Speaker 1: Is that smarts. Hi. My name is Jamie Loftus, and
Speaker 1: this is the first episode of My Year in Mensa,
Speaker 1: a four part podcast series about that time I joined
Speaker 1: Mensa as a joke and then nearly got kicked out
Speaker 1: of it after getting targeted by a secret Facebook group.
Speaker 1: There's obviously more to it than that, but I've got
Speaker 1: to get you interested now. I want to be clear
Speaker 1: that I am not doing this podcast series too strictly
Speaker 1: dunk on the mensines. I will be dunking on them occasionally,
Speaker 1: but I'm more doing this to analyze how these sorts
Speaker 1: of groups came to be in the first place and
Speaker 1: sort of what they have evolved into. Because it definitely
Speaker 1: did start as a dumb joke on my part, but people,
Speaker 1: unfortunately contain multitudes awful and so what I'm gonna do
Speaker 1: is take you through the story via my experiences and
Speaker 1: then go back in time to trace the history of
Speaker 1: these organizations and ultimately figure out what the fucking point
Speaker 1: of any of it was in the first place. And
Speaker 1: if you are listening from Mensa right now, Hi, maybe
Speaker 1: we've met before, maybe we haven't. Um. I hope you
Speaker 1: enjoyed this, and congratulations and doing well on that test once.
Speaker 1: So before we unpack this ship show as a whole.
Speaker 1: Hot is MENSA. I'm glad you asked. I have a
Speaker 1: prepared answer. MENSA is a high i Q organization founded
Speaker 1: in the UK and that requires that members take a
Speaker 1: test for admission or submit test scores within i Q
Speaker 1: beginning at one thirty two, then pay about seventy five
Speaker 1: and member dus a year and hopefully participate in local activities.
Speaker 1: So you know, it's it's a smart people club and
Speaker 1: people absolutely love to make fun of it. I used
Speaker 1: to love making fun of it, and now it just
Speaker 1: makes me tired to think about. But in short, MENSA
Speaker 1: is the most popular high i Q club on the planet.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna be skipping around in time, gonna go
Speaker 1: a little memento on this one. So we're gonna make
Speaker 1: a really fun turn the page noise. Listen to this
Speaker 1: noise I found online. Oh so bear that in mind.
Speaker 1: All right, podcast is starting to the disclaimer at the top.
Speaker 1: Let's hit a little a light music bed just to
Speaker 1: ease us in. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I have a degree
Speaker 1: in radio production and and here I am using it
Speaker 1: for the first time, and so to be clear, All
Speaker 1: of the names in this story, even ones that it
Speaker 1: agreed to or previously one on the record, have been changed.
Speaker 1: We're just keeping it clean here. So MENSA has three purposes,
Speaker 1: which are outlined in its constitution. According to the MENSA
Speaker 1: website this year, they are one to identify and foster
Speaker 1: human intelligence for the benefit of humanity. Two to encourage
Speaker 1: research into the nature, characteristics, and uses of intelligence, and
Speaker 1: three to provide a stimulating intellectual and social environment for
Speaker 1: its members. So we're gonna jump around in time a
Speaker 1: little bit. So we're gonna start towards the end on
Speaker 1: July four, day one of the MENSA Annual Gathering. M
Speaker 1: you do have to question the intelligence of anyone who
Speaker 1: holds a week long conference in Arizona in July, But hey,
Speaker 1: this event was planned by some of the brightest minds
Speaker 1: in the world. I'm told Jamie right. I've been at
Speaker 1: the MENSA Annual Gathering in Phoenix, officially titled MENSA Rising
Speaker 1: for all of five minutes, and one of the few
Speaker 1: faces I recognized from the mostly forgotten high i Q
Speaker 1: Society has already spotted me. It's ten thirty in the
Speaker 1: morning on the fourth of July and my sweat from
Speaker 1: the walkover hasn't dried at and I'm sort of slumping
Speaker 1: in the back of one of the Sheraton Grands millions
Speaker 1: of beige conference rooms. There's a speaker at the front
Speaker 1: for the Afrodds Acts Forbidden Food and Beverages talk, and
Speaker 1: he's going on about millennials in their avocado toast, and
Speaker 1: there's a room full of medicines who are just laughing
Speaker 1: it up. And as I said, joining this group was
Speaker 1: supposed to be a joke originally, but here I am
Speaker 1: full year later, traveling seven hours by greyhound to try
Speaker 1: and take it seriously. So who is the victim of
Speaker 1: the joke? But this guy and I started conversation and
Speaker 1: I whisper yeah and angle my body away because I'm
Speaker 1: sweaty and it's Arizona. He's quick to remind me of
Speaker 1: his name and standing as the second most blocked, reviled,
Speaker 1: and harassed member of an American MENSA Facebook group, the
Speaker 1: unmoderated chaotic online landscape that is cursed and fascinated me
Speaker 1: for over a year. It's called Firehouse, and I incidentally
Speaker 1: am the number one blocked member, even though I've only
Speaker 1: posted there twice. In fourteen months. At an average MENSA
Speaker 1: annual gathering, about two thousand members of American Mensa, which
Speaker 1: hold more than fifty thousand members as of this recording,
Speaker 1: attend the organization's city of choice, and I would estimate
Speaker 1: that about four hundred of them in Phoenix know exactly
Speaker 1: who I am and have a strong opinion about me
Speaker 1: one way or the other. So the man I'm talking to,
Speaker 1: who I'm going to refer to as two, is a
Speaker 1: self described communist originally from Puerto Rico and is one
Speaker 1: of the few people in the MENSA endorsed group that
Speaker 1: regularly posts about radical left politics, only to be excoriated
Speaker 1: by the majority conservative and far right leanings in that community.
Speaker 1: Hasn't been bad so far, he says, saying that he
Speaker 1: met some of the far right group members that he
Speaker 1: regularly spars with the night before. He shares an anecdote
Speaker 1: of an older white woman telling him in a black
Speaker 1: man that Donald Trump is a better speaker than Barack Obama,
Speaker 1: which okay, and he sounds equally annoyed and entertained when
Speaker 1: he's telling me this, You feeling okay about being here?
Speaker 1: And while I'm improvising a lie about how I think
Speaker 1: this will actually be really good for me. There's a
Speaker 1: deep sense of dread, just like adding another layer of
Speaker 1: sweat to my body, because I am genuinely pretty nervous
Speaker 1: to be here, and it's not entirely paranoia. There was
Speaker 1: an internal poll of who is the most despised mencin
Speaker 1: and Firehouse, and I won by an absolute landslide, although
Speaker 1: because I'm blocked by most of the people in the group,
Speaker 1: I couldn't witness the victory personally, and feeling nervous around
Speaker 1: a group of two thousand random smart people does sound
Speaker 1: a little far fetched, but there's already a low humming
Speaker 1: of safety concerns surrounding this event. The annual gathering in
Speaker 1: Indianapolis was a pr disaster, ending with one arrest, allegations
Speaker 1: of harassment that it resulted in a man being banned
Speaker 1: from a part of the event space, and two members
Speaker 1: reporting that their drinks had been drugged after official bartenders
Speaker 1: had gone off duty. And believe me, the smarts know
Speaker 1: how to party, and the smarts fiercely protect their own.
Speaker 1: So the backtrack. A little over a year ago, I
Speaker 1: tested into the High i Q Mental Society as an
Speaker 1: overpriced joke for a satirical column that I was writing,
Speaker 1: and the whole admittedly underthought idea was to just kind
Speaker 1: of make fun of what I thought then to be
Speaker 1: an outdated organization of people who had paid these steep
Speaker 1: dues to announce that they were smarter than of the planet.
Speaker 1: So too jokey columns into this conceived project. The online
Speaker 1: trolls of Firehouse discovered my writing and just attacked from
Speaker 1: every angle and for any woman who has expressed an
Speaker 1: opinion online before, I received what I think most would
Speaker 1: consider the starter pack of like online harassment, so middling
Speaker 1: insults about my appearance, guessing who's dick I had sucked
Speaker 1: to get such and such job, demands that I be
Speaker 1: removed from the group and was unfit to be there
Speaker 1: at all, and what most of our house insists to
Speaker 1: this day was a death threat presented as a joke
Speaker 1: because the prevalent idea in this group, The argument then
Speaker 1: and the argument now, is that who you are online
Speaker 1: is not who you are in real life. So after
Speaker 1: posting a few of these comments to my Twitter last
Speaker 1: October without the names redacted, an action I have lived
Speaker 1: to regret. In the preceding months, the satirical column was off,
Speaker 1: and it sort of had to be because the high
Speaker 1: browed dorks I thought I was making fun of it
Speaker 1: didn't actually exist. When it comes down to it, mensa
Speaker 1: is a group of thousands of people who did well
Speaker 1: on a test one time, and the rest is completely unpredictable.
Speaker 1: The people I've interacted with online and in real life
Speaker 1: this past year are protective, They're more right leaning than
Speaker 1: I could have imagined, and they are highly effective organizers
Speaker 1: of the occasional online mob. Sometimes their families who are
Speaker 1: trying to have something in common with each other, and
Speaker 1: sometimes they're older, single people who are seeking community, and
Speaker 1: sometimes there are people from remote areas looking to just
Speaker 1: meet up with other smart people to relate with. There're
Speaker 1: sometimes impossibly kind and other times alarmingly not so. A
Speaker 1: lot of them are misfits, and some of them are
Speaker 1: on the autism spectrum. And at least one lunged and
Speaker 1: accused me of being a spy and a share it
Speaker 1: and suite where a cardboard cutout of Donald Trump was
Speaker 1: looming in the background at one in the morning on
Speaker 1: the fourth of July, and at least one comforted me
Speaker 1: for an hour after that happened. The Mendicines contain fucking
Speaker 1: multitudes and they're more complex than I ever gave them
Speaker 1: credit for, and for that I would suffer. So after
Speaker 1: the organized blocking and harassment campaigns against me started last fall,
Speaker 1: I stopped making fun of the Mentions who did not
Speaker 1: exist and started reporting on the Mentions that did. Going
Speaker 1: to their annual conference called the Annual Gathering in Phoenix
Speaker 1: is what I hope will be my last stop and
Speaker 1: a to finally understand them, as many members have requested
Speaker 1: I do, instead of making fun of them, which is fair,
Speaker 1: and to be clear, I was not here to cause
Speaker 1: any sort of commotion or really rock the boat in
Speaker 1: any way. Uh. Eric Andre already did that, and he
Speaker 1: did it way funnier than I would have, so I
Speaker 1: was truly just there. I'll play you a thing from
Speaker 1: eric Andre's episode. Anyways, Hey guys, I'm here for they
Speaker 1: can mention. Well, I have a I have a fo Q.
Speaker 1: I'm in super Men, So okay, well let me just
Speaker 1: go on this board and I read quick very wait
Speaker 1: wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait how high
Speaker 1: is the guy? Wait? Wait wait wait? I have questions? Question?
Speaker 1: And is that the best? Yes, but it wasn't what
Speaker 1: I was trying to do here. So no, this is
Speaker 1: not an outsider story of random millennial inserting themselves somewhere
Speaker 1: they don't belong and making fun of it. And trust me,
Speaker 1: I was alive and I've written those stories. I didn't
Speaker 1: spend seven d dollars of my own money to come
Speaker 1: to Phoenix in July to tease two thousand people that
Speaker 1: hate me. I was actually invited. The member of Firehouse
Speaker 1: who invited me insisted, as is the company line, that
Speaker 1: I needed to meet them mentions in real life instead
Speaker 1: of judging them from their direct online death threats. And
Speaker 1: so for one second, let's return to that conference room
Speaker 1: on the fourth of July. Two says he's going to
Speaker 1: go to a different talk after growing board with the
Speaker 1: speaker regaling us on the horny properties of chocolate. I stay,
Speaker 1: and I pushed myself up against the wall, and as
Speaker 1: I'm writing a few things down on a pad of
Speaker 1: paper that has the mental logo just burning at the top,
Speaker 1: one of the favorite insults directed at me and Firehouse
Speaker 1: over the past year is just like pulsing through my
Speaker 1: head and it goes like this, I am a mentioned
Speaker 1: the comment says towards the end of a multi paragraph taunt,
Speaker 1: so presumably not a total idiot. M all right, I'm
Speaker 1: taking you back a full year to summer when I
Speaker 1: first decided to take the MENSA test. And I'm sorry
Speaker 1: if you're feeling time jump whiplash, but you know, keep
Speaker 1: up smarty. You know, mensa means stupid lady in Spanish,
Speaker 1: right like crazy lady. This is my friend MICHAELA. And
Speaker 1: we're drunk on those hangover in a bottle shandies they
Speaker 1: sell at CVS the night before I take the MENSA
Speaker 1: admission test. And at this time I did not know
Speaker 1: that mensa meant stupid lady in Spanish, nor that I
Speaker 1: would be reminded of this once a week by someone
Speaker 1: or other for the next year, because it didn't matter
Speaker 1: to me what MENSA meant. Really, the point of what
Speaker 1: I was doing was to not get in and dump
Speaker 1: on the whole experience and in six hundred words or less,
Speaker 1: for what I considered to be my birthright as a
Speaker 1: millennial woman, which is of course an underpaid personal experiences
Speaker 1: column on a Middle and culture website. The concept of
Speaker 1: a pay to play high i Q society is ripe
Speaker 1: to be fun of, and a lot of people have
Speaker 1: done it before. So as we kept drinking and watching
Speaker 1: King of the Hill, I built out my flawed vision
Speaker 1: of who I thought Amensum member was. So I thought
Speaker 1: all men, for sure, fiscally conservative, ideologically liberal, just solving
Speaker 1: puzzles and discussing the comedic merits of the Big Bang theory.
Speaker 1: And this is all wrong except for the last part
Speaker 1: mentions love the Big Bang theory and they're not funny.
Speaker 1: What I had not considered was that having sixty dollars
Speaker 1: and the willingness to wake up on a Sunday to
Speaker 1: take the test at all made me a perfect candidate
Speaker 1: for this group. My entire generation has been hardwired to
Speaker 1: excel at standardized tests at the expense of all else.
Speaker 1: And to be honest, I had been taking practice tests
Speaker 1: in secret because I'm very insecure, and because I wasn't
Speaker 1: having a lot of sex at this time. Besides, at
Speaker 1: this time, I thought that the concept of i Q
Speaker 1: tests had been proven over and over to be elitist
Speaker 1: pseudo science designed to elevate a group who were good
Speaker 1: at multiple choice tests and deciding that makes them intellectually superior.
Speaker 1: Was this assumption as far off as my first picture
Speaker 1: of a mention was. Well, like so many parts of
Speaker 1: this story, that's a complicated question. There's rumblings of talk
Speaker 1: about the role of i Q tests throughout history and
Speaker 1: the high i Q societies that have sprung into occasional
Speaker 1: relevancy over the past hundred years or so. So it's
Speaker 1: kind of hard to say. And the mensine I was
Speaker 1: picturing would probably tell you to look at the evidence
Speaker 1: and decide for yourself. The actual medicine might just tell
Speaker 1: you what they think with little or no sourcing whatsoever,
Speaker 1: which is why I feel comfortable telling you that I
Speaker 1: think i Q testing is still more or less bullshit
Speaker 1: does more harm than it does goods. But please, perceived medicine,
Speaker 1: decide for yourself. So before we can talk about the test,
Speaker 1: we have to talk about how and why the test exists.
Speaker 1: I know, I'm sorry, but we need to do it,
Speaker 1: interrupting this biased gonzo piece to lay out some facts.
Speaker 1: So there's a great podcast released as an offshoot of
Speaker 1: Radio Lab called g Show, which examines the perception of
Speaker 1: the idea of general intelligence. And I'm gonna start by
Speaker 1: citing an episode called the Miseducation of Larry p which
Speaker 1: is an in depth look at how i Q tests
Speaker 1: have been used to racially discriminate, beginning with its inception
Speaker 1: in the early nineteen hundreds and into now they were
Speaker 1: culturally specific to European Americans. This is black psychologist Brandon
Speaker 1: Gamble talking to Radio Lab in the episode, and he
Speaker 1: goes on to explain that contemporary i Q tests were
Speaker 1: designed using only white children as the control group. Now,
Speaker 1: to be clear, MENSA does not use the conventional i
Speaker 1: Q test that the criminal justice system, the NFL, and
Speaker 1: American schools used, but the tenants of the test are identical.
Speaker 1: It asks the question are you smarter than the average person?
Speaker 1: And what does that mean? Our MENSA heads you use
Speaker 1: the rate or r a I T scale that measures
Speaker 1: the following categories. You can you can ask me what
Speaker 1: these categories mean or to me, they all kind of
Speaker 1: sound like the same thing. Crystallized intelligence, fluid intelligence, total intelligence,
Speaker 1: quantitative intelligence, total battery intelligence. That sounds like a car.
Speaker 1: And they have you take the Wonderlock Cognitive ability test.
Speaker 1: And as far as I know, there is no precise
Speaker 1: way to translate your mental scores into a traditional i
Speaker 1: Q number score. But the mental website specifies that if
Speaker 1: a member is hoping to join based on a previously
Speaker 1: taken test, the lowest Binet i Q score accepted is
Speaker 1: one thirty two And right, Banet, I should tell you
Speaker 1: who that is. The originator of the i Q tests
Speaker 1: upon which all of these societies are built is French
Speaker 1: psychologist Alfred Binet, who spent his life studying how children
Speaker 1: learn over time. I'm getting with the inch music, but
Speaker 1: I mean, what if I stuck to it? Maybe I will,
Speaker 1: and devised an exam that would theoretically reflect how the
Speaker 1: student was learning based on an average for their age.
Speaker 1: So if a six year old got a score of
Speaker 1: one hundred on a Binet test, that would mean that
Speaker 1: a six year old was comprehending at the rate of
Speaker 1: Benet's average six year old, and a higher or lower
Speaker 1: score would indicate proficiency on either side. However, and this
Speaker 1: is very important, Benet's i Q test was not designed
Speaker 1: to be exceptionalist in nature, and by exceptionalists in nature,
Speaker 1: I mean you know, it wasn't invented for bragging rights
Speaker 1: or as a value judgment on a person at all,
Speaker 1: which is something that virtually every high i Q society misses.
Speaker 1: It was not a test that was designed to say
Speaker 1: this is how smart you are forever, and you should
Speaker 1: consider yourself better or worse. It was supposed to be
Speaker 1: a reflection of where you're learning is at in a
Speaker 1: specific moment. And this distinction is something that MENSA and
Speaker 1: all societies like it have completely ignored. High ACCU society's
Speaker 1: view intelligence as a permanent and never fluctuating state of being,
Speaker 1: rather than just a reflection of how you took a
Speaker 1: test at one point in your life, the scores of
Speaker 1: which could reflect a circumstance or a relationship to the
Speaker 1: style and content of a single test. And Benet himself
Speaker 1: was adamant on the fact that a score on his
Speaker 1: test was not an enduring statement on what a person's
Speaker 1: intelligence was. In ben I read a book called and
Speaker 1: Get Ready for an incredible French accent les Ideas Mont,
Speaker 1: and he said the following. Some recent philosophers seem to
Speaker 1: have given their moral approval to these deplorable verdicts that
Speaker 1: affirmed that the intelligence of an individual is a fixed quantity,
Speaker 1: a quantity that cannot be augmented. We must protest and
Speaker 1: react against this brutal pessimism. We must try to demonstrate
Speaker 1: that it is founded on nothing. So that's Benet's take.
Speaker 1: You can get an accuse score, but it's not a
Speaker 1: statement on who you are forever. It's a statement on
Speaker 1: where you're at right now. And his work in stating
Speaker 1: that intelligence was not fixed was more or less completely
Speaker 1: undone by a British psychologist named Charles Spearman, who noticed
Speaker 1: that if someone performed well in one section of a
Speaker 1: Benet test, they tended to do well in the other
Speaker 1: sections as well, and Spearman ended up describing this observation
Speaker 1: as general intelligence. Under Spearman's logic, the amount of general
Speaker 1: intelligence every person has is a fixed, unchangeable amount. And
Speaker 1: not coincidentally, Charles Spearman was a eugenicist, and this fixation
Speaker 1: on eugenics, which if you've managed to not have to
Speaker 1: interact with the idea, it is a proven false pseudoscience
Speaker 1: concept that states that the shape of the skull indicates
Speaker 1: your intelligence. Charles Spearman believed this strongly, as did Men's
Speaker 1: A co founder Roland Beryl, as do a lot of
Speaker 1: racist people on the Internet. Unfortunately, Spearman started to introduce
Speaker 1: this idea of general intelligence and the idea that i
Speaker 1: Q is fixed right after Bannet dies. So Spearman's work
Speaker 1: in the nineteen tens led to Bonet's i Q test
Speaker 1: to be used for purposes that were the complete opposite
Speaker 1: of its intent. And because Spearman just happened to start
Speaker 1: spouting this bullshit right after Bannet died, Banet was not
Speaker 1: able to call him from wherever dead people go to
Speaker 1: correct it. The eugenics movement that Spearman believed in would
Speaker 1: use a low i Q score under the idea of
Speaker 1: intelligence being fixed, as an excuse to separate, discriminate against,
Speaker 1: and even euthanize those that the test considered inferior. And
Speaker 1: there's many examples of this happening in America any episode
Speaker 1: of the Radio lab G series called Unfit, which discusses
Speaker 1: the role of euthanization based on arbitrary and frequently biased
Speaker 1: i Q tests, as well as the America and bugfeed
Speaker 1: Bell Supreme Court decision which stated that the compulsory sterilization
Speaker 1: of the quote intellectually disabled for the protection and health
Speaker 1: of the state unquote was not unconstitutional. That is to say,
Speaker 1: in certain cases, the i Q test could kill you
Speaker 1: Menso wasn't founded until the nineteen forties, but its co founder,
Speaker 1: Roland Barrel, was an Australian expatriate whose interests included the
Speaker 1: pseudo science of phrenology, a variant of which is used
Speaker 1: as part of the logic that in cells used today
Speaker 1: to incite violence against women, and was rehashed in the
Speaker 1: controversial book The Bell Curve to discredit the intelligence of
Speaker 1: black people. This since disproved study was focused around because
Speaker 1: these people are obsessed with skulls, the shape of a
Speaker 1: person's skull indicating things about them like intelligence and potential,
Speaker 1: or the lack thereof. Roland Barrel would later complain that
Speaker 1: he was disappointed that people who qualified FERMENTA would sometimes
Speaker 1: come from humble homes because he thought that the premise
Speaker 1: of the group was quote an aristocracy of the intellect unquote.
Speaker 1: In The Miseducation of Larry P. The reporters expand on
Speaker 1: the still valid law that black children cannot be given
Speaker 1: an i Q test in the state of California, a
Speaker 1: decision that was based around a case in which a
Speaker 1: young black student was deemed quote educably mentally retarded unquote
Speaker 1: after scoring poorly on an IQ test. This action, which
Speaker 1: was taken without notifying the parents, resulted in five black
Speaker 1: families whose children had been given similar diagnoses filing a
Speaker 1: class action lawsuit against their school district, and ultimately they
Speaker 1: effectively argued that the i Q tests of the time
Speaker 1: were demonstrably biased against your children, and Judge Robert Peckham
Speaker 1: ruled in the family's favor, saying this, we must recognize
Speaker 1: at the outset that the history of the i Q
Speaker 1: test and of special education classes built on i Q
Speaker 1: testing is not the history of neutral scientific discoveries translated
Speaker 1: into educational reform. It is a history of racial prejudice,
Speaker 1: of social Darwinism, and of the use of the scientific
Speaker 1: quote mystique to legitimate such prejudices. So the result of
Speaker 1: this ruling has a fairly complicated historical legacy. Peckham did
Speaker 1: not enforce the discontinuation of i Q testing in California
Speaker 1: for discriminatory separation of students. It was merely the discontinuation
Speaker 1: of giving i Q test to black children. Specifically, black
Speaker 1: students are still not allowed to take the tests in
Speaker 1: California schools, and as tests continued to be updated to
Speaker 1: cater to more than just white students of the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 1: This has kind of created a second prejudice that continues
Speaker 1: to separate students from each other by race. The prejudice
Speaker 1: roots of i Q based evaluation was given another talking
Speaker 1: point in that book, The Bell Curve, which is written
Speaker 1: by Charles Murray and Richard Hearnsan. The Bell Curve is
Speaker 1: uncritical of i Q tests themselves, claiming that the test
Speaker 1: has never in its history discriminated across any social, economic,
Speaker 1: or racial divides, and presupposes that intelligence, contrary to everything
Speaker 1: the inventor of the i Q test, Alfred Bennett, ever said,
Speaker 1: is fixed, and attempts to explore why certain racial and
Speaker 1: class groups did better or worse on the test. Quote,
Speaker 1: it seems highly likely to us that both genes and
Speaker 1: environment have something to do with racial differences. Unquote. The
Speaker 1: Bell Curve is a very controversial book that I personally
Speaker 1: have absolutely no respect for, and it rears its had
Speaker 1: every several years since its publication, and whispers of this
Speaker 1: book still permeate Mensa to this day. A few references
Speaker 1: are made to it in the time that I spend
Speaker 1: in Phoenix, whether it be in praise of a discussion
Speaker 1: of intelligence, or as quote disgusting racist bullshit unquote during
Speaker 1: a casual meal at a Scottish Hooters restaurant. There has
Speaker 1: been a talk at a MENSA annual gathering on the
Speaker 1: topic of the Bell Curve sometime in the past five
Speaker 1: years from a member that firehouse members described as an
Speaker 1: unabashed white supremacist, which causes yet another wave of drama
Speaker 1: at the annual event. Now MENSA itself was founded shortly
Speaker 1: after World War Two ended in ninety in Oxford, England,
Speaker 1: by English barrister and biochemist Lancelot linel Ware and the
Speaker 1: aforementioned Australian Elita's blowhard, Roland Barrel. These two guys just
Speaker 1: met on a train by chance. They'd both recently become
Speaker 1: interested in i Q tests, and they were enthusiastic about
Speaker 1: founding a society for fellow smarts, and like many people
Speaker 1: who meet on public transportation, menton history indicates that Lancelot
Speaker 1: linel Ware quickly grew annoyed with Roland Barrel's bullshit after
Speaker 1: the organization was formed, and only rejoined and participated in
Speaker 1: MENSA when his co founder died. Unlike its European counterpart,
Speaker 1: American men has a far more left leaning origin story.
Speaker 1: It was started in Brooklyn in nineteen sixty by Peter
Speaker 1: and Enez Sturgeon, a forty something year old married couple
Speaker 1: closely aligned with the Socialist Workers Party. MENSA International since
Speaker 1: its founding has ballooned to include over one hundred thousand members,
Speaker 1: most of which live in America and the UK, and
Speaker 1: as mostly who we'll be talking about. So it's impossible
Speaker 1: to separate any high i Q society from the history
Speaker 1: of the test itself. But that doesn't mean that i
Speaker 1: Q testing is entirely bad or sociologically completely useless. Radio
Speaker 1: Labs g explores a few different examples of i Q
Speaker 1: testing proving beneficial, including its function in curbing the lead
Speaker 1: industry during the Reagan era, when a doctor effectively argued
Speaker 1: that putting lead in public water would lower the general
Speaker 1: i Q of the population and affect the workforce. And interestingly,
Speaker 1: this argument relies on Benet's assertion that i Q is
Speaker 1: not fixed and can be influenced by external fact. So hey,
Speaker 1: that's something, but this does not get MENSA off the hook. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: MENSA does not have a history of using the test
Speaker 1: in this way. To get into MENSA, you get a
Speaker 1: maximum of two chances to formally test in for your
Speaker 1: entire life. One option is the traditional standardized test option
Speaker 1: that I took, and the other is called the culture
Speaker 1: fair option that is considered a better option for those
Speaker 1: that don't speak English as a first language or quote
Speaker 1: have language processing problems such as dyslexia unquote. That information
Speaker 1: comes from MENSA UK. If both of these options don't
Speaker 1: yield qualifying scores in the top two percent of the population,
Speaker 1: you don't get to take the test again in one year,
Speaker 1: or ten years, or fifty years. In high i Q societies,
Speaker 1: Spearman's hate enabling assumption that intelligence is fixed and unchangeable
Speaker 1: is the logic used. And conveniently, there is no conceivable
Speaker 1: way under this model that intelligence could be wasted. M hm.
Speaker 1: So with this in mind, we're going back to summer.
Speaker 1: I'm taking the test for real this time, no more sidetrack.
Speaker 1: I show up hungover at a college in Pasadena on
Speaker 1: the morning of my MENSA admissions test, and I am
Speaker 1: ready to fail. The test, which is taken by sections
Speaker 1: and all of those confusing sounding rate categories, takes about
Speaker 1: two hours to take and it's administered by a proctor
Speaker 1: who splits his time between engineering and repairing large orchestral organs,
Speaker 1: which is pretty cool. I do tease this engineer, organ
Speaker 1: intellectual guy a fair amount in what I thought was
Speaker 1: going to be a one off column about taking a
Speaker 1: standardized test that to me closely resembled the S A T. S.
Speaker 1: And we even maintain a friendly email correspondence for a
Speaker 1: little while after the test is over. But he strikes
Speaker 1: me at first as the typical smart, dorky mensine. I've
Speaker 1: been going on about to my friend the night before.
Speaker 1: He's kind of a nerd, and he's a proud nerd.
Speaker 1: In hell, if I can knock him for knowing how
Speaker 1: to fix an orchestral organ at the Disney Concert Hall,
Speaker 1: that's fuck me. I mean. The only other people taking
Speaker 1: the test this day a local CrossFit law student and
Speaker 1: his much friendlier girlfriend. Unfortunately I didn't find out what
Speaker 1: she did, but because he was talking too much to
Speaker 1: let her get a word in edgewise. But all three
Speaker 1: of us listen to the proctor patiently between sections that
Speaker 1: are on math, logic, vocabulary, and verbal intelligence, and while
Speaker 1: we're supposed to be focusing on the test, the proctor
Speaker 1: occasionally mentions what he feels are the benefits of the
Speaker 1: mensine lifestyle. He tells us about game nights we can
Speaker 1: attend if we get in, how fun local meet up
Speaker 1: dinners are should we be smart enough to attend them.
Speaker 1: And this is like shortly after her editory came out
Speaker 1: and he just like spoiled the entire movie. And if
Speaker 1: you've seen them that movie, that's a really has really
Speaker 1: mean to spoil that movie. But anyways, we're reminded that
Speaker 1: we only have this one chance to take this test
Speaker 1: in our one human life. And if we fail this test,
Speaker 1: we can take the culture Fair test, and if we
Speaker 1: fail that test, we are doomed to resume our lives
Speaker 1: not going to game nights and dinners with this specific
Speaker 1: test proctor, so the stakes are high. It's very important
Speaker 1: to him, and he lets us know. And it is
Speaker 1: a little funny. Sorry. In my column at the time
Speaker 1: after I took the test, I wrote, quote, maybe you
Speaker 1: don't feel non mentioned deserve you, or maybe the opposite.
Speaker 1: That's a manic episode. You set yourself up to fail.
Speaker 1: It's a waste of money that could end hopefully in
Speaker 1: community unquote quoting myself. Awesome. So if the history of
Speaker 1: the i Q test in the controversial application of fixed intelligence,
Speaker 1: is any indication. I don't think the fact that I
Speaker 1: got into MENSA makes me even remotely smarter than other people.
Speaker 1: It does make me remotely had sixty dollars, woke up
Speaker 1: on time and had taken a lot of standardized tests
Speaker 1: in the early two thousand's. I firm we believe if
Speaker 1: that you, who have taken the time to listen to
Speaker 1: this could get into MENSA, my stupidest acts could get
Speaker 1: into MENSA, and he's and he is dumb, my con
Speaker 1: artist uncle could get into MENSA, and I just as
Speaker 1: firmly believe that all three of us being in that
Speaker 1: group wouldn't make us better than anyone. It would only
Speaker 1: make us a pair of new balance is poorer, because
Speaker 1: I think all it takes to get into a group
Speaker 1: like this is a little bit of predisposed aptitude for
Speaker 1: a standardized test, and a little bit of ego. And conversely,
Speaker 1: if you historically don't test well, which many intelligent people don't,
Speaker 1: you probably won't do well in this test. It's almost
Speaker 1: as if it's a flawed metric. So I take the
Speaker 1: test and the email comes two weeks later, while I'm
Speaker 1: in the dressing room of a Forever twenty one trying
Speaker 1: on something that looks bad, and it says this, congratulations,
Speaker 1: your MENSA admissions testing has been scored, and based on
Speaker 1: the percentile rank, you qualify for admission into MENSA. I
Speaker 1: would tell you how my scores translate to a formal
Speaker 1: i Q test, but as I said, the Intelligence Index
Speaker 1: scores that you're given are only used for MENSA admissions.
Speaker 1: I got nothing for you. And when I get this email,
Speaker 1: I'm like laughing my mostly exposed ass off, and I
Speaker 1: do feel a small tinge of pride that I remind
Speaker 1: myself to feel ashamed about later. And I write my
Speaker 1: next column, which was called good news they let dumb
Speaker 1: sluts into MENSA Now. And I wrote that as a
Speaker 1: follow up to my first piece, which is about taking
Speaker 1: the test. And in this piece, I'm joking about infiltrating
Speaker 1: the local Los Angeles branch. But I think it's pretty
Speaker 1: clear that I don't actually have an intention to, because
Speaker 1: at this point I've already spent half of my freelance
Speaker 1: paycheck just to take the test and enroll in the
Speaker 1: group to get a membership card that I use to
Speaker 1: take stupid Instagram pictures with to this day. So continuing
Speaker 1: in MENSA for me makes no financial sense, not even
Speaker 1: for those cool, smart people game nights that I'd heard
Speaker 1: so much about. And the hundreds or some people that
Speaker 1: usually read my column seem to enjoy it. A handful
Speaker 1: of mensa reach out to say it made them laugh
Speaker 1: and to say welcome. And two people tell me about
Speaker 1: a closed Facebook group that might be of interest to me,
Speaker 1: and yes it is that one. The first is my
Speaker 1: test proctor, the organ fixing engineer, and he says, quote,
Speaker 1: the articles were very funny, I'll be it occasionally mean spirited.
Speaker 1: He also thanks me for changing his name in my column.
Speaker 1: This is sort of unrelated, but this was written in
Speaker 1: response to an email i'd written him asking if I
Speaker 1: could see what an orchestral organ repair looked like in person,
Speaker 1: to which he said no. So if anyone is wondering
Speaker 1: who the dork and this email thread is, it is me.
Speaker 1: And then another mensum member contacts me about Firehouse with
Speaker 1: a far sterner warning and he says, quote, I am
Speaker 1: writing you because menso is not just silly fun board games,
Speaker 1: hug dots, don't ask, and happy nerds. There's also a
Speaker 1: nasty alt right undercurrent that you can find in MENSA
Speaker 1: Facebook groups. They consist mainly of Trump supporters, and if
Speaker 1: you join, you will be amazed at what supposedly intelligent
Speaker 1: people believe. Okay, so I searched for the group on
Speaker 1: Facebook and request to join, and in keeping with the
Speaker 1: inclusive spirit of MENSA, I also need to send them
Speaker 1: my membership number to qualify for entry into the group.
Speaker 1: His message continues, quote, these groups are no moderation, which
Speaker 1: is the code of angry white people, for I want
Speaker 1: to say racist things without a moderator calling me a racist.
Speaker 1: In any case, if you are looking to blow people's
Speaker 1: minds with a behind the scenes look at MENSA and
Speaker 1: that might be a good place to start. And Okay,
Speaker 1: I know that sounds like a lot, but once Firehouse
Speaker 1: grants me access, the preconceived mention I had been making
Speaker 1: fun of this whole time completely implodes. There are some
Speaker 1: scattered liberal ideas posted in Firehouse, but the vast majority
Speaker 1: are far right leaning news sources, pixelated political memes, dirty
Speaker 1: inside jokes, and something called the boob thread. I tell
Speaker 1: a few of my friends about the group, but I
Speaker 1: hold off on writing about it, thinking back to what
Speaker 1: that mention had mentioned just before warning me of the
Speaker 1: group's off He said, quote, if and when you make
Speaker 1: fun of MENSA, please don't forget that a lot of
Speaker 1: these people were bullied because they were smart, and they
Speaker 1: finally found a club where they belong and where everybody
Speaker 1: is a little awkward or at least understands them. And
Speaker 1: that's completely fair. But does that apply to a far
Speaker 1: right closed Facebook group. I'm a little lost on this,
Speaker 1: So I go back to the group and I read
Speaker 1: its description and it says, quote, this group, like MENSA,
Speaker 1: is very diverse and can range from fluffy kittens two
Speaker 1: items that will make you wish you could bleach your brain.
Speaker 1: If someone upsets you or post things not to your liking,
Speaker 1: reported to Facebook and or block this person. The administrators
Speaker 1: will not take any actions to edit or delete post unquote.
Speaker 1: So here I am a sweet young lady in an
Speaker 1: unmoderated online forum. This lack of moderation is the same
Speaker 1: logic that what I do think it is interesting in
Speaker 1: the abstract has given way to websites like four chan,
Speaker 1: eight chan, and other dark corners of Reddit that function
Speaker 1: as venues for hate speech, which makes some members of
Speaker 1: the group extremely vulnerable. But what really threw me about
Speaker 1: the Firehouse group was the logo in the top right
Speaker 1: corner of the page. Firehouse, I saw was a group
Speaker 1: that was owned by the official American Mens of page
Speaker 1: and was ostensibly endorsed and encouraged by it. So a
Speaker 1: Facebook group of undercover bigots is unfortunately nothing new, but
Speaker 1: their encouragement by what is supposed to be the smartest
Speaker 1: organization in the country was not something that I had
Speaker 1: seen before. What academic institution in their right mind would
Speaker 1: proudly endorse a group that clearly states that no one
Speaker 1: is safe and that hate speech would not be deleted
Speaker 1: unless the historically faulty Facebook reporting system deemed it so.
Speaker 1: And this back in July is something that I think
Speaker 1: I could write about. But even so, I was nervous
Speaker 1: because when you're comedian online you encounter some pretty brutal
Speaker 1: comments that I didn't know if I wanted to put
Speaker 1: myself in the comment section line of fire because I
Speaker 1: think that there is an exact number of times you
Speaker 1: can be called an ugly cunt before you impulsively get
Speaker 1: a terrible haircut and Switcher meads and I had already
Speaker 1: passed this point a long time ago, but I'm still interested.
Speaker 1: And I talked to a few of my friends to
Speaker 1: see if this idea an official organizational endorsement of a
Speaker 1: far leaning, unmoderated group, was something they'd ever come across,
Speaker 1: and whether it was a story worth pursuing, even in
Speaker 1: spite of whatever backlash might happen. But while I was
Speaker 1: thinking about this man that Firehouse group, that they do
Speaker 1: not wait for you to be ready and make a
Speaker 1: rational decision, and I never have time to reach a conclusion.
Speaker 1: They find me first, and they are not happy. Alright.
Speaker 1: That was episode one of my year in mensa. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much to all of my wonderful friends who
Speaker 1: contributed voice work to this. They are Miles Gray, Maggie
Speaker 1: may Fish, if you, Waddy Way, Caitlin Durante, Danny Fernandez,
Speaker 1: and Isaac Taylor. And thank you to Sadie Dupre wrote
Speaker 1: the incredible theme song. And to all those medicines out there,
Speaker 1: see you. In episode two, Gang