Speaker 1: Hello there, it's me Josh and for this week's s
Speaker 1: Y s K Selects, I've chosen our classic episode on
Speaker 1: Lie Detectors. It's a pretty nifty little episode about a
Speaker 1: pretty dodgy piece of forensic science with a wow of
Speaker 1: a backstory. It is classic stuff you should know, so
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoy. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know,
Speaker 1: a production of My Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me
Speaker 1: is always as Charles to be Chuck Bryant liar you
Speaker 1: you could tell there's the ways you can find out
Speaker 1: Chuck Um. We'll get to that in a minute. This
Speaker 1: is stuff you should know. Let me finish, Okay, and
Speaker 1: it's you lie. Remember that guy, Yeah, Joe joey Pants
Speaker 1: or whatever the congressman's name. Yeah, Saturday Night Live a
Speaker 1: funny skit that he had gotten a whole group of
Speaker 1: people to all stayed up at once, wasn't the deal?
Speaker 1: Tell it? And well, yeah, and he supposed he had
Speaker 1: a whole group of senators that we're gonna all stand
Speaker 1: up and yell you lie. And then he was the
Speaker 1: only one that did it. That's because he was out
Speaker 1: of the room when they were like, no, we can't
Speaker 1: do that, that's funny. Yeah. So um, oh, we're talking
Speaker 1: about a lot of detectors. But let me take you back,
Speaker 1: all right to a little place in time and space
Speaker 1: called the jazz age early nineteen twenties. Yeah. No, that's
Speaker 1: the beat Knicks that did that. Okay, Um, I'm sure
Speaker 1: a jazz person snapped their fingers at one point. Sure, um,
Speaker 1: but not like that, all right. It was more like
Speaker 1: like Coltrane style, just like that. Anyway. This is Chuck
Speaker 1: in Berkeley, California, at u c l A, Berkeley, And
Speaker 1: there is a place there called, um, the College Hall,
Speaker 1: which was a women's dorm. And in that year there
Speaker 1: were a theft, a string of there was a string
Speaker 1: of um thefts, cash rings, um, pretty much anything of
Speaker 1: value went missing for a little while there. And uh,
Speaker 1: there's a man working at the Berkeley Police Department in
Speaker 1: the girl's dorm. Yeah, okay, called College Hall. There was
Speaker 1: a man working in the in the Berkeley Police Department's
Speaker 1: name is John Larson. And John Larson was the first
Speaker 1: cop ever to have a pH d. And he had
Speaker 1: gotten interested in this device called a cardio neumo psychograph
Speaker 1: which had been invented just a few years before by
Speaker 1: another guy named William Marston. And William Marston was a
Speaker 1: lawyer in a Harvard shrink and he also as an
Speaker 1: aside creative wonder Woman with her Lasso of truth. Really,
Speaker 1: he's the guy who invented the what's now called the polygraph.
Speaker 1: What about the wonder Woman? He created Wonder Woman, the character.
Speaker 1: He was kind of a renaissance man. But that's William Marston.
Speaker 1: John Larson works at the at the Berkeley Police Department
Speaker 1: and he's become interested in this thing, the cardio neumo psychograph,
Speaker 1: and he realizes, okay, this is a perfect chance to
Speaker 1: apply it. So he rounds up, you know, some suspects.
Speaker 1: He does some some normal police work and finds out
Speaker 1: who the suspects are in this in this hall, and
Speaker 1: he rounds him up, brings him down the station, and
Speaker 1: he starts hooking people up to this um this machine.
Speaker 1: And he gets to this one woman, her name is
Speaker 1: Helen Graham, and guilty, yes, pretty much is what he does.
Speaker 1: He goes, ms. Graham, this machine is saying that you're
Speaker 1: that you took this, that you you took the money,
Speaker 1: you know, did you? Um and he said that he
Speaker 1: noted on the machine a sharp dropping blood pressure followed
Speaker 1: by a sudden rise. And then after that this woman
Speaker 1: flew into a rage. She tried to attack the machine.
Speaker 1: She went crazy. So they they basically stringer along for
Speaker 1: a few days, and then finally she confesses, and it's
Speaker 1: the first time that a polygraph was ever used to
Speaker 1: to um solve a crime. Ever, that that was probably
Speaker 1: the heyday because before the people knew what it was,
Speaker 1: they could just say this machine says that you're guilty,
Speaker 1: and they would be like, oh my god, that's exactly right.
Speaker 1: Very early on, some of the early proponents, specifically a
Speaker 1: guy named a Leonard Keeler, um recognized the placebo effect
Speaker 1: value before anyone knew there was a placebo effect, but
Speaker 1: the placebo effect value of a polygraph. That just the idea,
Speaker 1: if you believed in this machine and that it could
Speaker 1: rude outlies, then it could force you to confess just
Speaker 1: being hooked up to it. You weren't going to pass it.
Speaker 1: They should have called it the guilt box. They called
Speaker 1: it the magic lie detector is one of the one
Speaker 1: of the things that they called it. Yeah, Leonard Keeler
Speaker 1: called it that he worked with John Larson at the
Speaker 1: Berkeley Police Department, and eventually, over time John Larson saw
Speaker 1: the what he considered the true youth behind the light
Speaker 1: detector and the fact that it kept being cold light detector,
Speaker 1: which is driving him crazy. Um, and he eventually distanced
Speaker 1: himself from it later on in his career. Um, but
Speaker 1: Leonard Keeler ran around marketing it to anyone and everyone saying,
Speaker 1: just having this is going to not only help you
Speaker 1: hire um, more more truthful, forthright people, but it's going
Speaker 1: to keep them in line while they're working for you,
Speaker 1: because they know you've got access to this thing and
Speaker 1: you can strap them to it at any time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's where the polygraph came from. Yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: little prehistory to just to give them their due. Uh.
Speaker 1: In eight Cesaire Lambroso, he's an Italian criminologist. He measured
Speaker 1: changes in blood pressure for police cases. In a nineteen
Speaker 1: o four a device by Vittorio Binosi measured breathing and
Speaker 1: so they were early nineteen hundreds, late eighteen hundreds. They
Speaker 1: were kind of on the scene of of measuring these things.
Speaker 1: And Dr James Mackenzie in nineteen o six first mentioned
Speaker 1: the word polygraph with his instrument that he didn't use
Speaker 1: to root out the truth, but for uh he did
Speaker 1: use it when giving medical examination though. And then right
Speaker 1: before the polygraph was the unigraph unigraph, which was part
Speaker 1: of what's still used today in the polygraph. Um, it
Speaker 1: measured respiration. Pretty cool, yeah, um, but then you add
Speaker 1: to it a couple of other things and you got
Speaker 1: the polygraph. We could stop here. This is interesting enough
Speaker 1: right now. So there's no uh you really, there's no um,
Speaker 1: no one walking the planet who has anything to do
Speaker 1: with polygraphs that call them lie detectors, And anyone, even
Speaker 1: the most ardent defender of polygraph technology would correct you
Speaker 1: if you called it a lie detector. They would be like,
Speaker 1: it's it's not a lie detector because you can't detect
Speaker 1: a lie. It's possible. The whole basis of a polygraph
Speaker 1: is that it is a set of um medical instruments
Speaker 1: that used to measure changes in things like your heart rate,
Speaker 1: your respiration, UM and sweatiness. Basically, I would fail. Um, well,
Speaker 1: a lot of people do fail, and we'll get to that.
Speaker 1: But um, oh, because you're sweat that's okay. They would
Speaker 1: they would even hook me up. Um. So when you're
Speaker 1: hooked up to this machine, the whole point is that
Speaker 1: it measures these physiological changes in the idea that there
Speaker 1: you're going to undergo physiological changes based on the concept
Speaker 1: that a person hooked to this machine who is guilty
Speaker 1: will experience fear that they're going to be detected. So
Speaker 1: this machine is designed to detect that fear. That's right,
Speaker 1: which is really round about. But for a century almost
Speaker 1: these things were used, um and abused, and it took
Speaker 1: a while for people that to catch on that. There's
Speaker 1: a lot to criticize here with polygraphs, Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: All right, so let's get into this um. First of all,
Speaker 1: we need to point out that analog polygraphs are what
Speaker 1: you have long seen in movies and TV when they
Speaker 1: have the little jittery looks like a seismograph on the
Speaker 1: on the paper scrolling by, and uh, you're hooked up
Speaker 1: to all these different things on your chest, in your
Speaker 1: forehead and your fingertips. These days they do that digitally,
Speaker 1: but it's basically still the same technique. They just don't
Speaker 1: use the little scrolling needle. Do They have a name
Speaker 1: for that. It's called an inkfield pen. It is. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But the three things that they do, Josh, They measure
Speaker 1: your respiratory rate, as you said, They take newmgraphs, which
Speaker 1: are rubber tubes filled with air time around your chest
Speaker 1: and your abdomen, and that is going to measure whether
Speaker 1: or not you're you know, you start breathing heavy essentially
Speaker 1: when you get nervous. It monitors your breathing pattern and
Speaker 1: any changes to it, and it does it pretty cleverly. Right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: With bellows, it they're filled with air. So when you
Speaker 1: when you breathe in real deeply or have a change,
Speaker 1: it's going to displace that into the bellows and that
Speaker 1: will Originally that was attached, the bellows were literally attached
Speaker 1: to the mechanical arm that showed the change. These days,
Speaker 1: as a it's a transducer that converts it digitally electronically, right,
Speaker 1: it converts it to an electrical pattern, right, Yeah, that
Speaker 1: probably just says for the same thing. Yeah, um no,
Speaker 1: I think it looks a lot like it if you look.
Speaker 1: There's a picture of a modern one and it looks
Speaker 1: just like But yeah, it's not. It's not a paper
Speaker 1: read out any longer, which is kind of interesting. Like
Speaker 1: this technology hasn't hasn't changed on a very fundamental basis
Speaker 1: for like a hundred years almost. Yeah, I mean the
Speaker 1: early one from Mackenzie in nineteen o six. They say
Speaker 1: that a lot of the same components are still very
Speaker 1: similar today. Right. Um. You also are going to have
Speaker 1: so you're gonna have two tubes, one around your chest,
Speaker 1: one around your abdomen. It's um keeping an eye on
Speaker 1: your breathing. Um. You're going to have a blood pressure
Speaker 1: cuff which um, which keeps an eye on your heart
Speaker 1: rate and your blood pressure, and it does it through sound, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't realize this. So when you're when the blood
Speaker 1: comes in and out of your veins, it creates sound,
Speaker 1: and sound can also be used to displace air, causing
Speaker 1: a bellows to contract, which again moved the arm on
Speaker 1: the scroll and now is created or turned into an
Speaker 1: electrical pattern. Um, but it's the same thing, but it's sound,
Speaker 1: which I just think is very neat. Well, and what's
Speaker 1: also neat is the sweat one. I figured they would
Speaker 1: have some sort of like a moisturerometer just to detect moisture,
Speaker 1: but it's called galvanic skin resistance or GSR or electrodermal activity,
Speaker 1: that's right. And they hook up these fingerplates to galvanometers
Speaker 1: and they are basically measuring the skin's ability to conduct electricity.
Speaker 1: And if your skin is moist, it's going to be
Speaker 1: able to conduct electricity easier. And that's what they're measuring there.
Speaker 1: It's like the ones the little um heart rate monitors
Speaker 1: that they clip to your fingertips in the hospital, but
Speaker 1: these things measure electricity instead, uh, which if you are dry,
Speaker 1: you're going to conduct less electricity, if you're wet, you're
Speaker 1: going to conduct more. So since you have so many
Speaker 1: pores on the end of your fingers and you sweat
Speaker 1: when you're nervous. There you got done. So you put
Speaker 1: all this together and um, it paints this picture. It's
Speaker 1: the A. C. L U among other people, have decried
Speaker 1: as just what are you doing here? Basically is what
Speaker 1: the A C l U says, right, Um, what what
Speaker 1: you have is a picture of a person who is
Speaker 1: undergoing stress, maybe feeling embarrassment, is maybe just scared to
Speaker 1: be there, uh, maybe doesn't like having things wrapped around
Speaker 1: his or her chest. Um, maybe doesn't really like the
Speaker 1: person asking the questions. The results of these these UM
Speaker 1: changes in pattern. The data is totally subjective, that's right,
Speaker 1: which makes polygraphs totally subjective, which takes it in large
Speaker 1: part out of the realm of science. Yeah, voodoo science
Speaker 1: is what they call it. And uh, all the proponents
Speaker 1: will say that a well trained forensic psychophysiologists which is
Speaker 1: the examiner, can get through all that to still get
Speaker 1: a good result. They're like, yeah, they know all this stuff,
Speaker 1: and if you're good, then you can factor that in
Speaker 1: and still get a good result. So let's talk about
Speaker 1: what the forensic psychophysiologist does. There's apparently I've seen anywhere
Speaker 1: between five thousand and ten thousand of them in the
Speaker 1: US at any given time, UM, and some of them
Speaker 1: belong to professional organizations. I think probably maybe half or third,
Speaker 1: depending on where you are on the on the estimate,
Speaker 1: UM belonged to any number of professional organizations. Some have
Speaker 1: no accreditation whatsoever, um, but are still able to open
Speaker 1: up shops depending on the state there in. Some states
Speaker 1: have zero laws about being a forensic psychophysiologist a k
Speaker 1: A polygraph examiner. That's right, but there is also some
Speaker 1: there are programs out there. Uh. The who wrote this article,
Speaker 1: Kevin bondser I don't know. I think so he he
Speaker 1: UM interviewed a guy who founded the Accidon Academy exit
Speaker 1: Haunt as a manufacturer of polygraphs, and they founded this
Speaker 1: academy as well, where um, you go through a certain
Speaker 1: amount of training to become a forensic psychophysiologist. And he
Speaker 1: actually interviewed that guy. Yeah, his name's Bobb Lee Lee. Uh,
Speaker 1: and Lee says that if you come to their academy, UM,
Speaker 1: you have to have a baccalaurea degree bachelor's right, or
Speaker 1: you have to have at least five years investigative experience
Speaker 1: and an associate's degree. Um, you have to take a
Speaker 1: ten week course, and after you complete the ten week course,
Speaker 1: you have to carry out twenty five polygraph examinations and
Speaker 1: submit them to be reviewed. Uh. So these are like
Speaker 1: real life ones. I guess you're working with your local
Speaker 1: police department or whatever. Maybe you're already a cop UM
Speaker 1: and you have to submit it to the Accident Academy
Speaker 1: board for a review. And then once they're all reviewed
Speaker 1: and everybody's all thumbs up, you are a life since
Speaker 1: I guess. But you're not licensed because there's no licensing body. Um,
Speaker 1: you are you graduate? I guess is is what they
Speaker 1: call it. So that's as accredited as it gets. I guess.
Speaker 1: And like you said, Um, proponents of polygraph testing say
Speaker 1: that there, if you're a good FP, you're gonna be
Speaker 1: able to structure everything correctly so that you can see
Speaker 1: past somebody who's just who sweats a lot like you,
Speaker 1: or who gets stressed out easily like me, Um, and
Speaker 1: design your questions appropriately, and you're gonna be able to
Speaker 1: to to figure out whether this person is deceptive or not.
Speaker 1: So how how would you do that? Chuck? Well, we
Speaker 1: should talk about the test itself. I guess. Uh, you're
Speaker 1: gonna you're gonna go in and you're gonna get a
Speaker 1: pretest before you get strapped up to anything. Could take
Speaker 1: about an hour. This is just you and those the
Speaker 1: only two people in the room. You're not surrounded by
Speaker 1: folks like in the movies and stuff, although a movie
Speaker 1: sometimes it's just two people, I guess. But the pretest
Speaker 1: that you're just going to get an interview basically about
Speaker 1: basically about why you're being investigated. Uh, they're also gonna
Speaker 1: be profiling you and checking you out and just seeing
Speaker 1: what kind of questions you respond to and what might
Speaker 1: make you nervous, just so they'll be better informed about
Speaker 1: how to properly question you once you're all strapped in
Speaker 1: right and the pretest where you're just kind of hanging
Speaker 1: out with them casually, the examiners also kind of getting
Speaker 1: info out of you that you might not be aware of, like, um,
Speaker 1: if you are uh, if you talk leisurely about your
Speaker 1: favorite beer at one point and how you like it
Speaker 1: a lot, and then later on it also comes up
Speaker 1: that you have to drive a lot um, they might
Speaker 1: come up with it. They might use that for a
Speaker 1: control question, UM, which could be something like have you
Speaker 1: ever driven under the influence of alcohol? And a control
Speaker 1: question is something where you would have to admit guilt um,
Speaker 1: and you may not want to, but it's such a
Speaker 1: broad question that just about anybody is guilty of it,
Speaker 1: like have you ever lied to somebody? Have you ever
Speaker 1: um stolen anything? That kind of thing, So where if
Speaker 1: you say no, they now have a baseline for what
Speaker 1: it looks like when you lie. That they can make
Speaker 1: a reasonable assumption that you have just lied. And any
Speaker 1: of the data UM captured on the polygraph they're going
Speaker 1: to use to analyze everything else off of. And that's
Speaker 1: pretty much it. That's the test, and afterward you have
Speaker 1: the post tests where they look at all the data
Speaker 1: and chart out whether or not they think you're deceptive
Speaker 1: and aware. Like on this question you were deceptive. On
Speaker 1: this question you may have been deceptive. It's kind of
Speaker 1: hard to tell. On this one you definitely were deceptive.
Speaker 1: So so, and it's all in it's all in relation
Speaker 1: to that control question, that baseline, right, So if you
Speaker 1: if your deception, if you if on questions where I mean,
Speaker 1: they're going to have to talk to the police as
Speaker 1: well too and say what do you want to know
Speaker 1: out of this person? So they'll design questions around that
Speaker 1: as well. Um, so they may have a question like, um,
Speaker 1: are you wearing a blue shirt? That may be question one,
Speaker 1: it's irrelevant, right. Question two is, um, have you ever
Speaker 1: lied to your boss? That's the control question, and then
Speaker 1: question three is something like you know, did you steal
Speaker 1: the cookie from the cookie jar? Like that's the one
Speaker 1: that the cops want them to ask. They'll compare the
Speaker 1: results of Q three against Q two and if they're
Speaker 1: the same or you can't really tell, that's in UH
Speaker 1: in that that's an UH inconclusive tests. So that's it.
Speaker 1: I mean, like you said, that's that's polygraph. It's pretty easy,
Speaker 1: it is. It's Uh, it's um jar ringly easy, considering
Speaker 1: that it's used in legal cases a lot, right, Yes,
Speaker 1: that's true. Um. People try to to battle the LDE
Speaker 1: detector in various ways or a little tricks that the
Speaker 1: Internet says works, like taking a sedative or putting any
Speaker 1: perspirint on your fingers, which seems like they would make
Speaker 1: you wash your hands, Uh, putting attack in your shoe,
Speaker 1: and anytime you get asked a question, every single time
Speaker 1: you stomp on the tack. And the idea is that
Speaker 1: you're just gonna skew the tests so they all look
Speaker 1: the same, so your body has the same reaction no
Speaker 1: matter what's going on, like they I guess, if you
Speaker 1: press on the tack, your physiological response could overwhelm any
Speaker 1: response to the question. Right. Um, Like I said, there,
Speaker 1: these these things are used in legal cases, but with caveats. Right.
Speaker 1: If you undergo a polygraph, Uh, whether you fail or pass,
Speaker 1: it doesn't really matter legally speaking, right, um, because of
Speaker 1: unless you're in New Mexico. Yeah, this is the only
Speaker 1: state that allows it just openly. Like if you take
Speaker 1: a polygraph like, it's admissible in court yeah, every other state. Um.
Speaker 1: Usually the both sides have to agree on it being
Speaker 1: admitted or um. The judge has to say, yeah, we're
Speaker 1: gonna admit this one, right, Yeah. And federally, the judge
Speaker 1: decides whether or not they're going to admit it, right,
Speaker 1: And I guess state judges kind of follow that federal
Speaker 1: ruling of polygraphing. Yeah, And it's sort of a crapshoot
Speaker 1: if a federal judge is gonna allow it or not.
Speaker 1: There's no precedent really to where they say we have
Speaker 1: to or we don't have to. Right. So, what are
Speaker 1: the problems with this um? The problems with a polygraph
Speaker 1: um or that it's subjective, Right, that's a big one.
Speaker 1: But also because there because it's subjective, you can get
Speaker 1: what are called false positives and false negatives. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you don't want that because then the test itself is
Speaker 1: just not valid. Right. Uh. But I mean that a
Speaker 1: lot of people use that as evidence that polygraph polygraphy
Speaker 1: shouldn't be done at all, that it's not valid. False
Speaker 1: positive and polygraph thing is when you find somebody who
Speaker 1: is deemed deceptive but was telling the truth. False negative
Speaker 1: is when somebody who wasn't telling the truth UM is
Speaker 1: deemed truthful. Like Gary Ridgeway, the Green River killer. They
Speaker 1: had him for a little while and gave him a
Speaker 1: polygraph and he passed and they let him go and
Speaker 1: he went and killed a bunch more women. All right,
Speaker 1: that's right. I didn't know that. Actually, Yeah, there's also
Speaker 1: the uh. You know, the federal government is the largest
Speaker 1: uh consumer of these exams, and if you work for
Speaker 1: the federal government, you've probably had one to get the job.
Speaker 1: But you can't do that in the private sector thanks
Speaker 1: to the Polygraph Protection Act Employee Polygraph Protection Act in
Speaker 1: the late eighties, they said, you can't force your employees
Speaker 1: to do this US. You can request it, but if
Speaker 1: they don't want to do it, you can't fire them
Speaker 1: because of it. You just can't do it, right, not
Speaker 1: in private land, right unless you have a contract with
Speaker 1: the government, and then that's not valid. But yeah, the
Speaker 1: the federal government is the largest opponent to him in court,
Speaker 1: but also the largest consumer. And imagine that, UM. And
Speaker 1: there's been a lot of cases that shaped its admissibility
Speaker 1: or not. But the polygraph it seems like it's kind
Speaker 1: of honest way out. I wrote an article about UM
Speaker 1: M R I being used as lie detectors, and that's
Speaker 1: starting to kind of come into fashion the more we
Speaker 1: start to understand, like how lies are born in the brain,
Speaker 1: being able to see it and saying this is the
Speaker 1: pattern that will happen. UM. If this person is lying
Speaker 1: and then that pattern happens, they say, what, we know
Speaker 1: you're lying. We just saw that live form in your brain.
Speaker 1: That makes sense, yes, But at the same time, people
Speaker 1: who understand MR eyes say, is way too early to
Speaker 1: be doing that. And even if we can do it
Speaker 1: with accuracy, there are a lot of moral and ethical
Speaker 1: questions to it as well that we need to address.
Speaker 1: First always uh and then penile plus demography. What's that? So?
Speaker 1: Remember the the UM newmeographs that go around the chest
Speaker 1: and the abdomen. Imagine one of those that goes around
Speaker 1: the penis and it does the same thing. It the
Speaker 1: text changes in contraction and girth. It's a perfect way
Speaker 1: to put it UM and it's used to detect arousal.
Speaker 1: They use it for UM sex offenders. It's under at
Speaker 1: least as much attack as regular UM polygraphs. But I
Speaker 1: wrote this blog post called UM using science to root
Speaker 1: out late in homosexuality among homophobes. A study at U
Speaker 1: g A used UH penile pleas plesismography UM to find
Speaker 1: if anyone who they had deemed homophobic be came aroused
Speaker 1: to inexposed to homosexual pornography. Yeah, it's it's one of
Speaker 1: the better posts I've ever written. Cheese, all right, that's
Speaker 1: our future. I guess peno pleathismography for everyone, everyone with
Speaker 1: a penis at least and then chuck. Lastly, I want
Speaker 1: to encourage everybody, if this has piqued your interest about
Speaker 1: lie detectors, to go watch the shoe Court shoe store
Speaker 1: job interview clip from Mr Show on YouTube. You remember
Speaker 1: that one. It's very good weather friend Paula Thompkins and
Speaker 1: he has a breakthrough. Was seeing that one? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: good old p f T yep. And that's it for
Speaker 1: lie detectors, right, Yeah. I want to take a test.
Speaker 1: If there's someone in the Atlanta area that administers these
Speaker 1: and would be willing to give me a lie detector test,
Speaker 1: I would love to do that, Okay, and I'll watch
Speaker 1: yes UM as long as I can, you know, approve
Speaker 1: the questions or not approve them. But I don't want
Speaker 1: to be like rooted out as some miscreant. That's a
Speaker 1: little late for that. Just keep it above board. UM.
Speaker 1: If you want to know more about lie detectors and
Speaker 1: play with some Lie detector flash animation, you can do
Speaker 1: that by typing in lie detector on this in the
Speaker 1: search bar on how stuff works dot com and UM,
Speaker 1: that means it's time for listener mail. That's right, Josh.
Speaker 1: This is from Brad and Brad. If you remember, we
Speaker 1: had a list of suggestions from a listener not too
Speaker 1: long ago that thought our podcast could be a lot
Speaker 1: better if we changed a few things. Brad has some
Speaker 1: suggestions of his own of how we can make the
Speaker 1: podcast better. We should both have nicknames zazz up the
Speaker 1: actual name like welcome to stuff you should Know with
Speaker 1: j C and the Dingo, sit back while getting a
Speaker 1: big helping of knowledge from Chucko and the Duck. I
Speaker 1: second the suggestion to remove the personal anecdotes should be
Speaker 1: moved to a separate podcast called the Josh and Chuck Memoirs.
Speaker 1: Daily one hour podcasts can recount your lives from birth
Speaker 1: to present, focusing on depressing stories that are marginally factual.
Speaker 1: It's in development, Chuck, please your raise your voice one octave,
Speaker 1: Josh lower yours one octave. What okay? So now this
Speaker 1: is how I talk to the opening of the podcast
Speaker 1: should be a description of what each of you ate
Speaker 1: that day and the number of trips to the bathroom.
Speaker 1: This allows the listener to keep track at home. Hedgehogs,
Speaker 1: brain surgeons, arcades, and Bolivian politics are underrated, under sorry,
Speaker 1: underrepresented on your podcast at least should be about these subjects.
Speaker 1: Do not exclude listener mail. Instead, create a quieter audio
Speaker 1: track reading the listener mail and overlay it on the
Speaker 1: rest of the podcast. That way, listeners can hear both
Speaker 1: the mail and the main content at the same time.
Speaker 1: This is a pretty good idea. Why not set the
Speaker 1: pod we literally driving people in Spain? If we did that,
Speaker 1: why not set the podcast to a backdrop of tribal
Speaker 1: drums and jungle animal noises would give it an exotic feel.
Speaker 1: That's over the listener mail track, over the whole thing,
Speaker 1: So that'd be three tracks deep. Yes, and it would
Speaker 1: lead to suspense for the listener to wonder if you
Speaker 1: will be eaten by jaguars? Uh. And it was clear
Speaker 1: from the podcast on Mummies neither of you had ever
Speaker 1: been mummified. Please refrain from explaining topics that you don't
Speaker 1: have personal experience with. And then the final suggestion, just
Speaker 1: retail episodes of this American Life that went that last
Speaker 1: one went down like the Dave Glitterman top. Finally, so
Speaker 1: that's Brad, Thanks brand. Those are all great ideas. Three
Speaker 1: tracks all in one, streaming at once together listener mail
Speaker 1: quietly to podcast and tribal drumming and jungle noises. Yes, um,
Speaker 1: let's see. If you have access to a polygraph and
Speaker 1: want to hook chuck up to it, let us know.
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