Hosts Jessi and Jeff go through the concept of intelligence used for the show, that developed by Harvard University professor
Howard Gardner. His theory is that intelligence is made up of six largely independent categories: linguistic, logical, musical, physical, social and visual. They discuss each of the six with experts, and provide real life examples of people who possess this needed intelligence for their careers. They speak of the thousands of applications received and narrowing those down to thirty-two contestants. They discuss how the challenges for the competitive aspect of the show were devised. They discuss the interactive component of the show: how viewers at home can test their intelligence along with the contestants as the show airs. The four contestants are introduced, they who include a charity CEO, an actor/law student, a business student/arts administrator/stand-up comic, and a teacher/ninja. Challenge 1, testing logic, entails doing math with the numbers moving around in the process. Challenge 2, testing linguistics, requires the contestants to make a convincing 45 second speech on a randomly chosen topic using as many of 30 predetermined words as possible. Challenge 3, testing social, has the contestants judging the emotion conveyed by people only seeing their eyes. Challenge 4, testing visual, has the contestants recreating a 15 piece ensemble shown to them on a model. And challenge 5, testing both physical and musical and worth double the points, is a moving instrument, on which the contestant must play a seven note melody played to them. The two contestants with the highest score move to the mega-challenge, a race testing all six concepts in six individual puzzles.
—Huggo