Factually! with Adam Conover - Rethinking Intelligence with Rina Bliss

Episode Date: April 5, 2023

How should we actually understand intelligence? This week, Rina Bliss Joins Adam to discuss common misconceptions of our understanding of intelligence, the progression of neuroplasticity throughout our lives, and how we should ultimately view intelligence as a society. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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So if all of that sounds good, if you want a big box of delicious snacks like this for yourself, use the code factually for $15 off your first order at Bokksu.com. That's code factually for $15 off your first order on Bokksu.com. I don't know the way. I don't know what to think. I don't know what to say. Yeah, but that's alright. Yeah, that's okay. I don't know anything. Hello and welcome to Factually. I'm Adam Conover. Thank you so much for joining me once again as I talk to an incredible expert about all the amazing things that they know that I don't know and that you might not know. Both of our minds are going to get blown together and we're going to have so much fun doing it. Now, I think if you watch this show, if you listen to this show, by the way, if you're watching on YouTube, subscribe in your favorite podcast player. And if you're listening on your favorite podcast player, go check us out on YouTube. We're uploading video episodes now. If you're a fan of this show, you probably think of yourself as an intelligent person, right? Or at least as a person who loves to learn. But that word intelligence is really

strange because as a society, our understanding of intelligence is all wrong. Take the famous IQ test. It was started in the early 20th century as a way to identify French children who needed help in school. And it provided age-specific questions across a couple domains of knowledge, like verbal and spatial, and then computed a score in comparison to others who took the test. And 100 was average. That's where the intelligence test began. But somehow, this tool for helping little French children get the support to do their little French math problems became the measure of intelligence. The U.S. went on to use it to sort World War I recruits, and soon eugenicists, both in America and Nazi Germany,

just loved having a science-y tool to justify their preconceptions that some people were innately smarter than others. People in power used the IQ test, this fallible thing made up to help French kids, as the basis for policy. Racist policy. And of course, I might not need to say this to you because you're all smart people, but this is bullshit. Intelligence is much more than just your answers to a specific question on a specific test on a specific day. We also know now

as a matter of scientific fact that IQ is not innate. It is not solely genetically determined because over the 20th century, IQ points kept increasing three to five points for the entire population on average every decade. Every decade, we were supposedly getting three to five IQ points smarter. And, you know, if it were genetically determined, that wouldn't be possible. This is called the Flynn effect, and it directly indicates that IQ cannot be genetically determined. There must be something else going on as well. And even more interestingly, or perhaps depressingly, recent tests have found that for the first time, IQ scores across the U.S. are in fact going down. Now, you might hear that and want to yell, idiocracy, reality shows are the problem, I always said so, and that's your right as an American, okay, to make that claim.

But researchers think that something more interesting is happening. Perhaps there's a ceiling to intelligence or that once there's a certain level of access to nutrition and education and environmental justice in a society that our scores plateau. Or maybe there's been a legitimate change in the skills you need to succeed in our society. The nature of what constitutes intelligence might have in fact changed. Think about that. Tellingly, while some IQ scores went down in this recent study, spatial rotational skills, the kinds you need to play, say, video games, actually went up. Food for thought, at the very least. There are so many theories about what intelligence actually is, how to measure it, and how it's determined. But whatever theory you

ascribe to, you have to accept that our concept of it as a society is sorely lacking. There simply must be more to this story. And to help us find out what it is, we have an incredible expert on the show today. Her name is Dr. Rena Bliss, and she's a professor of sociology at Rutgers and the author of Rethinking Intelligence,

A Radical New Understanding of Our Human Potential. Now, I know that you're going to love this interview, but before we get to it, I just want to remind you that I'm going on tour this year. If you're in San Francisco, I'll be there from May 5th through 6th. If you're in San Antonio, Texas, I'll be there from May 11th through 13th. And if you're in Batavia, Illinois, I'll be there from June 8th through June 10th. Come out and see me. And if you want to support this show, I want to remind you that you can do so on Patreon. Head to patreon.com slash Adam Conover. Just five bucks a month gets you every episode of the show, ad free, and a whole bunch of extra goodies. Now, without further ado, let's get to my interview with Dr. Rina Bliss. Rina, thank you so much for coming on Factually thank you so much for having me so you have a

new book coming out called rethinking intelligence what are the biggest misconceptions that we have about intelligence as a society is that a good place to start yeah it's a great place to start i mean the number one misconception is that intelligence is really your IQ score. I think that that is one of those weird kind of cultural beliefs that has been so pervasive for so long. I mean, centuries at this point. Right. And yet we can't seem to shake it. We've had a lot of really insightful intelligence research in the last like 50 years, let's say, that has told us that there's more to intelligence than IQ. But for some reason, IQ still hangs on as being like this major, you know, way of defining our intelligence and how smart we are. If someone has a high IQ score, they are considered really smart. If you have a low IQ score, you're considered really dumb, you know? So, um, and then another part of that is

that your intelligence is defined by your genetics or your genes, your DNA gives you your intelligence. I think that's another super big misconception that is still really, really strong, even in science, you know? So like, there's a lot of genetic science around intelligence and IQ and like people are still looking for markers, variants that are associated with IQ scores. So it's like, yeah, those two ideas are linked, right? Because the idea of an IQ score is that there's some sort of immutable score about you that like your height or maybe like your weight where your weight can fluctuate but we sort of believe there's a genetic component to it you know you're you're uh born at a you know with such a combination of factors that your weight is going to be about here you can go up or down um we have a lot of there are a lot of things about people like that uh the you know

your length of your feet or whatever but once you start poking at the idea of iq scores at all it starts to seem like frankly kind of ridiculous that this sort of one measurement that was come up with you know within the last couple hundred years uh would somehow measure everything about someone's intellectual quality and you could ascertain it through a test of probably a hundred questions or so that seems kind of ludicrous. What is the history of that idea? And when did we start to realize that it was bullshit? Well, sadly, we have known for a while that there are problems with IQ tests and, um, and the history of IQ even even more sadly, is that it comes from this really and all of this stuff comes from one of our

first geneticists that ever looked at behavior, Charles Darwin's cousin, Francis Galton. And he was just the most flat out racist guy ever. Is he known as the father of eugenics? Do I have that right? Exactly. Yeah. So eugenics was, um, was like basically his, his form of genetics and that he introduced and it stuck because it really was the basis of all our genetic science until quite recently. And, um, and he was knighted. So he's like Sir Francis Galton, you know, he's just like, he's only had a lot of good things said about him for a really long time. But at the same time, we have been discrediting the eugenics, you know, kind of idea of rankable races and rankable intelligences and all of that stuff in the last 50 years. For qualities we want or we don't want.

Like we have a real moral revulsion because of what happened across the 20th century as a result of these ideas. But also they're no longer scientifically. There's no basis for them, we now believe. Right. Exactly. So so we know that that's a problem. And yet still today, there are researchers who are looking for, like I was just saying, genetic kind of culprits for intelligence as measured by IQ tests. So we're still having the hunt go on for the same thing that we already discredited or have been kind of trying to dismantle for the last, you know, 50 years. And so it's still like, there's, there's kind of like a, like a split in how research is being done. A lot of research is trying to discredit and then

a lot, and then some research little pockets of genetics, you know, um, genomics, which is like the newer version of genetic science that looks at like our whole entire genome in our bodies and everything. So, um, there are little pockets where people are still doing that gene hunt and trying to say like, some of us are just born smart and some of us are born dumb and many of us are born average, whatnot. But, you know, I well we perform on a test at a given moment, a snapshot. Um, also there's so much research out there that shows that the tests are biased, that they're culturally biased. They're even racially biased. Like there are all kinds of biases in the tests themselves, like the questions themselves. So, um, and then also like, there's the biases that we don't even see, which are like how much, you know, a person has how much

privilege they've had to make it to the test, to the room or to the, you know, to the online system and be healthy enough to take the test. And what is the purpose of the test? You know, like I imagine there's a big difference between if I were like, hey, I want to go join Mensa, right, which is a club that you can get in if you score high enough on an intelligence test. Right now, first of all, that's a weird idea to have a club that you can get into if you do like let's start a club for people who can pass the test we made up already. That's a weird idea. Why would I want to be a member of that club? I'm not really sure. Like so I can sit around and with tea and go like, Oh, we sure all did well on that test. Didn't we like, what the fuck is the point of that? Um, but if I,

if I decide, Hey, I'm a, you know, I'm a college educated person who values my intelligence very highly. I value it so highly. I want to try to get into this club and I'm going to take a test. Right. And I go take that test. I'm taking it under very different circumstances than someone who is a foster child with a history of acting out in school. And then a counselor says, hold on a second. Maybe there's something wrong with that boy. And then they take them into a special room inside their disadvantaged public school and give them a test to figure out whether or not they need to send the kid to some kind of remedial program, you know, out in the country or whatever. Even if you're taking the same test, right, in those two circumstances, which I'm going to guess you're probably not, the circumstances under which that test is being administered are hugely different depending on who's being taken. I'm just spitballing, but does that sound accurate? Oh, you got it. This is exactly what I wrote about in the book, you know, and I think that another part of it is that there are people and there are services and like consultancies that you can hire to coach your kids to do well on the tests. Of course. Also, there are other kinds of ways to tweak your test scores to boost your test scores.

You know, taking stimulants is one way. Oh, yeah. Another. Oh, yeah. Look, hey, I got a 1490 on the SAT, and I do think the Ritalin prescription has something to do with it. Exactly. Yeah.

You know, so. I don't mean to brag. It's not that high 49 is pretty good but i i don't i do remember it okay i'm outing myself as a guy who remembers his sat score um but but but to this point like even those types of tests have been like really fallen into disfavor just among college admissions and that's for a much narrower purpose of like you know standard the idea of standardized testing at all, we're starting to realize is kind of an oxymoron and doesn't work.

Yes, yeah, it's so true. And so it's just like this idea that we can just measure somebody's intelligence with a snapshot moment of how well they performed on a test and then track their whole education based off of that or you know give them certain services or take away services from them i mean the whole idea of it is kind of crazy to me there are even um some people who are doing that genetic you know kind of gene hunt kind of research out there that say that you, that some of us are winners of a genetic lottery and

other people are losers. And therefore, you know, the winners, you know, need to be treated one way in school and the losers need to be treated another way in school. And, and so like, we should be DNA testing all of the people in our schools and DNA test kids when they're, you know, even DNA tests embryos, you know, DNA test fetuses and whatnot. So there's a lot of, there's a lot of, you know, kind of misinformation out there and ideas that I think are a little bit dangerous, you know, um, maybe they're not as bad as, as when we have, we have like, you know, our leaders of our, of our countries telling us that we needed

to sterilize and euthanize so called like euthanize, um, people based on their IQ scores. And people were, people were sterilized, euthanized or had, uh, brain surgery done on them, you know, as a result of these scores. Uh, so that's not, that's not like theoretical. It's not something that was just in movies. This was like something that was, that was literally done to people. Um, let me just bring it to this though, like beyond the test, something that always seemed ludicrous to me about the test, but the notion of idea of intelligence in general is the idea that intelligence is one thing like the the notion of there being a single number that you're going to apply to an iq score uh you can apply to

intelligence carries with it the implicit notion that there's one factor called intelligence as there is with height um or with but you know even if we're talking about strength like a person's strength there's multiple dimensions there's how much can you deadlift and there's how much you can bench press. And those are two different numbers. How much can you bicep curl, right? There are different muscles that do different things. And we also know that that's the person who could bench press might not be able to do a yoga pose, right? Like we're aware of this with the physical body. The same is true of intelligence, right? Like this is a word that means a lot of different things. Definitely. And that's why I offer this new way of looking at it, a new definition,

if you will. So I say, instead of using scores, like SAT scores and IQ scores and all of these standardized test scores that we have, instead of looking at these, these scores that again, are just a snapshot of how you happen to perform in this very moment in one moment in time. Um, let's look at intelligence as learning from our environment. It's something that we all do. We do it all day long. You don't have to be neurotypical or seem like a brainiac to do it. You actually do it. You know, there are very, um, amazing ways that we've shown in the last, like, you know, 20 years of research that people who are neuro divergent are highly intelligent and have different ways of exercising their intelligence.

And so, you know, this is a better definition. I think it's more accurate. It's more precise. And it's, it's what we do as humans. We are intelligent. We have infinite potential to learn from our environments. We just need to be empowered to do that. you know, taking care of ourselves and reducing stress in our lives. Because one of the things that really hampers us and hinders our ability to learn from our environments is stress and feeling that stress and having it percolate through our bodies and through our, you know, all of our, our cells and our organs and all of, you know, you know you know, down to, to our DNA, it actually affects and can modify our DNA in really harmful ways. So like stress is super toxic for us. And so, you know, I, I'm trying to get us to a point where we see that all of us are intelligent and that we also see that all of us have this huge responsibility to empower ourselves and each other to be less stressed and to be able to exercise that

intelligence, to see that there are opportunities to learn for all of us at all different moments of our lives and to do that learning, foster that learning instead of comparing us and saying like, oh, you were born. You're great. Don't need to worry about you. Oh, all you people, you're no good. We're going to put you in some weird room and kind of like not give you really much of an education anymore. You know, instead of seeing it like that, look at all of us as individuals, we're all different. We all have different, like you were saying, strengths. We all have different things that we need to strengthen, you know, and,

and help every single person to do those things. Yeah. I mean, what you say about stress makes total sense to me. I know that when I've been under periods of extreme stress, it feels like my, my brain stops working. And, you know, that's when I, and the stress that I'm under, frankly, is, is, you know, career related stress, job related stress, things of that nature, in school, you know, career-related stress, job-related stress, things of that nature. In school, you know, studying-related stress. I've never been under true, like, life strain the way some people are. And you know what it reminds me of, actually, is coming back to that example that I used of the conditions under which tests are taken, like the number of stressors that you

hear from teachers, kids in public schools are often facing, right, when they have stress at home and that affects them at school. And, and of course they're not going to perform as well on, on a test or, or, you know, perform well, uh, be able to learn as well when they're under all that stress. It almost makes me think of, uh, I kept mentioning height as being something that's genetically determined, but in fact, height is also, uh, uh also dependent on your upbringing, right? Like, I believe, and I'm going to say this very generally, but I believe that over the last couple centuries, Americans have gotten taller on average. And the reason is not genetic. The reason is because people started to eat better.

People started to have more access to food. The cost of food went down. There was less starvation, less famine. We still have a problem with hunger in this country, but it's nothing compared to what it was 100 years ago, 150 years ago. And as a result, people are taller. And so there's a genetic component. But also, if you are if you're raised in a condition where you didn't get enough to eat as a kid, you're not going to grow as much. And that's is that analogous to intelligence in some way? That is a perfect analogy because really intelligence actually is the same way.

We have seen over the last generation, two generations, even going back three generations, we've seen IQ scores, test scores all across the board going up, up, up. And it goes up with development, with standard of living rising. It goes up with basically access to quality food, access to better sleep and better air and water, all of the environmental things like that. And also like, you know, improved kind of levels of stress in terms of like people's livelihoods getting better, you know, more humane living existence, living conditions. Right. So it's the same kind of thing you see, even just like those flawed test scores are all shooting up thanks to standards of living going up. And when you, when you do these comparisons in, in different parts of the world, what you find are that anywhere where there's been an uptick in living conditions, you get an uptick in scores, and you get an uptick in heights,, you get an uptick in scores and you get an uptick in heights and you get an uptick in basically anything that is partially genetic and very much

environmentally determined as well, you know? And so it's really important that we, that we think like, okay, how can we increase everybody's standard of living so that we're not just comparing apples and oranges and then saying like the apples, well, how can we increase everybody's standard of living so that we're not just comparing apples and oranges and then saying like the apples, well, they just happen to be born perfect, you know, and these others are, these oranges are total losers, you know, it's like, well, did we empower those people to be winners? You know, saying it's just their genes is really just flat out lying about where the inequality lies yeah and we don't need to like this doesn't need to just be a social argument

like it's borne out by the facts right like i've read yeah uh that air quality you mentioned air quality in your list and i'm like yes i have in the last couple of years that there's like a really definite link between air quality, even on a moment to moment basis and how well your brain is functioning. Is that, do I have that right? Yes, you do. Yeah. And one of the other things that I wanted to mention about where the science has taken us is, is towards this idea of neuroplasticity. So we have all of this great neuroscience showing us that our brains are changing. They are malleable and they can grow and develop throughout our whole lives. Yes. We grow and develop in crazy ways when we're infants. And then when we're babies and toddlers and you know children and and things kind of take a different form as we get older right but we are still changing we're still growing we can

still create new what they call neural networks and so it's really important for us to seize on this opportunity to always grow we can do that because our brains want us to do that. Right. And so it's just, yeah, this idea that like, we are limited to some kind of score that we took when we were five years old, you know, as, as I did when I was five, you know, and that's when my whole educational path, you know, started to get cemented into place, you know, and that's when my whole educational path, you know, started to get cemented into place, you know, and my students too, I have, you know, I'm a professor now as well. And I have students who have all kinds of horrendous stories of being tested when they were three years old, you know, to get into preschool and, um, and then, you know, getting tracked from that age.

And so it's not just something that happened to, um, you know, millennial moms and then, you know, getting tracked from that age. And so it's not just something that happened to, um, you know, millennial moms and whatnot, you know, it's also like a whole, um, and gen, gen X season Xennials and, you know, all of the different, different people from who are like, you know, adults like full, full on adulting right now, you know, but also like, you know, young people, 17 year olds, 16 year olds that I have that, you know, are telling me like, this is what I'm going through right now. Like this is, I'm at the tail end of the high school experience that all got me here due to this one test I took when I was three years old, you know, it's crazy. Well, that's a great note to take us into our first break. We'll be right back with more Rena

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Okay. We're back with Rena Bliss. So we've been talking about intelligence and how neuroplasticity and how it can improve throughout our lives. I'd love to talk more though about, you know, we want everybody to be as intelligent as possible. You know, I mean, there's a there's a big desire. Oh, how do we improve our schools? And how do we how do we help kids be smarter, et cetera? But in the in the reading that you've done about, you know, all the different research about this or what are the factors that are not normally taken into account? We talked before the break about air quality and i think about you know a couple

years ago i went to i visited mumbai um visit some friends there uh in india and the worst air quality of any place i've ever visited you you felt it you know as soon as you stepped outdoors after a couple hours outside you could taste it in the air you know that's a very well-known problem in india um but i'm like man if there's a link between air quality and some measure of intelligence, I don't want to say it's IQ tests or whatever, but you know, if you're not able to think as well, then that I can only imagine the deleterious effect on, you know, entire generations. Right. Um, or that's not simply places like that. There's places in the U S that, um, you know, depending on where you live in Los Angeles, where I live right now, different areas have different air quality. If you live right next to a freeway, which, you know, freeways are driven through, you know, the communities of people of color here in Los Angeles specifically.

It's a matter of straight up history. Yeah. And present day zoning. It's so true. I mean, there's there's so much great research being done out of UCLA. And I used to be a professor in the UC system. So I am very familiar with my colleagues, my former colleagues, you know, in the UC system I haven't really named yet today, but that is a big part of my research, which is epigenetics. So it turns out that, you know, for all of these, again, centuries, we were focusing on our genes and saying like, oh, our genes just determine, you know, our quality of our thinking and our brain function and all of this stuff. And then, um, wow, guess what? When we started to, um, um, to kind of open up the genome and look at all the genes working together and what they actually do together, we found out that there were these parts of our, um, of our strands of DNA that were regulating whether our genes could turn on or off. And we

now have named them the epigenome and the people who study that are epigeneticists. And what they do is they say, okay, what happens when you increase the air quality? What happens to the genome? Well, it looks like it goes to work. It does what it's supposed to do. So it turns out that we are not so different no matter where we do live and where we are born. We're not so different inside, but what's different is what you're pointing to outside. Right. And so our environments are different from each other. And what happens is when you have toxic exposures and stress is a huge one for, for human beings. So, but yeah, bad air, bad food, you know, bad, bad water, bad, bad work, working conditions is a huge one too. And that's all of thing. All of these environments, when you have that, your genes stay turned off. Isn't that so crazy? Like they're, they're there and they're in all of your cells and they're supposed to go to work, but they don't go to work. They stay asleep. And so what happens is your epigenome basically fails you. And so all that great brain function, all that neuroplasticity,

all that like growth and development and all that learning from the environment that I'm like saying, let's do that. It's just like, it can't happen. Right. And so it's always going to be this, this question of like, how can we equalize our environments? How can we make sure that people have what they need, the basics of what they need, and they don't have all these harmful toxins, you know, crowding their, you know, their, their air and their living space and their living conditions, you know? Yeah. I mean, there's this tiresome binary that's always put on this of nature versus nurture. And it's usually used to sort of shut down this conversation. Oh, you're just arguing nature versus nurture, you know,

but the truth is a lot more complicated than that. The truth is that those two things interact and nurture, by the way, makes you imagine you're just talking about upbringing and, you know, did the kid get to watch Mr. Rogers or whatever, like that kind of thing. But we're talking about the more broad sense of nature and, and nurture, frankly, we're talking about like the entire environment that you're in and how that interacts with your genetics. Uh, it's a lot more complex than that binary. Right. Exactly. I'm not saying that genes don't matter because they do matter and they matter. And they give us that basic brain structure, that architecture in our brains to be able to do the thinking we need to do.

Right. And, and like, let's not let our environments go and shut that whole process down, you know, or, and you know, it's the, the most kind of, I don't know, just like kind of prescient wise thing about what you just said is that about the future generations is that the epigenome is actually passed down from generation to generation. So it is part, it's like with your genes, your tweaks, all those modifications are passed down to your kids and they pass them down to their kids and on and on and on. So it's like, if we are giving ourselves

a bad run this lifetime, it's actually going to affect the future. It's, it's very like, it's very unfortunate in some ways, but then it's also hopeful in other ways, because if you do improve the current situation, then you can improve generations to come. Yeah. And it feels like when people I don't want to harp too much on the bad old ideas of the past or the people who are still trying to promote those ideas. But when people harp too much on the genetic component and you hear it still in present day, there's there's authors like I don't I feel like Steven Pinker does this sometimes. OK, good. I'm glad I'm not mischaracterizing where they go. Oh, you know, genetics is so important and people don't want to acknowledge it because it's not PC to acknowledge it. But it's so true. And like when you look at the blah, blah, blah. And first of all, I feel like when people like him are making that argument, they're ignoring the facts that you're bringing. They're ignoring the incredible wealth of information we have about how the environment affects and about how similar

people truly are and about how the differences become magnified by not just environment, but not just upbringing, but like the the day to day conditions that people live in. That's the first thing that they themselves are ignoring facts. But secondly, it's it's profoundly hopeless to to put to say of people, well, there's genetic determinism. You know, if people are dumb now, their kids are going to be dumb and that's just their lot in life. So why don't we just consign them to the labor camps basically? And like, they can just like smelt pig iron and the rest of us

will read books. Like that's, that's, uh, I don't, you want to be an optimist about it? Don't you want to, don't you want to like, uh, help your fellow people and say, hey, we can we can all improve as a species, you know, as a as as a as a population. Why by caring for each other, you know? Yeah, especially because there have been a lot of really good data scientists who have tested IQ tests. And what they found is that if you pay people they do better on the tests you can you can improve people's scores by paying them another thing is like i was saying stimulants another one is um is also um you can drive down test scores by saying kind of negative things to people if you harsh their mellow before they go into a test or if

you say especially stereotypes are the worst if you say anything stereotypical um that is that could you know be a negative slight on them they will do worse so it's like you can boost scores you can drive down scores it's totally artificial and it's with these things that are like stress or with giving people money and giving them incentives, you know, or, um, and also they've shown that actually people get really big boosts. They can even jump up a whole so-called intelligence bracket from being average to being above average or being, or from being below average to being becoming average based on like changing their standard of living during their lifetime. So we're talking about adoptees, kids who were, you know, born into one circumstance and then changed, you know, their circumstance and their socioeconomic status, basically. So it's like, there are all these people moving and having like wealth all of a sudden.

And, you know, and then just and then, of course, there's what I was mentioning earlier on, which is that there are just straight up test consultants who will like, you know, give your kids the score you want them to have, you know. So, yeah. And there's a lot of that around SATs and stuff. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I took all those courses. I mean, when I was a, when I was a kid taking the SATs, it was like, yeah, you take the courses that, and that'll help

you that you do the test prep and the entire, at the time, this, this, this episode is not about SATs, but it is still stunning to me that I took the test in the late nineties. Um, and at the time the college board and all the rest of them were still promoting the idea that you could not study for the test. They had designed the SATs so that it was unstudiable and it was measuring some sort of, you know, innate quality that you had based on your, I guess, genetics and and, you know, how well you had done in school, et cetera. And yet there was an entire test prep industry that I grew up on Long Island in an affluent suburb. was an entire test prep industry that i grew up on long island in a in an affluent suburb um there was an entire test prep industry that literally every kid did every single kid was taking what was it like peterson or kaplan or one of those things yeah i remember that too that was what was at my school you know same time and same thing we all we all went to the kaplan test prep

study course after school to study specifically for the SAT. And then we all took the SAT and we all fucking did better. Like, obviously, because they told you stuff like, hey, if you don't know the answer, guess, but don't guess A. Because that's least likely to be A on multiple choice. Exactly. Which is just basic. Some kids don't get that training. Right.

And they do worse on the test. And therefore the test was wrong. So I'm sorry, again, this is not about standardized testing, but I think there's still a similarity there. Well, there's even, I mean, you can do it earlier. So very, very affluent families know another trick, which is that you can get your kids tested into a gifted and talented education program. If you, if you coach them when they're like four you know and so you can do like a um i mean and i'm not saying whether you know that you or i aren't like weren't like affluent enough to i mean i wasn't personally but i you know i have no idea your specific situation or you know other people's situations but i think that um there are like it will surprise some some viewers and

listeners to know that you can actually hire companies to do that work and to track them even earlier if you want to and that's just absolutely not fair and it's very expensive but if you're if that's your goal if your goal is to like, make sure that, you know, little Janie gets into, um, into Harvard, you know, you're just set on that. Like you, if you have the means, you can just throw a bunch of money at it and make, make things, you know, more, I'll tell you, I, I, I was not, you know, uh, my parents did not pay for that sort of service at that young of an age. But I know that I was tracked into a higher level of schooling at every level. Right. My parents were both both had Ph.D.s and they moved to a particular school district in order to so that we could go to one of the one of the better public schools in the area on Long Island. It was a very good school. It wasn't even that rich of a school.

It was just good. But, you know, as a kid, I was told I was intelligent. I also, though, had – I was put into the higher level of all the classes. I started reading at a young age. There were a lot of books in the house. As a kid, I acted out a lot. I had ADD. I was really – I'd run around and yell and scream and stuff like that.

And I was chastised a lot for that. But also the response to when that happened when I was a kid was they actually tracked me higher. They said, oh, this kid is he's acting out because he's bored. He must need to be take more advanced classes. So I actually skipped a grade in elementary school. Because they thought I needed more challenge. And then when I was in, you know, middle school, there was like a gifted and talented program that I was put in with a couple other kids. Now, again, not my parents are calling the school up. But for it, it just sort of happened that way. And then when I was in high school, it was, you know, there were there were I was one of the kids

who did all the AP classes. At that point, it, there were there were I was one of the kids who did all the AP classes. At that point, it was like there were just like tiers of the school. There is there were the AP class kids, they're the regular kids. And then there were the kids who started getting tracked into vocational programs where they went and learned air conditioning repair and stuff like that or like, you know, et cetera. And, you know, I I benefited from all of that. I don't my parents weren't doing anything nefarious. That's just sort of the way that, A, what they were encouraged to do by the system, and B, how that advantage compounds upon itself. It really does.

Intelligence leads to intelligence leads to intelligence, one after another. And I was very aware that there were kids in the same school who were not getting that same treatment. I was a child, so I didn't really know what to do about that. But, yeah, it's like pervasive. And I can only imagine if I was a kid in a different circumstance who, when I acted out, they said, oh, this kid's dumb. Let's put him in the dumb class, make him take a test to prove that he's dumb, not treat him well, you know, and then tell him that he's dumb over and over again. And then tell him that he's dumb over and over again. And one of the most depressing parts of the story is that students of color actually get disciplined and a lot of them get removed from school for the same exact behavior.

So one of the classes that I teach at my university is called mental illness. And it's really a mental health and illness class. It's not like I just talk about, you know, disease or something, you know, but I talk about learning disorders. I talk about all kinds of, you know, I talk about ADD, I talk about everything, everything under the sun, mental, right. And, um, one of the harsh statistics is that, um, students of color, particularly black students and Latinx, you know, but especially black students are disciplined for the very behaviors that white and Asian students are given special permissions. And a lot of the time therapy and psychological

support for. And so you've got like the same exact behaviors, but you've got different approach and then outcome. Right. And so you get kids who are basically given detention and then they're suspended and then they're taken to, you know, to like. They're taken into the courts and then they're taken into juvenile hall or whatever, you know, they're taken, they're removed from school or, you know, it's it's just really unfortunate because it's like the same exact thing going on in a different classroom or in the same classroom, you know, with people with a different appearance, skin color. And, you know, it's like, you know, you were saying intelligence begets intelligence begets intelligence. And it's really like perceived intelligence begets perceived intelligence.

And as a, as a person, as a parent, I'm a parent, I've got three little kiddos. Um, and as a person with a PhD, um, and my husband's a musician, but, you know, he's got a graduate education as well and, um, was in a PhD program at one point. And so it's like, you know, I, I already see how we've got two kids that are in kindergarten at public school now. And we've got one in preschool as well. And I can see how, you know, how there's just a belief that kids who have parents who are highly educated are going to be easier, easier kids to teach, you know, even, even though the schools want to create the most equal sets of circumstances for everybody,

you know, like they want that, but there's a kind of orientation towards parents who have a lot of education that's just a little bit different. And so can see how that gets you know it gets turned into this like perceived intelligence that will continue to help you know the future generations of our families and then are going to not be there for the other students who don't have that same education background and culture in a sense, like culture of education in their families. And just how willfully blind do you have to be to, to ignore all that and say, intelligence is, is genetic, you know, it's sort of stunning to me. Well, look, I want to find out more from you about your positive view of what intelligence actually is and what we can mean by it and how we can increase it. But we have to take another quick break.

We have to. We'll come right back with more Rena Bliss. OK, everybody. So you know that it is healthier and cheaper to cook at home, but it is kind of hard getting all those ingredients together, learning how to cook, following the recipes. Right. Well, HelloFresh has you covered. HelloFresh takes the hassle out of mealtime this spring by delivering pre-portioned ingredients and easy to prepare, not easy to say, but easy to prepare recipes right to your door. Skip the checkout lines and get outside in the warmer weather because HelloFresh has dinner covered for you, okay?

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Okay, we're back with Rina Bliss. We've talked for quite a while now about all the problems with the historical way that intelligence has been understood and the way it's been used against people. I want to spend more time talking about what is your view of intelligence? How should we actually understand it? You said it's learning from our environment. Tell me more about what that means. Like, what does it mean to be highly intelligent using that, uh, under that model? Yeah, I think that, um, just highly intelligent would be having a great awareness of the opportunity to learn from your environment. I want us to get to the point where we see the potential in everybody to do this and where we actually empower people to do this. But if people don't even know that there is this opportunity to learn, then, you know, it's not like, where are you going to go with that? What I mean is not that we spend every single waking moment of our lives learning things.

It's just more like being aware that our environment is presenting us with opportunities. Should we decide that this is the moment to take those to take our environment up on it? So, you know, for example, it's like you're sitting in a room. I'm sitting in a room. I think you have your dog in your room. And, you know, there are so many things that you could learn about, think about, know about more about him or her. It's Annie, right? So about her. Yeah. So, okay. So, you know, there are so many things that you could be learning about, thinking about, knowing about in terms of

like, you know, the audio, the visual stuff, you know, the technology that you have around you. There's so much that we can learn about anything in any environment. It's true in our work environments. It's also true in our, you know, enjoyment environments and our leisure moments of our days and stuff like that and in our family settings and whatnot. And so there are always these moments and opportunities. And unfortunately, a lot of people aren't aware of that. And so then they are just kind of like, you know, moving through life in this way of like, you know, I've got to do this, I've got to do that.

And I've got to like, just, you know, roll through. And so one of the things that I like to talk about and that I write about in, in rethinking intelligence is first of all, adopting a growth mindset. So shifting from, again, thinking of yourself as a score or like a fixed amount of intelligence to a person in process, a person who's always learning, always developing, always neuroplastic, always having more opportunities to learn. And also I talk about how important mindfulness is because it's a really good way

to kind of calm yourself, reduce stress. And it's also a good way to tune into the learning environment, right? To tune into the learning opportunities in your environment. One thing I say is seize the learning moment. So it's kind of, um, it's, it's kind of like a little slogan, you know, just like, just do it, seize that moment. Um, and also, um, also just see that there are always opportunities to learn with people around you. There's something I write about called connected learning. And it's just basically learning in collaboration, synergistically, and with an emotional connection to another person or other people. And it's a more effective way to

learn. You were saying how there are so many different aspects to, um, to being intelligent. And what was going through my mind was there's so many different aspects to memory. For example, there are different parts of your brain that are working on retrieval on cementing in new information on comparing new and old information on, um, retaining information and getting back into the deep long ago kind of memories and looking at the short term kind of like closer, you know, closer to the present moment kind of memories. And so it's like, there, there are just, there's so much there, you know, and, um, And we see in learning research in particular that when you have information connected to a context and connected to like real life, and especially when you are engaging with others about that information, you retain the information better. You actually learn better. So one of

the things that I want us to do is really just try to have that conjure up that emotional component and that life, real life kind of component to the learning moment. You talk about neuroplasticity and how we can, you know, we keep growing and changing. I'm curious how that interacts with, you know, aptitudes, because if we're talking about, I assume that you would agree, there's different dimensions of intelligence. There's different areas in which one can be intelligent.

You know, someone could be very intelligent about music, right. And understand it very clearly. And some people, you know, feel very, you know, unable to, you know, process it, right? I used to think of myself as being someone who didn't have a lot of social intelligence, you know, I would, I was always accidentally offending people, I was sort of making blunders, moving through social situations, I felt very separate from other people. I felt that I couldn't really read or understand how people felt. And then in my 20s, I started doing stand-up comedy constantly. And it cured me of a lot of social anxiety through, I guess, pure exposure.

But now I feel that the exact thing that I used to feel I was bad at is something I'm very good at in terms of being in a, if I'm in a social power structure, I'm meeting a lot of new people. If I'm say engaged in a new television project, and I meet a bunch of new producers I've never met with, I'm pretty good at figuring out who is who, how are they in relation to each other? How do each of them feel about this? What are the various power structures? What are the things I should watch out for? How do I if I have a problem, or if I need something from someone, how do I approach them in a way that will make them, you know, receptive rather than offended that I asked, that I made a request of them, that, that sort of thing, you know,

basic social politics. I feel that I now am better at than other people. And I, I, if you had asked me 15 years ago, I would have said, no, I suck at that. I should never try to, you know, engage in that sort of sphere. I'm more your mind, you know, like, we think like really just only good at one thing and you like, somehow your, your whole atomness changed and you became the opposite person. No, you're the same person. It's just that now you care a lot about that. So you care and you invest time and thought and energy into learning that. That's like one of your things that you grow about, right? And that's the thing about neuroplasticity is that you can actually go in any direction you want. You can learn a lot of languages,

or you can not learn a lot of languages. Is that something your culture cares about? Is that something you care about? Is that something that everybody is like, you have to do this? What are the things that we think, like Americans living in this day and age, what do we think everyone needs to know? What do we think everyone has to come out from school knowing, right? It's like, yes, most people will have those basics because we say that's what they need to know. Unfortunately, we don't say that people need to be able to read the room. We don't say that people need to be empathetic to other people, that people need to understand what others are going through, that before they, you know, say something that they have to kind of consider the other person's perspective or experiences or how they might make them feel, you know?

There's no classes in social dynamics. No, we don't do that, you know? So we're not going to raise kids who are doing that thing. And so my family is half of it lives here in the U S and half is in Indonesia. So it's really an education for me. I go over there and there's just like different values, you know? Um, one of the things that's really different is that our media is very violence oriented. And, um, and like most of the narratives about, you know, what you'd see on TV and what you see on streaming and what you see in movies and stuff is so much around weapons and violence something, you know, except without like the crazy, you know, mom families figuring out how to get along families like like people facing like challenges at work or something like that or challenges at school and having to like solve a problem together and

like you know what i mean so it's just really different you know you you go to one place and you have people who are really about learning how to be a part of a group and to take care of the different people in different ages. That's another thing that's super different is that in one household, you have all these different generations. You have great, great grandparents. You know what I mean? And you have all all the generations and then here people are more atomized, like the families are nuclear and they're just like, kind of like, here's us and our kids. And then our parents are somewhere else and really somewhere else, at this point, like they're in some other part of the country. I'm from LA and, you know, I did my graduate work in New York city and lived there

for like 10 years. And now I live in Princeton, New Jersey, you know, and none of our family lives here. And so, you know, when, when you look at us here, it's just, it's just, our values are completely different. We're much more about like, um, just giving kids basic reading math skills and a very individualistic. And I would say narcissistic kind of way of being towards other people. So we're not preparing people to learn in the way that I'm saying we should, you know, I would like that to change. Um, but yeah, I think that if we, if we have social and emotional learning as like on our priority list at the top there, um, I think that we would have better learning throughout the whole entire education career of a human being in this country. And we'd probably work out a lot of those inequality issues as well.

Yeah. If we just had basic training on those points, I mean, it's so funny that I think of one of the other things that helped my, my social intelligence improve was I read the, this is going to sound corny, but I will proclaim this book to the, to the high heavens, Dale Carnegie's, how to win friends and influence people. I found a copy of this book in a thrift store when I was like 24 or something like that. And I was flipping through it on a family vacation.

And I, I don't know why I picked it up, but I was like, Oh, this is a funny book. This is a famous book. I'll see what's in it. And it gave such basic advice about like the advice in this book. First of all, it sounds very cynical title. It's not cynical book. It's literally how to be nice and respectful to people and why everything is better when you do that. And so the advice in this book is people like it when you say their name. Did you know that, Rina? Did you know that people like it when you say their name? I love it when you say my name. Another one was, this is the best piece of advice I've ever gotten. If you want someone to do something for you, if you need something from someone, you need to explain to them why it's in their best interest. Why does it benefit them to do it? So, you know, that, that is, I use that every day, right? If I'm like, Hey, I, I,

I need, um, uh, you know, Hey, Rena, I'd love it if you wore headphones during this interview and you'll sound so much better on the interview and you'll make a better impression on our audience. Right. I don't say, I really want you to do that. I say it would help you to do it. Um, and this is extremely basic stuff. And what you're enlightening me to is it came to me as a revelation in my mid twenties. This is something that we don't teach. And it's something that we don't even attempt to teach, to let be. In fact, we denigrate that, ah, that's self-help, it's bullshit. You know, when in fact, this is like, it's basic socializations, basic social skills. I want to ask you about learning as we age, right? Or intelligence as we age,

because I'm getting a little bit older now. And I love that you're talking about the plasticity of the brain as we get older. And I'd love to hear more about that. Because something I've confronted recently is I've adopted throughout much of my life this idea of learning as that I'm going to cram stuff into my brain and that it'll go up infinitely. Right. Every time I read a book, I'm importing the knowledge from that book from the pages to my mind and I'm going to remember it. And there's a lot of reading culture that is still based around that kind of you know uh very productive kind of learning productivity focus there's all kinds of guides on the internet how to take efficient notes so that you don't just remember the things that you read you also like you know increase your intelligence by internalizing them and shit like that and as i get older i'm i realize that's

bullshit like half of the shit that i read more than half of it just falls out of my mind. I never remember it again. I'm reading it for some other reason. But yet I still want to feel that I am improving as I get older, that I'm that I'm learning new things, that I'm growing and that I'm increasing my capabilities in some way. And I feel that I am, but I'm not entirely sure how. And so what do you know that I don't know about intelligence and how we can continue increasing it as we age? Well, there are two things here, and I hope I'll remember both of them because I'm also getting older. One of them is that we are always changing and we are always able to form new neural networks. And that does slow down in some ways as we get older, but we can do what neuroscientists have shown is the best way to learn, which is to learn in bits. So learn a little bit and then rest, learn a little bit more and then rest. So instead of cramming, that doesn't really work because you'll get the information in, like your

eyes will register it. And you might even like, you know, go ahead and take those great notes and whatnot, but it won't be really soaked in there without rest, a time for your body to kind of recuperate, your brain to like shut down and, you know, chill out. And then the other part of it is that it's much better to learn in context. So to learn by doing, to learn by interacting. So even if it's not by doing in the sense of like, you're not going to like do, um, like you were talking about, um, a self-help book or something, you know, that type of thing. It's like by doing meaning, talking about it with somebody that you care about, talking about how you would make the changes, what are the ways that you would implement it or just going and implementing. Right. So like reading a tiny little bit, like not more than a chapter, you know, just a little chat, like a chapter or even just like a piece of a chapter and then enacting the thing or using it, you know, and then again, resting.

or using it, you know, and then, um, again, resting, that's why mindfulness practice meditation. I love yoga, Nidra, which is like the, you know, kind of like a longer kind of yoga sleep kind of way of, um, resting and kind of getting things to jumble around in there and get, get cemented and everything. Um, but yeah, the, unfortunately, one of the ways that we are taught to learn in school is to just cram. And also we're often in given, especially in public schools, we're given, um, all kinds of information out, out of the context of anything. Right. And so it's better if we can, as adults, if we have the choice to just go into learning something new as like saying, how can I enact this and also be mindful of the need to rest and not like trying to, you know, do what I used to do when I was in my PhD, where I would

read a whole book in an afternoon because I just had so many books that I had to read. And I was like, okay, I'm going to read like this book at this part of the day. And then this other book, and then this other book, and this other book. It's like, yes, I did read all the books on the list and I did, you know, get to pass the classes and whatnot, but none of them matter to me in this day and age, you know, none of that matters to me. All that matters are the things that I actually enacted, things that I practice, things that I did with other people, especially people I loved, you know, that's where you build memories. You build like, you know, that kind of like your heart is in it. Your soul is in it, you know? Yeah. Learning things that you're not just

learning from a book that, but that you're doing or that you're exploring or that you're doing with other people. Um, that that's real as opposed to like, Oh geez, I should learn about the history of the Adam or whatever. If that's an interest area, if that's something that you're, that you're actively exploring, that you have an interest in with other folks that you can go participate in, that's great. But if you're just like trying to cram in order to like an intelligent person should know about this, you're, you're actually probably not going to benefit much from it.

Exactly. And, and you know, why, like, why would anyone want to learn that way? I just, it's kind of like you were asking about the Mensa club. It's like, but why? Yeah. What is in it for you? You know, the book you mentioned, I've actually given that as a gift, you know? So I think it's a great book and it's a great resource. And it's, it's like, it's the, I like that. What's in it for me, what's in it for them, what's in it for, you know, what is in it for us. And if you learn like that, where it's just like trying to check a bunch of boxes, it's just like, okay, you'll check the boxes. Sure.

Yeah. No, but are you going to be smarter from that? Are you really going to be transformed? Like we want to be transformed by knowledge. We don't want to just be like, oh, I did it. You know, I performed it. Sure. That's, that's actually one, one way of looking at it.

It's just to ask yourself the question am i performing something or am i am i you know getting something out of am i being transformed and it's kind of a funny way to to say it because you're a performer you know so it's like you know when you're performing because you're going on stage and you're ready to do it right and it's like i'm performing but like do you want the rest of your time especially when you're going on stage and you're ready to do it. Right. And it's like, I'm performing, but like, do you want the rest of your time, especially when you're learning and stretching your mind to be like a performance? Probably not. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It gets very exhausting. Yeah. Um, and I do, I am guilty of, of doing that too much. Uh, well to, to end us here, I'd love to, uh, Well, to end us here, I'd love to ask, you know, one of our goals in schooling and our education system is to, you know, we want to raise the intelligence level of our entire society. You know, that's sort of the point of public schooling or making sure that every child has an education.

We care about the education, the intelligence of individual kids. But we also know that we sort of want the intelligence of the entire society to continue rising in a general way, that that's important, even just for the economy, right? Just on the most cynical basis, you need an educated populace. But we, of course, care about that for moral reasons and reasons of just it being a good thing. So how, in your view, in the last few minutes we have, I know it's a big question to ask, but what changes, if you could design a way of educating children, what would it be in order to give us

the highest level of intelligence we can? Well, the first thing is change our school environments from places where we score kids and track them based on scores to a place where every child is seen as an individual and is treated as valuable and is treated as a person with infinite potential to learn and is given that respect and that grace so that they can learn. is given that respect and that grace so that they can learn. And to take the kind of punitive way of dealing with kids who are neurodivergent out of the equation, because it just ruins it for everybody. It also makes the whole classroom environment and the school environment a really untrustworthy place for kids.

Even if it's not happening to your kid or to like you, it's like, it's happening to other people and it's not, it's just awful, you know? It lowers the morale of all the learners there. So, you know, that's one thing, but we actually can't fix all the problems within the classroom because we would need to really equalize our other learning environments because we're not only in classrooms.

So I'm saying like, we need to equalize our neighborhoods. And that is, that takes a whole lot of economic willpower and a lot of political willpower that, you know, hopefully we can generate. And I think that generationally speaking, we're getting wiser to this stuff, you know, hopefully we can generate. And I think that generationally speaking, we're getting wiser to this stuff, you know? But I think that we have a long ways to go. Having equalizing our environments as our main priority, first top priority, and then having the social and emotional learning part of it being our second priority. I think that those are the two things that I want to see us do.

I think that that will actually raise everything. It raises our standard of living, which is going to raise even those flawed test scores. So going with the social and emotional piece of it, you're going to have students actually for reals learning and retaining things and finding meaning and being transformed. Yeah. And these are changes that would benefit everybody if we were to enact them, that it's it's not it's not a matter of being soft on folks. It's a matter of it's just like cleaning up pollution, like so many countries want to do because they know that it's impacting their kids and their entire society. And they're like, hey, this is something that we need to do. Doing the same thing across our neighborhood, saying, hey, it's bad for everybody when there's a neighborhood that's polluted. So folks there have worse outcomes when there's entire communities where people aren't able to have secure home lives. So their kids show up to work, show up to school, excuse me, sometimes work because child labor is a big problem in America again, but really school, like it's bad for everybody that kids are being put to work and,

and are not achieving their full potential. Like that's a drag on our entire society. And it's therefore a drag on you. Like your life is worse. Uh, even if you come from more fortunate means if we're not taking care of each other. Yes, exactly. Well, Rena, thank you so much for coming on the show to talk to us about this. The book is called rethinking intelligence and, uh, you can get it at factually pod.com slash books. If you want to buy it from our special bookshop and support the show anywhere else that you'd like to shout out that where people can buy it and where can people find you online? You can also buy it, of course, at Amazon and at HarperCollins website. And you can find more about me at my website, DrRenaBliss.com.

Rena, thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you very much, Adam. It was so fun. Well, thank you once again to Dr. Bliss for coming on the show. If you want to pick up a copy of her book, you can get it once again at factuallypod.com slash books. Your purchase there will support not just this show, but your local bookshop as well. I also want to thank everybody who supports this show at the $15 a month level on Patreon. Our most recent subscribers at that level are Always Sunny, McPwoninator, Ashley Molina Diaz, Ask, Ghost, Francisco, Ojeda, Dark Avenger,

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adamconover.net, and you can find me at Adam Conover wherever you get your social media. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll see you next time on Factually. That was a HeadGum Podcast.