How to Become Famous: Lost Einsteins, Forgotten Superstars, and How the Beatles Came to Be

April 12, 2024, Video: "This hybrid seminar was given by Cass Sunstein, M-RCBG faculty affiliate and the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard, on Thursday, April 11, 2024. He spoke about his recent book: How to Become Famous. Fame is like lightning. Taylor Swift, Bob Dylan, Leonardo da Vinci, Jane Austen, Oprah Winfrey--all of them were struck. Why? What if they hadn't been? Consider the most famous music group in history. What would the world be like if the Beatles never existed? This was the question posed by the playful, thought-provoking, 2019 film Yesterday, in which a young, completely unknown singer starts performing Beatles hits to a world that has never heard them. Would the Fab Four's songs be as phenomenally popular as they are in our own Beatle-infused world? The movie asserts that they would, but is that true? Was the success of the Beatles inevitable due to their amazing, matchless talent? Maybe."