4.6 • 4.7K Ratings
🗓️ 10 December 2025
⏱️ 94 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Being the smartest person in the room is usually where the trouble starts. In today’s episode, Ryan sits down with journalist and author Helen Lewis to talk about genius, ego, and why so many “brilliant” people eventually spin out. They discuss the myth of the lone genius, why smart people overthink themselves into bad ideas, and how ego quietly wrecks careers, reputations, and entire movements.
Helen Lewis is a staff writer at The Atlantic who writes about politics and culture. Her first book, Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights, was a Guardian, Telegraph and Financial Times book of the year. She has written for The New York Times, the Guardian, The New Statesman, and Vogue. She is the host of the BBC podcast series The New Gurus and Helen Lewis Has Left the Chat, and co-host of Radio 4’s Kafka vs Orwell and Strong Message Here. She won the 2024 Kukula Award for excellence in nonfiction book reviewing.
Check out Helen Lewis’ book The Genius Myth: A Curious History of a Dangerous Idea
Follow Helen on Instagram @HelenLewisPosts
Read Helen Lewis’ article: How Joe Rogan Remade Austin
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| 0:00.0 | Introducing your new Dell PC, powered by the Intel Core Ultra processor. |
| 0:05.4 | It helps you handle a lot, even when your holiday to-do list gets to be a lot, |
| 0:10.6 | because it's built with all-day battery, plus powerful AI features that help you do it all with ease, |
| 0:16.5 | from editing images to drafting emails, to summarizing large documents to multitasking. |
| 0:21.8 | So you can organize your holiday shopping and make custom holiday decor and search for great |
| 0:26.2 | holiday deals and respond to holiday requests and customer questions and customers requesting |
| 0:30.5 | custom things and plan the perfect holiday dinner for vegans, vegetarians, pescatarians, |
| 0:35.5 | and Uncle Mike's carnivore diet. |
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| 0:59.7 | You know, you don't have to let big wireless and your overpriced phone bill suck the joy out of the holidays this year. |
| 1:05.7 | Because right now all of MintMobil's unlimited plans are 50% off. |
| 1:09.9 | You can get three, six, and 12 months of |
| 1:11.9 | unlimited premium wireless for 15 bucks a month. It's their best deal the year, and it makes |
| 1:16.7 | it really easy for you to give your expensive wireless bill the Scrooge treatment. All |
| 1:21.5 | Mint plans come with high-speed data and unlimited talk and text at the nation's largest |
| 1:26.1 | 5G network. Plus, you can bring your current phone and number over to Mint. |
| 1:30.0 | Actually, we just signed up for a Mint Mobile plan to use the social media phone here at the office, |
| 1:35.3 | and we didn't notice any kind of change in the quality of service or network or any of that. |
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