Speaker 1: You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope
Speaker 1: and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Guess what, Mango?
Speaker 1: What's that will?
Speaker 2: So I came across this study, and you know I
Speaker 2: love a good study, Mango, But this was from researchers
Speaker 2: at the University of Wisconsin Lacrosse, and you know I
Speaker 2: love University of Wisconsin Lacrosse. And this is a pretty
Speaker 2: weird one. So here's what they did. They asked six
Speaker 2: hundred and thirty two people to document every single lie
Speaker 2: they told over the course of three months. That is incredible.
Speaker 2: So what they find out, well, among other things, they
Speaker 2: discovered that the number one reason people lied was to
Speaker 2: avoid others. Oh, I mean that kind of makes sense
Speaker 2: to me, Yeah, it does. And the second most common
Speaker 2: reason people lied was for jokes or pranks, which also makes.
Speaker 1: Sense, like the time you told me the CEO of
Speaker 1: Vegemite was a huge fan of the show and wanted
Speaker 1: to send us a lifetime supply of vegemite. That is,
Speaker 1: that's a good example of a lie, yep. But from
Speaker 1: what you're describing, these are fairly like harmless lies, right,
Speaker 1: So is a lesson that lying isn't necessarily so bad.
Speaker 2: I do like that that's your conclusion. I mean, the
Speaker 2: lesson isn't quite that simple. Like, It's a highly complex
Speaker 2: form of social interaction that can serve many different purposes,
Speaker 2: and so lies can range from lighthearted and funny to
Speaker 2: of course malicious to downright dangerous, depending on the intention
Speaker 2: behind them and the cultural context too. So people have
Speaker 2: been trying to understand lying for thousands of years, and
Speaker 2: it definitely merits more research or at least a podcast episode,
Speaker 2: I'd say.
Speaker 1: So, will I do have something to confess?
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm nervous.
Speaker 1: I read that University of Wisconsin the study last week,
Speaker 1: and I just pretended I didn't know about it, so
Speaker 1: this show would sound better.
Speaker 2: Oh man, well, you know what I actually was lying too,
Speaker 2: because I knew that you had read the University of
Speaker 2: Wisconsin study and I pretended that I didn't. So it's
Speaker 2: just like this to an interesting start. But actually it's
Speaker 2: the perfect way to kick off an episode about lying.
Speaker 2: There is a whole lot to talk about, and I
Speaker 2: guarantee from this point forward we will be one hundred
Speaker 2: percent truthful. So let's dive in. Hey there, podcast listeners,
Speaker 2: welcome to part time genius. I'm Will Pearson, and as always,
Speaker 2: I'm joined by my good friend Mangesh hot ticketter and
Speaker 2: over there in the booth waving a red hot poker,
Speaker 2: that's our pal and producer Dylan fig and he's actually
Speaker 2: waving it pretty aggressively. I'm not really sure what he's doing,
Speaker 2: but it looks a little bit dangerous. If I'm being honest,
Speaker 2: I am.
Speaker 1: Glad that he's wearing oven mits at least, But believe
Speaker 1: it or not, I think I know what he's trying
Speaker 1: to demonstrate it. So, okay. Back in the Middle eight
Speaker 1: lying was considered a terrible sin, and people, specifically Christian people,
Speaker 1: believe that the only way to know if someone was
Speaker 1: lying was by testing them with a trial by ordeal. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, the accused was put through a physical challenge, and,
Speaker 1: according to the logic at the time, if they were honest,
Speaker 1: God would prevent them from getting hurt. Now, one of
Speaker 1: the ordeals was touching the person's tongue to a red
Speaker 1: hot poker. Obviously, this resulted in a lot of burnt tongues,
Speaker 1: which was seen as proof of dishonesty. Yikes.
Speaker 2: All right, well, thank you Dylan for that terrifying visual.
Speaker 2: It is not common that we see Dylan looking terrifying
Speaker 2: as one of the nicest humans on the planet. But
Speaker 2: good job there, Dylan. All right, So Mengo, it sounds
Speaker 2: like people took lying very seriously back then.
Speaker 1: They definitely did so. Other trials by ordeal included walking
Speaker 1: over burning coals and being forced to swallow poison. And
Speaker 1: if you're thinking, wow, that seems kind of extreme, this
Speaker 1: actually all traces back to Saint Augustine. He wrote a
Speaker 1: famous treatise on lying called Online and Augustine argued that
Speaker 1: lying is like a disease. It supposedly destroys your integrity
Speaker 1: and puts you in direct opposition to God. He's also
Speaker 1: the guy who came up with the idea that if
Speaker 1: you always tell the truth, God will actually swoop in
Speaker 1: to protect you from the harm. But medieval Europe didn't
Speaker 1: invent the idea of testing for truth. They just kind
Speaker 1: of took it to this new, more brutal level. In
Speaker 1: ancient China, accused liars had to chew a mouthful of
Speaker 1: dry rice while someone recited the accusations against them, and
Speaker 1: then they'd spit the rice out, and if it seemed
Speaker 1: too dry when they spit it out because of their
Speaker 1: dry mouth from nervousness. Then that was considered proof that
Speaker 1: they had lied. What a weird way to test if
Speaker 1: somebody's lying. Yeah, these early lie detectors were very, very ineffective,
Speaker 1: but I guess it shows that concern about lying is
Speaker 1: practically universal. There's actually this ancient Hindu text, the yard Javeda,
Speaker 1: and it dates back to one thousand BCE, and it
Speaker 1: has tips for royalty who are worried that their servants
Speaker 1: are undercover scenaries lying about their allegiance. So it says, quote,
Speaker 1: a person who intends to poison food may be recognized.
Speaker 1: He does not answer questions, or they are evasive answers.
Speaker 1: He speaks nonsense, rubs the great toe along the ground
Speaker 1: and shivers. His face is discolored. He rubs the roots
Speaker 1: of his hair with his fingers, and he tries by
Speaker 1: every means to leave the house.
Speaker 2: It kind of feels like they would not be very
Speaker 2: good mercenaries if they're doing all that stuff.
Speaker 1: I know, but this gets is something really interesting, which
Speaker 1: is that throughout history, people have believed that observing someone's
Speaker 1: nonverbal behaviors, like their cues of things like fidgeting or
Speaker 1: rubbing their nose. That's an easy way to tell if
Speaker 1: they're lying, So you don't really need the hot pokers
Speaker 1: or the vials of poison, I guess.
Speaker 2: And that's basically the idea behind lie detectors looking for
Speaker 2: those sorts of clues.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, So modern lie detectors or polygraphs were invented
Speaker 1: in the early nineteen hundreds, but some of the technology
Speaker 1: they use was developed in the eighteen hundreds, And all
Speaker 1: they really do is measure changes in certain vital signs,
Speaker 1: including things like blood pressure, breathing, perspiration. And although they're
Speaker 1: still used by law enforcement and government agencies, they're widely
Speaker 1: considered a pseudoscience. And that's because the physiological changes they
Speaker 1: measure it can be triggered by lots of things like
Speaker 1: not just the stress of lying.
Speaker 2: Well, if you think about how it like the fear
Speaker 2: of being arrested or stressed from being interrogated.
Speaker 1: Right. In fact, the ACLU has opposed the use of
Speaker 1: polygraph machines for decades, saying they don't work and they're
Speaker 1: a violation of people's privacy rights. And remember the machine
Speaker 1: itself doesn't offer any conclusions. It just kind of records
Speaker 1: this data for people But this is the part I
Speaker 1: didn't realize. It's that a human polygraph examiner actually has
Speaker 1: to interpret that data to decide what it means. Is
Speaker 1: that a normal spike in sweating because the room is hot,
Speaker 1: or does it indicate a lie, Which means the results
Speaker 1: of a polygraph test can actually be tainted by human.
Speaker 2: Bias, I mean, like crazy bias. It does feel like
Speaker 2: it's just so weird that in the twenty first century,
Speaker 2: where using what seems like the same lie detection concepts
Speaker 2: ancient people, did we just exchanged the dry rice for
Speaker 2: some sort of fancy machine.
Speaker 1: I guess, yeah, pretty much.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, you know, regardless of what goes on physically,
Speaker 2: telling a lie does require a whole bunch of complicated
Speaker 2: brain activity. Like first you have to come up with
Speaker 2: the lie and mentally detach yourself from the truth. Then
Speaker 2: you have to choose your words and behaviors carefully. Is
Speaker 2: to sell the lie and avoid suspicion, and that requires
Speaker 2: understanding what your audience knows now and then making guesses
Speaker 2: about what they might discover later. Then you have to
Speaker 2: process the response to the initial lie and spin out
Speaker 2: more lies as you need to back yourself up The
Speaker 2: scientific term for all of this is called cognitive load.
Speaker 1: That is so funny, Like it feels like lying comes
Speaker 1: so naturally at this point and you need to write,
Speaker 1: but like it sounds exhausting when you put it that way.
Speaker 1: So does this mean like there's a specific area of
Speaker 1: the brain that controls our ability to lie?
Speaker 2: You know? Actually it's the opposite of this, because there's
Speaker 2: this heavy cognitive load. Lying involves multiple areas of the
Speaker 2: brain really working together. So these are areas responsible for
Speaker 2: critical stuff like self awareness and social cognition. And one
Speaker 2: thing that really fascinates me is the fact that line
Speaker 2: can actually change our memories. That's because memories aren't set
Speaker 2: in stone, and so the way we remember something can
Speaker 2: be distorted over time, and if a lie is repeated
Speaker 2: often enough, the truth is then suppressed. It can actually
Speaker 2: distort our memory of an event.
Speaker 1: It also explains a lot about history and also like
Speaker 1: collective memories, right, it really does.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean you might be wondering how and when
Speaker 2: do we develop the ability to lie? And it turns
Speaker 2: out there's a whole body of research about little kids
Speaker 2: and lying. And we're going to chat more about all
Speaker 2: of that right after a quick break.
Speaker 1: And Okay, well, so I know you've done a ton
Speaker 1: of research about kids brains and how they developed the
Speaker 1: ability to lie, But first I have to ask, like,
Speaker 1: did you tell lies when you were a kid, or
Speaker 1: you know, can you remember what your kids first lies
Speaker 1: were to you?
Speaker 2: You know, I know that I did. I don't remember
Speaker 2: a whole lot of things specifically, but I remember that
Speaker 2: my lies that I would tell were usually just like
Speaker 2: ridiculous stories like coming in from playing outside or something
Speaker 2: and then just making up some absurd story that probably
Speaker 2: deep down I felt like my parents knew that I
Speaker 2: was lying, but I'd still go for it anyway. But
Speaker 2: how about you?
Speaker 1: Uh? Yeah, I remember like being four and telling my
Speaker 1: mom that I went to see Superman at the movie
Speaker 1: theater and like pretending to fly around like it, but
Speaker 1: I'd actually seen Return of the Jedi, And when she
Speaker 1: found out, she was upset not be excited see Superman
Speaker 1: just because she thought this like innocent kid could never
Speaker 1: lie to her.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's a heart break moment for mom.
Speaker 1: Ruby actually had an amazing first lie that I remember, Like.
Speaker 1: Ruby was also about four at this time, and Henry
Speaker 1: had had a birthday party at his school, and so
Speaker 1: Ruby was like, oh yeah, we had cake at my
Speaker 1: school too. I was like, oh, was there a birthday party?
Speaker 1: And we was like no, no, no birthday party. And
Speaker 1: I said, oh yeah, then then why was that cake?
Speaker 1: And we was like, uh the classroom anniversary? It was
Speaker 1: like a classroom niverse and like, I can I text
Speaker 1: your teachers to find out about this classrom anniversary? And
Speaker 1: Ruby was like no, no, no, they don't.
Speaker 2: Like the text.
Speaker 1: And so so I said, you know, oh so, uh
Speaker 1: so did you sing the traditional classroom anniversary song? And
Speaker 1: we was like yeah, and I said, oh would you
Speaker 1: sing it? And Ruby, without like skipping a be goes,
Speaker 1: it's a classroom manniversary. It's a classroom anniversary. We do
Speaker 1: it in the big building.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I heard that one. That's that is a classic.
Speaker 2: That's pretty amazing.
Speaker 1: So anyway, I think it's time to get to the science,
Speaker 1: so let's get to it.
Speaker 2: I don't know, I feel like it's time for more songs,
Speaker 2: so let's do more of that, all right. Well, the
Speaker 2: general consensus is that kids start lying when they're about
Speaker 2: two or three years old, and usually they do it
Speaker 2: when they've done something that they know they shouldn't do.
Speaker 2: But you know, their brains aren't sophisticated enough to take
Speaker 2: that extra step of thinking, you like, will the person
Speaker 2: I'm talking to actually believe what I'm saying? And so
Speaker 2: you get situations like a toddler standing there covered in
Speaker 2: paint and you say, did you open the paint? And
Speaker 2: they of course deny it.
Speaker 1: So at what age like does this start to change?
Speaker 2: Usually around four they start to take the listener's perspective
Speaker 2: into account, and there's something psychologists call the theory of mind,
Speaker 2: which is the ability to reason about other people's mental
Speaker 2: states and then act accordingly. So the kid realizes that
Speaker 2: you can see the paint and you'll be wondering how
Speaker 2: that paint got there, and so they might say something like,
Speaker 2: you know, my brother did, which is a nice try,
Speaker 2: of course, but maybe the brother's been upstairs all day.
Speaker 1: So they're close to getting this lie right. But there's
Speaker 1: still some holes in the story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, usually there are. It actually just is a side
Speaker 2: note reminds me of our good friend Adam that talked
Speaker 2: about a high school experience when he was sitting next
Speaker 2: to a girl that he had a crush on and
Speaker 2: he sneezed into his hands. She looks over at him.
Speaker 2: He clearly has snot all in his hands, and he
Speaker 2: just looks at her and he says, it wasn't me.
Speaker 1: Do you knew the story?
Speaker 2: Yes, it's pretty great. I just thought that was such
Speaker 2: a great response anyway. So things really start to change
Speaker 2: around seven or eight, and that's when they can account
Speaker 2: for a wider range of facts and contexts like in
Speaker 2: the lie. So maybe they say, you know, my brother
Speaker 2: did it, and you say, but he's in his room,
Speaker 2: And then a slightly older kid has the capacity to
Speaker 2: react with something like he came down for a snack
Speaker 2: and he was playing with the paint, but then he
Speaker 2: went back upstairs, you know, just taking it to another level.
Speaker 1: Really, it is wild to think of little kids like
Speaker 1: almost like new versions of AI, Like they just keep
Speaker 1: getting better and better at lying as.
Speaker 2: The yeah, yeah, it's a good way to think about
Speaker 2: it like that, that training over time, and it's even
Speaker 2: more wild to realize that this is something parents have
Speaker 2: known about for a long time. Actually, Charles Darwin wrote
Speaker 2: about toddler liars after doing some observational research to his
Speaker 2: own kids. This was, of course, back in the eighteen forties.
Speaker 2: So what happened is one day he caught his two
Speaker 2: and a half year old son coming out of the
Speaker 2: dining room with something very obviously wrapped up in a pinafore.
Speaker 2: And this is, you know, a dressed like garment. And
Speaker 2: Darwin says, hey, buddy, what what do you got there?
Speaker 2: And the kids like nothing, go away, and so Darwin
Speaker 2: checks and it turns out he'd stolen a.
Speaker 1: Pickle, the old pickle and a pinafore.
Speaker 2: Bit, yeah, you know, the whole bit there. But the
Speaker 2: point is, there's ample evidence that very young children have
Speaker 2: the executive functions needed for lying. More complicated skills like
Speaker 2: memory and inhibition control, they develop a little bit later,
Speaker 2: and that makes their lies more elaborate and believable. And
Speaker 2: what researchers have found is that kids with strong cognitive
Speaker 2: abilities actually make better liars. So, in a weird way,
Speaker 2: lying is a sign of reaching important developmental milestones.
Speaker 1: I like the idea of grade schools giving out stickers
Speaker 1: for lying. You know, so, the only thing cuter than
Speaker 1: a toddler telling whoppers is an animal who's trying to
Speaker 1: trick you.
Speaker 2: So were you suggesting that animals also lie?
Speaker 1: It kind of depends on what you mean. By lies.
Speaker 1: So usually when we say someone is lying, we mean
Speaker 1: they're knowingly making a false statement with the intent to deceive. Right. So,
Speaker 1: animals can't talk obviously, so they don't make statements the
Speaker 1: way we do. But if you expand this definition to
Speaker 1: include behaviors, then you know animals do engage in deceptive
Speaker 1: behavior all the time. So if you think about possums
Speaker 1: when they're threatened, they pretend to be dead. I also
Speaker 1: read about this bird called the forktailed drongo, which is
Speaker 1: native to the color Ahari Desert in Africa, and when
Speaker 1: it sees a predator like an eagle over ahead, it
Speaker 1: lets out a squeaky alarm call. Now, other desert animals,
Speaker 1: including meerkats, have learned to hide when they hear this
Speaker 1: alarm as well, But sometimes the drongo plays a trick.
Speaker 1: If it sees a meerkat holding food it wants, maybe
Speaker 1: like a nice juicy lizard, it starts squeaking the alarm,
Speaker 1: and the meerkat drops the food and runs for cover,
Speaker 1: and then the drongo swoops in and takes the meal. Wow.
Speaker 2: I mean that definitely sounds like the bird equivalent of
Speaker 2: making a fault statement with the intent to deceive. Don't
Speaker 2: you think.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So Weirdly, it's the last part that people actually
Speaker 1: disagree about whether or not there's intent. So clearly, the
Speaker 1: drongo knows that if it makes the alarm call, the
Speaker 1: meerkat will run, and the possum knows that if it
Speaker 1: lies really still, its predator may walk away. But some
Speaker 1: scientists actually call this functional deception, not intentional deception, and
Speaker 1: they argue that the intent depends on something you mentioned
Speaker 1: a few minutes ago, the theory of mind. And it's
Speaker 1: just not clear that animals have the ability to think
Speaker 1: about what other creatures know or believe.
Speaker 2: So I guess, in other words, the drongo isn't thinking
Speaker 2: if I yell, the dumb mere cat will believe there's
Speaker 2: an eagle. It just thinks when I yell, the mere
Speaker 2: cat runs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, pretty much. But there have been some studies that
Speaker 1: suggest animals, particularly great apes, may have a theory of mind.
Speaker 1: And in one experiment, researchers gave an ape eye trackers
Speaker 1: so they could tell where it was looking. And then,
Speaker 1: and I swear I'm not making this up, an assistant
Speaker 1: in an ape costume ran into the cage area puts
Speaker 1: an object under one of the two boxes on the floor.
Speaker 1: A researcher pretends to watch this happen and then leaves
Speaker 1: the room. And then when this assistant in ape costume
Speaker 1: is there alone, he puts the object under the other
Speaker 1: box for a moment, and then he picks it up
Speaker 1: and runs away. So when the researcher comes back and
Speaker 1: reaches for the boxes, the ape looks at him and
Speaker 1: then stared at the first box, as if he knew
Speaker 1: the researcher was expecting the object to be there, which means, like,
Speaker 1: you know, the ape is picking up on all these
Speaker 1: and is more aware of others behaviors. And actually there's
Speaker 1: video of this on YouTube.
Speaker 2: Oh man, I've got to see this. It's such a
Speaker 2: fascinating idea. And I also love the idea that like
Speaker 2: a guy with several PhDs having to run around in
Speaker 2: a costume pretending to be an ape. So this is
Speaker 2: definitely something I'm going to watch, all right. So to
Speaker 2: switch gears here, Mango, I want to tell you about
Speaker 2: lying and culture clashes. So you mentioned earlier that lying
Speaker 2: means knowingly making a false statement with the intention to deceive.
Speaker 2: That's a good definition, but some types of deception aren't
Speaker 2: so clear. Cut, and the context really does matter. So
Speaker 2: omitting information or being purposely ambiguous, those can be types
Speaker 2: of lies. Even accurate information can be used in misleading ways.
Speaker 2: And the way we interpret these nuances and the way
Speaker 2: we assess other people's honesty, it really comes down to
Speaker 2: the norms that we've learned from our culture.
Speaker 1: You know, this is a great quote by Montaigne that
Speaker 1: Mary actually pointed me too, and it goes, quote the
Speaker 1: reverse of you has one hundred thousand forms, And it
Speaker 1: sounds like that, right, Like, there's so many ways to
Speaker 1: lie in just like one way to simply tell the truth.
Speaker 1: But can you give me some examples of what you're
Speaker 1: thinking about here?
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. But by the way, Mary, great quote
Speaker 2: that is, that's pretty awesome, all right. So, according to research,
Speaker 2: highly individualistic cultures like the United States, they see lies
Speaker 2: very differently than more collectives cultures like many in Asia. So,
Speaker 2: for example, an American business manager might consider it dishonest
Speaker 2: to withhold negative feedback from an employee, even if it's harsh,
Speaker 2: but a Japanese manager might not see it that way
Speaker 2: at all because they're considering potential harm to an employee
Speaker 2: and to their relationship. So for them, that's part of
Speaker 2: being a trustworthy person. So maybe they downplay the bad
Speaker 2: review or delivered an indirect fashion. But if you imagine
Speaker 2: an American employee getting vague feedback might make them think,
Speaker 2: what are they hiding from me?
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I guess in both scenarios, people are they're
Speaker 1: trying to do the right thing, and there's no there's
Speaker 1: no actually intend to deceive there.
Speaker 2: No, that's exactly right. I mean this extends to speech
Speaker 2: patterns too. So most native English speakers in the United
Speaker 2: States consider clear, direct language to be a sign of honesty,
Speaker 2: and we're a little more suspicious of verbal meandering or
Speaker 2: someone using a lot of euphemisms, but that's just how
Speaker 2: some cultures communicate. Meanwhile, they might interpret our bluntness as
Speaker 2: bad manners. And you know, of course, then there's body language.
Speaker 2: So in the US, holding eye contact is usually considered
Speaker 2: proof that someone's being honest, but in other parts of
Speaker 2: the world that can actually be seen as rude or aggressive.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well this is a podcast, so so you all
Speaker 1: can't see my eyes. But I'm going to use the
Speaker 1: straightforward American approach to honest communication. Right now, it is
Speaker 1: time for an ad break, So we can make money
Speaker 1: and keep the show going. That's how honest I'm being.
Speaker 1: But we'll be back soon.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to Part Time Genius, where we're learning the
Speaker 2: truth about lies. All right, So Mango, what have you
Speaker 2: got for us next?
Speaker 1: So far, we've mostly been talking about lies at a
Speaker 1: personal level, but lying isn't just about how we relate
Speaker 1: to one another. It can also have legal consequences, including
Speaker 1: what we call fraud. So under US law, fraud can
Speaker 1: be a civil or a criminal matter, depending on the situation,
Speaker 1: and in civil cases is defined as a misrepresentation of fact,
Speaker 1: either intentional or negligent, and that causes injury or harm
Speaker 1: to another person. Criminal fraud usually falls into specific categories
Speaker 1: that have their own definition, so you think about things
Speaker 1: like financial fraud, or insurance fraud, or even something like forgery. Right.
Speaker 1: And although none of this is new, technology has caused
Speaker 1: the scale of criminal fraud to explode in recent years.
Speaker 1: So just to give you a sense, from twenty eighteen
Speaker 1: to twenty twenty two, the US federal government lost between
Speaker 1: two hundred and thirty three billion and five hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty one billion dollars each year to fraud. And wow,
Speaker 1: that doesn't even count money lost at the state level,
Speaker 1: and that's billion with a B like that is staggering. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and if you thought those numbers were big. According to
Speaker 1: the World Economic Forum, cybercrime, which often involves fraud, obviously
Speaker 1: will cost the world ten point five trillion this year alone.
Speaker 1: But even more than the economic impact, there are personal costs.
Speaker 1: So you think about identity theft is one of the
Speaker 1: most common types of cyber fraud, and in a survey
Speaker 1: by the Identity Theft Resource Center, sixty percent of ID
Speaker 1: theft victims found themselves struggling to cover their bills in
Speaker 1: the aftermath of the incident, and sixteen percent reported feeling suicidal.
Speaker 1: It's really a serious problem.
Speaker 2: That is wild, all right. So when you say technology
Speaker 2: is driving all this, what exactly mean by that?
Speaker 1: So some of it's the obvious stuff, like we do
Speaker 1: our banking online, we give out our email addresses like candy,
Speaker 1: We share personal information on social media and a lot
Speaker 1: of us aren't great about checking privacy settings or changing
Speaker 1: our passwords. So fraudsters have plenty of material to work with,
Speaker 1: and they also have more points of entry to our
Speaker 1: lives than our finances. Now. But the World Economic Forum
Speaker 1: reports that the biggest problem right now is generative AI.
Speaker 1: So criminals are using AI language tools to crank out
Speaker 1: phishing emails that seem really authentic. They're using AI image
Speaker 1: generators to create deep fakes of people's faces that let
Speaker 1: them pass identity verification checks. According to a recent FBI warning,
Speaker 1: They're even using AI voice cloning to create deceptive audio
Speaker 1: clips that quote impersonate a close relative in a crisis situation,
Speaker 1: asking for immediate financial assistance or demanding a ransom.
Speaker 2: So, I mean, this is obviously just terrifying, and I'm wondering, though,
Speaker 2: before I throw my phone out the window, is there
Speaker 2: anything I can do about this?
Speaker 1: So from a tech standpoint, there's been a lot of
Speaker 1: interest in digital identity wallets like that would combine and biometrics,
Speaker 1: ID documents, personal information to create a secure log in
Speaker 1: that you can use multiple places. Proponents say it's like
Speaker 1: being asked to show your physical driver's license, so much
Speaker 1: safer than easily hacked password. But civil liberties groups the
Speaker 1: one that this could mean sacrificing privacy.
Speaker 2: I thought you were just gonna say something like change
Speaker 2: your passwords. I was kind of hoping that was where
Speaker 2: you were going with it.
Speaker 1: I mean you could do that too. You should do
Speaker 1: that actually, But the FBI has another tip that is
Speaker 1: so low tech, it's kind of brilliant, and it's just
Speaker 1: create a secret passphrase with your family and close friends.
Speaker 1: So if you ever get a call that sounds like
Speaker 1: me asking you to wire ten thousand dollars, you can
Speaker 1: ask for the phrase to confirm it's me. Wow.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's a good idea, all right. With all of
Speaker 2: this raises another question, and that's what makes someone lie
Speaker 2: or commit fraud, Like, we all know what's wrong, so
Speaker 2: why does it keep happening? So Dan Arielli is a
Speaker 2: professor of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke, and he's
Speaker 2: done a lot of research about this kind of thing.
Speaker 2: So he pointed out that our entire legal system operates
Speaker 2: on the theory of cost benefit analysis, Like, if you
Speaker 2: know there's a serious penalty for being dishonest, you'll decide
Speaker 2: if it's worth it or not, and you won't do
Speaker 2: it if you decide that it isn't. And the problem
Speaker 2: here is that it's just not how lying works in
Speaker 2: real life, and that's because humans have the ability to
Speaker 2: rationalize dishonesty. So Arieli did this experiment with a vending machine.
Speaker 2: He set the price mechanism to zero sense, but put
Speaker 2: labels on the snack saying that each item costs seventy
Speaker 2: five cents. He also taped a sign to the machine
Speaker 2: that read, quote, if there's something wrong with this machine,
Speaker 2: please call this number, and then he put his own
Speaker 2: cell phone number.
Speaker 1: That's clever. So what happened when people use the machine.
Speaker 2: Well, they'd put their money in and the machine would
Speaker 2: dispense multiple snacks and return all of their cash, and
Speaker 2: not a single person called to report the malfunction, although
Speaker 2: Ariela noted that nobody took more than four bags of
Speaker 2: free candy either. So his theory is that people were
Speaker 2: rationalizing the decision based on previous vending machine experiences, like
Speaker 2: we've all had that situation where you put your money
Speaker 2: in and it doesn't give you a snack, or, as
Speaker 2: he puts it, people were just kind of sorting out
Speaker 2: the vending karma in the world. I guess.
Speaker 1: I mean that's pretty fascinating, although obviously there's a big
Speaker 1: difference between taking candy and committing identity theft.
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course, but understanding the ways criminals make sense
Speaker 2: of what they're doing could help stop fraud before it
Speaker 2: even starts. So, for example, a Reli found that people
Speaker 2: would behave more honestly if they spend time reflecting on
Speaker 2: their personal morals or their ethics. So he tested this
Speaker 2: by asking one group of people to list ten books
Speaker 2: they read in high school and another group to recall
Speaker 2: the Ten Commandments. Then he gave both groups reward based
Speaker 2: tests that included opportunities to cheat, and he found that
Speaker 2: people who thought about books engaged in widespread cheating, while
Speaker 2: the Ten Commandments group did not cheat at all. So
Speaker 2: this is a reminder, don't read kids, you know what
Speaker 2: I mean. And what's really interesting is that he repeated
Speaker 2: the test with people who identified as atheists because they
Speaker 2: didn't know the Ten Commandments. He just had them swear
Speaker 2: on a Bible. After doing that, they still didn't cheat.
Speaker 2: That is incredible. So well, we're almost at the end
Speaker 2: of the episode.
Speaker 1: Tell me the truth. Did you prepare anything for the fact? Off?
Speaker 2: I sure did, Mango, Let's get to it.
Speaker 1: If there's one man whose name has become synonymous with dishonesty,
Speaker 1: it is Charles Ponzi and we've all heard his name.
Speaker 1: But I thought we'd get into these stories. So Ponzi
Speaker 1: was born in northern Italy in eighteen eighty two, and
Speaker 1: apparently his family had at one time been pretty well off,
Speaker 1: but by the time he came along, they had lost
Speaker 1: their fortune. He tried going to university in Rome, but
Speaker 1: dropped out and decided to take his chances in America. Now.
Speaker 1: Ponzi later claimed that he had set sail with two
Speaker 1: hundred dollars in savings, most of which he lost on
Speaker 1: the ship crossing the Atlantic because he got swindled by
Speaker 1: a card sharp Once in the US, though, he bounced
Speaker 1: around a series of jobs and low level but in
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty he launched the scheme that made him famous. Basically,
Speaker 1: there was this thing called an International Reply coupon, which
Speaker 1: was like a voucher many countries accepted in exchange for
Speaker 1: local postage stamps. Ponzi realized that he could buy cheap
Speaker 1: IRCs in Italy and exchange them for more expensive stamps
Speaker 1: in the US. As he put it in his memoir, quote,
Speaker 1: the racket fell into my lap like a ripe apple.
Speaker 1: It looked good, luscious. I examined it for flaws, found none,
Speaker 1: and I had to bite. I wouldn't have been human
Speaker 1: if I didn't. And just to be clear that part
Speaker 1: of the scheme was not illegal. It's just simple arbitrage,
Speaker 1: which happens in the stock market all the time. The
Speaker 1: problem was when he started tricking thousands of people into
Speaker 1: investing in his operation, claiming they'd earn a fifty percent
Speaker 1: return in ninety days. Now, every time an investor gave money,
Speaker 1: he used it to pay off earlier investors. So people
Speaker 1: thought they were getting huge returns and thought it was
Speaker 1: all real. And in the first eight months of nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty Ponzi actually made fifteen million dollars, which is about
Speaker 1: two hundred and thirty five million dollars in to day's money.
Speaker 1: I had no idea how much money you'd made.
Speaker 2: That's huge.
Speaker 1: It all came crashing down that August when Boston Post
Speaker 1: Reporters launched an investigation that ended in eighty six counts
Speaker 1: of mail fraud and a lengthy prison sentence.
Speaker 2: All right, well, speaking of elaborate and profitable lies, the
Speaker 2: FTC reports that in twenty twenty two, almost seventy thousand
Speaker 2: people were the victims of romance scammers. Now, this is
Speaker 2: a type of fraud that often begins on dating apps.
Speaker 2: That's where someone lies about who they are, usually in
Speaker 2: order to get you to send them money, and it's
Speaker 2: an extra malicious form of cat fishing. Now. One of
Speaker 2: the trickiest things for a catfisher to explain is why
Speaker 2: they can't meet up in person, So, according to the FTC,
Speaker 2: they'll often build a fake identity around a job that
Speaker 2: keeps them far away. And among romance scammers, the most
Speaker 2: popular lie is quote I'm stationed on a military base
Speaker 2: in another country. But another one that comes up a
Speaker 2: lot is I'm an offshore oil rig worker.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think what's funny about that is it's
Speaker 1: going to make online on dating so hard for actual
Speaker 1: oil rig workers.
Speaker 2: Like sure, I didn't think about this. I feels so
Speaker 2: bad for the rig workers just trying to get dates.
Speaker 1: Anyway. I was curious where the word lie comes from,
Speaker 1: and it turns out the term white lie is older
Speaker 1: than I expected. The first known use occurred on April tenth,
Speaker 1: fifteen sixty seven, when an English landowner named Ralph Adderley
Speaker 1: wrote a letter to a friend describing his brother in
Speaker 1: law by saying, quote, I do assure you he is
Speaker 1: unsuspected of any untruth or other notable crime, except a
Speaker 1: white lie, which is taken for a small fault in
Speaker 1: these parts.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's definitely sort of a compliment, I think.
Speaker 2: But all right, well, for our final fact, here's the
Speaker 2: story of a lie that was anything but harmless because
Speaker 2: it almost threw off decades of archaeological research. So it
Speaker 2: was back in nineteen twelve you have this amateur fossil
Speaker 2: hunter named Charles Dawson. He wrote to the British palaeontologist
Speaker 2: Sir Arthur Smith Woodward, and he was claiming he'd unearthed
Speaker 2: parts of a human skull in Piltdown. This was a
Speaker 2: village near his home in Sussex, so Woodward helped expand
Speaker 2: the excavation and eventually he and Dawson dug up parts
Speaker 2: of a mandible, pieces of a skull and multiple teeth there.
Speaker 2: And so intriguingly, some of these teeth appeared to be
Speaker 2: larger than a human's but smaller than an apes, and
Speaker 2: so it was pointing to the possibility of an ancient
Speaker 2: ancestor some five hundred thousand years old. Now the British
Speaker 2: scientific community was understandably excited about the evidence of a
Speaker 2: creature dubbed the Piltdown Man in part because a few
Speaker 2: years earlier, an ancient pre human jawbone had been discovered
Speaker 2: in Germany. Now in the run up to World War One,
Speaker 2: tensions between Germany and the UK were running high, and
Speaker 2: so the Piltdown Man was proof of England's importance and
Speaker 2: the fossil record until nineteen fifty three, when new dating
Speaker 2: techniques showed that his bones weren't all the same age,
Speaker 2: and what's more, they were a mix of human and
Speaker 2: eight bones. So this was proof of the p but
Speaker 2: the question was who did it so. Finally, in two
Speaker 2: thousand and nine, a paleoanthropologist named Isabelle de Groute used
Speaker 2: DNA analysis and CT scanning to get an even closer
Speaker 2: look at the Piltdown samples. Here's what she found. She
Speaker 2: found that all the teeth came from one orangutan, and
Speaker 2: that the bones had been coated in a sort of
Speaker 2: putty to make them appear uniform and heavy. Even so,
Speaker 2: she concluded that given the consistency of the cover up,
Speaker 2: it was the work of one person. Charles Dawson, as
Speaker 2: an amateur who dabbled in geology, archaeology, and anthropology. He
Speaker 2: would have known exactly what a real prehistoric find should
Speaker 2: look like, and he had access to samples and to tools,
Speaker 2: and as it turned out, he had perpetuated other smaller
Speaker 2: frauds that were all in an attempt to gain recognition
Speaker 2: by the British scientific community.
Speaker 1: That's so weird, you know, I'd heard of Pilton men,
Speaker 1: but I'd never realized that they'd figured out that Dawson
Speaker 1: was behind it. And I guess he did end up
Speaker 1: getting some recognition, but none the way he wanted. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, if I'm being honest, which I am obviously,
Speaker 1: I think he deserved Today's trophy for explaining how kids
Speaker 1: become such expert liars. I think that bit of the
Speaker 1: story was my favorite today.
Speaker 2: Thank you. It is fun, too fun to think about.
Speaker 1: Well that does it for this episode. If you like
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Speaker 1: by Will Pearson and me Mongish Heatikler and research by
Speaker 1: our good pal Mary Philip Sandy. Today's episode was engineered
Speaker 1: and produced by the wonderful Dylan Fagan with support from
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