IQ Tests are (Kind of) Dumb

Summary

Ridiculous History Podcast Summary

Episode: IQ Tests are (Kind of) Dumb
Hosts: Ben Bowlin & Noel Brown
Date: April 2, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into the peculiar history, legacy, and controversies of IQ tests. Ben and Noel unspool the story behind how our society tried to quantify intelligence into a single number, highlighting the flawed origins and worrying consequences. They track the journey from Alfred Binet’s early experiments to the widespread adoption and misuse of intelligence testing, while questioning if a three-digit number can really measure what it means to be 'smart.'

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Personal Encounters with IQ and Standardized Tests

• The hosts open by joking about generational differences and test-taking, noting most Americans have taken some IQ test or its "kissing cousin"—standardized tests like the SAT or ACT—even if they don't realize it.

  “If you ever aspire to go to college or university, you take something that is the kissing cousin of the IQ test—things we call the SAT or the ACT.”
  — Ben [08:00]

2. The Origins of the IQ Test: Alfred Binet

• Alfred Binet’s Path: From law to medicine to hypnosis and finally psychology, Binet’s career is described as “mercurial.”
• Early Psychology: Binet’s mentor, Jean-Martin Charcot, fell from grace over dubious hypnosis research, tarnishing Binet’s own reputation and leading him to pivot into child psychological development.
• Daughter Experiments: Binet tested his ideas on his daughters, which the hosts find ‘cringe’ yet (relatively) benign for the era.

  “He’s not hurting the kids, but he’s asking them very strange questions and making them do little experiments that inform his research.”
  — Ben [22:06]

3. From Diagnostic Tools to Social Gatekeeping

• Purpose of the First IQ Test: The French government in the early 1900s asked Binet to create a test to identify children with special learning needs—emphasizing that it was originally about support, not ranking.
• Break with Galton: Binet eventually parted ways with his early inspiration, Francis Galton, criticizing Galton’s focus on trivial abilities and emphasizing judgment, reasoning, and comprehension instead.

4. The Stanford-Binet and Global Spread

• Binet’s test was adapted in the US by Lewis Terman at Stanford in 1916, creating the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale.
• Standardization: The idea of an average score (100) and deviation-based scaling emerges.
• New Versions & Children’s Tests: Weschler’s scales add further nuance, splitting verbal and performance abilities.

5. The Problem with IQ Tests

• Lack of Clear Definition: Intelligence is still not universally defined, meaning any attempt to measure it is essentially limited.
• Relative, Not Absolute: IQ tests compare you to others, unlike an objective measurement like a target-shooting score.
• Cultural Bias: Early and modern tests favor certain backgrounds, systematically disadvantaging minorities and the poor. Attempts to develop "culture-free" tests are discussed but found lacking.

  “These tests have always been controversial since the early 1900s...and are far less useful than we have been led to believe.”
  — Ben [45:10]

6. Consequences & Ethical Failings

• Misuse in Education and Policy: The US used IQ-derived scores for institutionalization, gifted tracks, and at worst, to justify sterilization and eugenics.
• Real Life Outcomes: High IQ doesn’t predict practical or social success; brilliant people can fail at life skills, just as “bad test-takers” can thrive.
• Soft Skills Ignored: Emotional intelligence, networking, and adaptability are not measured.

7. The Flynn Effect & Modern Reflection

• Flynn Effect: Over generations, average IQ increases—not from suddenly smarter genes, but from better education, health, and nutrition.
• Genetics Overplayed: Lineage has less to do with IQ than environment and opportunity.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Dismissiveness is arguably…a sign of insecurity, lower intelligence.”
  — Ben [02:06]

• On Binet’s experiments:
  “He is the weirdest goddamn dad ever.”
  — Ben [22:06]

• “No one thinks IQ tests are perfect, even the biggest proponents or champions of it.”
  — Ben [13:38]

• On the gap between test-taking and life skills:
  “They can tell you how good you are taking an IQ test…but they don’t measure how you would raise kids or survive a week in the woods.”
  — Ben [53:51]

• On systemic abuse and eugenics:
  “People begin to think that these special needs kids are not fit for society…these kids get carted off to abusive foster homes and institutions.”
  — Ben [57:20]

• On the myth of IQ’s predictive power:
  “There’s no statistical association between your IQ score and hard measures like your wealth.”
  — Ben [61:58]

• On the irony of IQ’s origins:
  “IQ tests, I will posit, cannot be immune from that law [that a character is only as smart as their creator]. We need the smartest people ever writing the test, and these are not them.”
  — Ben [61:54]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• IQ Tests in Schooling and Standardized Tests: [07:46] – [08:58]
• Alfred Binet’s Biography & Experiments on Children: [15:26] – [23:36]
• Development and Purpose of the First IQ Test: [30:52] – [34:24]
• From Binet to the Stanford-Binet: [37:07] – [39:46]
• How Modern IQ Testing Works (Bell Curve, Deviation, etc.): [41:46] – [44:14]
• Cultural Bias & Historical Misuse of IQ: [45:10] – [56:13]
• Eugenics and Abuse: [57:20] – [58:52]
• The Flynn Effect: [62:22] – [63:25]
• Closing Reflection & "Smartest Person" Trivia: [64:19] – [66:34]

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Conclusion: What Can We Learn?

IQ tests are a historical artifact—a well-intentioned attempt to help struggling students that was quickly repurposed as a tool of ranking, exclusion, and at worst, oppression. Their seductive simplicity—a single, objective score—has proven both alluring and incredibly flawed. Intelligence is far too complex, social, emotional, and context-dependent to be captured by a number, and the search for a better way to understand human potential is still ongoing.

As Ben sums up:

“They’re just overblown.”
— [63:38]

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Further Listening / Related Episodes

• “Did Lead (lead, lead, led) to the Fall of the Roman Empire?”
• Stuff They Don’t Want You to Know: Episodes on hypnosis, eugenics, and educational controversies
• Stuff You Missed in History Class: The Kallikak Family and “hereditary feeble-mindedness”

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Transcript

[A]

Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartradio. Welcome back to the show, fellow ridiculous historians. Thank you as always so much for tuning in. And let's hear it for the man, the myth, the legend, our super producer, Max Benet Williams. Not Benet Benet like JonBenet. Similar to. We don't have the relationship.

[B]

Dark.

[A]

Well, we've got kind of a dark turn here. This episode is following on the heels of our recent episode we're quite proud of the title. Did lead to the fall of the Roman Empire, right?

[C]

Yes. Led. Lead, lead, lead. You know, maybe. Probably not. Spoiler alert.

[A]

Yeah. Contributed to maybe. You'll have to check out the episode, folks, that is none other than the legendary Mr. Noel Brown.

[C]

Hello? It's you. Ben, is it you? I think it's you.

[A]

We are all. We are all vast. We contain multitudes. For tax purposes, they call me Ben Bullen here in the United States.

[C]

We are, bro. I gotta tell you, I made the mistake of briefly dating a gen person and she told me when I said I contain multitudes, she said, that is such a millennial thing to say. And I was really triggered by that.

[A]

Has she not read Whitman?

[C]

The relationship did not go well. Unclear. My whole thing is I really like there's a Bob Dylan song called I contain multitudes and obviously the Whitman is what he was referencing, but it just felt like such a dismissive thing to say. And she's the kind of person that would say like bedrot all the time. So, you know, potato, potato, to each their own. I wish her well.

[A]

Yeah. Dismissiveness is arguably depending upon who you read. Dismissiveness is a sign of insecurity, lower intelligence.

[C]

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Boy, oh boy. Ben, we're talking about a thing today related to the leading with lead episode in that There purports to be a way that our society claims you can measure one's intelligence. And it's those two golden letters that people love throwing around. You know who loves throwing around a lot? Our president as a dis. Low IQ individual.

[A]

Right, right.

[C]

Well, he's got some news coming his way, my guy. Not the best metric, it turns out.

[A]

Not the best. We actually, I got a little heated up during our lead Roman Empire fall episode. Little het up, as they would say in Tennessee, about the concept of IQ test. And we had to change the title to make this a little bit more family friendly. Maybe the best way to begin, folks, is check out our Roman Empire episode. I think we did an all right job. And then answer us this. We'll do it first on air. Fellow ridiculous historians. Noel, Max, have you guys ever taken an IQ test? No.

[C]

I did recently take one of those Enneagram tests that measures your feelings or whatever. Right.

[A]

Infj. Entp. That's an entp.

[C]

I think I was. Hold on. I've actually got a note for it here. Oh, no, I'm getting the beach ball of death on my notes app, so we'll come back to that. But this was even a step above the regular Enneagram thing called. I think it was called Jungian something or other. It was some kind of Jungian thing. And it was interesting because it wasn't, you know, it wasn't like taking a test. It was like having a conversation, and then the person that was administering it was able to make all these notes. If I'm not mistaken, Ben, the old IQ test is much more of a by the numbers, less interpretive kind of, you know, bubbling in the circles test.

[A]

Yeah, it's a weird thing. Max, let's hear from you. You ever took one of those tests, bud?

[D]

If I did, I can't remember. Maybe it had that little impact on me that I can't remember it, but

[C]

I can't say I have.

[A]

It makes sense, right, what we're saying when we say I haven't taken an IQ test. The odds are most certainly that you did if you grew up in the United States. Even if it was not explicitly called an IQ test. We have a lot of capstone things. Standardized test for every child in school. And if you ever aspire to go to college or university. University, you take something that is the kissing cousin of the IQ test. Things we call the SAT or the act.

[C]

See, that's funny, Ben, because when I was thinking about whether or not I'd taken an IQ test, my Mind immediately went to Scantron World.

[A]

Yes. Yeah.

[C]

Wouldn't that be a really boring amusement park?

[A]

Scantron World.

[C]

Scantron World.

[A]

I maybe have a standardized techctomy, but I really want to go because you get your results at the end of the amusement park. What does their roller coaster look like?

[C]

Sort of the nerdy equivalent of getting that picture, you know, where you're making the O face when you're on the coaster or ET Saying your name at the end of the ET Ride at Universal. What would the roller coaster be? You know what it could be? It could just be a roller coaster of emotion. Because kids, they're not a huge fan of these high stress tests. And we know that. I think we've discussed. Not on this episode, but maybe a conversation you and I were having leading up to this episode and maybe a brief mention in the Rome episode about how even some of the smartest people in the world notoriously don't test well or specifically crumble under the pressure of these timed high stress tests.

[A]

Yeah, we've got some stories to share. Also, maybe we can make a solid argument in this episode that instead of a roller coaster of stats at your SAT amusement park or your IQ amusement park, you should have the roller coaster of love courtesy of Red Hot Chili Peppers and Anthony Kiedis. Just walk down the street for that reference.

[C]

Well, their version is a banger. Who does the original? I remember their version from Beavis and Butthead Do America soundtrack. It was a lot of fun of love. And the original is by the Ohio Players from 1975 funk hit that topped the US charts in 1976. Known for its energetic rhythm, the song famously is an urban legend, claiming a murder scream was recorded in the background.

[A]

Oh, fascinating. We have to get into that. That might be an episode for another day.

[C]

Maybe at the very least a bullet point on a listicle episode about weird music urban legends that we should. I'm going to drop in on the spot here right now. Invite our buddy Jordan Runtog to join us for him.

[A]

Oh, I miss you, Jordan. I hope you're tuning into the show. I love that guy. I'll text him after this. Another kind of thing, another sort of standardized test that's going to be familiar to a lot of us in the United States is something called the asvab, the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery. This is what determines whether you get to work in intel or whether you work in the elevators, etcetera, Et cetera. All jobs are worthwhile. The idea of placement test does make sense. They can help Set school children up for success. They can help you get the right college or university. And of course, Uncle Sam loves the ASVAB because it helps you figure out what a new soldier is especially talented at. It's weird because going back to what you said, Noel, all these things that we could loosely group as IQ or intelligent Computer Quotient test, they are attempting to understand not your rote memorization abilities, but your cognitive abilities like reasoning, problem solving, verbal comprehension, and it's never. The tricky thing is it's not the same as say, a firearms test. In a firearms test you are measured by how accurate you are getting close to, say, a bullseye, right, with certain weaponry. But with this, your intelligence quotient attempts to quantify your level of smarts in comparison to other people who are taking the test or have taken the test in the past. So it's a comparison thing, not an absolute measurement.

[C]

Got it. So you're part of the sample size that only includes those who have taken the test before you or with you.

[A]

Sticky wicket, right?

[C]

A little bit. Right a little bit. And we'll talk a good bit about why no one believes. Of course. I hope not anyway. We all have things to learn that you're perfect, you're not. Spoiler alert. But I think it's really important, you know, in order to human properly to know the things you don't know and know that it's probably a smart idea to continue to learn new things. Humans still can't agree, however, on what that knowledge base could perhaps be quantified as. You know, it's a combination of the things you know, intuition, skills, certain skills that you might have, and that all bundled together we might refer to as intelligence, right?

[A]

Or competence or the ability to function in a given situation. But as we said, no one thinks IQ tests are perfect, even the biggest proponents or champions of it. The issue is, can we really quantify all that stuff that you just named Noel? Can we accurately represent that in something as boiled down as a 3 digit number? How did we get here? Why do so many people think IQ tests are kind of malarkey? To understand that, we have to understand how these things came to be. And this is where we begin by introducing everybody to a guy named Alfred Binet. Now, when I was research associate for this, I want to confess to you guys, transparency is key. To me, I accidentally wrote Alfred Bidet quite frequently in this. It was just a slip of the fingers.

[D]

Was it an autocorrect thing such as you've written Bidet so many times that it's automatically changing to it. Or was it just a mind autocorrect?

[A]

I just really liked our Bidet episodes.

[C]

Well, we are all admittedly bidet boys over here. And if that isn't the name of a fun punk rock band, then it absolutely should be Bidet Boys.

[D]

Sounds like a couple tattoos we should get.

[C]

Noel Potato. I'm set. I'm. I'm good with my Toto washlet. I know.

[A]

You guys should get it. You guys should get Bidet Bros. Right? Like where the old tramp stamp goes. Just the Bidet Bros. Right at the. Right at your lumbar.

[C]

I like it in theory. Ben. I don't think I like it.

[A]

I don't think you should do it.

[C]

No, I don't think you should do it.

[D]

I think Jonathan Strickland should get it.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Right on his ball.

[A]

Oh, jeez. So this guy, Alfred Binet. B I N E T. Not bidet.

[C]

And no relation to the Ramses, right?

[A]

Yeah. So far as we know, he is born as Alfredo Benetti.

[C]

Oh, it was one of those Americanizations, right? It must have been. Gotta sound a little more native born. It was common when people immigrated in

[A]

those days, especially in France. Right. In the mid-1800s. He's born on July 8, 1857. So his post Humus birthday is coming up pretty soon. His dad was a doctor, his mom was an artist. His parents separated when he was very young and he was raised primarily by his mother. She moved with him to Paris later in life so that he could attend law school. And guys, here's the thing. He did get his qualifications, his bona fides. He was able to practice law in 1878, but he looked around at the legal landscape of France in the late 1800s and he said, no, I'm going to be like my dad. I'm going to go into medicine. And then soon after that, he said, no, I'm going to be different. I'm going to get into hypnosis.

[C]

Cool. A very reasonable progression there. A reasonable trajectory.

[A]

Yeah. So he spent several years becoming sort of autodidact. He is teaching himself. He reads extensively. He loves work by people like Alexander Bain, Charles Darwin from earlier, John Stuart Mill. And eventually he publishes his first article, his first professional article. It is on hypnosis. He publishes this in 1880 and everyone hates it.

[C]

Yeah, people were not fond of this piece of writing in 1883. However, he weathered the critiques and the poor reviews, the throwing of the tomatoes, and he took a position in the. I'm gonna try my best Here and make Casey Pegram proud. The sepulchriere. Salpetriere. There we go.

[A]

Hospital.

[C]

I was about to say hospital, but that would be a bridge too far in Paris. It was a place that allowed him to pursue research that focused on hypnosis. He was greatly influenced by a guy by the name of Charcot, and he published four articles during his time there on hypnosis and the concept of animal magnetism, which is another one that's a little bit of a sticky wicket. My dog just growled when I said animal magnetism. What do you know that I don't know, buddy?

[A]

Yeah. We're referring to Jean Martin Charcot. And this guy becomes a mentor to our buddy Alfred. His work shines brightly, but briefly because other peers in the world of hypnotism or animal magnetism. Oh, Apollo can't hear me. Okay. His words.

[C]

He sends you. He's vibing with you. But that one seems to have gotten the past, Ben.

[A]

I love a vibe. So this guy is sort of his mentor figure. Right. Charcot. And Charcot gets in a lot of trouble because other scientists look at his work and say, I don't know, man. This feels less like science. This feels more like you sort of doing your own thing and calling your opinions science. It's a massive scandal. It's a massive downfall. And unfortunately, our buddy Al Benet, his reputation takes a big hit as well.

[C]

It's by association.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. He caught some strays, as we would say on the Breakfast Club.

[C]

Well, we would, if we were ever invited back or, you know, for the first time. You know, Ben, this makes me think of a recent discussion that we had on our sister pod, stuff they Don't Want yout To Know, with the incredible host of the podcast series Mind Game about sort of the history of hypnosis, more specifically, the history of a controversial technique. What was the main thing that we talked about with Zoe Lacaz. Lacaz. Thank you.

[A]

Yeah. It focuses on the controversial group of tactics called neuro linguistic programming.

[C]

Right. And also the types of controversial forms of hypnosis, like memory regression therapy and this idea that it can cause false memories to be, quote, unquote, recalled. So it makes sense to me that in the early days of this kind of attempt to science, ify this practice, that it might have been met with some backlash.

[A]

Oh, right. And this stuff happens well after Binet has passed. At this point where his mentor has an academic downfall and gets hit with, look, his career is basically over. Binet has to pivot, as they would say in corporate America. So he decides he is going to abandon hypnosis in favor of studying psychological development. This is his big switch. This is the decision that will later change the world. And he starts. There's no other way to say it, folks. He starts experimenting on his own children. Mm.

[C]

Yeah, that's not great. I mean, we just talked about that as well, Ben, on stuff that I want you to know, in talking about the fine line between scientific advancements and the concept of magic. And we've certainly talked about folks that have gone all mad scientist about things and in the pursuit of progress, but doing some pretty horrific things in that pursuit, like human experimentation or, you know, self experimentation. Not great. Definitely better than experimenting on someone who is not consenting. Not really sure what the relationship was with the daughter. Maybe she was into it, but still kind of doesn't matter, to be honest.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. Here's the thing. It's 1884. Binet marries his longtime spouse, Laura Balbiani, and Together they have two daughters, Madeleine and Alice. Madeleine's born in 1885, just a year after they get married. Alice is born in 18, 1887. And so this guy is not, to be clear, he's not drugging his children. He starts to study how they think or how they think about thinking, their metacognitive processes. And this means that he is the weirdest. Beat me here, Max. He is the weirdest goddamn dad ever. He's not hurting the kids, but he's asking them very strange questions and he's making them do little experiments that. That inform his research on suggestibility and attention. Now he starts saying, how do we measure intelligence? How do personalities, or how does lineage affect intelligence? And he publishes so much stuff at this point. If we Fast forward, it's 1892. He gets a doctorate in natural sciences from soborne. And in 1891, bro, I'm not sure how to say this. He kind of gets a job at the Laboratory of Physiological Psychology.

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[A]

It is a prestigious place, but we're saying kind of because when he got the job it was an unpaid position. He worked for a year and didn't see a dime or a franc.

[C]

Am I giving dude too much trouble for doing this stuff with his daughters? Because I mean it doesn't seem like it's particularly invasive just studying suggestibility and attention. But I guess immediately when I hear about someone experimenting quote unquote on Their family members. It does make me kind of of, you know, raise my eyebrows a little bit.

[A]

It's cringe. And we're right to be skeptical because even if you're just asking the questions, you are never not going to also be their parent. You know what I mean? That's true.

[C]

That's true. That can also lead to just, you know, it's just not good science. Right?

[A]

Not great science. Yeah, agreed. And everybody in France disagreed with our conclusion because they said, this guy is great. He works for a year and we don't have to pay him. Let's make him the director of this laboratory. And there he meets his longtime collaborator, Theodore Simon. Theodore Simon works with Binet to do doctoral research under Binet's supervision. Binet does some things that are unequivocally very good things. He starts the first French journal of psychology in 1895. And at first, he is a huge fanboy of a guy named Francis Galton. Francis Galton earlier worked in developing what we would call standardized test. And his thing was we can build out a rubric to measure individual differences in a population. So Binet adopted this approach in his work. He later, I think it's 1903, he publishes an article that says, hey, guys, have you ever asked your daughters off putting strange questions all the time.

[C]

Have you ever dated before? Yeah. Kind of comes with the territory. So, Ben, shall we begin? Zittest.

[A]

Ah, Vanderba. Also, he got. He got a. He got a lot more love for this 1903 article that he did about his hypnosis stuff.

[C]

He was getting there, man. He was doing the work.

[A]

They were like, al's back. Al is back so hard. He and his collaborator, as we're alluding to, they started working on a test that was meant to help the kids. Just like Wu Tang, they said, if children have problems in learning, we gotta figure out how to assist those kids. This is what leads to the thing we call the Binet Simone Intelligence Scale. And it was a government project.

[C]

Yeah, Ben, I thought I'd maybe take a minute real quick here, just as an aside to talk about something that you and I talked about off mic about this subject in terms of helping kids to learn and this knowledge that kids learn differently and that no two kids are the same. I do appreciate where Binet is coming from here, specifically because my kid is given certain dispensations through the public school system here in Atlanta, allowing them for a little bit more time on tests. And it's not something that you'd go so far as to maybe call a learning disability. But it is something that after an assessment, it is determined that a little bit of extra time is helpful. And I just really appreciate all the admins and teachers and folks in the school system that advocated for that kind of stuff. Because to your point earlier, Ben, or what we talked about, some really smart people just don't test well. And it can be a real source of anxiety if someone already has like, say, just generalized anxiety. So just kudos to the teachers as, as we always say. And you know, this is a. It's been a very positive experience.

[A]

That's awesome. Yeah. That's not what's happening in early 1900s.

[C]

Not yet. Definitely not yet. But just again, speaking to the idea of, you know, helping the kids. Helping the kids. Yeah.

[A]

The French government, it's 1904, okay? And the French government says we need to identify special needs in children. Specifically, the Minister of Public Instruction over in Paris says we have to study existing tests or we have to create our own test so that we can ensure intellectually disabled children, their words, not ours, can receive an adequate quit education as best as the state can do. The minister at the time, or the ministry, I should say, is also concerned that children who have normal intelligence are being placed in classes for disabled children, not because of their cognitive abilities, but because of behavior problems. And so they look around France and they say, oh, former creepy hypnotist fanboy Alfred Binet, you're the guy who should be in charge of all of this. And he took the reins. He took it. He went off running. By this point, I gotta tell you, I think Benet is sort of a mercurial dude. You go from law to medicine to hypnosis to psychology.

[C]

That's funny, Ben, because it's like, when I think of mercurial, I guess I sometimes think of somebody who might be like a jack of all trades or sort of a polymath. But I guess maybe that you're meaning more in terms of a little bit on the flighty side.

[A]

A little bit. He's a little bit on the flight. You know what I mean? The guy takes flights. But hey, so do we.

[C]

And so, speaking of which, I need to book a return flight before, you know, it costs $1 million.

[A]

Oh, right, yeah, that's a good time. The best time too. If you're gaming the system, if you want to take advantage of the AI pricing or dynamic pricing, wake up at like 2 to 3:30 in the morning. That's when the system resets. That is not helpful. Or, well, hopefully it's helpful is not relevant to what we're talking about. Our buddy Benet, in classic mercurial nature, has already at this point, rejected his adoration of Galton and Galton's ideas. He said, look, this guy was onto something with standardized tests, but they're only measuring trivial abilities. They're measuring things like memorization. What we need are tests that measure the more impactful, if abstract, things like judgment, comprehension, reasoning. These are much more difficult to measure. And he knew that going in, but he was convinced that doing so would yield more accurate results in this question. And again, this question was entirely about how to set children up for success. Should these kids who maybe have learning disabilities, should they go to special classes in regular schools, or should they be sent to asylums? And who determines whether a kid has a learning problem in the first place? The psychologists were kind of a cartel at this point in France, and they said, oh, yeah, you got to go to our boys. You got to go to our crew of psychologists, and they'll tell you if your child is a broken egg. And Binet and the crew that he led in opposition, they said, no, that's weird. You guys are being weird. Don't get me wrong. I experimented on my daughters as well. But we should use objective criteria, because humans are. Are fallible. So what should be the test? And that's where they started to create what we call the first IQ test. It probably also did not escape this guy, or at least. No, here's what I like to think. It probably didn't escape him that the future of a lot of children rested on his shoulders, especially since he had those earlier missteps in the world of hypnosis. He had to get this one right, right?

[C]

He sure did. So soon enough, he and Theodore Simone had created an early prototype of the IQ test. Is an early test a prototype? It has to be. I'm gonna go with that. It's a type of technology, and this was known as the Binet Simone test. But they wanted a little bit more input from some other folks in the field. So they took this early version of the test over to Stanford University across the pond.

[A]

Ah, yes. And here we introduce our friends at Stanford University. So in this sense, specifically when we say friends, we're talking about another psychologist. His name is Lewis Terman. He built on Binet and Simone's work, and he created a version of their test called the Stanford Binet Intelligence scale, introduced in 1916. This is the IQ test a lot of people take. It's been revised numerous times. It's administered individually, so you're not sitting in a big room. Like when you take an SAT and it assesses individuals as young as two years old, it primarily focuses on children. I just can't imagine giving a 2 year old a standardized test. Like, what are you talking. What are you talking about? Shapes.

[G]

Yeah.

[C]

Pointing at animals like that. What's that one for dementia that Trump's always bragging about?

[A]

Oh, man. Woman, person, camera.

[C]

Something like that. Yeah. Hands on a clock.

[A]

Tv. Man, woman, person, camera. Cool. Something like that.

[C]

We're clear.

[A]

We can name five words we heard earlier.

[C]

Is this a square peg, round hole type situation or like one of those ones where you're putting shapes in different order? I mean, I know that square peg, round hole thing is it doesn't work, but the one where you're recognizing patterns and things like that.

[A]

Yeah, Pattern recognition. Like you see a picture in a grid and maybe let's say it's a three by three grid, right? So nine squares. And one of the squares is left blank and you have to pick the image that fits in there. You've got, let's say equilateral triangle and the bottom left corner is missing. And then you have a couple of choices for what image would best complete that full picture of the triangle. That's an example.

[C]

Ben, you know what completes my full picture of a triangle?

[A]

What's that, Noel?

[C]

You.

[A]

Oh, shucks.

[C]

The full picture of the triangle in my heart.

[A]

Cool. Shout out to Alt J. And shout out to Max Williams, man. You're part of the triangle as well. Are you cool with the that? Oh, Max is gonna stay on mute.

[C]

He's done with us. Speaking of triangles.

[D]

Yeah, I'm done with y'.

[A]

All.

[C]

Oh, dear. Okay, well, that's not good. We'll have to get back into Max's good graces. But Ben, speaking of triangles and French stuff, have you heard of this Montreal, this French Canadian band called Engine de Poitrin?

[A]

I have not.

[C]

So they. They have this whole mythology. You'd love them. They wear these crazy costumes and they purport to be aliens from another planet and they worship triangles and they play micro to math rock and they wear these bonkers costumes and they're blowing up right now and they're a lot of fun. They kind of have King Gizzard vibes. But I just. I know you love a mythology, especially a triangle based one.

[A]

Yeah. Thank you for the recommendation. What's the name of the band?

[C]

I guess they are called Angin de Poitrin. All right. And I'M linking you to their. I'm linking you to their KEXP performance right now.

[A]

Oh, phenomenal. I love kexp. Look, we also know that this idea of measuring intelligence is tricky because even back then and in the current day, humanity has no universally agreed upon definition of intelligence. So ever since 1916, the boffins and the eggheads and the very smart badgers have been revising this scale, the Stanford Binet Intelligence Scale. They have also, again, it's different from a firearm test because it is a comparative score. So modern tests are going to use what we call deviation. They're going to assume the average score, like in the middle of the bell curve, is 100. We can get into the weeds there later.

[C]

The old standard deviation, if I'm not mistaken.

[A]

Yes. Yeah, nailed it. Standard deviation of 16. So if you take a test like this and your IQ score is above 130, you are considered gifted. If it's below 70, they're going to look at you a little bit harder for some sort of intellectual disability, Forrest Gump style.

[C]

Right. So as this concept kind of starts picking up steam and expanding throughout the world, you started to see other sort of folks styling on it a bit, giving it their own spin, which sort of led to some other, still to this day, pretty well known tests and other kind of ideas around testing beginning to emerge. Stuff like the Weschler perhaps. I know this one Adult Intelligence Scale and the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, which do yield an overall intelligence quotient score as well as separate ones for verbal and performance subtests.

[A]

Yeah, sort of like how you get your SATs, right? One score for verbal or communicative in your SATs, one score for quantitative or mathematical.

[C]

Well, so I guess the reason a lot of this stuff rang true to many of us in the audience, including myself, is because as we're learning, the basis for so many of these standardized tests is in all of this stuff. So even if to your point, Ben, you haven't taken a quote unquote IQ test, which is less of a thing, it's much more of a spectrum, you've probably taken something that was very much inspired by the work of these folks, 100%.

[A]

For an example of a verbal test, it would be a vocabulary question. A performance test would be picture arrangement like we described just a few minutes ago. And for us folks, fellow ridiculous historians, this actually sounds like a lot of fun because neither of those examples requires you to be super good at math, which is where, no offense to us, Noel, I think we both Crap the bag a little bit.

[C]

Yeah. Now, my thing, I got a near. I mean, not to brag or anything, but I got a nearly perfect verbal score, as I'm sure you did on the sat. And I don't even remember what my math was, but it was so bad that my overall SAT score weren't impressive, taken in, you know, as the verbal one. That's what I always lead with when I. I'm talking about the sat.

[D]

Just to be this guy. I was a guy who did much

[C]

better in math than verbal. And frankly, dude, that makes sense. You've got a very analytical brain in that respect, but you're also a really good communicator. So go to hell.

[D]

It's got good SAT score in general.

[C]

So get off of here. Get off of here and be gone. Stop into a well with you. And we're not even going to send Lassie after you.

[A]

Stop kissing up to each other, guys.

[C]

That is not what's happening. This is a heated crap rivalry and not the gay hockey kind.

[A]

The decades go on, right? And as we said, new versions of similar tests emerge. These things are continually getting revised, as you pointed out, Noel. Now, some version of this, some grandchild of this sort of idea is found in all sorts of places. There is no escaping it. A good score can have a significant impact on your future in terms of your career path.

[C]

And vice versa, of course, right?

[A]

There's a bit of a feedback loop, right? And this is the ridiculous part. These tests have always been controversial since the early 1900s. And a lot of people are gonna tell you, including us, that these tests are far less useful than we have been led to believe.

[C]

It's never gonna die.

[D]

It's never gonna die.

[A]

Never gonna die. And so, on paper, it sounds pretty nifty, right? To put it simply, we love black and white.

[C]

We love being able things down to like a formula or a score. It is a human brain thing. But typically we know that that stuff can sometimes be a little too good to be true or a little too broad to be nuanced, if that makes sense.

[B]

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[F]

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[B]

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[A]

The idea of quantifying every single member of the human population by bypassing all those things you described. Nuance, right? The idea.

[C]

Experience.

[A]

Right? Right. Soft skills. The idea that you can just treat a person like a file or a unit and slap a number on their forehead. It turns out that so similar to so many other things that sound like amazing shortcuts IQ test test fall far short of what they are supposed to do. I mean the Stanford Binet test is used to evaluate abilities, but it has also inescapably been used to justify racist ableist beliefs and policies.

[C]

No callback to phrenology, which also just came up pretty recently. Typical of these types of again very black and white boilings down of something that is a much more complex issue like feeling the bumps on someone's head and feeling like that allows you to say that they are not a Valid member of the human race.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. This is the question. Efficacy. Efficacy for an IQ test would be asking, are these results an accurate measure of a concept that human beings still struggle to fully define? Can your IQ score really predict your future performance? The answer is give me a record. Scratchbacks. Perfect. Not really. Yeah. Skirt. Skirt. Not really. Not 100% of the time. Not fully. It's fairly common. I will pause it. That a lot of us know objectively brilliant people who could maybe write amazing novels, they can make phenomenal murals, they can do high level math in their heads without notes, but they still don't have financial or social success. They're not at the top of society. And it's not because they're dumb by any means. It's just because they're good at taking one test, which is not the same thing as being good at life.

[C]

And it's also worth mentioning the path dependency. Maybe that's the wrong term. I'm a little bit stuck in a conversation we recently had about oil and natural resources and path dependency in that respect. But in terms of the path towards success and this dependency that is sort of pushed historically on kids to follow that path, including things like college and taking these tests and getting good scores on these tests, we know that a lot of that too is sort of just gatekeeping for. For connections and the types of people that you might encounter that are ultimately the ones who put you in the right rooms and get you a leg up towards perhaps that journey of success. But these days, I don't know, man, those paths are a little bit less relevant than they used to be. And we know that if you make the effort and put yourself out there, you can find your people, you can find those connections on your own just by being, being part of the world and being interested in stuff and perhaps being part of Reddit groups or, you know, making Internet content or just like hanging out and going to clubs and stuff like that. So I'm not saying don't go to college, but I'm also just saying that I think it's coming around. The general knowledge maybe is that it's not exactly the only way.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. And part of that is because IQ tests measure a very narrow slice of what we could call mental horsepower power. It looks at your logic, your pattern recognition, short term memory, problem solving. So these tests can tell you how good you are taking an IQ test, they can tell you how fast you can solve a puzzle, but they don't measure, they're not able to measure how you would do things like raise kids or stop your friends in the middle of a fight, or even survive a week in the woods. The soft skills are the key. Right. You can score incredibly high on all sorts of tests, but you might not have emotional intelligence. You might not be good at reading and understanding the needs, perspectives, and actions of others. Right. If you're very good at math, but you don't feel that other people also are equal entities in the world, then folks at your job aren't going to like you. You also might not be good at handling stress. These are key things to success. And I love what you pointed out there about things like networking. IQ tests don't measure that. They don't measure interpersonal intelligence. Well.

[C]

And we certainly all remember the no Child Left behind scandal and how inevitably, scandal maybe is a strong word, but how, when these quotas are pushed upon already strained educational systems, you're going to end up with a whole lot of teaching the. Which, again, is not a good indicator of what that test is actually supposed to measure in the real world.

[A]

100%, dude. Binet's original test was meant to be a diagnostic tool, not some kind of leaderboard. But the issue is, by the time it hit the United States, the test and versions of it were being used to rank people, to gatekeep opportunities, and even to justify eugenics programs. Like they would use the IQ test results to justify another pseudoscience up there with phrenology, the idea that some people have to be sterilized, the idea that your perceived race means you are superior or inferior to others.

[C]

And, Ben, I'm not trying to get on a political soapbox here, but that sure feels like the flavor of the way the President is thrown around that term because he's often using it to refer to people of color and referring to them as low IQ individuals and stuff like that. It just has echoes of what you're talking about there, Ben.

[A]

Oh, 100%.

[C]

I yield my time. Yeah.

[A]

Oh, no, don't yield. We could break, but we will not bend your.

[C]

It's just gross. It's. Again, not even. It's an apolitical observation. It's not nice. It's just rude and at its very least. And. And racist at its worst.

[A]

Yeah. In the early 1900s, Uncle Sam started using these tests descended from Benet to sort students into programs. So if you got a score on their version of the IQ test that was above 115, that was your quotient, your deviation from the norm of 100, then you were considered gifted, and you then got higher Education opportunities so you can make the most of your abilities. If you're a normal kid, your score is between 70 to 115. At this time, you stay where you are. If your score is under 70 for one reason or another, and you don't often get to retake the test, you are considered special needs. You are sent to state schools, you are sent to institutions. People begin to think that these special needs kids are not fit for society. Only a few of them actually had a cognitive disability. A lot of these kids were from foster care. Right. They didn't have earlier educational opportunities. Their parents or their relatives may have substance issues. They may have had their own sort of mental issues. These kids get carted off to abusive foster homes and institutions. And Noel, since we're a family show, can we just leave it at this? Horrific stuff happened to these children. All the kinds of abuse that you can imagine. And also sterilization.

[C]

Oh, yeah, yeah. And there's, you know, if you want to dig deeper into that very disturbing topic, we've done episodes about that very thing on stuff that I want you to know as well as our sister podcast, Stuff youf Missed in History Class, who have done, I think, several episodes on sterilization and on this kind of horrific treatment of children through these varied

[A]

types of programs that we're talking about 100%. Yeah. And these controversies continue in the modern day. Critics will tell you intelligence tests have a strong cultural bias. They favor people from more affluent backgrounds. They discriminate against people from minority groups. Right. Whether that be racial, ethnic, social, et cetera. We also know that psychologists are responding to this by developing what they call culture free tests. And the idea seems like very basic stuff. Say, for instance, if we're testing kids who grew up in the inner city, then we're going to use, when we ask questions, we're going to use urban or city settings instead of an outdated rural pastoral thing. Right. Like, I'm a kid in Queens. I'm in upper Queens. Why are you asking me about this farmer and his rutabagas?

[C]

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[A]

Yeah, that was weaponized language for sure. But what we're telling you is eugenics aside, aside, cultural gatekeeping aside, there is hope for the IQ test. These tests are not total garbage, but they have, and continue to have massive issues. They've been weaponized, flagrantly misused, the results have been overestimated, and on and on and on. And here's one of the things I wish more people talked about when we talk about IQ tests. This is one of the most ridiculous flaws in the origin story. No, Max, there is this old adage in writing fiction, which is this. It is incredibly difficult to write a super smart character because any character can only be as intelligent as the author that created them. IQ tests, I will posit, cannot be immune from that law. So the creators are very smart people, right? The folks who make these tests. But they're probably not the smartest people ever, ever, ever in history. And they're probably not even the SM people in their own lifetimes. So they quite possibly are not the best candidates to make these examinations in the first place. We need the smartest people ever writing the test. And these are not them.

[C]

No, they're usually. No. No, they're not.

[A]

And there's no statistical association between your IQ score and hard measures like your wealth. So look, this is a crazy thing. Humans are still figuring out intelligence. We didn't even get to the Flynn effect, which is kind of good news. Maybe we end on that. Noel, have you heard of the Flynn effect?

[C]

No, not till just now when I clocked it in the outline. But please tell us about the Flynn effect.

[A]

All right, here's the pickle. This is fascinating. Over time, over decades and decades and decades, more than a century now, IQ scores have shown a consistent increase across generations. It's called the Flynn Effect because a guy named James Flynn first popularized this in the 1980s. And it looks like people are scoring higher on IQ tests not because they're necessarily getting smarter, but because the themselves are changing. People have improved access to education and information, and people, perhaps most importantly, have better health and nutrition. The one thing that hasn't changed is genetic lineage. Your genes have very little to do with your IQ test.

[C]

It's true.

[A]

It is true. So where do we land on it, guys? I know I was coming in hot and saying IQ test or kind of beat me here, Max, but bull.

[C]

They're kind of dumb.

[A]

They're just overblown.

[C]

They're overblown. It's true. And we already kind of knew that in terms of these types of tests for the very reasons that we mentioned. Just the idea of. It's really hard to boil down the individual unique snowflakedness that is a human person into a number. But Ben, you do end the episode with, I think a question that may be on all of our minds is but who's the best? Who's got the best one? Who's the smart? Remember when we were kids too? That's why I think it's so funny that Trump throws that around where we used to probably make fun of people by saying you, your IQ is negative zero or stuff like that. Not fully understanding anything about this world. So who's got the highest IQ in the whole wide world of sports?

[A]

Oh yeah, yeah. Oh, I've got to do one joke for. Please, one joke for our Irish American friends. This might get us in trouble, but let's do it. And Max, get on Mike for this one. Hey guys, guys. What's three miles long and has an IQ of 40? The St. Patty's Day parade.

[C]

Oh, cuz Daddy added up together. That means they're all real. Did we even talk about what the scale is though? The, the numerical scale. Like 40 would be pretty bad, right? 49.

[A]

40 is very bad.

[C]

40 is bad. And then we're talking about a cumulative score of 40. So. Man, they really, whoever wrote that joke really stuck it to the iron.

[A]

It was probably a British guy. It was not us. So yes, to answer your question directly as we can find in the research, currently we don't know the actual smartest Homo sapien alive right now. But as of 2024, a doctor named Jung Hun Kim has established the world record title for the world's highest IQ person. Now his intelligence quotient has been verified as 276.

[C]

I'm impressed. That seems like a big number.

[A]

I don't know.

[C]

What does he do?

[A]

We're not saying he's brilliant. No, he might just be very good at taking the test.

[C]

Crackerjack. Test taker. And good on you, Dr. Jung Hun Kim. And by the way, I do love the idea of the non. A non Olympic race record.

[A]

Oh yes, the International Non Olympic Committee.

[C]

Yes, the International Non Olympic Committee. It's very niche, very, very specific.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, like, oh, it's my first time going to a committee meeting. What are you guys about? Well, you know, the Olympics. Yeah, pretty much nothing related to that. Everything else.

[C]

Everything Else. Everything else is in our wheelhouse. We also, of course, have the World Memory Championships, the World Memory Sports Council console. These are wild, Ben. And the official world record trademark, right?

[A]

Yeah, whatever.

[C]

The R. What's the R? Register trademark. Yeah, that's the R Register trademark. I should remember that from our intellectual property series. But Ben, man, excellent. I don't know what kind of test taker you are, but you're sure good a research doc writer. And this was a fun one.

[A]

Ah, shucks. Will be big. Big thanks to everybody for tuning in. Big thanks to our super producer, Mr. Max Williams. Big thanks to Jonathan Strickland, who I bet will lie about his IQ scores.

[C]

Maybe. And I bet he knows it too. He's the type of cat that knows and that keeps it. You know, he's probably got it written on the back of his Mensa card.

[A]

Big thanks to AJ Bahamas Jacobs. Big thanks to eavesdropping Jeff Coat and Christopher Haciotes. Who else, who else, who else?

[C]

All the people. Geez Louise. The lovely humans over at Ridiculous Crime. If you dig our show, you will absolutely dig theirs. Alex Williams, you compose our theme. If you already said it, I'm saying it a second time. I'm doing it. I'm just doing it.

[A]

Good save, good save. Forgot that One thing, one thing I never want to forget is a big thank you to you, Noel. You're one of the smartest people I know and it's always a pleasure to hang out with you.

[C]

Oh, Ben. Same. You are the missing piece in the triangle pattern recognition test of my heart. We'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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You ever wonder how far an EV can take you on one charge? Well, most people drive about 40 miles a day, which means you can do all daily stuff no problem. Go to work, grab the kids at school, get the groceries and still have enough charge to visit your in laws in the next county. But they don't need to know that. And the best part, you won't have to buy gas at all. The way forward is electric. Explore evidence that fit your [e-mail]

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