THE ED MYLETT SHOW - Harvard’s Dr. Howard Gardner on Unlocking Your 8+ Hidden Intelligences

Episode Date: March 4, 2025

Are You Smarter Than You Think? For years, we’ve been told intelligence is about IQ, test scores, and fitting into a rigid mold. But what if everything you thought about intelligence was wrong? What if intelligence isn't just one thing—but many? In this episode, I sit down with one of the most influential psychologists of our time, Dr. Howard Gardner, the man behind the groundbreaking Theory of Multiple Intelligences. His work changed the way I see people—including myself—and I know it’s going to change the way you see yourself and those around you. We break down the different types of intelligence and how understanding them can transform your confidence, your parenting, your leadership, and even your business. Think you’re not smart just because you weren’t great at math? Think again. You may have an intelligence that’s been overlooked your whole life. Dr. Gardner explains how to identify your strengths, unlock your potential, and even help your kids or team members thrive by recognizing their unique abilities. We also get into the future—how AI is reshaping intelligence, what true leadership looks like, and why being "smart" isn’t enough. We need people who use their intelligence for good, who lead with purpose, and who build lives based on their natural strengths. Key Takeaways: The eight types of intelligence and why traditional IQ tests only measure two How to identify your personal intelligence (or your child’s) The hidden biases we have about intelligence—and how they impact hiring, leadership, and success Why AI is changing the way we think about intelligence and what it means for our future The secret to staying mentally sharp as you age This conversation is going to shift the way you see yourself forever. Stop doubting your intelligence—start understanding it. Let’s go! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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because let me tell you how it usually works. Typically, folks send me their books and I scale through hundreds of books to decide who I want to have on the show. This situation is different today. This man's work has impacted me personally very deeply for a long period of time and I've been reading his work. And so I told my producer about six months ago, said I want Howard Gardner on the show if we can find this man and if he's willing to do it and We found him and he's willing to do it and he's here today. And so I'm very very grateful Howard is a renowned developmental psychologist Probably best known for his theory of multiple intelligences, which is the work that affected me most

Theory of Multiple Intelligences, which is the work that affected me most. But he's also got a couple of paired books out right now called The Essential Howard Gardner on mind. It's sort of a collection of all of his work you can get and or some of his work rather, and a couple of different books. And we're going to talk about all of his work today. But today is really going to explain you to you, maybe better than you've ever heard before. And so probably my favorite author, walking the planet today, his works affected me the

most, Howard Gardner. Welcome to the show. Wow. Well, that's a daunting introduction. I appreciate it. And yeah, I would like to give people a sense of who I am, where I'm coming from, what I've done in my work and what lies ahead. I have written over 30 books and probably a thousand articles.

No one is ever going to be foolish enough to even assemble these things, let alone digest them and my mother is deceased. So a few years ago I said, let's put together the best of my thinking and writing into items and one of them is focused on education, the other more broadly on my own understanding of the mind. And I'm happy to convey as much of that as I can with Ed leading the way. If I'm leading the way we're in big trouble,

I gotta tell you that. But I'll do what I can today to hang in there with you. I mean this everybody, this man's work is so profound. Let's start with sort of the basis, if you don't mind, because we could, if I had 20 hours with you, I could fill it up with questions that I have for you. And I think the audience knows they can feel the difference sometimes when someone's work's really deeply impacted me. This idea of multiple intelligences I think is so important because so many people through traditional education, which you know a lot about, if they don't fit into a particular box or think a particular way, they just feel like they don't have a lot to offer the world.

They get stamped as a young person as not bright or not intelligent. And you put forth the theory, I'd like you to just share the basics of that first, that there are multiple, I'll call them geniuses in my way, or gifts that people have, and not all of them are the same. So I'll let you take the floor on it, but hang on everybody. This, for your kids, for you, for the future of you developing and recruiting leadership in your businesses, this is going to help you a great deal. What are the multiple intelligences? Okay. Well, I'm going to give a a great deal. What are the multiple intelligences? Okay, well, I'm gonna give a bit of context.

Scholars didn't take the word intelligence seriously as something that could be measured until about a century ago when a French psychologist named Binet put together a set of questions, and it was really the first intelligence test. And if you lived in Paris and you had 45 minutes and you were sitting with a kid in front of you

and you asked him a bunch of questions and you saw how well the child did, you could give him a number, and we call that the IQ. And for its purposes and its time, it was quite an invention, and I have respect for Alfred Binet for having done that. But once you begin to think about it, you realize that the mind and the brain are very complicated entities.

And my big insight, which came in the early 1980s, was that if you thought of the mind and brain as a single computer, then if you were good in one thing, you'd be good in everything. If you were average in one thing, you'd be good in everything. If you're average in one thing, you'd be average in everything. And if you didn't do well in one thing, you'd be a dummy. In a sense, we all know this intuitively and many of us use the word talent. But talent, when it's opposed to intelligence, kind of says, well, intelligence is what's important, but I happen to be talented at playing poker or at fixing windows.

What I did, and what my critics have never really taken seriously, is I did five years of research with a whole research team, put together the book that Ed referred to and called Frames of Mind. It's over 400 pages and it's got hundreds of references. And now I'm gonna answer your question. If you thought that intelligence was one thing,

then basically you're implying there's one computer in the head. The breakthrough that I made was to hypothesize that there were several computers, and if your musical computer was good, it told absolutely nothing about whether your computer for understanding other people was good. Or if you were good in finding your way around an unfamiliar territory, that said nothing about whether you would be good in understanding yourself.

So at the time, in 1983, I posited seven different intelligences. A decade later I added one which shows you I'm pretty conservative and now 42 years later I think there might want to speak one or two others but it's less important whether I pick the right number and gave them the right names. What's really important is the fact that somebody is strong in something or weak in something simply doesn't predict whether you'll be strong or weak in anything else. That's the theory of multiple intelligences in a nutshell. For extra credit, those of you who

are really in the business of taking a speaker very seriously, my colleagues and I recently posted a blog called Who Owns Intelligence? And we talked about the work that I originally did 40 years ago in positing seven or so intelligences, but we go on in this essay to talk about the intelligence of animals and artificial intelligence. So if I had another 40 years, Ed, the next frames of mind would include birds and chimpanzees and various kinds of plants which can signal whether there's something dangerous in the environment so the other plants can avoid it.

And of course, what everybody's talking about now, specific AI and general AI. Dr. Justin Marchegiani Luckily for us, we have at least 40 more minutes and that's a good thing because you know everybody, this IQ thing, I have a speech hour that I give on the road when I make fun of myself. I talk about in my own household of my wife and two children, I'm fourth out of four in an IQ test. And you know, I feel really strongly about this. I feel like if people would have been exposed to your work more broadly, I think a lot of lives would have turned out differently. So many people are stamped in their youth as, you know,

not special or not smart. I remember even as a young man, my, in our family, there's not a lot of, uh of very mechanically inclined people, you know, we're just not any good. I can't fix a light bulb. And I remember as a young man thinking, my gosh, you know, that guy must not be very bright, you know, he fixes cars or engines. And as I got older, I went, oh my gosh, that man's got a form of intelligence that I don't possess. And just because it's different than mine doesn't mean it's not special. And I want you to fill in the blanks for me here though a little bit if you would. We have linguistic intelligence,

we have linguistic, we have musical intelligence, we have logical and mathematical, we have spatial, bodily and kinesthetic. What are the ones that I'm missing beyond those? Okay, well that was a good rendition. And just to fill in a little background, the IQ test basically looks at language and logical math. And if you're good at using language, reading, writing, doing crossword puzzles, and or you're good in chess and in Go and in other games that involve logic or mathematics, you'll do well in the IQ test. And I joke, as long as you simply stay in school and try to get into Mensa, you'll be okay. But if, as you say, you're washing machine breaks down or you get lost while you're in downtown Boston,

which just happens to me after 60 years, or if you have to understand how to make sense of somebody with whom you're having a negotiation, or even talking to on a podcast, or if something happens to you and you can't really understand its impact on you, those are different kinds of intelligence, and we can all be helped.

There's no question that if you know that you're deficient of intelligence, and we can all be helped. There's no question that if you know that you're deficient in intelligence, the right kinds of scaffolding can help you, but frankly, I think it's better to have a relationship with somebody who has complemented a kind of intelligence, and then when they're stuck with a crossword puzzle, you can help them,

or when they can't recognize one tune from another, you can help them. And if an intelligence test had been developed in China 3,000 or 4,000 years ago, it would have been much more about morality and ethics and knowing how to relate to other people, and they wouldn't care if you could just do a crossword puzzle. And here's the big issue, and this is going to take another podcast. What do we do with education in 21st century? Why teach people geography when this thing

I'm holding in my hand can find anywhere? I don't have the answer to that question, but at least I know that that question we'd have to raise. I'm gonna make you do this still though. What intelligences did I miss? Because I want the parents to hear this. I used to feel like this, the parents listening to this or people that are running a company.

If you looked at your child, maybe they don't do great at math. That doesn't mean they're not intelligent. Maybe they got an unbelievable linguistic intelligence. It was probably one of mine perhaps, right? I wasn't great at math or geography or are they more musical or spatial? I assume bodily kinesthetic is sort of an athlete, or could be an athlete. Sure, it could be a dancer.

It could be somebody who knows how to maneuver either their body or the body moving through space, which is unfamiliar. I just had my exercise for the day, and I'm glad I have a very good PT person because she has more bodily kinesthetic intelligence than I do. But to answer your question, there are two forms of personal intelligence. One is interpersonal intelligence, how you understand other people, how you can work with

them, cooperate with them, give them help when they need it and so on. And that intrapersonal intelligence is understanding yourself, your strengths, your weaknesses, the kinds of things that could go wrong, the kinds of abilities you have which should be helpful. And I think we've just run through the initial seven. I'll recap them. Linguistic, logical, mathematical, musical, spatial, bodily, kinesthetic, interpersonal, and intrapersonal, I added an eighth one called the naturalist intelligence, and that's being able to make consequential distinctions in the world of nature, between one plant and another, between one animal and another. Obviously, that was very important when we were living in the tundra in the darkest parts

of Africa. But I think it's equally important in the world of commerce. You go to a store or you go on the web and you're trying to decide between one product and another. The computers in our head, which were designed initially for us not to get eaten by the monsters before they ate us, now helps us decide which product to buy, which one we'd like, what it looks like, and so on. And it took me 10 years to add the naturalist intelligence because I don't just wake up

in the morning and say, oh, there's a wisdom intelligence, you know, or there's a humor intelligence. I do very thorough research. That's why we have a 400 page book on the topic. But if you want the short version, get Howard, the essential Howard Gardner on education, because I have an essay there called In a Nutshell, and that takes pages and boils it down to probably 20 pages. Howard, I think they should get both.

I don't talk like this on my show all the time either. I really, you guys, Howard's been sitting with this work that he's been doing, you know, for 40 plus years, right? And I have to say this to you. I believe this is like earth shattering, life changing type information. So many people, you know, Howard, in my space, it's always people overcoming, they're limiting beliefs about themselves or, or not understanding why they're not successful at one thing or another. This explains it. And for so many of you, if you're building a family, it's beginning to look at your precious children finding their special thing. And maybe it isn't math. That doesn't mean they're not smart, right? And thank God I was raised by parents that sort of started to look for what mine was, you know, and I think such a huge part of life is sort of figuring

out your proclivities is what I'll call it. And then it's kind of spending a life. I mean, you should work on your weaknesses, but if you can figure out my geniuses X, Y, Z, or my intelligence and building a life kind of in that zone, it just makes life so much more fun, so much easier. A hard life is either, a thinking you have none or B being forced into one of these intellect bubbles that isn't your strength. No, you right. Yes.

One of the most rewarding thing for me is letters I get from individuals. They could be parents, they could be working in an HR division at a company, and they say, you know, until I read your writings and understood what you were saying, I didn't realize that I had a combination of abilities as well as some disabilities, which showed me what I should do, or if I'm in HR or I'm a grandparent, what I should direct other people to do'm in HR or I'm a grandparent,

what I should direct other people to do, so they have more likely to feel competent and to fulfill what it is that has meaning for them. I play the piano every day. Every day, because I'm over 80, I get worse. But this has enormous meaning for me. In fact, it's also this thing to spirituality. And especially as you get old,

it's very, very important to be able to do those things which you have an affinity for and which can give you pleasure. And if somebody else wants to listen to me, I charge them a lot of money, just kidding. But I have to say one thing to you about that. As a person of faith, as a Christian myself, whatever someone's religious beliefs are or not, what you just said is really profound.

I have found in my own life that when I am really in my intelligence state, and for me, it's typically usually my form of expression and one of my giftedness is verbal, is speaking on stage, is moving people linguistically. And when I'm in that state, I somehow feel closer to God when I'm doing it, because I think that's where that intellect emanated from in my belief system. And so you're exactly right. Many people will say that if they're a singer, when they're singing, it's spiritual for them, or a speaker, or a writer. And it's so important that someone knows that there is not one better than the other Everyone should have known this when this book came out and it should have changed the planet

It's made a big difference But I wanted Howard on one because he's in his 80s and I want to make sure I have them on as many times As I can over the next 15 years, but also I wanted you all to have the gift of this So hey guys, I want to jump in here for a second and talk about change and growth. And you know, by the way, it's no secret how people get ahead in life or how they grow. And also taking a look at the future. If you want to change your future, you got to change the things you're doing. If you continue to do the same things, you're probably going to produce the same results.

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at no extra charge. So let me ask you this question this is a tough one IQ wise because I have like zero mechanical ability I mean like none right and I've never judged myself thinking I'm stupid because I can't repair things fix things I don't know how the lights came on in this studio. Heck Howard before we started the show today this screen wouldn't come on behind me it's still kind of glitching a little bit. I'd have been here a month and a half trying to figure out how to get this screen on. Steve and my producer walked in and got the thing turned on in about 90 seconds. That's part of his intellect.

And in building a business, everyone, it's knowing your intellect zone, as Howard said, and surrounding yourself with the people who fill those gaps in. That's what Jim Collins work, get the right people on the right seats on the bus, and Howard just takes us to a much different level, which is this idea of the intelligences. Is there a way, if you have children, Howard, I'm sure you've been asked this many times, that you can begin to identify their intelligence? Is there a test? Is there something as we look at our children or even people that work with us that will illuminate that I'll call gift or talent or intellect?

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, no, I have, I have four kids and five grandchildren. And yes, I have two answers which have worked for me and for other people. One is, and most people here who would be listening to us would have this option, is go with your child to a children's museum. But don't tell them what to do, just watch them. And if they see they're interested in something, encourage them. And then when you go there again, let the child go there if the child wants. And if the child kind of ritual this thing,

just repeats himself, that's one thing. But if the child begins to explore differently, try things out, say I wanna do more, where else can we do this? Is there a game I can have at home? Is there something I can play with online? That's giving you a hint that this is something that the child is good at.

I'm gonna give you another advice in a moment, but let me talk about my own life. My parents were very indigent. They had no money at all. But when I was five, we went to a neighbor's house, and I began to pick out pieces on the piano. And I'd never seen a piano before, and my parents had no money, but the hosts said,

you know, you need to get this kid a piano, because he has some musical ability. They didn't say musical intelligence. My parents spent $30 on the piano. It would now be probably $300. My kids still have that piano, and that made no difference, but that was the Children's Museum.

I was growing up in Scranton, Pennsylvania. A bit of trivial information, My kids still have that channel, and that made a little difference, but that was the Children's Museum. I was growing up in Scranton, Pennsylvania, a bit of trivial information, same age and same city as Joe Biden, but did not know him. Were you in a gang with him? You weren't in a gang with him? No? Okay, I'm just kidding.

If that hadn't happened, my life would have been very different because music wouldn't have been opened up to me. The other idea is whether or not you have the Children's Museum available, or a science museum, just go to an unfamiliar territory. It could be a big city, it could be a farm, it could be a forest. And again, don't tell your child what to do. Watch what the child does.

And if the child shows interest, encourage it. And if you don't know how to encourage yourself, find a friend who can encourage it. So a museum of some sort, or an unfamiliar territory, whether it's a big city or a suburb or a forest or a mountain, and just watch the child. And don't try to project what you would do. Watch what the child does, what the child's interested in,

what the child wants to do more of. And often if you're not good at that, find a friend, either an adult friend, a peer of the child. We like to do that sort of thing. And I must say that people haven't written to me that much about doing either of those things, but in my own life it's been revealing when I am trying to make sense of anybody, including somebody who works with me, is give them an amorphous stimulus,

put it in psychology terms, and see what they do with that stimulus. So good. I have to tell you everybody, we're going to get to business is the next topic, but as a parent, you know what we do do a lot of use the word sort of projection. Um, sometimes I wonder back on my children's lives, how much I projected my passions, beliefs, uh, talents onto them, especially like sports. You know, my kids were in sports and around sports and around sports. And then in, uh, one of the two of their cases, it is clearly not, it's not my son's a very good athlete,

but my daughter, that was not her giftedness yet. You know, because that was one of my core intelligences, I think I projected that onto her rather than give her the space to find and navigate hers. There's a part of your work I've always wanted to ask you about. And unless someone's read it, they probably won't understand this question, but I want to serve everybody. Then we'll

shift the business. I think you stipulate in part of the book where you talk about the personal intelligences, this idea of personal growth, the ability to grow, right? Let me ask it my way. And then you just correct me because I'm 99% sure the way I took it is sort of self-serving. But are you, are you saying that the ability to grow is also a form of intelligence? Meaning do some people have a capacity for growth in general that's greater than another person's capacity or am I conflating the whole idea there? I think it's somewhere in between head. Okay. If you, if you don't have a good personal

intelligence and you don't have some help in nurturing it, and therapy often can help you have a better understanding of yourself, you're much less likely to be able to make the best use of whatever God or the devil gave you. So the way I would translate what you're saying, it's giving your personal intelligence the help that it needs so you can make the best of who you are and who you could become. And here's another way of putting it. If you have a lot of personal intelligence,

you don't need much help in that. But if you don't, this is where, you know, a friend, an aide, a parent, a therapist, and a therapist doesn't have to be somebody you pay a lot of mind to. It's somebody who's got more clinical insights than you do and help you grow. And, of course, no two people grow in exactly the same way.

And let me go back to one thing that you said before, because it's kind of a confession on my part. I certainly was aware of the theory of multiple intelligences when I was raising my family, and I tried to do what I could to encourage what they were good at. But you can't hide your own strengths and your own value system. And it took me quite a while to recognize with each of the family members and others

that I was setting a powerful example. I would say it's a typical scholarly mind of linguistic and logical matter, mathematical. And they, I wouldn't say they had to overcome with it, but they had to be able to say, oh, that's just Dad doing his thing. But when I'm with Dad, I like to do something. And I must say, they've all come through very, very nicely, either despite what I said and did,

or maybe they got something from their mother and from other people in the world. Because especially in America, we aren't just raised by our families. We're raised by our peers, by our teachers, our coaches, and so on. And as I said, my parents didn't even think about musical intelligence.

Thank God the people who lived down the block, I can still see the apartment, when they saw five-year-old Howie picking out jingle bells or something, they said, this kid needs a piano. Wow. You know, do we have a bias towards our own? I want to ask you about business now. The general question will be what makes a great leader?

But then I'll give another confession. Probably the first, I'll say 40 years of my life, maybe not quite that many, I lacked an appreciation for people because I didn't have a context for it. I hadn't read your work yet. I thought the smartest people were like me, I guess is what I'm saying. Like when I talked about the mechanic earlier, right? So I didn't know that guy's bright or that lady's got it.

And I wonder as a leader, if we have to be careful of a filter or a bias towards, frankly, hiring and developing people around us that are a lot like us. Like if someone doesn't communicate verbally very quickly, I sometimes still don't think they're very smart. Like, come on, let's go, right? Like, you don't process things quickly,

but no, they're just not... We're speaking early in 2025, and I have a one-word answer, which probably everybody in 2025 will understand. The person who does exactly what you described is named Musk. Musk looking for people who are just like him and maybe for what he does that's absolutely right. But we would hope that most people in positions of leadership and authority wouldn't just look for clones of themselves. What should they be looking for? Should you, I mean, I guess it depends on the type of business, but I have now my net

worth, my productivity, the last decade of my life, 15 years of my life's exponentially grown as I've surrounded myself. Now that I understand your work with people, frankly, I, I, this sounds funny the way I don't mean it arrogantly when I say it, but I got enough of my type of intelligence for all of us in our company. I need the stuff I don't have around me, if that makes any sense, and everything's changed since I've appreciated that. Do you believe that that's the definition of a great leader, or do you have a different definition? Well, my definition of leadership is quite different, though we may end up at the same place. But let me respond first to the question that you're asking.

And that is, I don't think there can be a formula for leadership independent of what kind of work you're doing yourself. For example, I'm doing scholarly work. And therefore, when somebody works with me, they don't have the scholarly aptitude, it's not a good use of their time or my time. That said, one of the things I'm most proud of

is the number of people who've worked with me, who continue working with me, and who I now can follow through their life. I have students who are already retired. And I think because I did follow what you said in the sense that I helped them recognize how good they were at stuff that they hadn't known before. And I think that's an important part of, let's call it mentorship rather than leadership.

Now, I have a fairly succinct definition of leadership. I think a leader is an individual who creates a story, a narrative, which is convincing to others, and the individual, the leader embodies that narrative or story in himself, herself, or now we would say in themselves. So it's a simple definition. You have some kind of a narrative or story, who we are, where we come from, where we're going,

but you don't just tell the story, but in the way you live, you embody that story as well. And I think that's kind of what I said I do. But when I look at the landscape in 2025 and people who are in leadership positions around the world, I think that it's less of an issue of whether the people embody what they're saying or whether they can seem to embody it. And you know, because we're moving into a much more authoritarian kind of world.

And somebody who isn't an authoritarian myself, somebody who doesn't believe that the one with the power have all the answers, I'm not very fond of that definition of leader, but I'm also, you know, an observer and a reader. And you know, if I take a look at the leaders of many countries now, big and small, they don't simply catalyze a way of thinking. They sort of make you think that way. So I would, again in the book on the essential Howard Gardner in mind, I have several chapters on leadership and I say that I may be talking as much about the kind of leader I admire and would like to have, as I am about the kind of leaders that I see emerging in the world today.

And in 2025, it's not the same picture I would have given in 1995, whether I was talking about China, Russia, or places closer to home. You know, one of the things that I think is so important in life is some sort of self-worth and sense of belief in yourself. And I don't think you can really love yourself or believe in yourself if you don't know yourself. And I think Howard's work is so critical for so many of you that are, for you yourselves, your children,

you leading people, for them to say, oh, that's me, that one I have. And that's what's special about me. And then to build from that, that's where that foundational belief can come from is understanding yourself and knowing your intellect and knowing, I keep calling it a genius. And I guess, depending on the level of

whether you have it or not, I mean, I guess someone with spatial intellect is good, but LeBron James is probably a genius. You know, I suppose there's levels to this stuff. This is a message from sponsor Intuit Turbo Tax. Here's the thing, you got to handle your taxes and waiting around and worrying if you're going to get money back or what you owe and then waiting and wondering some more. You don't have to do that anymore. Right now you can get a TurboTax expert

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Get an expert now on TurboTax.com. Only available with TurboTax live full service. Real time updates only in iOS mobile app. See guarantee details at TurboTax.com slash guarantees. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Who's your support system? For me it's my family and friends and you know one of the things I get asked often is what are all 800 people that have been guests on your show have in common?

And not all of them have this in common, but the thing that would surprise most people that many of them have in common is they've been to therapy, including myself. That's something most people don't talk about. Therapy can help you from things like you're working through some trauma from childhood or a difficulty that you're going through right now, but it could also be just to get clarity of thought, a sense of direction in your life. Talk out loud about your goals and dreams or your issues and problems with somebody. Therapy from BetterHelp is helpful because you can do it online. And if you don't vibe with your therapist, you can switch out any time and get one that

you do work with well. You can access a diverse network of 30,000 credentialed therapists, a wide range of specialties and easily switch, like I said. So build your support system of BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.ed. Show to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp.com.ed.io. That's betterhelp.ed.io. I was fascinated by this. I want to ask you a question about this. It's a left turn, but maybe we'll put it together. The study of brain damage actually in people and cognitive insights and what, what came from that? I had a really good friend say, will you ask him about that? And I said, absolutely, I'll throw that out there. So, so there it is. Absolutely. That very, very pertinent question. I was on my route to be a

developmental psychologist interested in how children grow, particularly intellectually, cognitively. But in 1969, so you can do the math, a long time ago, I happened to hear a lecture by a neurologist named Norman Geschwind, and that lecture changed my life because I was going to go on and study kids, and I said to myself, I need to understand the brain, and I need to understand brain damage.

So I spent 20 years working in a aphasia ward, that's the kind of brain damage that affects language, and working with all sorts of individuals who were once perfectly okay, but had the misfortune of having a stroke or a tumor or a shrapnel wound, and part of their brain got destroyed. And as we were talking at the very beginning of the program, where the damage occurred, impaired the kinds of things that you could or couldn't do.

So an area, damage in one area would affect your language, the damage in another area would affect your mathematical ability, in another area, understanding of other people, in another area, music, and so on. And I said, goodness, we don't have one computer in our skull, we got a bunch of them, and of course it's best if they work together, but when brain damage is an experiment in nature,

or you can say an experiment in the divine, if you want, it helps us unpack the package of what our talents and what our weaknesses are. So I would never have come up with the ideas about multiple intelligences or frames of mind, the book that you mentioned, if I hadn't spent 20 years working with patients and seeing what abilities were undermined.

And then sometimes how you could strengthen them again. We developed something again decades ago called melodic intonation therapy, using music to help people with language and another thing called visual communication using spatial configuration to help people improve with language and this is before I had the idea of multiple intelligences. So yeah the brain was crucial in what I did and now at this point in my life I've been trying to think about what's special about my mind. And the truth is, multiple intelligence's theory

doesn't tell me much about my own mind because I'm a scholar and I would do well in an IQ test or an SAT, and the fact that I'm musical is kind of a bonus. But what it does enable me to do is to look at different things in the world and figure out how to put them together. And so I've written 20 or 30 blogs, and this is described in both of the books, of synthesizing. Synthesizing means there's a lot of stuff in the world, there's a lot of noise.

How do you figure out what's important? How do you put it together? And especially not just how it makes sense to you, but how it makes sense to other people. So when I wrote an autobiography, it came out in 2020, I didn't call it multiple intelligences theory. I called it a synthesizing mind. Because if I have a gift, it's the gift of synthesizing. And now for people who are really curious, I have 20 or 30 blogs just posted at my website,

howardgardner.com, about what I think synthesizing is. And what I never thought, even in 2020, was that what large language instruments do is incredibly powerful synthesizing. And so I have to figure out, is that what all of us have to do, if we were born today, what would be our competitive advantage when we have very, very smart machines that do almost everything we can think of better than we do?

In fact, my wife was in the same trade as I am, and I want to start a project called AI in the era of AI, artistic intelligences in the era of artificial intelligence. Very good. I mean, to be a poet or a painter or a choreographer or a violinist when we have machines who do stuff better. And if anybody who's listening wants to help us,

we have no support for this, please let us know. But we love the- You're going right down where I wanted to go next, which is just unbelievable. Can you all just sit back just for a second and think about, he's not gonna accept this. So I'll just say it so you can all hear it because he'll just make a face when I say it.

But the absolute brilliance of his work, and although millions know millions of people have been exposed, hundreds of millions haven't. And I have a feeling about Howard, it's gonna be around a long time, but his work is gonna stand on its own for centuries about human beings, their capacity, how special they are, and it should be a revolution in how and how people look at themselves, look at their children, look at their own lives, find their own self-worth, their own self-belief. You know every week and for years now on the show we're always trying to increase our self-worth and our self-belief but the

truth of the matter is if you really understood yourself, if you really knew yourself, if you really understood you do have a form of intelligence, that would be a whole lot easier journey than all of the stories you've been told about yourself because people don't know his work because what he said about stories earlier is true you've been told a story about yourself and now you've been telling one about yourself for a long time and a lot of that was founded by people that just don't know this information. This message is sponsored by Greenlight as As your kids get older, some things about parenting get easier. Not everything though.

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So start your risk-free Greenlight trial today at greenlight.com slash Ed. That's greenlight.com slash Ed to get started. Greenlight.com slash Ed. So having said all of that, I got off my soapbox there. I just want to thank you for your work, but now let's talk about AI. Uh, I covered on the show probably about every 10 weeks, somebody will come on and give me their opinion about it. I'm wondering how you think it impacts the world, but also the synthesizing idea.

How will it affect intelligence? If, if a computer can do all of this thinking for human beings, what does the world look like, like 30, 40 years from now, if we're not using parts of our brain that we, like, I don't mean this as a general statement, but you meet a 15 year old now, their interpersonal communication skills compared to a 15 year old 40 years ago, it's been quite a fall off in my experience in general because of their nose in a phone and in a laptop over time. So it seems to me there's been a,

not all 15 year olds everybody, trust me, please don't send me all my 15 year old listeners, but y'all know what I'm talking about, your friends at school. What's AA guy, what's it look like and what's it gonna do to the world? But also what's it gonna do to human intelligence? That is of course a huge topic and one that I don't claim to have expertise on that other people don't.

Well, you've been writing about it though. Don't be falsely humble here. No humility. You're writing about it and thinking about it a lot. Let me take this in two parts, sort of education and life. Okay. Education, I think we need to do much more what I'm going to call meta or super, namely less learning how to do something and more understanding of what it is and why it's important. So for example, when I grew up in Pennsylvania in the 1950s, we had to draw a map of Pennsylvania

with all 57 counties and get them right. Maybe that had some point, but now I'm carrying around a machine like everybody else, which does anything geographically better than I could ever hope to do. Meta or circa or super knowledge means understanding what geography is and what is important could ever hope to do. Meta or Circa or super knowledge means understanding what geography is and what is important

and what happens when it can go wrong, but not having to memorize where the 57 counties are or how to get from Florida to New England the way you need to do. So we need to have much more of a focus on meta knowledgeknowledge, and that's one answer. And I'm sorry that Facebook has taken the word meta, because it's the best one, but I'll come up with something else. But the other thing is what I've spent my last 30-plus years on,

which we haven't talked about, and that's what I call good work and good citizenship. Because intelligences are amoral. Both Goethe, the German poet, and Goebbels, and good citizenship, because intelligences are amoral. Both Goethe, the German poet, and Goebbels, Hitler's propagandists, used the German language very well. Both Nelson Mandela and Slobodan Milosevic, Mandela in South Africa, Milosevic in the former Yugoslavia, knew how to manipulate people, but one did

it in a positive way and the other in a very harmful way. And so when people say, oh, let's develop the intelligences, I say, but intelligences for what? If you're going to use your linguistic intelligence to generate hatred and to divide people, that's very sad. But if you're very good with language and you can write poetry that moves people, or you can write inspirational speeches which makes people want to be helpful to others, or run a podcast where you have people who you hope will be benevolent rather than malevolent, you're using your intelligences in a positive way.

Similarly, this applies not only to how you go around your work, but what it means to be a good citizen. Because a good citizen doesn't just promote what's good for himself or herself or themselves. A good citizen says, what's better for my community? What's better for the society? What's better for the world? You said something which was overly complimentary, that people will read my work in the future.

I'm worried whether there is a future, because we have many countries now with nuclear weapons and other ones that are likely to get it, and they could destroy the planet quickly, and, you know, climate change is doing its best, though it's doing it at a slower rate. So we don't need people, Ed, who are simply more intelligent. We need people who will be good workers and good citizens

who will say, how can I use my abilities, my capacities in a positive way, not at the expense of myself or my family, but not just for me, not just for us. And again, I don't have to talk politics. Everybody who's listening can apply that metric to what we're observing all over the world these days. It's a very different world than the one

I grew up in 70 years ago, you grew up in 45 years ago, and our kids and grandkids are growing up now. And so we can't just cultivate our own garden. I'm a gardener, I'd like to cultivate my own garden. We need to think about what happens after us. You say you're very religious. I often talk about an existential intelligence, which is concerned with big questions. Who are we? Where are we going? Where should we go?

And you can do that whether or not you're religious, whether or not you are religious in a particular religion or just spiritual in general. Sure. I like you so much. What would you say to somebody who says, I don't think I'm intelligent. I'm kind of taking us all the way back to the beginning, and then I want to ask you a question about you last. But by the way, you know most people feel that way.

Well, I would say, what do you mean by that? And you tell me more, then I would say, tell me what you like to do. Tell me what you enjoy watching, listening, participating in. If you have kids and they're different from one another. Here I have a line I used to say, when I had one kid, I thought all kids were the same. When I had two kids, I said, well, there are two kinds of kids.

When I had three kids, I said, they're all different. And when I had four kids, I said, I don't have time for theory. I have to make enough money so they can all go to school. No, I wouldn't have time for theory. I have to make enough money so that Helen comes to school. I wouldn't say... I would ask questions and kind of as you would nurture their understanding of themselves and find out what they like, what they're better at, what they would try to cultivate in other people.

And to be frank, anybody who asked me that question, it's already... that's opened the door. Because you wouldn't go around and say that unless you were looking for help. And I can always help, but I always try to help. Yeah, you're one of the just kind, good, brilliant souls I've met in my life. When I ask you about you, you are not 30 years old,

yet cognitively, I always think it's an odd thing to say to somebody who's a little bit older, well, you're very cognitively sharp. You know, I think there's, I think that's almost a backhanded compliment, but I am listening to you and I didn't, you know, I didn't know, I just knew the books. Now I'm meeting the man. Have you done something to cultivate your own cognition as you've aged? Is this, is this just genetics or are there things I, the people listening should be doing so that when we hit the big eight number,

we're going back and forth on a podcast like this and everything is processing at full speed? A good question and one that I think I spent a lot of time thinking about. I spent the last weekend with four of my college friends. So we're all the same age, and we're all asking that question. The first thing, which is a facetious answer, but it's true, pick your parents and grandparents well.

And, you know, if you have a family where there's been dementia, of course you need to be more alert. I am very meta about my own thought. I get help whenever I need to. I take notes all the time. And I build little things in. For example, I take medicine every morning,

as most people do. I know of a calendar, and I check off the medicine. So if I'm saying, did I take it this morning, I can check and see if I did. I don't need it yet, but it's kind of planning ahead. When I have a conversation with people, I take notes on it. The very fact of writing up the notes, this may be the most valuable thing I can say,

usually means I don't have to look at them again, because a great act of them was a second thing. But finding help when you need it, but equally important, if there are things that you're better at with your peers, your spouse, your friends, you try to help them. And that's one wonderful thing about having a good marriage or good friends is you can compliment one another, which doesn't mean say nice things.

It means provide what it is that you can do well, and hopefully they can help you on things that you can do well, and hopefully they can help you on things that you can do well. But of course you have to accept that if everybody is old enough, they're going to have things they can't do anymore. And this is for very extra credit. My teacher was Eric Erickson, who was a great psychoanalyst, and he wrote about eight life

stages. And most people who study psychology will remember the identity life stage, identity versus identity diffusion. Are you sort of hanging together, know who you are, or are you diffused? The last stage, which I'm in now, is called integrity versus despair. And what Erickson was saying,

does your life kind of hang together? Do you feel like you did pretty much what you could? Or are you despairing because you're falling apart and you can never put it back together again? And what I wrote in this blog, which will be posted soon, is when I just look in the mirror, I feel okay. But when I look at the world, as I've said more than once in this podcast, I feel despair.

And Erickson never talked about whether what's happening elsewhere can affect your own views of yourself. And that's why we work so much in good work and good citizen, because I always say what I do and my friends do isn't going to make a difference. But if enough other people do the same thing, if enough other people try to develop good work and good citizenship, we may save the planet. And whether you're a believer or not, saving the planet is an

important thing to do. We are at the end of the Anthropocene. That means we're at the end of the era where human beings ruled everything. And we could blow up the planet. We could have AI do it. Or we could arrive at some kind of an understanding about the world, physical world, and the computational world, and make it better together. So maybe that's a good thought in which to mull. I'm smiling because biggest compliment I can give you, Howard, is I'm just listening to you. My dad really loves you, man. You and my dad, by the way, same age, and he's gone. I get the feeling your political leanings

are identical to my dad's as well. He's also a Boston guy for all these years, and my favorite guy of all time is my dad. And so that's about as big a compliment as I could give somebody. My dad would love you. And he sounded a lot like you about the way he viewed the world, especially as he got older as well, and I think that idea of despair about the world and feeling pretty good about himself

Also fit with my dad. So let me say that in your way you're carrying on your dad's work Thank you the very best thing. I'm almost cheering that that any of us can do Thank you. I have to tell you, your work is, everyone knows this, as well, I opened up with it, but made me understand me and my children and the people that are around me every day, love, appreciate, and believe in myself and other people more as I understood their intelligences.

And so you're a treasure, Howard. And by the way, Howard wants me to make sure that you go get the essential Howard Gardner on mind. I want to make sure you guys all do that. But I also want you to go get Frames of Mind. And it's going to be a long read. You need to pack a lunch. It's going to take you a while and it's worth it.

It is absolutely worth it. All of his work is. And I'm going to check out these blogs as well, Howard. So thank you for the time today. I enjoyed it immensely. And you're welcome here anytime you want to come back. You're very kind. All the best to you, your listeners and those who come after us. Amen. All right everybody, you could tell I loved this one today. I hope you all did as well. Please share this episode. Make sure you get on my email list everybody at mylet.com. Just go in there, put your email in so you can get the episodes before everybody else. God bless you. Max out.