Jhlyn Hill (2:14)

How do you define it?

Stuart Jeffries (2:17)

Damn you, That's a really good question.

Jhlyn Hill (2:22)

This is Stuart Jeffries. He's a journalist and he wrote a book called A Short History of Stupidity.

Stuart Jeffries (2:28)

I like, I like this idea of it being somehow a moral thing rather than data, you know, because I think we're so wedded to data and it doesn't really capture what we really value. What we value, I think, is stopping being ignorant, having A will to stop being ignorant. And that is a. If you don't have that will, that to me is stupidity.

Jhlyn Hill (2:50)

Why are we talking about this now? Why have we returned to this discussion about it?

Stuart Jeffries (2:56)

There seemed to be a lot of it around, and when Covid hit, there seemed to be a lot of people behaving in rather stupid ways. A lot of people weren't, but it seemed to be a good time because of that and because of the rise of a kind of populist demagoguery, which. Which still appalls me, still shocks me, you know, it's like people have abandoned the very critical thinking that we need right now.

Jhlyn Hill (3:18)

There are a lot of things that make us feel, I don't know, like, kind of numb. You know, our feet are full of slop. The Pantone colors of the year have been so bland.

Andrew Budson (3:29)

I'd like to announce Pantone's color of the year 2025 is shit brown.

Jhlyn Hill (3:35)

Good news, everybody.

Casual Participant (3:36)

Pantone just announced its 2026 Color of.

Jhlyn Hill (3:39)

The year, and they're going with white. Plus, we have AI summaries for everything Now.

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Andrew Budson (3:50)

The truth is, nobody has time, but AI does.

Jhlyn Hill (3:53)

It all just feels flat. Is that making us less smart?

Stuart Jeffries (4:01)

I don't know. I'm going to push back. I'm always going to push back a little bit against the idea that AI is screwing us over. But I really take your point. There is a sort of blandification of life. It's like we feel that we're more stupid, but, you know, looking at the history, maybe we aren't. We're actually just dealing, as we always have done, with new kinds of technology which threaten us, you know, really upset us. Like the Luddites destroyed the machines because they were terrified of them. Now we're terrified of AI because, you know, maybe an existentially different threat, but it is a sort of. It seems similar to me. We're just threatened by the unknown and we think we're on the chasm of something, you know, of our own extinction or something like that. I kind of think it's too soon to call it, but. Yeah, I know what you mean. The sense of brain rot we're feeling is out there.

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Stuart Jeffries (4:52)

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Jhlyn Hill (4:53)

Yes.

Stuart Jeffries (4:54)

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Jhlyn Hill (4:56)

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Stuart Jeffries (4:57)

Tung. Tung. Tung sahor.

Jhlyn Hill (4:58)

Yes. And there are ways our brains are working less for things, you know, for instance, I don't necessarily need to know directions. I have Google Maps on my phone. There's not really as much friction in the world for payoff. Does that impact the way we interpret and understand the rest of the world?

Stuart Jeffries (5:20)

I think, yeah. I mean, I really take that point. That sort of cognitive outsourcing where we just made our technology do the work for us. That's worrying if that's what's really happening. There's also another thing which is that we are made to feel stupid by the bureaucracies we live in. If you ever get mired, as I always seem to, you know, two factor recognition, authentication and all that kind of stuff, you just feel dumb all the time. Even though you aren't. Even though, you know if you're a college graduate or if you're a professor, you're going to feel dumb. So there is a sense in which you will feel dumb no matter how clever you are. I think life, living lives in, you know, technologically advanced society has got really complicated, perhaps too complicated.

Jhlyn Hill (6:05)

You know, people say because of, of these different factors that now we're in this golden age of stupidity.

Stuart Jeffries (6:12)

Yeah.

Jhlyn Hill (6:13)

Is that true? Do you think that is true?

Stuart Jeffries (6:15)

No, not really. What a father I would be for it. Apart from anything else that suggesting that we're getting, you know, we're on average getting more stupid. When my daughter's, you know, I think, cleverer than me, you know, she's got better opportunities, better read and she's. Yeah. You know, more empathetic and kinder. Sweeter person than I'll ever be, you know.

Casual Participant (6:34)

Yeah.

Stuart Jeffries (6:34)

So I'm not going to say. I'm not going to say that. And I don't really believe it at all. You know, I look back at some of the things I was doing when I started my career, you know, they weren't great and I wasn't doing things that were particularly clever. I think I'm cleverer and better now partly because of the technology I use that helps me to connect with people in ways that I wouldn't have been able to do. When I say, you know, her age.

Jhlyn Hill (6:54)

When I was 20, is, are when we talk about stupidity, or we may be thinking of a different kind of stupidity when we think of the era we're in now, you know, it's the lack of critical thinking, a lack of curiosity. Is that sort of where we are?

Stuart Jeffries (7:09)

Yeah. There's a fear and you can see it in the way that people talk about how politics isn't working. People don't know the names of their representatives. They don't really get involved in politics, and that leaves the way open to demagogues of the kinds who are dominating the world at the moment. You know, yeah, you're right, there is a lack of critical thinking, but it was ever thus. You know, it's not like there was a golden age where everybody was really, you know, on top of democracy and really keen to sort of, you know, Hitler was elected. You know, I've said the H word already, but you know, it's always worth bearing that point in mind. He was elected, and by sophisticated people as well. So the suggestion that we are worse than we than our elders cognitively seems to me to be dubious.

Jhlyn Hill (8:06)

Humans have been fretting over how smart we are and aren't for a really long time. That's next. Support for this show comes from Rocket Money. We all have goals that require a little bit of planning in the money department. If you need help getting your finances under control, you can turn to Rocket Money. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings. Rocket Money doesn't just help you track and cancel your subscriptions. They also make it easy to build and stick with a budget. It automatically categorizes transactions so you can easily monitor your spending by category. That way you get to include whatever silly thing you like to spend money on while making sure you have enough for everything else. Let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster. Join@RocketMoney.com Explain it that's RocketMoney.com Explain it RocketMoney.com Explainit.

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Jhlyn Hill (9:48)

For details I'm JQ, this is Explain it to Me, and I'm talking with writer Stuart Jeffries about his book I A Short History of Stupidity. Turns out this worry of ours goes a long way back.

Stuart Jeffries (10:03)

Well, as far back as I can find I mean, it probably goes back further, but it goes back certainly to Socrates 2,500 years ago in Athens. He has this dialogue with this guy called Alcibiades, who is an aristocrat, very rich, very beautiful and really, really dumb. But he's completely full of self belief that he should become a leading politician, that he has the right stu to guide the Athenian people through the crises. So the whole dialogue is Socrates just gently saying to him, no, you haven't. You're not very clever, you know, you're ignorant.

Actor Reading Quote (10:40)

You are wedded to stupidity, my fine friend of the vilest kind. You are impeached of this by your own words, out of your own mouth.

Stuart Jeffries (10:49)

But that's not the worst thing you can say about you. You're stupid because you know, you don't realize that you're ignorant. And even if you did realize that you're ignorant, you wouldn't do anything about it because you're so full of pride.

Actor Reading Quote (11:02)

You are not only ignorant of the greatest things, but while not knowing them, you think that you do.

Stuart Jeffries (11:09)

So that's like 2,500 years ago. And to me it reads like today.

Jhlyn Hill (11:17)

You'Ve looked at the historical understanding of stupidity through different lenses, including the Buddhist lens or what, what conclusions did they come to? How did they think about stupidity?

Stuart Jeffries (11:28)

Yeah, well, Daoism as well, you know, they're just very interesting perspectives to have on how we live in the West. You know, the implication is that we live in a stupid way because we live for our possessions. They're saying, you are leading worthless lives in your pursuit of materialism. How can we live without desire and how can we live without wanting to have things and possess things? Could we, Is that something that human beings can do? You know, in a way that's what the Buddhists are saying and that's what they're why their critique of how other people live, particularly us in the west, particularly us now in the decadent, materialistic West.

Jhlyn Hill (12:05)

It's so interesting how the definition of stupidity can change based on what time you live in or what culture you come from.

Stuart Jeffries (12:13)

Yeah, it's a social construct. You know, it's always a reflection of what's valued at the times in which people are talking about. So, you know, like in Shakespeare's time, all those Shakespeare's plays just fall full of fools. And I, that am sure I lack.

Podcast Host (12:28)

Thee may pass for a wise man. Better a witty fool than a foolish wit.

Stuart Jeffries (12:34)

But the fools are always kind of low class people, they aren't kings. And they're always telling Truth to power in a rather, you know, hidden way, in a clever masked way. And they're talking about the value of folly, you know, the value of not being, you know, easily consumed, not being easily sort of read. That's what, you know, a lot of Shakespeare is about.

Jhlyn Hill (12:57)

How did the big psychologists understanding of stupidity shape us? You know, I'm sure Carl Jung had a lot to say about it.

Stuart Jeffries (13:06)

Yeah, I mean, there's so many intellectual revolutions where we realize that we aren't masters of our own domains. We aren't, you know, in charge of our cognitive worlds at all. Nowhere more so, I suppose. Thank you. Freud saying that we are, you know, subject to our unconscious impulses or, you know, Jung sort of talking about the idea that there's a collective unconscious. So the idea that we're all connected, we're all actually part of the same being in a way. And it's stupid to imagine that we're individuals who can just force our wills on other people. And, you know, that's, that's what the game's about. Life isn't, you know, life for them isn't really about these great big narcissistic displays of human will.

Jhlyn Hill (13:46)

I wonder if there are other kinds of intelligence we should be thinking about. You know, not just iq, but eq, emotional intelligence.

Stuart Jeffries (13:54)

Yeah, EQ is a very interesting phenomenon. Very different from, you know, the reason we're not talking about it. And the reason is, you know, it's not really written. Well, it is written about, but the reason it isn't held up as a yardstick is because it's hard to measure, you know, why the stereotypes of men not talking and men being, you know, very repressed about their feelings and all of that is often a symptom of a lack of emotional intelligence.

Jhlyn Hill (14:18)

For example, how did ignorance come to be associated with evil? Because, you know, there's a history there too.

Stuart Jeffries (14:27)

Yeah, well, there was with Socrates. You know, he was saying that Alcibiades, this, you know, that young, dumb and full of stupidity guy we were talking about before he was, he was evil because his soul was sort of bent on doing something which he wasn't ready for. You know, he wasn't ready to lead the people of the city. You know, he shouldn't have been anywhere near politics until he understood what politics was. He cut to a courtroom in Jerusalem in 1961. New Yorker sent Hannah Arendt, who's this German Jewish philosopher, to cover the Eichmann trial. And she looks at this guy, this architect of the Holocaust, and says to him to herself, this guy is stupid, by which she means, and she expands on it, evil. And there she's got the idea. She equates stupidity with evil, with a lack of empathy.

Jhlyn Hill (15:20)

There's nothing deep about it, nothing demonic. There's simply the reluctance to ever imagine what the other person is experiencing.

Stuart Jeffries (15:28)

He had no empathy for the people he was killing. He just didn't see them as people. And that was for her, a form of stupidity. So evil comes in. It's like a failure of your soul in some sort of way.

Jhlyn Hill (15:42)

So who has gotten this right? You know, which understanding of intelligence and stupidity is the one we should be looking at, especially right now?

Stuart Jeffries (15:52)

Oh, me, me, of course. I don't know. I mean, if you ever come across anybody who speaks with humility about themselves, who's deprecating about themselves, that to me is such a sign of intelligence. You know, I use this example all the time when the Guardian introduced, like the New York Times did, corrections and clarifications. So for the longest time, you know, you'd write something and it wouldn't get corrected even if it was garbage. And even if you've got the, you know, the gender or the age of, you know, basic facts wrong about the person. And then suddenly there were these corrections. And I remember feeling absolutely, absolutely humiliated by it because it was a threat to my sort self esteem, you know, but it was really good for my soul, you know, really good to have that, you know, to be made, made to feel a sense of humbleness, you know. But there are people around who have a humility which I think Socrates would have recognized. I, I think anybody, anybody you come across who, who has done that walk, you know, walked into a path where they, they can realize that they are wrong and learn from their mistakes. That's got to be a sign of intelligence, surely.

Jhlyn Hill (17:08)

Do you think we can reclaim our intelligence? Is there a way for us to turn this thing around?

Stuart Jeffries (17:13)

Yeah, why not? I mean, and the other things, studying history, my daughter studying history, that helps. Having a historical perspective on how things, you know, we feel we're in a special doom laden terrible age. Perhaps we aren't. Perhaps. Actually things were much worse back in the 18th and 19th century in these eras when things were supposed to be so much better. When it comes to a sort of cynicism about the age we live in, it's the worst of all possible worlds. And things are only going to get worse. I don't see that. I don't really believe that at all.

Jhlyn Hill (17:54)

All is not lost. We can reclaim our brains and make ourselves smarter. Coming up, how to do it.

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Stuart Jeffries (18:26)

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Podcast Host (18:44)

Right now in the world of AI, two things are happening simultaneously. One, the technology is getting better fast. People are finding new uses for it it' than ever. And two, every company that makes AI is absolutely hemorrhaging cash. On the Vergecast this week we're talking about what OpenAI and other companies are doing to try to finally figure out how to make some money off of this technology. Spoiler alert. It's mostly ads and we're talking about whether any of it's actually going to work. All that, plus some stories about the Chinese company that appears to be beating Tesla. On the Vergecast. Wherever you get podcasts.

Jhlyn Hill (19:27)

We're back. It's Explain it to me. I'm J.Q. and this is Boston University's Andrew Budson.

Andrew Budson (19:34)

So I'm a neurologist and I specialize in memory disorders.

Jhlyn Hill (19:38)

Andrew studies how we make memories and how we hold onto them. He says it all starts when we notice something. That information gets stored deep in our temporal lobe, otherwise known as the hippocampus.

Andrew Budson (19:54)

This hippocampus, it actually takes like the separate sights and sounds and smells and thoughts and feelings that you're having at that instant, and it binds them all together into a coherent whole. It then gets tagged with an index that that will allow you to retrieve that information later.

Jhlyn Hill (20:16)

Is it like a filing cabinet? Because that's what I imagine. I'm like the little, I don't know, inside out people in my brain, like reaching into the files and pulling stuff out.

Casual Participant (20:26)

Oh, here's one where she waved at a guy who was actually waving at a girl behind her.

Jhlyn Hill (20:29)

Oh, that was so bad. Good choice.

Andrew Budson (20:32)

Oh, here's when she forgot that girl's name.

Stuart Jeffries (20:34)

Oh, yeah, that was super awkward. What was her name?

Andrew Budson (20:36)

You know, it's a little bit like a file cabinet, but the twist is that the files are just the blueprints or the Schematic of the memory. And what your brain needs to do is it needs to take this blueprint and it needs to very actively recreate the memory. It needs to actively recreate all the details that are going on. So there another part of your brain called the frontal lobes get involved, and they are sort of like the director or the contractor that is in charge of this active construction. So to sort of get all of these pieces to be working together, and when we retrieve the memory and actively reconstruct reproduces the pattern of. Of neurochemical electrical activity that it had when that episode was originally created.

Jhlyn Hill (21:48)

Biologically, what allows us to learn and retain new ideas.

Andrew Budson (21:53)

So it's one of the coolest things, and it really is part of neuroplasticity. So neuroplasticity is essentially the concept that our brains are elastic or, you know, they're able to make new connections over time. So memories are a strengthening of existing connections in the brain between one neuron and another. And they're also the creation of new connections between neurons in the brain. And so what happens when we sleep is the brain figures out, okay, this strengthening of connections here, this is an important memory. So we're going to strengthen that even further or we're going to grow new connections so those connections become permanent. And one of the really cool things about neuroplasticity is how it's something that people can use throughout their lives. When I went to medical school, I was told that, that it was really only, you know, like, like babies and children that had this sort of neuroplasticity available to them. But we now know that neuroplasticity is going on throughout the life span, including in people as old as me and older.

Jhlyn Hill (23:24)

Yeah, so it sounds like our brains are a muscle like any other. And so is it one of those use it or lose it type situations?

Andrew Budson (23:33)

That is very true. And there have been studies that have looked at what happens when people get socially isolated. Our brains evolve for social interactions. You know, our math teachers might think it's, you know, to do arithmetic in our heads, but they're wrong. That's not what our brain is for. You know, so when you're, like, talking to your friend next to you in the math class, that is actually what our brains are for. They're for these social interactions. And so people who become socially isolated, their brains actually shrink. Even if they don't have a disorder, their brains shrink. And people who are socially isolated are at increased risk of developing dementia.

Jhlyn Hill (24:23)

Okay, so if your brain is a muscle, does that mean we can train it to be smarter?

Andrew Budson (24:29)

Absolutely, we totally can. And the key is to train with the most direct example as you possibly can. So what I mean by that is there are a lot of companies that are out there, many of whom are working very hard with lots of scientists to try to develop brain training games that are going to really help us. But so far, what the studies have proven is that if you spend a lot of time with these brain training games, you get better at the brain training games. You know, it does not translate into everyday life. But, like, if you want to get better at doing something like, you know, remembering, you know, French vocabulary words.

Stuart Jeffries (25:25)

You.

Andrew Budson (25:26)

Can get better at remembering French vocabulary words by basically working hard at, you know, developing sort of a routine or a program as to how you're going to work on, you know, studying the vocabulary words, how you're going to incorporate into your life. So we all can improve on almost anything our brain does, but the trick is to work on practicing that.

Jhlyn Hill (25:59)

Yeah. You know, people have written and talked about how it can be difficult to focus and think critically these days. How does critical thinking and knowledge develop?

Andrew Budson (26:11)

You know, I actually think that critical thinking is a skill, and I don't know that I have a simple recipe, but I think it has to do with when you're faced with a complicated decision or something complicated that you're trying to do or achieve or create of sort of slowing down, of listing, like all the different things that, you know, listing, you know, what is the output that you want to have, what's the final product, and then going through and thinking about all the different possibilities so that you won't miss something that's important. And often another thing that happens when we sleep is we allow our unconscious brain processes to work on problems. So I think critical thinking is really the conscious part of it. But we want to use our unconscious mind as well, because often we can get insights when we sleep.

Jhlyn Hill (27:23)

Yeah. You know, before I let you go, I'm. I'm curious your thoughts on something. There's all this talk about how, like, oh, we're not as smart as we're used. We used to be. I don't know, you look at a lot of brains like, how are we stacking up these days?

Andrew Budson (27:36)

Yeah. So, you know, I do think that there are some reasons that we may not be as smart today as we used to be. I think the average person's ability, for example, to navigate from one place to another has been dramatically reduced by the use of Google Maps and other programs like that. The part of our brain that's involved in navigation does actually shrink for many people. The one other thing I'd like to mention, because it was actually studied, is that people who spend more than an hour a day watching TV actually end up getting less smart over time. And what do I mean by that? It's going to make your brain smaller because you're not using it. It's important to use your brain. And don't forget, the thing that our brains evolve for is to have social interactions. So I don't want people to, you know, go out and, you know, spend their time in a windowless room, you know, studying math, text. What I want people to do is to get out there in life, interact with people. That's how to use your brains the best.

Jhlyn Hill (29:17)

If you remember one thing from this episode, let it be this. We all gotta hang out with our friends more. Doctor's orders. Is there something you'd like explained? Something you've always wondered about? Give us a call at 1-800-618-8545 or email askvox vox.com by the way, you can help make this and other Vox podcasts happen by becoming a VOX member. When you become a member, you get perks like episodes with no ads. Head over to Vox.com members to sign up today. This episode was produced by Ariana Aspuru. It was edited by Ginny Lawton, fact checked by Melissa Hirsch, engineered by Patrick Boyd, and our executive producer is Miranda Kennedy. I'm your host, jonphyn Hill. Thank you so much for listening. I'll talk to you soon.

Podcast Host (30:09)

Bye.