Radiolab
Deception
Show #402
Friday, February 29, 2008
We look at lies, liars, and lie catchers, and ask: can you lead a life without deception? We consult a cast of characters, from pathological liars to lying snakes to drunken psychiatrists, to try and understand the dark trait of deception.
Catching Liars
In this segment, Gordon Burghardt introduces us to a snake that plays dead. Then, from a highway median at John F. Kennedy Airport, Paul Ekman tries to teach Jad how to catch a liar the old-fashioned way: by reading their facial expressions. Because if you know where to look, he says, the truth leaks out. We learn more about this truth "leakage" from CIA interrogator Barry L. McManus and Steve Silberman, reporter from Wired magazine. We then return to Ekman for a peek into his personal effort to walk the path of the honest man.
Paul Ekman's Website
How Polygraphs Work
Article About a Computer System to Read Faces
People Who Lie
What's going on in the mind of a liar? Producer Ellen Horne tells the story of a con woman and the trail of mistrust she leaves in her wake. Then we delve into the brains of pathological liars with Yaling Yang, a psychologist at the University of Southern California. She tells us that pathological liars have a surprising advantage over normal people: they are better at making connections between ideas in different parts of their brain.
USC Press Release on Pathological Liars Brains
The San Francisco Examiner Writes About Hope Ballantyne
Lying to Ourselves
Can we lie to ourselves? If you are the liar, wouldn't you know the truth? In this segment, we explore the confusing and contradictory idea of self-deception. We go back to the early 70s, when psychiatrists Harold Sackeim and Ruben Gur came up with a set of embarrassing questions that they say reveal the lies we tell ourselves. Psychologist Joanna Starek tells us that swimmers who lie to themselves swim faster than those who do not. And we explore the power of self-deception to make us more successful, and happier, people.
Video of Noam Chomsky and Robert Trivers Talking about Self-Deception
TAKE THE SELF-DECEPTION SURVEY
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