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slash UK slash AI for people. Welcome to the Scientific American podcast Science Talk posted on

August 20th, 2012. I'm Steve Merski. On this episode,

We have no idea of the Gulf that separates our mind from people 100 years ago in America.

We've put on scientific spectacles, and they had on utilitarian spectacles.

That's James Flynn. He studies intelligence at the University of Otago in New Zealand, and he's the discoverer of what's called the Flynn effect, the consistent rise in IQs over time around the world.

He features prominently in an article called Can We Keep Getting Smarter by Tim Folger in the September issue of Scientific American magazine.

Back on July 10th, Flynn visited the Scientific American offices, where he chatted with a group of editors.

What follows is an edited version of that wide-ranging discussion.

The first voice you'll hear is Senior Editor Michael Moyer, who asks Flynn about his latest book titled Are We Getting Smarter?

You'll also hear me and senior editor Gary Sticks.

And what's the big change in this book since your original book?

Well, one of the big surprises is that Scandinavia, the IQ gains tailed off towards the end of the last century. And many of us thought,

and I had an open mind, that that would mean that they would tail off on the rest of the developed

world. Well, three data sets are in now from America, Britain, and Germany, and they haven't.

They seem to be humming along on the Wechler tests, you know, the

wists and the wastes, at just about three points per decade. We're in the 21st century

a decade now, and there they still are. And this revises one's calculations a bit. I thought

...