THE SMARTEST MAN ALIVE

Here’s how this week’s arts and culture column begins:

One of the people culture maven and best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell profiled in his 2008 blockbuster “Outliers: The Story of Success” (Back Bay Books, $11.64) is a man named Chris Langan, who supposedly has the highest IQ in the world.

This record has since been disputed but at the very least, we can agree that the man is very, very smart.

Langan grew up poor, had an abusive stepfather, and even after educating himself to the skies in philosophy, physics, mathematics, and linguistics, had been unable to achieve mainstream success. Here was a man “with a one-in-a-million mind, and he had yet to have any impact on the world,” noted Gladwell.

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