SuperHuman Geniuses: World's Smartest People

The teenage art prodigy whose gift has become a million dollar business. The real rain man with the biggest factual recall in the world. The child scientist who passed O-level chemistry aged seven. The unemployed accountant with the record-breaking memory. And the 10-year-old music prodigy ready to hit the international stage. Five people, five extraordinary talents, five very different lives. Me and God are both in control of everything. I am absolutely completely flat broke at the moment. I don't like the meaning of child prodigy. That's a very fun thing. You don't have to be handicapped to be different. Everybody's different. Welcome to the world of genius. To some, genius is an arbitrary label. The strict definition is an outstanding artistic or intellectual ability. In short, extreme talent. 13-year-old Akiana Kromaric fits the bill perfectly. And she has a unique claim behind her gift. The earliest memory I can recall is probably when I was around four and a half, four years old. One day I started having these very amazing and mysterious visions. This voice was following me, guiding me through these galaxies. And I asked him, you know, who are you? And I started calling him God. Akiana is an art prodigy from Idaho who claims that God told her to paint. For nine years, she hasn't stopped. I like to say me and God are both in control of everything. So he tells me an idea and I could just take that idea and make it better and polish it better and just put it into paints. So he's like my personal teacher, my tutor. She was four years old when I knew there was something special about her because she was describing a lot of new things on spiritual matters. And also she started drawing exceptionally well. Akiana developed an intense interest in sketching. By five years old, she was already drawing at a level way beyond her years. Myself, I thought she was dreaming. I thought there was something made out of an imagination. But when she started describing more and more, it became apparent that this was actually something that did happen. By eight, Akiana was painting portraits on giant canvases. It kind of took me aback because we never read the Bible or we didn't have any kind of spiritual connection. With no artists in her family, she was completely self-taught. This is actually one of my absolute favorite and most memorable painting. This is called the Prince of Peace. I painted this when I was eight years old with oils. Many, many artists all around the world, they always ask me, so how did you do this and how did you do that? I was like, I don't know, I just did it. It's very complicated for, you know, a child to explain what they did. The only way they can explain is through, you know, painting or through their creativity. Described by art critics as a phenomenal talent, she has now produced more than 100 paintings, ranging from realist portraits to fantastic landscapes. And the natural world. They can each take anywhere from 15 to 300 hours to complete. Akiana's genius could be explained by sheer hard work. Home-schooled, she gets up at 4am six days a week and paints for up to five hours a day. Sometimes there are days, you know, sometimes when she's finishing up a painting, she might paint for 12, 14 hours. And I would ask her to take breaks and have something to eat or drink, and sometimes she would refuse. Akiana only studies the subjects she enjoys. She loves printing, publishing her books and poetry and art, and that's what she loves doing and her do all day long. I don't ask her to ever do math. If critics say, no wonder she's a genius because she's devoting all her time for art, then it would be a better place in the world that there would be more people who are interested in focusing their energy to the fields that they are interested in. While some geniuses use their talents to create a feast for the eyes, others may find that their unique skills are not quite so useful. Ben Pridmore, an unemployed accountant from Derby, is perhaps an unlikely genius. But on today's shopping trip, he's set himself a challenge. Ben is going to attempt to remember the 13-digit barcode of every item in his basket. This means memorising the order of 130 digits in just five minutes. Most of us can only remember up to seven new numbers. Time for Ben to see how far he can go. Bacon? Bacon. Five, zero, zero, zero, one, nine, two, zero, one, four, one, eight, seven. Yeah, seems right. Steak pie? Steak pie, that's five, zero, zero, zero, one, nine, two, two, six, four, three, six, zero. Yeah, seems right. Ben is the UK memory champion and a world record breaker. I hold a record for memorising the most packs of cards in an hour, 27 packs, and also for binary digits, that's ones and zeros. I hold the record for memorising the most of those in 30 minutes, 4,140 digits. Garlic bread? That's five, zero, zero, zero, one, nine, two, zero, four, three, seven, seven, four. Yeah, seems right. Really, it's only since discovering this hobby of mine that I've, well, excelled at anything, I suppose. Sweets? Five, zero, one, zero, three, one, seven, zero, four, zero, five, two, six. Yeah, seems right. How do you do it? How do you remember it all? I turn the numbers into pictures. We share but lemons here, where a lemon being fed to a Sasquatch, which is wearing a plastic mack, concealing a pack of sausages and a leg. How do you remember the numbers by that? In practice, people are either completely nonplussed by it, or they think it's extremely cool. It's sort of about a 50-50 split. I think it's wicked. That is amazing, yeah. I can't just, I can't even remember many shopping lists some days. I'm one of the few people who find this kind of thing really fun. Did you tell him your birthday? 07-06-1980. It's a Sunday, and this year it's a Sunday. You retire in 2045 on a Thursday. You'll be 65 in 2045. Fantastic. In Salt Lake City, Utah, everyone knows 56-year-old genius Kim Peek. April 12th, 2006. It's a Wednesday, and she'll be two years old on Saturday. And when can she retire? Good little girl. When are you going to let her retire? I'll hold her out until 2071 on a Sunday. Known by many as the real Rain Man, Kim was the inspiration for Dustin Hoffman's character in the Oscar-winning film of the same name. Brain damage since birth and a rare condition known as Savant syndrome have somehow given Kim an ability to memorize facts and information that is without equal. Savant syndrome is a rare but spectacular condition in which somebody with a developmental disability, such as autism, has some spectacular island of genius that stands in stark contrast to overall handicap. For years, doctors have tried to fathom Kim's spectacular brain. I'm just going to ask you some general questions. Can I do that? Yes. Okay. Today, it's the turn of the world's leading expert on Savant syndrome, Dr. Daryl Trafford. When did President Truman remove General MacArthur from his command? April 19th, April 11th, 1951. When did Hong Kong return from British colonial rule to Chinese control? July 1st, 1997. When did Saigon fall to North Vietnam? April 29th, 1975. When Kim was nine months old, the medical world said he would never walk, talk, or be able to learn. Proving experts wrong, he is now believed to have the greatest factual memory in the world, memorizing 98% of everything he reads. I keep thinking that pretty soon the memoryful sign has to come up like it does on a computer, but it doesn't. He continues to absorb, and not only absorb, but also recall. What day was Easter this year? What was the day? It was March 23rd. We won't see another one this early again until 2160. And we won't see it? When is the last time that we see it? 1913. We don't see it. You folks should remember. So how many years before the next? 152 years. What year will that be then? 2160. It's believed Kim's talent may be partly down to the fact that his brain is wired in a completely different way from the rest of us. Since birth, Kim's corpus callosum, the white matter that carries vital connections between the left and right halves of the brain, has been completely missing. But somehow, Kim's brain has managed to rewire itself in a unique way. This could explain his extraordinary genius. What is the earliest that Easter has ever fallen? 1761, 1818, 2274. How do you figure those things out, Kim? How do you do it? By looking at my own heart and my own mind. Kim, like most savants, doesn't explain how they do it. Kim, Kim, how do you remember all that stuff? I just know that. How do you remember all that stuff? I just know a lot about it. They don't really explain their methodology. And I think in reality, savants are not aware of what that process is. Every time I look at him and when I see it, it blows me away. Music is everything for 10-year-old Ariel Lanyi, a child prodigy from Israel. Ariel is more than just a pianist. He's a composer too. All this could be an intro. And then there could be a total... This was there before? No, that's what I want to write now. But first of all, I want to jot down the intro. Okay. Before we start anything. But don't you have a subject? You have a subject. I'm going to do my opus 8, opus 9 and opus 10. So I'm going to work on opus 6, opus 7. I don't have to do so. Then I'll work on opus 8, then on opus 9 and then on opus 10. His achievements are beyond, far, far beyond of any most gifted child. That I've known. The question was, why do you take criticism from your teachers and not from your parents? And not from your mother. And not from your father either. Well, because my teachers are way smarter. That's nice, that's nice. Parents Gabi and Olga have raised their son in a home dominated by music. Ariel was destined to be a pianist right from the off. We were negotiating for a piano when Olga was pregnant with Ariel. And she said, well, why are you so anxious about it? What's the big deal? I'm going to come back home from the hospital and start taking piano lessons. And I said, no, but I don't want to bring the child back from the hospital into a home that doesn't have a piano. Neither Gabi nor Olga could play the piano. It was for one person only, their newborn child. When he was born, he started listening to music right from the beginning. Because there was a tape that his father prepared for the occasion. And from then on, he was listening to music almost 24 hours a day. There is a theory that very young children can be taught anything. They don't have to be born that way. But the earlier you start the education, the more you'll be able to achieve. It soon became apparent that the theory was working. He was less than three, just a little less than three. And we were driving in a car. And he was sitting in the back. And we're listening to the radio. It was Beethoven's Second Piano Concerto, which I recognized. But I don't know the key. And I didn't have the CD. So I told him, this is the Piano Concerto by Beethoven. And Ariel said, Ian, and I didn't have the answer. Because I didn't have the CD to look at, right? And obviously, I cannot tell. So he says, in B-flat major. And I looked in the mirror. And I said, are you sure? And he said, oh, yeah. So needless to say, as soon as we got home, I take out the CD. And I look at it. And it's in B-flat major. By five, Ariel had already taught himself to play the piano and started taking lessons. By seven, he was playing classical concerts with an orchestra of adults. In a way, we created it to some degree by exposing him early on. And a little baby doesn't have many choices. So he just lies on his back. And you play Bach. And you play Bartók. And he listens. Ariel is now firmly on the path for a life of music. But although showing a talent way beyond his years, he's wary of being labeled. I don't like the meaning of child prodigy. Because child prodigy is basically someone who can play fast. And not more than that. Not understanding music. Just playing fast. And how are you different? Because I understand the music. I analyze. Are you a pianist or a musician? A musician. And are you a genius? Not yet. I will be one day, but not yet. While Ariel developed his gift from an early age, others find greatness much later in life. But it doesn't always reap rewards. Ben Pridmore started out on the path to genius in his mid-twenties when he began training himself to memorize decks of cards. I hold the record for memorizing a pack of cards in the quickest possible time. 26.28 seconds. From just a single glance, Ben is able to recall every number and every suit in the exact order in which he saw them. Six of spades. Queen of hearts. Queen of diamonds. Eight of spades. Ace of hearts. No, ace of diamonds. Queen of clubs. Ben is in training. Five of clubs. In just two days, he is going to push himself to the limit and attempt to smash his own world record. Nine of spades. King of hearts. And three of diamonds. Ben's genius is not simply in remembering playing cards, but in the elaborate mental process he uses to do it. I have an image in my head of a person or an object for each pair of two cards, which comes to a total of 2,704 possible images. So, for example, this pack of cards starts with the seven of spades, king of spades, which is a pack of seeds, growing into two of hearts, five of spades, which is Marty Pellow out of Wet, Wet, Wet. And five of hearts, king of clubs, which is Elmer Fudd. Okay, preparation time starts now. The key to Ben's memory genius is that he uses a different part of his brain to store new information compared to the rest of us. To remember cards, most of us would use our working memory, but this can only store up to seven new pieces of information, such as a phone number. This information is only held here for a few seconds before it's forgotten. But Ben can link any sequence of numbers and cards with images that he has permanently stored in his long-term memory. This system means that in the UK memory world, he reigns supreme. It's a real community, the memory championship people. We all get on well, we hang out outside competitions, we sit around talking in pubs about our systems, sounding like a terrible bunch of nerds. Well, we are a terrible bunch of nerds, let's be honest about it. But being a memory giant hasn't translated into financial success. Two years ago, Ben gave up a career in accountancy to focus on his talent. Now, he's struggling. I am absolutely completely flat broke at the moment. I've got no money at all. I've got less than no money. I've got loans and things, so I am actually quite desperate to get back to work at the moment, and I'm struggling to find a permanent job in accountancy. People tend to assume I'm a naturally brilliant person, which I deny absolutely. I'm a bit of a thicko, really, in a lot of ways. I just have an interesting hobby, possibly because I've got too much time on my hands. 13-year-old art prodigy Akyana Kramarik absolutely believes that her God-given talent is behind her extraordinary success. Today, at a local gallery selling prints of her work, she has come for a meet-and-greet with some of her fans. Have you ever had any visions of heaven? Yes, actually, for a couple of years, since I was four to seven years old, I had constantly visions of heaven, and I use those visions and I paint them. When I'm thinking that, you know, you're at your age and you're already, you know, so established in this industry, you know, I look up to you. Thank you. That's a very inspiration to me. Thank you. She's really been in touch with another dimension that is not common to our normal human experience. It's definitely projected. She's like a projector from God onto a canvas. An artist since the age of four, this is no mere hobby for Akyana. Her prints alone sell for thousands of dollars. At home, she is the sole breadwinner, with her parents and brothers carrying out specific roles in her business. Being the main moneymaker in the house is a great responsibility, but actually, when I paint, I just don't feel like I'm making money, I'm making a business, but it just feels like I'm having fun with the painting. But Akyana's genius has made her family rich. Since it's slow now and the economy's kind of a little flattened out, I probably do, or we do, I should say we, 50 prints a month. A print is $1,800 US dollars to $3,100. On top of the $100,000 plus a month they make from prints, every so often they sell an original. Well, the most originals are between $100,000 and $300,000. Our highest one sold is $175,000, and that was a challenge. That was the one with the horse in the middle of the pine trees in the snow, and it was sold to a rancher down in Texas. We try not to sell the originals. You know, she has control, because all of this you see here is all hers. So when she's 18, this is hers, I walk out of the picture and I do something else. And the fruits of Akyana's labor? A new million-dollar family home. She'll be painting in this area here. We'll have her probably easel here, I don't know if an easel on this wall or easel on that wall, but we also gave her a little kitchenette where she'll be able to have her daily coffee or tea, wash her brushes. But is this a normal childhood for a 13-year-old girl? If a normal childhood is to sit in front of television and just be on cell phone for three, four hours a day, I don't know if that's normal childhood. I consider normal childhood being able to serve other people, to help other children, to enjoy what you're doing, to be together with the family. I agree on that, I got nothing to add to that one. She's not missing out her thing. A self-trained genius is about to push himself to the limit. I'm going to try to break my world record at speed cards. I'm going to try to memorize a single pack of cards in sometime faster than 26.28 seconds. I'm sorry. But things aren't going quite to plan for the UK memory champion. Pushing it too much in the middle, I sort of lost track of all the images. Ben has done this before. He's very experienced. His current record is around 26 seconds and we're very much hoping that he can push it down and give us all a tremendous shock. Ben gets a second chance. Time to shuffle cards. You're ready, go. Ben hopes to have memorized the pack in less than 24.68 seconds but to prove it he must now arrange a separate pack of cards in the exact same order. Okay, your recall time starts now. That's my best guess anyway. To decide it, the two packs must be compared card for card. Fantastic. I did it, yeah. 24.68 it was in the end which is just about exactly the kind of time I was hoping for. Oh, that was amazing. I mean, my God, he's broken, you know, the four minute mile for the brain. We started out with a puppy teaching a lesson to a Maori who was holding a microphone over a necklace owned by Naseem Hamed who was using a pair of tongs to hold up a bag of sherbet pouring it into a sieve. It's an objective test of how fast it can be done and in that sense, it's unbelievable. In front of an auctioneer who was selling a tentacle which was growing out of a superhero in a suit of armor who was planting a flag in my dad's old garage. Simple as that. Simple as that in 24.5 seconds. In Israel, it's 9pm on a Thursday night and 10-year-old musician Ariel Lanyi has a gig. At the tender age of seven, he branched out onto the jazz scene. This gig is supposed to start at 9.30 which it probably won't so it'll start closer to 10. It'll probably go until about 11, 11.30. By the time he's gonna get home, it'll be midnight. That's obviously not a good thing but if a kid plays jazz and if he wants to have an audience he can get an audience at 4pm. Thank you very much. This is Uncle Jones. This is Ariel. But can a child of 10 handle the strain of such a late night gig? It means crazy nights. It means strange life. It's a payoff between what is this child gonna give to the world as he grows up and what is he gonna sacrifice as a human being? As the set continues, the late night starts to take its toll. What's in the programme, man? I don't know what to say. You can tell the people that you're very tired. You can tell them, you know, if you want to. Are you a professional? Yeah, I'm a professional. Ariel decides to persevere. It's now 10.30pm. How did I play? I could do better. You know, I was very tired. We're going out to improve. You're going out to improve? He's not pleased. I know it flopped. In exactly six weeks, Ariel makes his European debut at a jazz festival in Italy. Don't film me, don't film me. Could it be too much too soon? Getting the balance right between protecting and encouraging a gifted child is incredibly difficult. But in Singapore, Valentine Corley is determined that his eight-year-old son Aynan reaches his full potential. Fits into a correspondingly shaped molecular lock. Exactly. The key can be a relatively small molecule circulating in a body fluid, whereas the lock is usually a large molecule known as a biological receptor that is often found embedded in a cell membrane. Aynan Corley's love of science was spotted when he was six years old. We discovered that he was interested in chemistry when he was at his aunt's house. He found a chemistry book and he was reading it. And his aunt saw him reading this and said, Aynan, you seem to understand that. And he said, yeah, I do. So she went away and got an exam paper, gave it to him, O-level exam paper, and he answered the questions correctly. Aynan taught himself chemistry on the internet and at seven, passed the O-level exam. Now his father is battling to fast-track his academic career. Yehudi Menuhin without a violin is not a violinist. He's a could-have-been. And the same applies to any of these children. If they don't get the opportunities they need, then all you've done is wasted their life and wasted their contribution they could have made to society. Tell me why I can't climb. The weight and the pressure. Daddy can't climb because he is so heavy. If he steps over here, he will ruin his feet because his weight exerted on a small area will cause a lot of pressure. He weighs 111 kg. And the surface area is roughly how much? Square inch, a square inch. A square inch. Can you imagine what would have happened if Leonardo da Vinci had never been apprenticed to an artist? None of his work may have happened. To put a child like that in an ordinary school is a kind of abuse. From his perspective, school is in slow motion. Which is how he described school to me one day. He said to me, the only thing I like about school is my friends. So he does have that. But the actual lessons don't give him anything at all. Nothing, they cannot. Although Ayanan must continue attending primary school, Valentine has arranged for him, aged just eight years old, to also study chemistry at degree level. It's only the third year students here get to do the experiments because they have gone through first and second year training. But for Ayanan, he just comes in as if he's gone through the first and second year training already. He basically knows what to do. If I increase the concentration of nitrogen, what would happen? Very good. Reaction would go to the right to reduce the concentration of nitrogen according to Le Chatelier's principle. If I increase the concentration of chlorine, what's going to happen? Yeah, equilibrium will shift to the right. He has a mind of an eight-year-old, but the intelligence which is roughly the same of ours, which is a bit stressful if you work with him. Subsequently, you need to wash it with sodium chloride. Tell me why we need to do this. I'll leave it to you to find out, okay? Why do you need to wash with sodium chloride? Anybody can tell me now? It aids layer separation. Yes, it aids layer separation. It's very obvious that he's a prodigy and I think that the people here are very welcoming of that. I had worried they might not be, but no, there's no worries at all. But it would seem Einan might not be the only genius in the family. His father, now a freelance writer, originally studied natural sciences at Cambridge. When I was a child, I had many different gifts, but I don't think that they were given the full opportunities they needed to be expressed. To your mind, is any of Einan's ability inherited from his parents? Yeah, I would say so. The funny thing is that his scientific interests parallel my own age for age as a child. He starts expressing interest in chemistry at six. It's the same age I became interested in chemistry, okay? So it's the same pattern and yet we didn't guide him in this pattern. We just let him be. And he chose the same path. It's easy for a child in that position to end up frustrated. And having, you know, known that situation myself, I don't want to see him frustrated. I want to see him develop at his own pace, in the areas of his interest, and become the full human being he's intended to be. Where are you from? I'm from Davenport, Iowa. And what's the area code there? If you're a three, it's 563. If you're a seven, it's 309. Prodigious savant Kim Peake is a walking encyclopedia, having memorised over 12,000 books. When did England become England? It's been that way since 827, under Egbert, and then Athelstan, and defeated the Danes at Brunnenburg and united the country. In what year? In 933. But suffering from brain damage since birth, Kim is a genius in need of 24-hour care. And at 82, his father, Fran, has his own illnesses to contend with, having recently had a melanoma removed from his face. I have to brush his teeth and everything is physical. We shower together and I have to dress him after. He dressed himself, I have to redress him. Just everything we do together. And provisions have to be made for when Fran is no longer here. The last place I'd want him to go is into a group home or into an institution. My other son, about six months ago, came and told me that he would like to take his wife and move into our home, where Kim's environment of books is, and he would take care of Kim just like I am. And we're going to have four more great days together. But for now, Fran is constantly at the side of his genius son. The pathologist says everything's great. I just can't wear the bandage until next Monday. I have to go back and see him again. But everything's fine. No cancer, okay? Yes, Dad. Before becoming the inspiration for Rain Man, Kim had been a recluse, unable to even make eye contact with another person. But Dustin Hoffman told Fran to share Kim with the world. Ever since, he has done exactly that. We've flown 1,992,000 air miles in 19 years. We've talked to over 4.4 million people in small groups. He's become something that he was never supposed to be. Kim and Fran are on tour 20 days out of every month. Today, they've been invited to the University of Wisconsin to meet an audience of over 300 people, all eager to witness the genius of Kim Peek. We'll start with an easy one. What day of the week was March 20th, 1979? A Tuesday. And I was born on March 12th, 1933. What day is it? Sunday. You're 75 years old. Unfortunately, that's right. Sometimes people look at savants, whether it's a musician or an artist or a memory giant, as sort of putting them on display, so to speak. And, you know, can you stump the genius kind of thing? And that's not what this is all about. It helps them. It's a form of therapy, if you like. Part of that is what we call training the talent. And that's really what the treatment of savant syndrome is, is to find the talent and run with it. Although Kim is unable to hold a simple conversation, he has now interacted with millions of people at events like this, all on a non-profit basis. What was the best picture in 1961? West Side Story. There's a place for us. Bernstein wrote the score in 1957. Thank you. When did Shakespeare write Romeo and Juliet? But Leonard Bernstein wrote the score in 1957. Very familiar with the literature through the last 125 years. And there's never been a Kim Peek, and I don't know if there will be another. What are you singing to me? That song is called The Birch Tree. Vicenza, Italy. And 10-year-old musician Ariel Lanyi has been invited to make his European debut at a prestigious jazz festival. But he's feeling the pressure. It's a big gig. Okay. So right now, what matters is to put a smile on your face. A non-nervous smile. This is a real jazz festival with big names, and he is playing alongside known people. So he's very, very nervous. We just hope that he will revive before the concert. Later that evening, an audience of jazz aficionados gathers to watch Ariel and jazz partner Jean-Claude Jones. They'll know it's better. We practice with the metronome. We're more together. And we drop the key. That's it, you get it. Dad Gabby is in the wings throughout. This time, Ariel's a success. Fantastic. I never thought that a little child like him could do something like that. A genius, more than a genius, I think. I was so surprised. How do you say in English? Goosebump? I had a goosebump on my arms. Thank you. Good. Hey, Casey, how was it? Yeah, man, that was good. Yeah. Was it professional? Good. When a child prodigy stops being a child, then the question is, does he have the wherewithal to be a bona fide artist or not? And if he doesn't, then he can be a very happy amateur. If he doesn't follow career in music, he'll probably have to follow a career in something else. And it will have to be his decision, ultimately. It will not be ours.