Radiolab7 Jun 2019

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.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(652)

Fela Kuti: Enter the Shrine

Our original host Jad Abumrad returns to share a new podcast series he’s just released. It’s all about Fela Kuti, a Nigerian musician who created a genre, then a movement, then tried to use his hypnot...

28 Nov 202538min

Our Common Nature: West Virginia Coal

Today on the show, we’re bringing you an episode from Our Common Nature (https://link.podtrac.com/v7mx144d), a new podcast series where cellist Yo-Yo Ma and host Ana González travel around the United ...

21 Nov 202553min

Quantum Refuge

Qasem Waleed is a 28-year-old physicist who has lived in Gaza his whole life. In 2024, he joined a chorus of Palestinians sharing videos and pictures and writing about the chaos and violence they were...

14 Nov 202548min

The Wubi Effect

When we think of China today, we think of a technological superpower. From Huawei and 5G to TikTok and viral social media, China is stride for stride with the United States in the world of computing. ...

7 Nov 202556min

The Glow Below

A call to oceanographer Edie Widder about a fish with a very odd immune system quickly becomes something else: a dive into the deep sea, into a world of brilliant light. But down there, the light does...

31 Okt 202528min

What Up Holmes?

Love it or hate it, the freedom to say obnoxious and subversive things is the quintessence of what makes America America. But our say-almost-anything approach to free speech is actually relatively rec...

24 Okt 202535min

Content Warning

Over the past five years TikTok has radically changed the online world. But trust us when we say, it’s not how you’d expect.Today we continue our yearslong exploration of what you can and can’t post o...

17 Okt 202529min

Creation Story

Ella al-Shamahi is one part Charles Darwin, one part Indiana Jones. She braves war zones and pirate-infested waters to collect fossils from prehistoric caves, fossils that help us understand the origi...

10 Okt 202534min