Sarah Breedlove was a genius. Born in 1867, the first person in her family to be

born into freedom. She was one of six brothers and sisters from Louisiana. When

she died 51 years later, she lived just down the street from me in New York,

in a mansion. She was the first self-made black millionaire in the United States.

Madame CJ Walker pioneered the way haircare was sold in this country. When she started the company,

she switched her first name to CJ, adopted Walker from her husband and added Madame at the front

because it made her sound French. She pioneered the idea of a sales force. She traveled the country.

She gave speeches all throughout the United States. She solved problems that other people didn't

even know were problems. And now, a hundred years after she did her work, the things she created

are still being copied by companies all over the world. She was a genius. Hey, it's Avril Hernandez

and this is a special archive episode of Akimbo.

The word genius gets thrown around a lot, given that no one can actually agree on what a genius

is. The MacArthur Grants, the so-called Genius Grants, have been awarded to more than 960 people

so far. And even if you don't concur that every single one of them is a freaking genius,

I think that we would probably have enough agreement that some of these people have something

awfully special going on. So what's a genius anyway? Well, here's what we did. A couple hundred

years ago, we started a generation's long conspiracy to establish that a genius is someone who's

not you. That a genius is somebody who can do something you can't do, who's so smart operating

on such a high level that it's for the other. Nikola Tesla, clearly a genius, invented radio

and lots of our uses of electricity. He was a little quirky and as a result, Max Fleischer put him

in the Superman cartoons, named checking him and establishing the meme of the mad scientist.

Albert Einstein, another transplanted European, also labeled as a genius. With his big head of

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