# From the archive: How should we think about IQ?

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/many-minds-510509/from-the-archive-how-should-we-think-about-iq
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/many-minds-510509/from-the-archive-how-should-we-think-about-iq.md
Podcast: [Many Minds](https://stenobird.com/podcast/many-minds-510509)
Published: 2026-01-14T23:39:00+00:00
Episode link: https://manyminds.libsyn.com/from-the-archive-how-should-we-think-about-iq
Audio file: https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/manyminds/archive_How-should-we-think-about-IQ-2.mp3?dest-id=1868261
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/many-minds-510509/episodes/from-the-archive-how-should-we-think-about-iq
Duration seconds: 5625

## Resource

Hello friends, and happy new year! We're gearing up for a new run of episodes starting later in January. In the meanwhile, enjoy this pick from our archives. ------ [ originally aired October 16, 2024 ] IQ is, to say the least, a fraught concept. Psychologists have studied IQ—or g for "general cognitive ability"—maybe more than any other psychological construct. And they've learned some interesting things about it. That it's remarkably stable over the lifespan. That it really is general: people who ace one test of intellectual ability tend to ace others. And that IQs have risen markedly over the last century. At the same time, IQ seems to be met with increasing squeamishness, if not outright disdain, in many circles. It's often seen as crude, misguided, reductive—maybe a whole lot worse. There's no question, after all, that IQ has been misused—that it still gets misused—for all kinds of racist, classist, colonialist purposes. As if this wasn't all thorny enough, the study of IQ is also intimately bound up with the study of genetics. It's right there in the roiling center of debates about how genes and environment make us who we are. So, yeah, what to make of all this? How should we be thinking about IQ? My guest today is Dr. Eric Turkheimer . Eric is Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia. He has studied intelligence and many other complex human traits for decades, and he's a major figure in the field of "behavior genetics." Eric also has a new book out this fall—which I highly recommend—titled Understanding the Nature-Nurture Debate . In a field that has sometimes been accused of rampant optimism, Eric is—as you'll hear—a bit more measured. In this conversation, Eric and I focus on intelligence and its putatively genetic basis. We talk about why Eric do…

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