- What the heck is this?
- That's salmon.
- Augh.
You're gonna eat that?
- I was gonna blend all this together for a beautiful drink
for the three of us.
- Oh.
(upbeat music)
What constitutes a genius?
That is a question that's plagued me for quite some time.
I went to an IB International School in Thailand
for my high school education
and I was surrounded by a lot of peers
that excelled in the maths, the sciences,
whereas I, let's just say my grades were below sub-par.
Something that my parents would often hear
at parent teacher conferences was Aria,
he has a lot of potential,
but he's just not fulfilling it.
I'm gonna meet with Dr. Dana Chidekel,
who is going to test me
and then I'm gonna see if over the next 30 days,
I can train myself and study enough
to improve my scores and maybe, just maybe,
you'll be looking at a genius in 30 days.
Thank you so much for meeting with me, Dr. Chidekel.
- It's my pleasure.
I'm so glad that you're here.
- How would you define what a genius is?
- I don't think there's any one definition for it.
So what we've talked about is
let's look at the different kind of things that people do
that you could potentially do better,
as a function of going through all the brain training.
So we talked about memory.
You could say well, maybe a genius has great memory.
We're gonna look and see what this does for your memory.
I think we're gonna be looking at math.
- That's very important to me
because math was one of my worst subjects.
- [Chidekel] Was it really?
- Yes, well I had many worst subjects.
- I'm totally open to the fact
that you may get better at things
and then I'll have to shift the way I think about it.
- How about this, let's place a little wager, if you will.
- Ooh.
- [Aria] Yes.
- What are we gonna bet?
- I recently procured what they call the--
(loud drone)
(laughs)
and I'm thinking whoever loses this bet
has a little nibble of it.
Just a little nibble.
- Yeah, okay.
There you go.
(upbeat music)
- In 30 days from now,
hopefully we see some marked improvement
and then hopefully you'll be able
to enjoy some delicious spicy chocolate.
- Oh well, you know, I guess we'll see.
(light music)
- There are a lot of apps on the market that claim
to improve your mental acuity,
your memory, your math skills.
I'm gonna go buy one or two of them
and I will use them religiously
over the course of the next 30 days.
Hopefully it pays dividends.
If not, I will have just wasted some money
and a lot of my time.
Elevate was selected by Apple as App of the year.
I'll do one test.
Remove unnecessary words.
"The history of structure discussed
"the Vikings' old customs."
So you don't need "old."
I guess you don't need that.
This is kinda fun, actually.
Yeah, I just finished my first training session on Elevate.
You know, it's fun visually,
so it's actually pretty engaging.
Kelly found these sort of brain supplements.
You know, hopefully they don't kill me.
Maybe this is the start
of where I become like a super-villain.
The brain supplements have indeed arrived
and I'm just gonna take them,
I guess before I brush my teeth.
We have Neuro-Peak, Genius Mushrooms.
Oh, that has a stink to it.
Put three pills right now.
(swallows)
Yeah, I don't know if these pills
are actually having any effect.
Maybe it's more of a gradual thing.
It's crazy to think
that there's a whole industry built
upon the idea of becoming a genius, becoming smarter.
(swallows)
Three down the hatch.
Yeah.
At the halfway point of this challenge,
it actually might be beneficial for me to actually speak
with someone that the world,
or at least some accreditations,
would deem a genius.
And I actually found out that the guy, the actor,
that plays Luke Dunphy on the hit Emmy Award-winning show,
Modern Family, is actually a part of Mensa.
He is, what many would consider, a genius.
Aw, thank you for coming.
- Thanks for having me.
Oh!
(laughs)
There we go.
I think this is a new experiment
that has never been done before.
So either way, whether you succeed and are a genius,
or if you fail,
we are going to learn some valuable information
along the way.
The brain food can make us smarter at least.
- Yeah, perfect.
- What the heck is this?
- That's salmon.
- Augh.
You're gonna eat that?
- Well, I was gonna blend all this together
for a beautiful drink for the three of us.
- Oh.
(makes vomit noise)
- Make it clear.
This is not research-approved.
(laughs)
This is based off what we just googled.
- Cheers.
- To two geniuses.
(upbeat music)
- Ah.
Oh my lord.
(chokes)
Oh, uh-uh, I'm out!
(laughs)
- Genius in 30 days, sum it up, will it happen?
- Um, yeah, it's not gonna happen, man.
(laughs)
But you know what, follow your dreams,
live up to your potential.
And if your potential is a genius, then chase it, dude.
I believe.
You know what we're gonna do, we're gonna do an elbow thing.
You smell a little fishy right now.
(laughs)
(chill music)
- It is officially the final night before my test
and so I'm just gonna cram, as I've been doing,
with these pills.
No idea if they're making any improvement
on my mental acuity.
(swallows)
I'm about to settle into bed
and do my final Elevate session.
I mean, I could go to the test tomorrow
and I could knock it out of the park, that'd be great.
But do I feel any different, you know.
Thank you so much again for having--
- It's been nice to see you.
How have you been feeling?
- I can't say I feel smarter.
I felt a lot of stress the past week.
You know, I'm worried.
- Are you kinda anxious about the testing?
- Definitely.
Like it sort of all comes down to today
and I genuinely have no idea how this is going to go.
- Okay, well I guess we're gonna find out.
- And I hate that uncertainty.
- So here we go.
- I'm ready.
- Alright.
(intense music)
Alright, so let's talk about what we found.
Wouldn't it be great if everything made lots of sense?
- Yes.
- But it doesn't.
- The tests of, you can think of them as working memory,
you went from the 16th to the 37th percentile,
which is not quite one standard deviation,
one piece of difference, but it's better.
Interestingly, you actually did do better on the math.
You've been practicing math.
I bet you've been practicing your long division.
Now let's look at language.
91st percentile to the 16th.
- I dropped from 90--
- 91st percentile to the 16th.
A substantial difference.
That's almost two standard deviations.
You know these tests can be very seductive
'cause ooh we've got numbers and percentiles,
but you have to think, what does this mean?
Right?
What are you noticing in your real life?
Are you disappointed?
- I thought I'd be more disappointed.
- [Dr. Chidekel] Yeah?
- Makes me think about the value
that we put on these testings.
But I think it's safe to say
that I am not a genius in 30 days.
- Well, it's safe to say that whatever you did
didn't make a huge positive difference
in your ability to remember stuff and concentrate.
- That's unfortunate, but we did make a promise.
- That's right.
We had a bet.
(loud drone)
(laughs)
(crunching)
- You know I think there's a lot more
to the idea of a genius than what we typically think of.
But I'll tell you this,
any genius would not have eaten that.
(laughs)
(smooth jazz)