Daniel Tammet

Daniel Tammet’s mind does not work like most. He’s an autistic savant. One of just fifty or a hundred of his rare kind in the world.

He can recite pi out to 22,000 digits, from memory. And, maybe most unusually, he can talk about how he does it. About the lightning-fast associations and textures of reality that leap out at him.

Daniel Tammet is a savant and a great communicator. And his message is this: As strange and marvelous as his mind may seem, it is not that different from yours. You can learn from the autistic savant.

This hour, On Point: A tour of the wide horizon of the human mind.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guest:

Daniel Tammet described living with Asperger’s syndrome and synesthesia in his 2007 bestselling memoir “Born on A Blue Day.” A British poll named him one of the world’s “100 living geniuses.” His new book is “Embracing the Wide Sky: A Tour Across the Horizons of the Mind. You can hear our previous interview with Daniel Tammet, and watch Daniel describe his new book on YouTube.

It wasn’t until he was 20 that Nicky was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome, a kind of high-functioning neurological cousin of autism that is being diagnosed in more and more young Americans.

They can be high achievers — many in computer science or engineering. But it’s not an easy life.

Now, Lizzie and Nicky are telling their story.

This hour, On Point: living with Asperger’s Syndrome, up close.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Lizzie Gottlieb, director of “Today’s Man: Adventures of a Young Man with Asperger Syndrome.”

Nicky Gottlieb, Lizzie’s brother, has Asperger’s Syndrome and is the subject of “Today’s Man.”

Lynda Geller, clinical director, Asperger Institute at New York University. She is also a board member at the Asperger Foundation International, where she served as executive director from 2004 to 2006.

Brian Hughes, product engineer and trustee at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in 2003 he wrote a column for MIT alumni titled “Understanding Our Gifted and Complex Minds: Intelligence, Asperger’s Syndrome, and Learning Disabilities at MIT.”