Great Minds Think Alike

Great minds have never thought alike. They have a bad habit of thinking for themselves, and when you put two really smart people in the same room, sparks are bound to fly. It's fun finding out what happens when geniuses collide.

Alfred Hitchcock rarely opened up to journalists or fans, but he did open up to famed French New Wave director Francois TruffautHitchcock is the result of lengthy interviews between the two directors and is almost a substitute for film school. As an added bonus, a number of these interviews were later broadcast on French radio and are available for free online.

Wittgenstein's Poker retells a notorious incident between two famous philosophers. In a heated debate about puzzles and problems, Ludwig Wittgenstein threatened Karl Popper with a hot poker, or maybe Wittgenstein was just using the poker to make a point, or maybe Popper made a joke about not threatening philosophers with hot pokers, or maybe nobody knows what happened, which is hilarious because philosophers make their livings by pretending to know what they're talking about. The author uses the incident to explain all the characters and theories involved, and the result is a miraculously brief overview of early 20th century philosophy.

But philosophers aren't the only ones who can throw a hissy fit. Psychologists lose their minds, too. A Most Dangerous Method narrates the friendship and falling-out between Freud and Jung, a conflict which involved a woman who herself became a well-regarded psychologist. The book was later made into a play, which was then made into a reliably unsettling David Cronenberg movie.

I guess I just learned that if I'm an amiable person who gets along with everybody, it means I'm not a genius. I'd better figure out how to be a better jerk.