My Year in Mensa
4.8/5
Critic Rating
Jamie Loftus takes you through her year in the high-IQ Mensa society, from taking the test as a joke to spending the Fourth of July with 2000 angry Mensans in Phoenix. Chaos reigns, but at least it tests well.
Critic Reviews
Score: 5
Lauren Passell • Bello Collective • Dec 2, 2020
"In My Year in Mensa, Loftus brings you right into this crazy conference while making statements about what we call “intelligence,” toxic cultures, and herd mentality. And it’s effing hilarious."
Score: 5
Josh Flear • CBC • Jul 16, 2020
"My Year In Mensa seems to combine so many podcast genres (it's documentary, true crime, history...) but I think the most important thing is that it's super funny."
Score: 4.5
Cat Zhang • New Yorker • Mar 9, 2020
"The show uses first-person reporting to offer insight into how the geeky group became a forum for the far right. The Mensa saga is more straight-faced than Loftus’s usual comedy, much of which replicates the frenzied pace of the Internet and is disturbing and nonsensical to the point of chaos. Like the prankish Nathan Fielder or the strangely sexual Megan Amram, she does elaborately dumb things to make fairly smart points. Like her one-woman show, the podcast “My Year in Mensa” condemns élitism, though it uses more traditional reporting methods. "
Score: 4.5
Nic Dobija-Nootens • PodcastReview.org • Feb 4, 2020
"Like many young comedians working today, Jamie Loftus finds her greatest humor in the awkward moments of her own life. My Year in Mensa is a story, felt in real-time, of how the internet and social media are so finely tuned as to transform a single joke into a saga of awfulness. What’s worse, when Loftus brought attention to the Facebook death threat by sharing it on Twitter, her account was suspended for posting a violent threat. That’s just the kind of techno-cosmic injustice podcasts were made to explore."
Score: 5
PodcAsteroid • Podcasteroid • Jan 4, 2020
"More than any podcast, you are really going to have to just listen to this. If only for the SFX. *airhorn* The podcast is a four part deep dive into the (questionable at best) merits of IQ tests, the psyche of all concerned, and the nightmarish hellscape that is being a Woman on the Internet."
Score: 5
Noah Jacobs • Vulture • Jan 2, 2020
"After a year of occasional articles and interviews, hearing Jamie speak out in her own words is a hilarious catharsis."
