Latest / Stuff You Should Know / How Mensa Works

Transcript

How Mensa Works · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: There's Charles w Chuck Bryant and Jerry Rowlands lurking um
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: in the background. And this is Stuff you should know.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Smarty pants a dish m hm hmm. We're doing MENSA right,
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: Oh god, no I thought you were. I thought we
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: were doing a cage free re dux. Yes, this is
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: about MENTA. That's what I have pulled up to Chuck.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: So this works out just fine. All right, let's do it.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: So um. Dave Russe helped us out with this one.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: And um he mentioned a bit of news that if
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: you looked up MENSA recently, would be hard to miss.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: But I believe it was their youngest member ever was
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: inducted into MENSA. Mensa by the way, UM, for those
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: of you who don't know, IS bills itself as the
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: High i Q Society. It stands for it doesn't stand
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: for anything, so, which is super smart if you stop
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: and think about it. Yeah, it feels like it should
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: be an acronym, but it's not. Definitely. I'm with you,
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: but it will just go ahead and say it means
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: table in Latin yeah, and in Spanish slang it's a
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: female goofball or dumb person. Strangely enough, the irony Is
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: had tip to Dave Rus for putting that one out.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: So as I was saying, it's a high i Q society,
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: it's society for smarty pants, as you put it, and
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: they inducted they inducted their youngest member recently, who was
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: two years old. Two years old, sure, and they don't
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: so they don't discriminate by age, which is great bully
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: for them. And I believe on their website they say
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: they're their membership ranges and ages two to a hundred
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: and two. I knew they were going to say that,
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: and I wonder if there's like a hundred and four
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: year old MENSUM members, Like what the F Yeah, I
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: just I didn't fit in with the cool uh whatever.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: It's not even a rhyme, you know what I mean. Yeah,
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: I've always felt really bad about UM, the people in Uh.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: Why what is that Christmas song? Kids from one too?
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: It's like year olds still appreciate Christmas. You know. I
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: cut that whole group out, And then you stop and
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: think this is written in the mid century and there
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: was like almost no one living to ninety two because
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: they were all having coroneries from cigars and scotches and
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: steaks all at once. It's kind of a random age,
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: though it is, but it rhyme, which is what I
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: think means it did here too. But regardless of this
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: two year old cache quest, um, just a queues a
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: button has an i Q of on, which means she's
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: got it all basically, and with an i q of
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: ont six, that puts her well above the minimum wronment
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: to be accepted in a MENSA, which is usually about
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: an i q of about one thirty two. Yeah, so
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: you may have seen that in the news if you
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: and uh, you know, David is right to point out
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: if you mentioned mensa, the first thing most people will say,
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: and I don't know how this got so into the
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: public consciousness, but they will generally say, oh, you know,
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: Gina Davis is a MENSA member. Uh, she must have
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: mentioned in an interview or something. But it's been a
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: long time, because I've heard that for a long long
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: time as like the sort of go to fact for MENSA. Yeah,
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: I also heard another thing about Gene Davis. She used
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: to bake cookies and bring them to like meetings. She was. Well.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: I heard another thing about Gina Davis because our our
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: friend and friend of the show, Jesse Thorne, interviewed her
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: on his great interview show Bulls Eye, and he said
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: that Gina Davis is the best person and he said
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: she is exactly what you hope she would be. And
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: everyone just felt like it was their cool aunt. Oh
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: that's pretty Everyone in the office like she was just
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: the nicest person and it she sounds like the kind
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: of person who would bake cookies in her MENSA style. Yeah,
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: and Jesse Thorn's hearing this and it's like she didn't
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: bring cookies to Army. Maybe she did so, um so Yes.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: Gina Davis is world renowned as the uh, the most
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: famous member of MENSA, even though plenty of famous people
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: have been members of MENSA over the years. Bucky Fuller,
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: Arthur C. Clark was a vice president of MENSA International
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: for a while. Sharon Stone famously told people in the
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: nineties that she was in MENSA, and she finally called
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: out by MENSA saying like, no, you're not in MENSA. Yes,
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: she did lie, apparently for a good decade, until somebody
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: finally said something about it. And then James Woods is
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: often confused as a member of MENSA, but I don't
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: believe he actually is. Who else the guy who created
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: the anti virus software McAfee John McAfee. Uh. And yeah,
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: there's there's a handful of people. And then, as we'll
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: talk about later, there are a lot of journalists who say, well,
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: I qualified to be in MENSA, but I didn't want
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: to be involved. Yeah, because that's the one thing about
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: men says. A lot of the popular press that's done
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: on that group takes easy pot shots at them because
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: they are a group of of their a high i
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: Q group and they're by definition very smart people, but
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: also enjoying a club like that it bestows a bit
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: of an air of superiority onto you. So there's a
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: there's a certain undercurrent of that, and so people who
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: write about them, recover them, usually take pot shots at
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: them and generally lump them all into one big group.
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: But that's not necessarily fair to say, because they are
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: a very collection of people. For sure, there are weird
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: undercurrents that are distasteful here there um, but overall, um,
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: they seem to be okay from what I can tell. Yeah,
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: and they are all kinds of mensines, which is what
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: they're called, uh, from all kinds of backgrounds in socio
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: economic strata. I guess we could break down the percentages
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: here if you want to get specific, U it is
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: sixty six percent uh male, this is from their stats,
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: thirty four percent female, UH, two percent to have a
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: four year degree or more, sixty three graduate degree or more,
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: thirty percent boomers, Gen X thirteen millennial, and then the rest.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: But it's it's not a big group though. UM like
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: their total membership is a little less than a hundred
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: and fifty thousand worldwide, with about fifty thousand of those
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: being in the States, UH and nineteen thousand mean in
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: the UK where it was founded. But it's uh a
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: lot more people could be in MENSA that aren't in MENSA.
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: Does that make sense? Dave did them ath as if
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: to show off that he could be a member of
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: MENSA if he wanted to. But what MENSA membership means
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: is that you have tested in aptitude for intelligence within
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: the top two of people. So in the United States,
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: say there's three million, just to make it easy, but
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: I think there's much more than that. Now, UM that
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: would be six million people who would who would qualify
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: as members of MENSA, and yet, like you said, there's
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: only about fifty thousand in there. Yeah, I mean, and
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: I get if some people think that's a weird thing
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: to say, because you still have to take these tests,
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: you have to be good at test taking. But if
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: you just go by numbers of the top two percent
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: of intelligence, then sure, yes, but it also reveals something
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: that it's not for everybody, Like, just by virtue of
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: being smart or testing really well on an intelligence test,
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: that doesn't mean you automatically want to be a member
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: of a group that that shares that in calm, and
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: that's an extra there's a very slight tranche of people
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: who qualify or who would qualify, who actually do want
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: to join MENSA. But the ones who do join MENSA
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: seem to tremendously enjoy and feel very accepted and happy there. Yeah,
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: And that's also in itself a pot shot that journalists
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: have taken commonly, which is, these are people who who
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: are smart enough to be in MENSA and want to
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: be able to tell everybody that they're in MENSA. And
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm sure there is some of that to
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: some degree. There are people that like to to flaunt
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: their Harvard degree or you know, drop the H bomb
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: as they say, or or their Ivy League education or
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: their MENSA membership. But I'm sure there are out of
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty thousand people, there are lots of
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: Gina davis Is that probably are just like, oh, yeah,
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: I'm in that, but it's really no big deal. Yeah.
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: The worst of the worst are people who are in MENSA,
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: went to Harvard, are on keto and are in the
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: cross fit Oh God, make it stop, and who recently
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: quit social media. Can you imagine? Ye? Should we talk
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: about the history party of one? That's a good joke.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: Uh So MENSA got its start in six like I
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: mentioned in the UK, and it sort of happened by chance.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: On a train there was a post grad student from
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: Oxford named a Lancelot where who was coming home for Christmas.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: Break shared a cabin with a fifty year old named
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: Roland Barrel or Beryl, and Burrill was like, oh, you
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: got to Oxford. You know what. I wanted to go
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: to Oxford. I couldn't get into Oxford and it sort
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: of haunted me. And uh, he said, you know, I'm
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: into all kinds of stuff. Though I'm a smart guy.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: I'm into chronology and astrology, and where said, that's that's
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: very interesting. I'm into testing intelligence, the younger Lancelot said.
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: He said, I was in the army in Britain and
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: we did aptitude testing on troops. I became fascinated by it.
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: When I went to Oxford, I was surrounded by smart people,
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: and I thought it would be really cool to form
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: a high i Q society within a school of people
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: that were already super intelligent. And Burrell said, very interesting, huh.
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: I envisioned him clapping his hands together and saying splendid. Okay,
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: because you left something out about him. One of the
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: things that usually is touted about, um what what Beryl
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: was into a barrel um is that he had a
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: plan to make all men were very brightly colored clothing.
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: I could not, for the life of me find out
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: why or what the point was, but it's yeah, so
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: so so. Barrell said, you know, this is a very
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: great idea. I think we should we should explore this further.
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: And young Lancelot, where post doc UH student at Oxford, said, well,
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: you know, older gentlemen who have only just met on
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: this train. Why don't you come stay with me at
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: Oxford when I get back to school after Christmas break?
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: And Burrell took him up on it, and um, it
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: was there that they hatched the plan for MENSA after
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: Burrell was given an intelligence test UM by Lancelot Where
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: and When when Lancelot Where calculated the results and said,
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: Mr Burrell, you are within the top one percent of
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: all people in terms of intelligence. It's widely reported that
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: Roland Burrell cried because he was so happy and touched
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: by that right and had funding uh to start this
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: thing up, which was key. And so how it really
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: went down was he told them that he cried and said,
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: oh can I see the results? And Where quickly watted
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: them up and said that's not important. Take my word
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: for it. You're in the top one percent. Make the
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: checkout dumoi and Burrell said splendid. Uh. But they needed
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: a name, and like you said, uh, they landed on MENSA.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: I think initially they wanted to call it UM Capital
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: mm E n S, which was short for the Mental
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: Health Society. That's just not even close. No, it's pretty
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: where yeah, where's the h H? And also there was
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: I think a a gentleman's magazine called Men's. Uh that's
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: in scare quotes. And so they said, well, how about mensa, which,
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: like you pointed out, is Latin for table, because I
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: just envisioned its like all these smarty pants sitting around
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: a round table talking about wonderful things. And they said,
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: I guess they said, shut, that's as good a name
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: as any. So originally, if you've ever seen that Simpson's
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: episode where Lisa joins Mensa, UM, I don't remember that one.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: It's it's a pretty good one. Uh. It's a cautionary
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: tale about um mensa, letting an intelligent elite determine the
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: fate of everybody else at the while just completely discounting
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: anyone who's not an intelligent elite, right, Um, And like
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: Comic Book Guy and Dr Hibbert and a couple of
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: other character Sideshow mel, they're all in. They're all in
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: Mensa with her, and they basically take over the town
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: if I'm not mistaken, and it just goes awry, it
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: ends up going terribly awry. Um, But that's kind of
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: originally what Lancelot where and Roland Barrel were, Um, we're
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: envisioning when they founded mensa, this group of the most
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: intelligent uh Britishers Britton's say, yeah, um in in the UK,
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: who would kind of be assembled to be a group
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: that the government or scientific projects or whoever wanted to
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: tap their intelligence could tap their intelligence. That was the
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: original idea for mensah. And by the way, the keen
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: eared listener would have just picked up on my one
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: word impression of Juliu Sibbert. What did you say. I'm
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: not going to repeat. It's got You've gotta be a
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: keen listener man. So, uh, if you heard it, then
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: hats off to you. You're not allowed to rewind if
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: you're listening at home. Can I rewind? You can't rewind.
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: Nobody can rewind. You had to have heard it live,
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: okay okay? Uh And and like two people will have
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: gotten it and one person and the rest of us
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: are all mad. Now, Oh that's okay, I'll do it
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: for you off Mike. Uh So, yeah, they wanted they
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: wanted to kind of from the sounds of it, almost
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: like a Rolodex of Smarties because they wanted to not
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: just have that list, but they even said in their
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: charter they wanted it in the hands of anthropologists and
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: ministers of the crown, like they wanted people that mattered
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: to have this list on hand, like who do who?
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: You know? I need a smart person, let me look
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: at my mental list. Uh. And their goal, I think,
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: did you mention was six d people with their contact
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: information so they could get in touch. And it took
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: them thirteen years uh to get to that. That benchmark
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty nine is when they finally got it.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: And it wasn't until some American ex pats joined in
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: England got written up by the Village Voice in the
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: New York Times that it kind of really started to
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: gain a little bit more traction in the States and
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: then around the world. So it's it's crazy that it
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: took him thirteen years to what because right after that,
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: and I guess it was because of the interest among Americans,
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: UM that initially started out, like you said, with ex pats,
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: and then after a couple of articles captured everybody else's attention,
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: UM that it just took off. Like if you saw
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: a chart, it would look like that hockey stick of
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: um of global warming. I think it is. Remember that
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: from the nineties the hockey stick crash. So that's pretty
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: much what mentsa UM membership would look like it from
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: nineteen sixty UM. And it was largely thanks to a
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: few people UM over the years. But one of the
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: first people who really kind of helped meant to take
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: off as an organization was a guy named John Cardella,
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: who was an American pr guy UM, and he took
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: this group that was almost had like fraternity like origins,
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: like apparently Roland Barrel UM had a uh like part
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: of the early rules was to have a woman seated
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: on a throne wearing a leopard skin and nothing else
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: UM as part of the meetings. Like it was they
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: had that kind of vibe to it. And when Cadella sure,
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: you know, and it kind of Anton LaVey vibe UM.
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: And so when John Cadella UM came in the picture,
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: he like kind of dusted off all that stuff and
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: UM turned it into a legitimate type of organization, definitely
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: legitimized it, if not made it legitimate, right, So in
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: fifty nine they had six hundred. By sixty seven, a
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: mere eight years later, uh, it had swelled up to
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: twelve thousand and change. And uh, you know that he
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: would get people on TV. It was that kind of thing.
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: Like he was a genuine pr guy. So all of
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: a sudden there were MENSA members, some very charismatic that
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: we're being sort of bandied about in articles and on television.
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: Well there's one in particular. He was the chairman, I believe,
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: and he was the guy who I think would go
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: on like Johnny Carson and stuff like that. That's right,
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: that's what I was talking about, Victor. Uh. True. M
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: Sarah Briakoff, I think so I've seen it, seen it
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: compared to or Cerebral. So I think it's Cerebriakoff. Yeah,
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: there's an extra vowel in there that's coming up the works.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: That's right up my alley. Though. Should we take a break, Sure,
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: all right, let's take a break. We'll be right back,
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: all right. So member member MENSA is gaining members very steadily. Uh,
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: it is growing throughout the decades. You could, if you
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: wanted to be a member, you could mail them some money.
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: And I know a cynical view would be like they're
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: just like trying to make money, but it's an organization
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: that that you know, that needs money to run. Um.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: I doubt if they like or have some super rich
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: fund that they dig into but is when you look
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: at the things they do, it's really nothing like super lavish.
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: They don't have like yacht parties and stuff from what
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: I can tell. No, but I've never run across any
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: kind of intimation that it's a money making scheme of
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: any sort. Yeah, I just mean for the listener, like,
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: uh oh yeah, mail them a check and they'll send
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: you a test. But that's how it works. You mail
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: them a check back in the day, they would send
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: you a test um. They I think it was Cerebrakov
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: who said, you know what we can also do is
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: we can have these supervised like actually someone would come
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: and administer a test. Uh, it would be a little
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: more official, might cost a little more money. We need
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: a constitution, so they said, not a bad idea, And
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: if you read their constitution, the three tenants are really
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: pretty great. It's identifying foster human intelligence for the benefit
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: of humanity, no problem there, encourage research in the nature,
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: characteristics and uses of intelligence, check and provide us stimulating
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: in a alectual and social environment for members. Sounds good
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: to me, yeah, of course. And then number four forced
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: breeding of people according to intelligence. Yeah, no problems, right, No,
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: they didn't do that. So UM, there was kind of
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: a heyday. It seems like, uh in the sixties, I think,
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: And apparently there's a lot of attention at first between
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: UK and US and UM. Within just a couple of
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: years of coming on the scene, the Kansas City chapter
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: stage of revolt against the UK headquarters six shooters, and
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: basically I saw that they launched like a poison pen
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: attack where they were right. Yes, they would write the
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: employers of these MENSA like higher ups and like and
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: basically accused them of terrible stuff and and finally got
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: the American chapters to basically be independent and equal UM,
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: and that formed Mensa International. But the sixties were kind
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: of a heyday. The seven seemed to be hohum. And
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: then apparently the eighties took off because UM, from what
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: I saw in this article, and I can't remember what
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: what maybe the independent from it said that the kind
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: of the through line of an organization like MENSA, the
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: idea that some people are just naturally more intelligent than others,
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: really jibes with that Reagan, Thatcher era of mentality of UM,
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: of getting away from the idea that you know you
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: can achieve if you're given the right kind of stuff.
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: It's like, no, you got this problem over here, We
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: got that you know, we're over here. We're not gonna
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: help you, because why would we, Because you're you're beyond help,
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: You're not naturally gifted. That kind of conservative uh thread
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: that was really present in the in the Thatcher Reagan
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: eighties made MENSA a lot more respectable or a lot
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: more appealing during that time from what I saw. Yeah,
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: and I think in England it peaked in the nineties
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: or specifically with about thirty thousand there and now as
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: fewer than twenty thou So, uh, Dave said, you know,
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: some of this might be, you know, the MENSA image
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: problem might be to blame. But you know, it's just
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: one of those organizations. It's gonna have its ups and
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: downs over the years. I'm sure as far as membership numbers,
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, So, um, how do you get in, Chuck,
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: If you want to get into MENSA? What do you do?
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: Hot shot? You bake some cookies for Gina Davis? Sure
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: that doesn't hurt Uh, No, you it's really easy, actually, uh.
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: In in practice, you just need to score within the
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: top two percent of an intelligence test and that it's
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: it's not like you can just take any intelligence test.
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: It depends on UM. Well, I mean, now there's an
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: official MENSA test that that you take, but uh, there
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: are also other i Q tests that can qualify, the
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: Stanford Benet test, the Catel three B test, and I
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: think we should hold off on sort of the the
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: big reveal, the big twist here for another few minutes. Okay, Uh,
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: we'll keep that in her hip pocket. Uh. An official
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: from your country will administer uh their tests to you,
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: and uh it takes a couple hours if you take
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: the official ment to test. These are those If you've
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: ever taken an i Q test, you know it's not
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: like the s A T. It's it's a logic and
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: reasoning test generally. Uh. And the questions are things like, uh,
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: you're you're doing a lot of sequencing, like look at
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: these shapes, which shape would come next? Which number would
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: come next? Uh. It does test verbal intelligence and vocabulary
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: and stuff like that. Math is a part of it,
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: but it's times, which is one of the big sort
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: of not caveats. But the big thing you have to
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: remember is you have to be a good test taker
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: and you have to be able to take tests under
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: pressure time to pressure, right, like that one scene in
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: Swordfish with poor poor Hugh Jackman. I didn't see that.
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: You didn't miss much at all. Ok So, um, that's
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: the standard mentor test menta admissions test. Um. And some
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: people say, well, hold on, if you're a non native
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: English speaker and you're in America, that that's those tests
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: are have been shown to be biased towards certain people,
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: usually based on language. So Mental also administers what's called
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: the culture fair test, and it's nothing like yeah, it's
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: nothing but shapes and symbols and um, you know what
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: what comes next kind of thing. And I took a
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: test like that. It was I think Norwegian in origin,
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: and I got to like question six before I'm like,
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: I have no idea whatsoever what shape would come next.
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: The first few I was like, okay, I can do this,
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: and then it just got so increasingly difficult that I
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: just I just stop. I just had no idea what
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: was next? This recently? You did that for this? Yeah,
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: I was yesterday, um, and I I a little a
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: little blood coming out of my ear. I felt really disoriented,
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: and I woke up in a pool of my own urine. Yeah,
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: you can also take a thirty minute online like MENSA
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: workout thing for free, which is sort of just an
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: amuse bush uh to see if you might want the
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: full deal, the gift of the Chef. I thought about
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: taking one of these for this episode, and then I
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: was like, I don't want to. I don't care. Yeah,
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's that's I think. Another thing too,
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: is like this. This, like taking a test like that
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: is probably up your alley if you're interested in becoming
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: a MENSA member. Yeah. I don't think I'm great at
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: tests like that, And maybe I don't want to know
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: that I am or am not. Maybe I'm just happy
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: with my life. Yeah, I'm happy doing my New York
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: Times cross word and spelling be and playing word all
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: and that's good enough for me. I think that's fine.
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's not like you're proving anything to anybody
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: by becoming a member of MENSA, except maybe to yourself.
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: I tried. I mean, honestly, I was like, oh, that'll
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: be fine. I'll take it, and I'll embarrass myself to
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: our listeners by saying what I scored. And every time
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: I went to do it, I don't want to do this. Yeah,
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: so I didn't do it. So they there's a there's
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: a whole hook to that whole thing. A catch, I
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: guess is what you'd say. If you use the right word. Um.
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: You can take those tests, the Standard test or the
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: culture Fair Test once one time each and if you
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: don't pass, meaning you don't score in the top two
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: percent of the average American UM, you can never take
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: those tests again, like you just have been denied admission
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: into MENSA through those tests. There is another way, there's
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: a back door man way. That is what I think
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: they call all it at MENSA. Yeah, this was the
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: thing we were keeping in our hip pocket. Uh, you
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: don't have to take this test because two thirds two
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: thirds of all members did not take that official MENSA test.
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: They you can also pay a fee. Not just people
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: like what pay like a thousand bucks to get in, No,
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: pay a regular forty dollar fee, and they can accept
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: results from about a hundred and fifty different standardized intelligence
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: tests that they evaluate based on you know, the general population.
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: So they'll basically just say, give us your test that
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: you took, we'll see if you're in the top two percent,
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: and you can get in that way. That's a big
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: back door. It sure is a big backdoor, chuck um
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: so Uh. One of the ways that you could get
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: in is if you qualified for your high school's gifted program,
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: or if you're super smarty pants, your middle school or
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: even elementary school's gifted program. They gave you a bunch
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: of different telligence tests back then. If your school didn't
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: burn down in a fire, it's possible they still have
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: those records and you could have them via a sealed
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: envelope from the school, uh sent to send your your
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: test results. SEMENSA mental will check it out and be like, yeah,
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: you're in, buddy, you're in now. Question about these gifted programs?
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: Does that mean like the AP classes? All right, here's
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: the deal. My friend, I was in AP English and
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: AP History and then when I saw and we'll go
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: ahead and mention this. You can submit your S A
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: T and a C T scores, your g R and
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: your ls ats uh and if between eighty I'm sorry,
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: between seventy four and ninety four, if you scored A twelve,
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: if ye're higher on the S A T, you would
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: get into MENSA even retroactively. Yeah, and buddy, I scored
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: in eleven seventy. I wasn't as far off as I thought. Oh,
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: that's great, you're not in mensa. But that's great. No,
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: but if I would have known that back then, I
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: might have tried a couple of more times. Once I
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: took it once too, I got a ten ninety. That's
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: good too. No, it's it's average. No, no, no, to ninety.
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: I think. I think anything that breaks a thousand is
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: on the higher side, not high high, but it's higher
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: than average, right, I don't. I don't think so. I
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: think that's pretty comfortably right in the middle of average.
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: They don't even score it that way anymore though, right, No,
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: they don't. So up to after ninety four, they won't
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: accept your s a T scores anymore because the s
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: a T switched from testing general intelligence to testing what
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: you've learned in school thus far. So it was like
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: it went from being like an i Q test basically
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: to a um an exit exam for for high school.
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: I think that they changed it would do worse on
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: that kind of tests, actually would have done worse. Yeah,
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: I think I took the intelligence one. I don't remember
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: because it's I definitely took it in well, now, I
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: probably were taking a ninety or I probably would have
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: taken it in like ninety three. I think you would
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: have taken it your sophomore or junior year, right, Yeah,
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: so it's probably that I took it. So I took
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: the the original intelligence test tonight. I got a ten
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: ninety and it doesn't feel great, Chuck. I feel good
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: saying it out loud, but it doesn't feel great. Uh. Well,
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: that got I mean that was back then very easy
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: to get into the University of Georgia. It's a lot
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: harder now. They've really tightened tightened it down. Yeah, because
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: of the Hope grant, which started the year I started
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: to try to get in. So it got hard to
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: get into Georgia the year that I started to try.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: And I gotta tell you so when I showed up
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: with my ten ninety s A T score keep walking Pale,
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: did you do you remember your high school g p A?
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: What are you bleating the fist? I don't even know
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: what that is. I don't remember my g p A.
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: I want to say it was, it wasn't. I mean,
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: my brother I think was a four, oh, of course,
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: but I think I was like a three two or something.
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: Both threes. I mean it was pretty slightly above average,
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: because I would think mine was probably lower than that. Like,
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: I was not at all interested in school. I liked history,
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: I thought earth science was pretty cool. It wasn't until
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: I got to college and wanted to like go to college.
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: I just suddenly, like turned from Saul to Paul all
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: of a sudden as far as college is concerned, and
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: just completely started to take things seriously and got interested
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: in learning. And it was then that I started to
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: become like a four oh student in college, not not
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: at all in high school for a student. Uh well,
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: I went to some easy colleges the way to Georgia.
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: Well my deal was I and I still am like this.
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: I have a hard time tackling anything with enthusiasm that
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: don't want to do. So I've always been that way
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: since I was a kid. And so in my English
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: classes I made A S and B S. And in
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: my non major classes, not all of them, but the
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: ones I wasn't super into, I made C S and
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: a D or two. Oh yeah, I have those under
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: my belt too, especially math. And it wasn't because I
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: wouldn't try. I just genuinely couldn't get math. And one
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: of the best things I ever did as far as
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: math is concerned, was I took geometry twice in high
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: school and the second time it just clicked, like I understood,
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: Like I was walking around like I was Pythagoras. All
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: of a sudden at high school. I just understood geometry
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: that second time around. It was really cool. It was
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: a great feeling to to just have something like that
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: click that was so foreign, it's so difficult before, all
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: of a sudden, I just understood it the second time around. Well,
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: and we went to school in an era when boy,
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: there were not a lot of accommodations made for different
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: kinds of learning at all, much less different learning disabilit
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: at ease, and uh, it was just it was a
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: different time. There's so much better now about you know.
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: Every kid learns in their own way, and uh, and
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: we can try and accommodate that. And then a lot
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: of schools, not every school obviously, still a lot of
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: work to be done. Yeah, I can't remember. I guess
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: it was probably the NBC Nightly News, the National News.
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: They have like a sweet human interest story like at
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: the end of every every show, and they had one
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: recently and it was about an integrated school in that
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: like they didn't separate kids with like learning disabilities or
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: um um physical uh, I don't even know what you
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: call it differences, thank you um and kids who don't
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: have those, Like they were all in the same class together,
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: and I was like, holy cow, it's a huge improvement,
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: you know, because they used to be like if you
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: had facial differences and no cognitive disability whatsoever, just facial differences,
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: they would put you in a class with Yeah. I mean,
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: like it was like the dark cages in the eighties
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: and nineties even you know when we were in school. Um,
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: but the like now they're just integrating kids, at least
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: in this one school. I thought it was so cool.
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: But it was based on this Instagram post where this, uh,
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: this little kid, I think he was probably about five
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: or six, has cerebral palsy and he just had a
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: little friend who was a girl who was the same age,
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: who just loved him like like and just played with them.
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: They were like best friends. She didn't seem to treat
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: him any differently than she did any of the other kids.
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: But it's just like so touched her mom. She posted
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: on Instagram. Of course, it went viral and it was
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: a sweet story. But I just thought it was really remarkable,
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: and I was really glad to hear that. Now they're
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: just like integrating kids by age level, not and not
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: separating them by anything else. So hats off to school
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: districts doing that. The final kind of test we should
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: mention that can get you in uh as. If you
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: were in the military prior to night you might be
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: able to use your aptitude tests that you took back then.
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: Now they do more vocational aptitude testing, but back pre
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: eight they would do intelligence testing and you can use
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: some of those if you did. You want to take
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: a break and then talk about what you do if
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: you get into MENSA. Let's do it, okay, Chuck, so um,
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: let's see if you get into MENSA. There's a lot
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: of things people do. One thing people do is take
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: the test, say I'm in MENSA, and like you know,
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: congratulate themselves for a couple of weeks and that's it.
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: Other people like join MENSA because they have this sense
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: and rightfully so that they will probably meet a lot
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: of people like them who are smart, probably really like games,
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: really like trivia, really like Star Trek. That is not
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: a stereotype that is for real, Um, might be into nudism,
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: might really love beer, just stuff that you would have
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: like an interest in. But if you if you wanted
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: to hang out with other high i Q people who
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: have interests in that, you could do worse than joining MENSA.
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: I think. Yeah, Um, you have to be an active member.
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: You have to keep up with your dues, which you're
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: seventy nine bucks a year. Uh, And it's they have
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: not a sliding scale, but they have a if you
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: sign up for and pay multiple years at a time,
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: you can get that number down by average and stuff
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: like that. Or you can pay for like a lifetime
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: membership pro rated by your age if you want to
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: pay all at once and save some money. But the
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: dues are seventy nine bucks a year. And then like
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: you said, there are are they're what they're called special
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: interest groups. If you want to um drill down in
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: your local area and be a member of like the
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: MENSA Investment Club is a really popular one where imagine
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: people sit around and talk about finances in smart ways
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: to take care of your money. Um, it's like any
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: other you know, local group that you you know, there's
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: probably a MENSA Knitting group. Uh, it's just it's just
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: that you're meeting with people that are like minded and
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: that they're all good at take their high Q and
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: they're good at taking those kind of tests right, right.
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: And again, if you want some like unkind um characterizations
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: of you know, what it's like at some of these,
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: like you, you can just throw a rock on the
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: internet and you'll find some article about somebody who like
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: took the MENSA test and ended up at a MENSA
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: meet up and now they're writing about it, but they're
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: not really a member kind of thing. There's plenty of
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: stuff out there, but suffice to say that like these
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: are just there're people who really like board games and
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: really like um uh beer and are probably like really
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: sexually active to a surprising degree. Um. And one thing
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: I saw, Chuck that seems to be genuine is that
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: there is a kind of a libertarian, right leaning bent
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: that seems to be fairly common in the mental world. Yeah,
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: and the modern mental world. I've seen that in more
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: place than one. Uh. And you know, I, like you said,
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: someone will go to one of these conferences and then
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: do a write up about it and say, like there
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: was a lot of drinking late night. There was a
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: lot of people hooking up. It's sort of like any
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: conference you would go to again, except they're made up
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: of people that are good at taking this kind of test.
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: But there there usually is some sort of mention of like, yeah,
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: there seemed to be a sort of right wing bent
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: two uh, and again there's a hundred fifty thousand members.
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: That's a generalization, but at least that's what's being written. Yeah. So, UM,
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: the the big deal gathering that they have every year,
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: the big conference is called the Annual Gathering the a
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: g UM. Last year they had one for it was
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: like a world gathering because it was the seventy five
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: anniversary of Mensas founding UM and they had that in
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: Houston of all places. UM. So one is coming up
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: in July. It's at the Golden Nugget in Sparks, Reno, Nevada,
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: and they're having the Hidden Figures author Margaret Lee Shadow Lee,
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: who's I think she is the keynote who's going to
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: speak about Hidden Figures. There's also a drag show during
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: a breakfast brunch UM I probably on Saturday or Sunday. UM.
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: And then the other thing they're going to do is drink, drink,
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: play games, drink and drink. I think is what what
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: else is going to go on at the a G
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: It's really interesting. There are other smaller get together as.
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: There's one called the UH Colloquium, which is an annual thing.
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: It's just one day and it's you know, they'll have
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: like themed topics at this one, like crime scene intelligence
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: would be one. Uh. There are mind Games, which is
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: a four day board game extravaganza where people this is
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: since nineteen they get together and play board games and
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: You're a game can actually qualify as MENSA select on
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: the label if they deem it. So so technically the
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: stuff you should know board game uh might be played
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: at the mind Games conference that it might even get
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: that stamp one day. Yeah, you never know, you never know.
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: I mean Apples to Apples, got it? And our game
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: is at least as popular as that. Yeah, Taboo, got it? Yeah,
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: it's categories uh. And then there's Culture Quest. It's obviously
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: MENSA members are probably generally into stuff like trivia, and
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: there's a trivia Dave calls it a trivia throw down
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: where they play trivia games against one another. So one
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: of the other things about MENTA that it's well known
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: for at their meetups is that people will wear name
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: tags UM, third try and the the There'll be a dot,
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: a colored dot next to their UM their name, and
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: depending on the color of the dot, it indicates how
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: welcoming they are toward hugs from other people. And this,
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: by the way, is like this has been going on
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: for a while. This is kind of like a longstanding
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: Mensa tradition. It is very forward thinking because frankly, we
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: could all kind of use the green dots or the
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: hug dot system. Yeah. I mean a lot of people.
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: I'm a hugger, but a lot of people don't like
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: to be hugged. And it's, uh, it's one of these
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: things I just learned m in the past few years
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: that like with uh, with choosing what you do with
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: your body and what people do to your body, that
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: you shouldn't just go up and hug somebody. Mm hmm.
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: That's you know, it's just not some people genuinely don't
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: like that kind of human contact. And it's not like
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: I go up and just like tackle everyone I see, Like,
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: I don't think I've ever uh, I don't think I've
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: ever been in a situation, in a situation where I
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: made someone uncomfortable anything like that. But it's good to
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: realize that, like, yeah, not everyone is into the same
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: level of human contact and you shouldn't put your norm
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: on them. And they have a very elegant way of
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: doing that with these green dots and yellow dots or
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: red dots or blue dots. Yeah, green is all. Hugs
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: are welcome. Yellow chugs ask before hugging, Well, that's chuck. Now,
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: red dot, no hugs at all, that's you. Blue Yeah,
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: it should say burns like acid. Blue dot means I'm single.
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: I think that means more than I'm single. You know what.
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: I think that means like lead with your hips when
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: you're hugging. Yeah, I think so. So what else, Chuck,
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: What else do we have to say about MENA? Well,
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: I mean, I think we've talked about their image problem
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: a bit. Like you said that you can throw a
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: rock on the internet and and open almost any article
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: and you will see someone bagging on mensa, uh in
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: kind of a snotty way. And I don't know, man,
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: the more I read about it, the more I just thought,
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: you know what, these are probably a lot of these
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: people probably got teased growing up because they may be
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: fairly bookish, and uh like stop now, like your adults
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: don't continue this sort of bullying in in newspapers by saying, yeah,
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: I went to these things and it was a bunch
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: of dorks playing board games and trying to get laid.
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: Like they literally say that stuff in these articles. They do,
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: and so I don't think it's just out of meanness.
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: I think whether they're picking up on it um unconsciously
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: or overtly, um, it's the people who write those kind
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: of articles typically are not right leaning, so they're picking
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: up on that right leaning undercurrent. And then they're also
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: they're also kind of pointing to like some disturbing and
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: alarming and just straight up gross ideas that people from
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: MENSA have supported over the years or at least proposed um.
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: And so like, when you take a group that focuses
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: on i Q and inherently suggests that some people are
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: superior to others, that can lead you to all sorts
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: of like unsavory rabbit holes. And some people on MENSA
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: or or parliaments are not afraid to like go down
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: those rabbit holes and discuss them and talk about them
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: free speech is a huge, huge, um thing among mentions,
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: and they very much resent not being able to say
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: whatever they want to say. UM. So it's it's it's
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: with those articles. It's revealing there's like a culture clash
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: between the person who's writing the article and the mentions
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: that that are like the foil to them. That seems
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: to be like the crux of those articles. Yeah, and
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: there was a lot of news made UM kind of
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: more recently when a comedian named Jamie Loftus, who by
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: the way, has a podcast on our network called The
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: Bechtel Cast Great Show, Movie Show, UM. Jamie's comedian who
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: did a four part episode called My Year in Mensa
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: where she joined Mensa. UM. I think the story was
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: sort of just took the test one morning while hungover
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: and then didn't have a good experience and became the target.
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: There's this Facebook group, a mensa Facebook group that's a
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: moderated called Firehouse, which can be very unkind and I
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: think she uh loft has had a bad experience there
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: and again with the sort of alt right undercurrent, and
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: so that's what the basis of that podcast was. So
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: I'm certainly not defending that stuff. You know, so yeah,
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: I mean no, anytime anybody's attacked online that sucks. Um.
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: But Dave I think kind of discovered like the genuine
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: criticism that you could level against MENSA as a whole,
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: and that is they're basing everything on i Q and
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: i Q tests test a certain kind of smartness, completely
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: leaves out things like emotional intelligence, street smarts, Yeah, that
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: kind of stuff like, um, like it's a group of
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: people who do really well on aptitude tests. Who it's
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: a society of people who do really well on aptitude tests,
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: and like the idea that they're joining the ranks of
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: people who are in the top two percent of that
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: group of people, that type of person So um, the
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: fact that it's it's kind of bandied about is like
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: the the the society for intelligent people. Um, it kind
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: of misses a lot. But he also points out that
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: they don't build themselves as that they build themselves as
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: the high i Q society, which is a much narrower definition.
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: And if you take it on its face value, then
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: that makes sense. But most people out in the general
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: public who hear about MENSA don't kind of differentiate between
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: those two things. And if you get a hundred and
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: fifty in of any people together in a group. Uh,
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: you're gonna have a couple of hundred that are pretty
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: bad people that do bad things on Facebook. Um. So
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: it's like, I just have a hard time sometimes when
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: entire organizations get lumped in because of it. I don't
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: want to say a few bad apples, but just the
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: actions of of what's clearly a minority. Sure you know
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: what I mean. Yeah, except Nazis. Yeah, yeah, they were
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: nothing but bad apples. That's right. Uh, Well, if you
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: want to know more about mental you can start poking
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: around the internet. And uh, since I said you can
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: start poking around the internet, that means it's time for
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: a listener mail. I'm gonna call this a young listener. Hey, guys,
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: brand new listener to the show. I first heard about
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: you through the new book, which I checked out of
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: the library a day the day before my baby was born.
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: After my has been returned to work, I was trying
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: to figure out a way to get the baby to
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: sleep and tried reading to her. So I picked up
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: stuff you should know, hoping the soothings out of my
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: voice would laller to sleep. And that is all My
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: husband walked in on me reading about Jack of ORKI
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: into a three week old and put a temporary moratorium
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: on reading to her. Uh, I think that's probably a joke. Um, well,
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: I was hooked, and now that I've returned to work,
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: I'm going through the backlog of episodes and learning while
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: in the car. Thanks for helping me get through that
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: postpartum period, Jessica. That's fantastic. I'm glad you're bringing them up,
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: young Jessica. Thanks you ver very much, and congratulations on
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: your little gift to the world. Yes, that's right. Well,
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: if you want to be like Jessica and let us
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: know about your late night um readings or listenings or
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: goings on or anything like that, or if you've had
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: experiences in MENSA. If you're a member of MENSA, we
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: want to hear from you. You can send us an
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: email to Stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio.
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the I heart
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: favorite shows. H