Ian Sample

speaker

2,123 appearances 29 recordings 3 series first heard Apr 2026 last heard 2d ago

Ian Sample’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 29 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 8.

newest first · ▶ plays the moment

Science Weekly · We’re reading less. And it’s making us stupid · 11 Aug 2026 podcast

I don't read books at one time. matched

I'll read one book at a time. matched

The last one I finished recently was When We Cease to Understand the World by the Chilean author Benjamin Labatut. matched

I'm reading a book called Brian at the moment, which is fantastic, by a guy called Jeremy Cooper. matched

I'm going to finish Brian quite soon. matched

The next one is Comedians by Graham Greene. matched

I've got far more. matched

You know what matched

Yeah, I've bought far more books than I will read. matched

I'm better at buying books than reading books. matched

So one place I guess you could start with this is by looking at what's called the Flynn effect. matched

So James Flynn was a philosopher and a psychologist. matched

And he found that in the 20th century, there was this really steady and substantial rise in IQ. matched

So if you looked at like 100 years ago, matched

IQ rose pretty much 30 points over that period. matched

So the question becomes, well, why? matched

Nothing is going to happen genetically over that period of time. matched

So what could be at work? matched

Well, obviously, you could look at things like nutrition. matched

Our nutrition has changed a lot in 100 years. matched

Showing 781–800 of 2,123 · page 40 of 107