded by researchers twice his age Jake is presenting his summer physics research project on PT symmetric lattice systems this has implications in fiber optics electromagnetic signals anything that requires like a light going through a cable got it every number or math problem I ever hear I have permanently remembered you just never forget they never slip out the back door of your brain no is it fun for you to do it I mean do you get a kick out of it yeah for Jake fun is reciting from memory the infinite series of numbers known as Pi 3.141592653589793 2 38462 643 38327 952 Jak memorized more than 200 of Pi's numbers in an afternoon he did it just to test himself you want me to go backwards from there well sure 32397 98535 62951 41.3 Bravo he's not not just parting a textbook he understands and analyzes the logic of higher mathematics he can visualize and solve complex Problems by using what he calls the fourth dimension just exactly what is the fourth dimension it's hard to describe in terms of the typical three because it's tangent to all the other ones I'd be able to describe it if I had like a whiteboard and like 30 minutes to describe it it takes a while it's the fourth dimension what do you expect the numbers appear to him as shapes that he says just build on one another so this for example is 3 cubed or 27 and then if I want to do 54 I just stack another one onto it he says his mind is constantly buzzing with new physics problems and theories when he runs out of wall space he moves on to Windows remembering things so precisely does that ever become a burden to you no not at all no sense of overload in ter I remember math and numbers I don't remember other things for example if someone ask me where something is in the house I tell him I don't know the oldest of four kids Jake lives with his family in the suburbs of Indianapolis these are my periodic table it's got all my elements he used the money he made from his summer research project $3,200 to turn his bedroom into a science lab cernus was the most recently named element for as long as he can remember he's been fascinated by the mysteries of space Saturn is my favorite planet not due to the Rings but due to some of its moons any ambition to be an astronaut um not an astronaut um that's like too dangerous I'm going to be the guy controlling the astronauts if anyone's an astronaut it's going to be my brother all work and only occasional play does not make Jake a dull boy what do you do for fun when it isn't anything academic no I mean beyond the academics does looking up space articles online count Pi a he has a full scholarship at the Joint Indiana University Purdue campus in Indianapolis where he is an honors student in math and physics he may not be the tallest student on campus but is surely among the brighted he regularly gets the highest grades in his classes what happens if you have see B where it's proportional to n Jake's been auditing classes here since the rip old age of eight when it became obvious to his parents that third grade was not going to be enough for him what did your fellow students make of you everyone was thinking that mom was taking the class and she couldn't find a babysitter the students thought I was the student his parents Christine and Michael Barnett expected their son would quietly listen and learn but even they were shocked when Jake jumped right into scientific discussions the professor would ask questions and Jacob was answering them and then he took the final at the end and got an A on it and suddenly the people at the University took notice of that and eventually invited him to attend the University it's pretty shocking with an 8-year-old acce is a university astronomy course weren't you impressed I guess I was impressed I was just doing what I like to do no one could have predicted that Jake would even make it to College just before his second birthday he began to regress stopped speaking and making eye contact after Consulting with several doctors the diagnosis was autism we went through speech therapy Physical Therapy developmental therapy occupational therapy therapist came to the home he was going further and further from our world into a world of his own and I I really was just baffled at how we were going to get him back out of that world and how did you get him back out of that world we realized that Jacob was not happy unless he was doing something he loved which even as a three-year-old was Math and Science his parents say the more he focused on the subjects he loved the more he began to communicate you could just see him just relax you could just see him feel like thank goodness we're not working on something that I can't do today and how long did it take for him to as you say Come Back by the time he was Kindergarten age 5'6 he was still behind as far as speaking with others and socializing with others but he was also light years ahead of everybody else he was coming home asking us when am I going to learn something at school today I want to learn algebra it was trying to keep Jake challenged that led to a kind of double life Elementary School by day and sitting in on college courses in the evening by fifth grade he dropped out of public school and just to demonstrate that he was ready for college he taught himself all of high school math in just two weeks he was 10 years old that was the most determined thing I've ever seen anybody do he had to sit in a Calculus class to prove to the university that he could sit still and Jacob was like I'm going to participate in that class discussion so if I need to learn algebra 1 Algebra 2 geometry trig that's what I'm going to do and he took a stack of books and he sat down and he just went and taught himself all of it in two weeks not only that he finished the entire state of Indiana curriculum for grades 6 to 12 in little over a year the barnetts who've started a center for autistic kids called Jacob's Place say that many of Jake's symptoms of autism have disappeared there's certain traits that are still there um and if you really really knew what you were looking for you could dig them out but otherwise you know that I got 10-year-old kid at that point in time that just happens to be doing next level work and no one knew anything different your parents told us that you're very proud of your autism that I believe is the reason why I am in college and I am so successful it is the rise as to my love for Math and Science and astronomy and it's the reason why I care other otherwise I wouldn't have gotten this far Joanne Ruth say a psychology professor at Ohio State has been studying child prodigies for the last 13 years she believes there's a link between Autism and prodigies we know that child prodigies are having autistic relatives at a very high clip and some of them have autism themselves she believes that what sets of Prodigy with autism apart from other children with the condition is The Prodigy's genes have been modified so that the genius emerges without many of the severe disabilities associated with autism in the general population of autism 10% will have an autistic Savant skill where they're exceptional at something and they've only got that piece displaying itself she says for prodigies be it in math music or art the key to the extraordinary Talent is extraordinary memory they all share this incredible memory each and every one of them in j case he's 13 years old mhm what's remarkable is not just this memory but his vocabulary is so adult of course they speak like adults they've picked up so much information along the way so early in their life and continue to do so she says a talent like Jake's is about one in 10 million Jake's extraordinary he's picking up information at a rate that none of us could even imagine doing it she's tested Jake and says literally Aces every intelligence and memory test imagine if everything you saw you could remember every word you heard you could recall that and then you could integrate that information and come up with new ideas that's what he's doing Kentucky New Mexico a demonstration Nevada Dr ruset named 28 States in random order psylvia West no surprise he was able to do it forwards and backwards in sequence with ease and when asked again 3 months later you still remember them yes yes I do in the same order mhm and I can still go backwards and backwards give me five or 10 Kentucky New Mexico Nevada Florida Pennsylvania Wisconsin North Dakota Washington Missouri Texas Utah Colorado well some may dismissed Jake's Talent as simply a gift of remarkable memory his physics professor says the boy is much more than a human calculator is it just great memory or something else it is definitely something else the great memory does help him of course because he once he reads something he remembers it but uh what is more important is that he has the drive to learn more he definitely stands out as a Powerhouse of raw talent just can't Professor yoges joal car oversaw Jake's research project their work was published in physical review a Jake is the youngest person to be published in that prestigious physics journal the whole Randomness thing that's like completely against all physics he plans to continue his research building on Einstein's theory of relativity his parents say he takes on these challenges with an easy Grace he has his own little tight-knit group of friends that he hangs out with he studies with he leads study groups I have college age girls calling the house wanting to know if Jake is available to study during finals when I go to campus with him it's like I'm walking around with Elvis so far the king seems to keep his celebrity status in check more or less practically everyone knows who I am are you a star on this campus Big Man on Campus I just figured it out but the little big man says he enjoys nothing more than using his talent to help fellow classmates see the beauty he sees in the numbers thanks Jake you're welcome I kind of want to try to use use that to end the whole math phobia thing because so many people like me and millions of others are scared of math I scared of science correct what why is that so funny you can almost can't understand how anyone could be exactly yeah Jake is writing a book to help us overcome our fear of math and he's on track to graduate at age 14 when he hopes to begin his PhD studies pancreatic cancer is one of the most aggressive and deadly cancers in part because Often by the time it's diagnosed the disease has spread to other parts of the body so when news broke last year that a test had been developed that might detect early pancreatic cancer the research world not only took notice it went into shock for the test hadn't been developed by some renowned Cancer Research Institute but by a boy wonder a 15-year-old High School freshman named Jack Andrea he then convinced an eminent cancer researcher to let him use his lab to develop his theory all before he even had a license to drive while the test must undergo years of clinical trials the Biotech Industry has already beaten a path to Jack's [Applause] door this is Jack Andrea as he beats out 1500 contestants and wins the grand prize at the Intel international science fair with his invention like a modern-day Rocky this self-described science geek took the stage and $100,000 in prize money pure unadulterated adolescent Joy when you won the Intel award your reaction went viral correct yes yes it did it's a no joke award I wasn't expecting any awards then when I won I was just flabbergast I was like freaking out I was just like what yes you me Jack and draco's journey from Suburban Baltimore High School freshman to cancer researcher began at age 14 when a family friend died of pancreatic cancer shocked that there's no reliable early test for the disease Jack decided he would develop one he began probing the internet for everything he could find about pancreatic cancer biomarkers he read research articles during class and in the middle of biology while stealthily reading a medical journal he says inspiration hit the teacher was not amused I swear she has like eyes on the back of her head or something thing she sees me and she storms up to my desk and is like Mr Andrea what is this and like snatches out of my hand and if you had Playboy magazine I'm just like it was just a science article shouldn't this be a good thing but he told his parents steveen Jane Andrea about his project they weren't exactly encouraging my reaction wasn't a good one I said I was Jack getting that a little far-fetched and I know that when you're 14 you can't just run out and get a lab a lot of people you know are like we don't train middle schoolers but Jack decided to find one that did over the course of four months he prepared a test protocol for his theory and sent it out to 200 cancer researchers I essentially had to send them my budget my procedure my timeline and materials list and I actually had 199 rejections out of those some professors ripped apart my procedure completely but one Professor Dr Aron Bon maicha finally said yes yes an encouraging yes it was like this idea might work and he starts interrogating me kind of firing these questions trying to snc my procedure in a way but answered all of them Dr anner ban MRA was a professor of oncology at John's Hopkins University now heads pancreatic cancer research at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston he says his curiosity was piqued by Jack's proposal well it's not every day that you get an email from a 15-year-old that comes with a detailed protocol with methods and supplies and what pitfalls you might run into and I said maybe I'll get you a corner in my lab and we'll have one of the postto fellow supervising you let's see where this this all goes for the next 7 months after school and on weekends Jack's mother would drop him off at the lab where he learned basic lab techniques and worked on developing his cancer test finally one day in March I realized this was actually working like it was working amazingly because it was passing all of these preliminary tests and I run out and I'm pretty much like screaming around the lab I finally go out and rush into my mom's car and like me and her are screaming in the car and then of course I have school the next day Jack's test detects an unusually high level of mesothelin a protein that the body produces in pancreatic Cancer's early and most treatable stage what exactly are you doing now so essentially what this is is it's one of my strips and what you do is you first get an original measurement of how the electricity flows across it the paper strip is coated with a carbon substance that attracts meelin it is placed in an apparatus that Jack built in his parents garage and I'm just taking out one single drop of blood here a high level of mesopen in a patient's blood sample May indicate the first stages of pancreatic cancer see how it's increased it's increased by about two times here and so what that means is that there's a really high level of this one protein there and that signals the presence of pancreatic cancer from it while years of clinical trials must be done there is no FDA approved test that can reliably measure mesothelin Dr MRA says a test of this kind that could detect pancreatic cancer in its earliest stage could save thousands of lives he did horn in to the most important missing aspect in terms of pancreatic cancer which is we don't really have good early detection there is nothing like a PSA test or a colonoscopy or a mamogram that you can get for the pancreas at this point in time so by the time the majority of patients present they already have tumor that has spread outside the pancreas and those patients typically don't do very well he says the test which cost Jack 3 cents a strip to make is remarkably elegant in its Simplicity it's remarkable what you've achieved and what you've come up with there no question have the brain men come to talk to you and want to figure you out no actually no one has approached me to do like an autopsy of my brain yet but um a scan a scan but like maybe later on allop but um really I don't think it's that I'm really smart I I mean I know people that are way smarter than me you can be a genius but if you don't have the creativity to put that knowledge to use then you just have a bunch of knowledge and nothing else I mean like then you're just as good as my smartphone his parents say he's been obsessed with science since he was a toddler conducting experiments even as a three-year-old school for him was so easy his parents tried to keep him engaged by encouraging science projects at home my family isn't the typical family like we're instead of like talking about football we have like all these science magazines all scattered through our house and we talk about them at dinner after Jack decided to cultivate Eola just for the fun of it on the kitchen stove his parents insisted that he and his older brother Luke used the basement as their lab their parents believe the less they know about what goes on down there the better I gather the rule of the house is don't burn down the house and don't kill yourself pretty much just don't blow up the house I I want to come home to a place to live what do they do down there I don't really know cuz I don't go down there much and they may have reason for concern clearly neatness does not count last year Luke cooked up some nitroglycerin just to see if he could and I was just interested to see could I make it down here uh it work worked it also drew the attention of the FBI who they say sent a letter letting them know that their internet purchasing history had been noted by the feds they were a little concerned chemical don't know why I'm laughing but these days Jack doesn't have much time for messing in the basement Jack and Dr his test idea has made him a star speaker at medical conferences all over the world so with me I just used Google and Wikipedia to find a new way to detect pancreatic cancer at the beginning of this I didn't even know I had a pancreas so if I could do that and he's become a regular at the White House four visits this year alone where's Jack there he is Jack stand up you've also become a heavy duty celebrity it's pretty insane I mean you see Barack Obama the president Barack Obama yeah President Barack Obama my I'm just like hello Mr President and then hello first lady it's just like it's crazy in the past year he's spoken in Canada Italy Australia Greece the United Nations and so far four trips to England earlier this year I including this address he gave to the renowned Royal Society of medicine about his test and the problems with current cancer Diagnostics I typed this into the internet and this 15-year-old has all the confidence of a phys and what it comes up with is I could be going through cocaine withdrawal I could have cancer or I could be pregnant so a standup physician so what I see in the future of medical Diagnostics is a shift from the symptom based to more of a diagnostic antibod based approach such as a sensor working the crowds of academics and checking out Cambridge University no big deal could you study here yes Jack easily maintains a 4.0 GPA in school despite a spotty attendance record you're still in High School cor yeah why bother uh well the reason I still bother with high school is because of my mom she she's really like you have to do high school and you have to go college but they're being kind of lenient with me right now who watch te Jack's family is pretty laid back about his success low pressure and a high sense of humor they say that all work and no play makes Jack a doll boy it seems like you've been doing all work well I would say all play no work because for me going to the lab is pretty much played I mean it's the funnest thing ever Jack holds the patent on his cancer test and with the help of his patent lawyer is looking to license the technology to a pharmaceutical company in the next few months now the actual testing on people or animals mhm I gather you're not interested in doing that so I did some preliminary studies however one thing I don't want to do is end up as a labat I kind of want to be able to come up with a new idea and then really just move on to the next idea and have other people do their repeated trials well where does that stand right now I have enough data to prove that this works and so now I'm going to give it to the pharmaceutical companies to rent through like clinical trials and stuff he believes that one day his invention will be in every doctor's office and even on Pharmacy shelves but Dr maitra who's seen so many promising ideas flame out when it comes to pancreatic cancer urges caution pancreatic cancer is a very humbling disease every time we think we have a home run we barely get to first base as it test it is still a very long way off and the reason for that is because such a test cannot be marketed unless it has been validated in large clinical trials and that cannot be done in a small lab that cannot be done by a 15-year-old but that does not detract in any way from the remarkable achievement of this young man I think he's brilliant I was sing in class and suddenly it hit me between speaking engagements and the occasional appearance at school Jack is back in the lab working on new Diagnostic and environmental tests congratulations while he now moves in very adult circles Jack says when it comes to his future he's just like any other lost teenager I actually have no clue what I want to do when I grow up I mean hopefully something in science I'll be in and hopefully I'll be doing work that will help change the world Jack has come up with a new diagnostic invention and is using it to compete for the $10 million tricar x prise in medical Diagnostics all of the 300 plus teams competing are made up of adult researchers except for one Magnus Carlson is the best in the world he's a 21-year-old Norwegian reign supreme in a sport played by 500 million people it's chess many don't think of it as a sport because nobody moves but Chess Masters will tell you it can be more brutal than boxing that's because at the championship level the objective is not only to win but to demolish your opponent that can take hours the best players need extraordinary endurance so most of them are young Magnus is the youngest number one ever and no one can explain to you how he does what he does it seems to come from another world which is why he's become known as The Mozart of Chessy just look at what he's doing competing against 10 players simultaneously that in itself is not extraordinary but Magnus cannot see the boards he's facing the other way so he has to keep track of the positions of 320 pieces blind and the number of possible moves moves infinite Magnus comes out on top it's most amazing thing I've ever seen do you have any idea how extraordinary this looks to no it's um one of the amazing things in chess that you can you can you don't really need board you can just keep but it transcends chess I mean I just uh I I just can't fathom what you've just just done it's just it seems like it's supernatural last December we caught up with him at the London chess classic he arrives with his constant companion his father Magnus will play against eight other top ranked players but he is the star as celebrated in this world as Eli Manning is in his the world number one player from Norway Magnus Carlson today Magnus is playing America's number one hikaro Nakamura the match will last 4 hours and there will be no breaks Magnus will go on a stroll now and then but his mind won't be going anywhere he says he's concentrating not only on this game but on other games played by other Masters at other times which he might want to draw on now 10,000 of them we gave him a test it was played right here in London and Simpsons on the Strand mhm in 1859 I don't know the month or day you got it wrong not 59 51 wow you see your memory isn't superb in everything it's not what it used to be chess players are pretty poker-faced but occasionally Magnus will Flash the smile of someone who knows it's all over but the handshake while Nakamura Dives deeper into Doom Magnus was playing brilliantly and he knew it is there anything in life more satisfying than that feeling when you're playing brilliantly I don't know but it's it's really you know up there it's pretty good yes the spectators seem as mesmerized as the competitors they're all chess players of course if they weren't it would be like watching paint dry worldwide a 100,000 are watching on on their computers the suspense keeps building until endgame by which time it's Cutthroat but you enjoy it when you see your opponent squirm yes I I do I uh enjoy it when I see my opponent you know really suffering when he knows that I've that I've outsmarted him if I lose just one game then usually you know I just want really get revenge This Is War isn't it yeah yeah for 50 years chess was war it was a Battleground in the cold war with the Russians who were dominant but then an American came along his name was Bobby fiser in 1972 he took on the Russian Champion Baris spasy and he won it was an international spectacle and the enthusiasm has not waned back in London just down the corridor from where Magnus is playing 500 novices are learning how to master kings and queens do you ever um play any any grown-ups yes yep I do play grownups in fact I'm getting to the hang of playing grownups who's your um who's your favorite chess player Bobby Fisher Bobby Fisher and and I like Magnus you like Magnus chess is now routinely taught in schools all over the world including the United States in some countries it's compulsory chess can be taught but not genius Magnus seemed like a normal enough kid growing up outside Oslo but wait a minute when he was five he could name almost all the countries in the world and their capitals and their populations magnus's father Henrik didn't think that was Terri terribly unusual he did have a good memory and the ability to concentrate for hours at the time on a specific topic and he seemed to be interested in a lot of things new things all the time but I thought that was normal what got him into chess sibling rivalry his older sister started to play so he wanted to beat her which he did quickly then he started winning tournaments before long he became a celebrity one of the first Norwegians to excel in a sport that did not involve snow people lined up in shopping malls to play him when he won Magnus said it was just a game no big deal he couldn't understand why people were making such a fuss why does why does all people want to talk with little me you know magnus's parents took him and his sisters out of school for a year rent Ed out their house sold their car it was part holiday mostly chess they went to raiki evic Iceland which is where Magnus took a leap into Legend when he was matched against Gary caspero the Russian considered by many to be the greatest ever and how did Magnus prepare by reading up Kasparov kept the 13-year-old kid waiting for half an hour and when he did arrive he didn't even say hello it was speed chess the Formula 1 of the sport a race against the clock caspro started slow Magnus started getting bored I sat there for a few seconds and then I thought to myself you know what I don't know why he's thinking but I know what my response is going to be anyway so I'll just walk off and watch the other games casprov had never played anyone so young but he did not exude confidence or happiness and he did not win Magnus played him to a draw it was a sensation Cas bro left quickly no nice game kid nothing how did Magnus react guess he thought he had blown it when I actually got the winning position I I had little time I was nervous and I couldn't finish him off why were you nervous I was playing kpro I was intimidated were you were intimidated by playing the world champion when you were already 13 years old yeah go figure it warranted a celebration of course and Magnus got to choose yes I went to with my family and had some ice cream at McDonald's by the time he was 19 the boy with the ice cream had become number one in the world he has a very deep understanding of Chess Frederick freedel company chess base publishes the world's most popular chess program is this an indication of Genius of genius and raw talent now Magnus has uh still hasn't reached his Peak he hasn't really worked yet I've heard him described as uh lazy which I find quite extraordinary I think that's an impolite term but it's probably appropriate except when he's not Magnus plays soccer whenever he can break away from the board he's got a mean backand and he's Moonlighting as a model there's never been much money in chess but Magnus is changing that sponsors are lining up to endorse him he's making about a million5 dollars a year but it's a solitary life Magnus is on the road 200 days a year now between matches he is alone in his hotel room getting ready for tomorrow's game he works out almost every day knows he can't concentrate for its often 7 hours unless he's in shape Magus says he wouldn't be able to tolerate this life if it weren't for his father who's always there for him when you travel with Magnus what's your role I'm a servant and a chess fan you enjoy the games yes and so he says does Magnus boy when you look at him when I look at him enjoyment is not the word that comes to mind it should maybe you have to compare it to a a writer or a painter I mean uh probably if you see them at work they they're not smiling or having an easy time they're exploiting their mind to the utmost and the same with the chess players but that level of concentration is not danger free a fair number of Grandmasters have gone mad which is what happened to Bobby fiser in his later years this was not an arrest this was a kidnapping it was all cooked up do you ever think about that yes I do you know when I was watching the the recent film about Bobby fiser I was thinking you know is this going to be me in uh in a few years I don't think that's going to happen but you know it made me made me think a little bit that you know I have to to be aware of this at least people have described you as the Mozart of Chess how do you react to that yeah maybe but but was moart ever asked how he does this I I don't I I would be very impressed if um if he had a good answer to that because I think what he would say is that just it's just comes natural to me natural to me it's what I do which is what you say yeah it's what he does for fun too at the Oslo chess club where he started he's playing a Norwegian Grandmaster here it's called bullet chess and Magnus has a handicap his opponent has given 3 minutes to make his moves Magnus has won it's just a friendly match but Magnus always hates to lose so he doesn't wh you got him yeah I got him

Channel: 60 Minutes

Views: 2,694,428

Keywords: child prodigy, genius, smart, intelligence, child prodigy piano, child prodigy pianist, child prodigy artist, Jake Barnett, Magnus Carlsen, Jack Andraka, alma deutscher, alma deutscher 60 minutes

Id: B5esTad3S9o

Length: 52min 59sec (3179 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 28 2023