The 7 Craziest Geniuses in History — Ranked

One of them slid a needle behind his own eyeball to test a theory. One stood barefoot in one spot from dawn to dawn because a thought would not let him go. One gave humanity the electric grid and spent his last years in love with a pigeon. This is a special episode: the seven maddest minds ever covered on this channel, ranked from least to most insane — Richard Feynman, Leonardo da Vinci, Ludwig van Beethoven, Marie Curie, Socrates, Isaac Newton, and Nikola Tesla — told through their own notebooks, letters, and the sworn accounts of the people who knew them. Every story is documented: the safes Feynman cracked at Los Alamos while the bomb was being built, the corpses Leonardo opened by candlelight, the sixty coffee beans Beethoven counted every single morning, the radium Curie carried in her pocket, the trial where Socrates asked Athens to reward him with free dinners, the million secret words of alchemy Newton hid from the world, and the complete AC motor Tesla saw in a vision and drew in the dirt with a stick. Underneath the madness, one pattern: the same wiring that made these people impossible is what made the work possible — and every one of them aimed it. Highlights from this episode: • "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool." — Richard Feynman • "I will seize fate by the throat; it shall certainly not bend and crush me completely." — Ludwig van Beethoven • "One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done." — Marie Curie • "The unexamined life is not worth living." — Socrates • "Newton was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians." — John Maynard Keynes, on Isaac Newton • "When I get an idea I start at once building it up in my imagination. I change the construction, make improvements and operate the device in my mind. The inventions I have conceived in this way have always worked." — Nikola Tesla Full episodes on these minds: Nikola Tesla —    • Nikola Tesla: The Method Behind the Genius   Steve Jobs —    • Steve Jobs: The Relentless Obsession That ...   More are on the way. Tell me in the comments who I ranked too low — and who should be on the next list. Chapters: 0:00 Intro 1:15 Ranking The Seven Geniuses 2:14 Feynman The Safecracker 6:24 Leonardo da Vinci 11:03 Beethoven's Madness 13:26 Beethoven Versus Deafness 16:13 Marie Curie's Obsession 19:16 Radioactive Notebooks