Was Helen Keller a fraud?

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Friends —

I was watching a comedian recently who takes audience questions and comments, and someone wrote in: “There is no freaking way Helen Keller did all the things people claim she did.” The comedian roasted him pretty hard, and it was all funny and good-natured... but honestly? It reminded me of questions I had when I was younger.

Did Helen Keller really do everything we think she did?

Some of her writings from her early teens contain imagery that would be sophisticated for an experienced writer twice her age. Her prose was sophisticated, visual, and frankly stunning for someone who’d been deaf and blind since infancy. Was all of that writing by Helen Keller … or a lot of it her interpreter, Anne Sullivan? Can we ever really know?

I want to be careful here. Trashing old celebrities is an easy way to get clicks these days. Even I’ve been critical of figures like MLK Jr. and Gandhi when I had real questions, but I don’t want to just do a takedown video and tell the world that Helen Keller was “problematic.” She had some amazing, real-world accomplishments we should celebrate. I just want to see if we can learn the whole truth about Helen Keller, and I’d love to have you along for the ride.

I just posted this video minutes ago.

Paul Ehrlich’s Wrongheaded Legacy

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Paul Ehrlich died last week at 93.

You might know him from the hugely popular book “The Population Bomb,” where he predicted mass starvation and the collapse of civilization by the 1980s. He supported the forced sterilization in India, which affected 8 million people, and he suggested the U.S. government jail Americans for having too many kids. He was wrong about everything, yet died loaded with honors and utterly convinced he’d been right.

But we didn’t run out of food — we became more efficient at growing it. We didn’t run out of resources — we got better at finding them. Now, birth rates are collapsing worldwide. If you want the full story on Ehrlich and why population decline might be the real crisis, check out this video from last year.

– Ken