Uploaded June 2024 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
This is a censored re-upload because YouTube has once again targeted Vsauce2 and Age-Restricted the previous upload which essentially shadowbans it.
Support Vsauce2 on Patreon: patreon.com/Vsauce2
Genie Wiley was found in California in 1970, a feral child subjected to 13 years of horrors at the hands of her father -- and her tragic story blurs the line between research and true crime. It's part psychology, part biology, part linguistics... and all a chapter in the dark history of science.
Genie presented an incredible opportunity to study the limits of and potential for language acquisition at a time when Noam Chomsky's "Syntactic Structures" dominated linguistic debates. But was it even possible to help an abused girl and study her at the same time? That depends on who you ask -- but the result was limited scientific knowledge and a broken life.
FURTHER READING / VIEWING:
"Genie: A Scientific Tragedy" by Russ Rymer
NOVA: "Genie, The Secret of the Wild Child" (1994)
This video is for educational, artistic, and documentary purposes.
#psychology #weirdhistory #truecrimestories
This is a censored re-upload because YouTube has once again targeted Vsauce2 and Age-Restricted the previous upload which essentially shadowbans it.
Support Vsauce2 on Patreon: patreon.com/Vsauce2
Genie Wiley was found in California in 1970, a feral child subjected to 13 years of horrors at the hands of her father -- and her tragic story blurs the line between research and true crime. It's part psychology, part biology, part linguistics... and all a chapter in the dark history of science.
Genie presented an incredible opportunity to study the limits of and potential for language acquisition at a time when Noam Chomsky's "Syntactic Structures" dominated linguistic debates. But was it even possible to help an abused girl and study her at the same time? That depends on who you ask -- but the result was limited scientific knowledge and a broken life.
FURTHER READING / VIEWING:
"Genie: A Scientific Tragedy" by Russ Rymer
NOVA: "Genie, The Secret of the Wild Child" (1994)
This video is for educational, artistic, and documentary purposes.
#psychology #weirdhistory #truecrimestories
