Free The Geography of Genius: A Search for the World's Most Creative Places From Ancient Athens to Silicon Valley by Eric Weiner Page A

little bit simpler. “There is this chaotic mess of seemingly unconnected data out there, and then someone says, ‘Wait, here is how it all fits together.’ And we like that.”
    Mathematicians, for instance, speak reverentially of an “elegant proof.” An elegant proof is not merely correct but highly streamlined. Nothing extraneous, and nothing missing. An elegant proof is pleasing to the mind the way an elegant design is pleasing to the eye. The Greeks always sought the most elegant solution to any problem. Invariably, that meant finding connections, for, as historian Edith Hamilton put it, “to see anything in relation to other things is to see it simplified.”
    Brady concedes that, despite his scary smartness, he often falls into the complexity trap. He can’t help it. He’s an academic at heart, and complexity is what academia encourages and rewards.
    When President George H. W. Bush visited Athens, Brady was assigned translation duties. The president was about to address the Greek parliament and thought it would be nice to open his comments with a few words in Greek.
    “How do you say ‘Long live Greece’ in Greek?” President Bush asked Brady.
    “Well, Mr. President, there’s actually no simple answer to that question because, you see, there are at least two ways of saying ‘Long live Greece,’ each with a very different connotation. For instance, if you say . . .”
    Brady looked up. President Bush was nowhere in sight. He had gone to ask someone else how to say “Long live Greece” in Greek.
    I’m digesting that story, my mind a churning whirlpool of caffeine and alcohol, when Brady does something I haven’t seen anybody in Athens do before. He looks at his watch. He has to go.
    He starts to walk away, but suddenly stops and pivots. “It’s all about interlocking feedback loops.”
    What? Wait, Brady. What does that mean? But it’s too late. The Brady is gone, swallowed up by a glistening sea of Greek light, now in its full afternoon glory.
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    I reach for my fork but it is not there. Nor is my napkin or, most alarming of all, my coffee. Where have they gone? They don’t exist yet. Not in the Athens of 450 BC, and that’s where I am now. I’m dining at a restaurant called Archeon Gefsis, or Ancient Flavors. It aims to re-create the dining experience of Athens in the time of Socrates. It strikes me as the perfect place to explore the connection between food and creativity, an area littered with romantic notions such as that of the starving artist. That’s nonsense, of course. A truly starving artist creates nothing but his own misery. We need food in order to create, but how much and what kind? Did the Greeks eat their way to genius?
    The restaurant is tucked away on a small street in a largely immigrant neighborhood, well off the beaten tourist paths. When I had entered, a waiter, dressed in the loose-fitting, togalike clothing of the day, handed me a copy of the Ancient News , which doubles as a menu. Cute. The interior is all stone walls and dim lighting and chairs covered in white fabric that looks as if it was cut from the same cloth as the waiter’s outfit.
    My dining companion is Joanna Kakissis, the National Public Radio correspondent in Athens. Raised in North Dakota, she returned to her ancestral homeland a few years ago. I like Joanna, and besides, in ancient Athens to eat alone was considered barbarous, and I make it a point not to be barbarous.
    We sit down and peruse the Ancient News. My eyes are drawn to a quote by Epicurus: “The source of all pleasures is the satisfaction of the stomach.”A nice sentiment but a misleading one. The Athenians were not foodies. Far from it. Most people, no matter their social stature, were satisfied with a hunk of bread, two onions, and a small handful of olives. The typical Athenian meal consisted of two courses, “the first a kind of porridge, and the second a kind of porridge,” quipped the historian Alfred Zimmern. Even the food