Radiolab - G: The Miseducation of Larry P

Are some ideas so dangerous we shouldn’t even talk about them? That question brought Radiolab’s senior editor, Pat Walters, to a subject that at first he thought was long gone: the measuring of human intelligence with IQ tests. Turns out, the tests are all around us. In the workplace. The criminal justice system. Even the NFL. And they’re massive in schools. More than a million US children are IQ tested every year. We begin Radiolab Presents: “G” with a sentence that stopped us all in our tracks: In the state of California, it is off-limits to administer an IQ test to a child if he or she is Black. That’s because of a little-known case called Larry P v Riles that in the 1970s … put the IQ test itself on trial. With the help of reporter Lee Romney, we investigate how that lawsuit came to be, where IQ tests came from, and what happened to one little boy who got caught in the crossfire. This episode was reported and produced by Lee Romney, Rachael Cusick and Pat Walters. Music by Alex Overington. Fact-checking by Diane Kelly. Special thanks to Elie Mistal, Chenjerai Kumanyika, Amanda Stern, Nora Lyons, Ki Sung, Public Advocates, Michelle Wilson, Peter Fernandez, John Schaefer. Lee Romney’s reporting was supported in part by USC’s Center for Health Journalism. Radiolab’s “G” is supported in part by Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation initiative dedicated to engaging everyone with the process of science. Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate.

Duration: 1h 6m
Broadcast on: 07 Jun 2019
Audio Format: other

Are some ideas so dangerous we shouldn’t even talk about them? That question brought Radiolab’s senior editor, Pat Walters, to a subject that at first he thought was long gone: the measuring of human intelligence with IQ tests. Turns out, the tests are all around us. In the workplace. The criminal justice system. Even the NFL. And they’re massive in schools. More than a million US children are IQ tested every year.

We begin Radiolab Presents: “G” with a sentence that stopped us all in our tracks: In the state of California, it is off-limits to administer an IQ test to a child if he or she is Black. That’s because of a little-known case called Larry P v Riles that in the 1970s … put the IQ test itself on trial. With the help of reporter Lee Romney, we investigate how that lawsuit came to be, where IQ tests came from, and what happened to one little boy who got caught in the crossfire.

This episode was reported and produced by Lee Romney, Rachael Cusick and Pat Walters.

Music by Alex Overington. Fact-checking by Diane Kelly.

Special thanks to Elie Mistal, Chenjerai Kumanyika, Amanda Stern, Nora Lyons, Ki Sung, Public Advocates, Michelle Wilson, Peter Fernandez, John Schaefer. Lee Romney’s reporting was supported in part by USC’s Center for Health Journalism.

Radiolab’s “G” is supported in part by Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation initiative dedicated to engaging everyone with the process of science.

Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate.

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RIDILEB is supported by AT&T. We all love to connect via video calls or texts. Right now, at AT&T, you can get the new iPhone 18 Pro for $0 with iPhone trade-in. Any condition. It has the ultimate pro camera system and big leap in battery life, so you can turn this deal into a long-lasting connection. Learn how you can trade in your iPhone for the new iPhone 18 Pro requires trade-in of iPhone 14 or higher, excluding iPhone 16E, an eligible plan. Terms and restrictions apply, subject to change, visit an AT&T store for details. All right, hello, hey, how are you doing? Maybe just say who you are real quick before we start. Pat Walters, I'm a senior editor here. Excellent. So, where do we start? I mean, do you want to tell me how you got into all this? Yeah. Okay, so we're doing this series and this all started for me or I got thinking about the thing we're about to talk about a lot because of this moment, several months ago, where I sort of got caught between two of my closest friends. I got caught just, I get caught between them all the time. It's really like a political. It's really hard. Political caught? Yeah, so, friend number one is this guy, I'd call him a bit of a contrarian, politically. And we ended up getting in a few arguments about this guy named Jordan Peterson. It's precisely the sort of danger that people who are really looking for trouble. Who, right? You probably know, he's a public figure, a public figure, a Canadian psychologist who has gotten, he's said a lot of things that are very controversial about gender and race. I think the idea of white privilege is absolutely reprehensible. Like he thinks white privilege is a myth and he said we should somehow enforce monogamy. He's sort of like a man's movement. He's big with dudes. He's really big with white dudes. And this friend of mine is a white dude. And so we were arguing about some things Jordan Peterson had said that my friend had liked. And at one point he was just, he said to me, he kind of called me out. He was like, you've never even listened to the guy talk. Like you were having all these arguments about his ideas and you've never even listened to him. So I was like, okay. Fair point. That's fair. Listen to him. And then enter friend number two, we're hanging out a couple of days later. And I told her I'm having a fight with friend number one again. He wants me to listen to this guy Jordan Peterson, told him I'd do it just to be fair. And she got this look on her face and was like, why would you do that? And then she said this thing to me that really stuck with me afterwards.

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