How would you feel if you found out you had a very high or a very low IQ? Would it change you? The IQ test has an awful allure to it. A single number that ranks your mental ability against everyone else’s, for better or for worse.

Helping Dallas explore the origins of this blasted test is John Carson, historian and author of The Measure of Merit: Talents, Intelligence, and Inequality in the French and American Republics, 1750-1940.

Edited by Joseph Knight, produced by Freddy Chick, senior producer is Charlotte Long.

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Today we welcome Todd Rose, the co-founder, and president of Populace, a nonprofit think tank that works to find solutions to redistribute opportunity, so all people have the chance to live fulfilling lives in a thriving society. Prior to Populace, he was a faculty member at Harvard University where he founded the Laboratory for the Science of Individuality and directed the Mind, Brain, and Education program. Todd is the best-selling author of Dark Horse, The End of Average, and his most recent book is called Collective Illusions.

For part one of our interview, I talk to Todd Rose about intelligence. From both history and research, we know that standardized tests made the false assumption that an average baseline of intelligence can be captured through IQ. Until today, our education system continues to value general cognitive ability over more specific skills. Instead of focusing on test scores, Todd asks us to look at jagged profiles so we can create environments where everyone can thrive. To truly cultivate human potential, Todd asserts that we need to rethink our traditional frameworks about intelligence.

Website: www.toddrose.com

Twitter: @ltoddrose

Topics

01:50 Dropping out of high school

04:20 Kurt Fischer’s Dynamic Skill Theory

09:33The problem with standardized testing

12:00 Jagged profiles matter more than IQ scores

15:26 There is no aptitude without strategy

22:54 Everybody is capable of excellence

23:58 Changes to improve our school system

28:23 Education transforms lives 

33:59 How Todd got into an honors program

40:46 The bell curve of intelligence

43:22 Stop pathologizing natural human variation 

47:40 IQ limits our view of human potential

58:43 Individual contribution over cognitive ability

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Octopuses are largely solitary animals, but there have been rare times — notably in the movie My Octopus Teacher — where they seem to have become comfortable around humans. But is it really possible to be friends with an octopus?

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It's hard to start a conversation with a stranger—especially when that stranger is, well, different. He doesn't share your customs, celebrate your holidays, watch your TV shows, or even speak your language. Plus he has a blowhole.

In this episode, which originally aired in the summer of 2014, we try to make contact with some of the strangest strangers on our little planet: dolphins. Producer Lynn Levy eavesdrops on some human-dolphin conversations, from a studio apartment in the Virgin Islands to a research vessel in the Bermuda Triangle.

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Understanding octopus intelligence requires stepping outside the notion of intelligence as we know it. Two octopus experts explain how they understand the curious creatures in this episode.

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