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<\/figure>\n\n\n\nHaving an \u2018interest in everything\u2019<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIntellectual omnivore\u201d isn\u2019t a scientific or educational term. The first documented person to use this term was Amy Gutmann, who once served as the U.S. ambassador to Germany and the president of the University of Pennsylvania. In 2015, when her former Princeton colleague, Angus Deaton, won the Nobel Prize, Gutmann described him as \u201can intellectual omnivore\u201d because of his \u201cinterest in everything,\u201d according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This term resonates with many people who have ADHD. The hyperfixation that often comes with the condition causes a person to focus on one thing or topic for hours, days, or weeks at a time. What will spark the hyperfixation is generally not something that can be controlled, which is why many people with ADHD have in-depth knowledge about a plethora of topics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSo apparently there\u2019s a new term for neurodivergent people,\u201d Instagram user\u00a0Nichunterreal\u00a0says in a video. \u201cWe\u2019re called intellectual omnivores. I\u2019m sorry, but we\u2019ve been doing this since childhood. One minute it\u2019s black holes, the next it\u2019s Greek mythology, and then we\u2019re on to quantum physics, then the mating rituals of octopus, then somehow the Roman Empire. And yes, we still know all of it for absolutely no reason.\u201d Later in the video, she laughs and says, \u201cI\u2019ve been collecting facts like a cognitive raccoon for years.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIn all seriousness, maybe our brains were never broken,\u201d she reflects. \u201cThey were built to connect dots that other people didn\u2019t even know belonged on the same page. Maybe because innovation doesn\u2019t come from staying in one box or from bending the spoon. Because the box was never real, and there is no spoon. Neurodivergents don\u2019t have hobbies. We have rotating PhDs, but I guess we\u2019ll accept intellectual omnivores.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n But \u201cintellectual omnivore\u201d isn\u2019t just a title for people with ADHD. It applies to many types of intelligent people with an ability to retain information from multiple topics and make connections to unrelated situations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When speaking about intelligence in 1982 at the\u00a0Academy of Achievement, Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, explained, \u201cIt seems to me, a lot of it is memory, but a lot of it is being able to zoom out like you\u2019re in a city and you could look at the whole thing from the 80th floor down at the city. And while other people are trying to figure out how to get from point A to point B reading these stupid little maps, you could just see it in front of you. You can see the whole thing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Being an intellectual omnivore doesn\u2019t seem to be innate to one or two groups of people. It requires a little curiosity and a love of learning, then taking a step back and thinking outside the box to find unexpected ways things can connect. To some, an intellectual omnivore may sound unfocused or scatterbrained, but with people like Steve Jobs, these minds make way for innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Steve Jobs may also have been classified as one. Some people know a lot about a variety of topics, and having a\u00a0conversation\u00a0with them can give<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11559,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/784251449_4486027924946085_8419529463904468648_n.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11558"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11558\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11560,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11558\/revisions\/11560"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"intellectual](\"https:\/\/www.upworthy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/08\/WP-Jacalyn-TOP-SPLASH-2026-08-18T185222.606.jpg?w=1024\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nIntellectual omnivores and neurodivergence<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Steve Jobs and making unexpected connections<\/h2>\n\n\n\n