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Daniel Tammet on the Mind

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Daniel Tammet
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.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.

This program aired on January 12, 2009.

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