It's the 1470s, and Leonardo da Vinci is hiking alone in the hills of central Italy,

when he chances upon an enormous cave.

It's unmarked, and there are no signs of human habitation anywhere.

It's apparently undiscovered.

He later wrote in his journal

what he felt at the time. Suddenly there arose in me two contrary emotions, fear and desire.

Fear of the threatening dark cave and desire to see whether there were any marvelous things

within. He stands in front of the cave for a long time, bending back and forth to see if he can maybe make out even a faint outline of something inside.

But it's too dark. He can't see anything. He's got a decision to make.

Does he risk going into the cave and seeing what's inside?

Or does he continue on with his day?

But he already knows what he'll decide because Leonardo

Da Vinci always chooses satisfying his curiosity over everything else. He enters the cave, and the

reward for following that curiosity is that he discovers in the walls a fossilized skeleton of a whale.

The historian Kenneth Clark calls Da Vinci the most relentlessly curious man in history.

And I have to agree, when you read enough of these biographies, you start to see certain

archetypes, certain types of people. But I think Da Vinci is a one of one. I've never seen

or read about a mind like his ever anywhere.

You're probably not wired like Da Vinci.

And that's okay.

I'm not.

I don't know anyone that is.

...