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.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 2: That is, that's a good example of a lie, yep.
Speaker 1: But from 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.
Speaker 3: So let's dive in.
Speaker 2: Hey there, podcast listeners, welcome to part time genius. I'm
Speaker 2: Will Pearson, and as always, I'm joined by my good
Speaker 2: friend Mangesh hot ticketter and over there in the booth
Speaker 2: waving a red hot poker, that's our pal and producer
Speaker 2: Dylan fig and he's actually waving it pretty aggressively. I'm
Speaker 2: not really sure what he's doing, but it looks a
Speaker 2: little bit dangerous. If I'm being honest, I.
Speaker 1: Am glad that he's wearing oven mits at least, But
Speaker 1: believe it or not, I think I know what he's
Speaker 1: trying to demonstrate it. So, okay. Back in the Middle
Speaker 1: eight lying was considered a terrible sin, and people, specifically
Speaker 1: Christian people, believe that the only way to know if
Speaker 1: someone was lying was by testing them with a trial
Speaker 1: by ordeal. So, in other words, the accused was put
Speaker 1: through a physical challenge, and, according to the logic at
Speaker 1: the time, if they were honest, God would prevent them
Speaker 1: from getting hurt. Now, one of the ordeals was touching
Speaker 1: the person's tongue to a red hot poker. Obviously, this
Speaker 1: resulted in a lot of burnt tongues, which was seen
Speaker 1: as proof of dishonesty.
Speaker 2: Yikes. 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 like destroys your
Speaker 1: integrity and puts you in direct opposition to God. He's
Speaker 1: also the guy who came up with the idea that
Speaker 1: if you always tell the truth, God will actually swoop
Speaker 1: in to protect you from the harm. But medieval Europe
Speaker 1: didn't invent the idea of testing for truth. They just
Speaker 1: kind of took it to this new, more brutal level.
Speaker 1: In ancient China, accused liars had to chew a mouthful
Speaker 1: of dry rice while someone recited the accusations against them,
Speaker 1: and then they'd spit the rice out, and if it
Speaker 1: seemed too dry when they spit it out because of
Speaker 1: their dry mouth from nervousness. Then that was considered proof
Speaker 1: that they had lied.
Speaker 2: What a weird way to like test if somebody's lying.
Speaker 1: Yeah, these early lie detectors were very, very ineffective, but
Speaker 1: I guess it shows that concern about lying is practically universal. Wait,
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Speaker 1: this ancient Hindu text, the yard Javeda, and it dates
Speaker 1: back to one thousand BCE and it has tips for
Speaker 1: royalty who are worried that their servants are undercover mercenaries
Speaker 1: lying about their allegiance. So it says, quote, a person
Speaker 1: who intends to poison food may be recognized. He does
Speaker 1: not answer questions, or they are evasive answers. He speaks nonsense,
Speaker 1: rubs the great toe along the ground and shivers. His
Speaker 1: face is discolored. He rubs the roots of his hair
Speaker 1: with his fingers, and he tries by every means to
Speaker 1: 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 to 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 light 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 you think about it, like the fear of being arrested,
Speaker 2: 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, Like
Speaker 1: is that a normal spike in sweating because the room
Speaker 1: is hot, or does it indicate a lie? Which means
Speaker 1: the results of a polygraph test can actually be tainted
Speaker 1: by human bias, I.
Speaker 2: Mean, like crazy bias. It does feel like it's just
Speaker 2: so weird that in the twenty first century we're still
Speaker 2: using what seems like the same light detection concepts ancient people,
Speaker 2: that we just exchanged the dry rice for some sort
Speaker 2: of fancy machine. I guess, yeah, pretty much. All right, Well,
Speaker 2: you know, regardless of what goes on physically, telling a
Speaker 2: lot does require a whole bunch of complicated brain activity.
Speaker 2: Like first you have to come up with the lie
Speaker 2: and mentally detach yourself from the truth. Then you have
Speaker 2: to choose your words and behaviors carefully. Is to sell
Speaker 2: the lie and avoid suspicion. And that requires understanding what
Speaker 2: your audience knows now and then making guesses about what
Speaker 2: they might discover later. Then you have to process the
Speaker 2: response to the initial lie and spin out mora lies
Speaker 2: is you need to back yourself up. The scientific term
Speaker 2: 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 fast sates me is the fact that
Speaker 2: lyne can actually change our memories. That's because memories aren't
Speaker 2: set in stone, and so the way we remember something
Speaker 2: can be distorted over time, and if a lie is
Speaker 2: repeated often enough the truth is then suppressed. It can
Speaker 2: actually distort our memory of an event.
Speaker 1: It also explains a lot about history and also like
Speaker 1: collective memories.
Speaker 2: Right, it really does.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean you might be wondering how and when do
Speaker 2: we develop the ability to lie? And it turns out
Speaker 2: there's a whole body of research about little kids and lying,
Speaker 2: and we're going to chat more about all of that
Speaker 2: right after a quick break.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, so I know you've done a ton of
Speaker 1: research about kids' brains and how they developed the ability
Speaker 1: to lie. But first I have to ask, like, did
Speaker 1: you tell lies when you were a kid or you know,
Speaker 1: can you remember what your kids first lies were? You know?
Speaker 2: I I know that I did. I don't remember a
Speaker 2: whole lot of things specifically, but I remember that my
Speaker 2: lies that I would tell were usually just like ridiculous
Speaker 2: stories like coming in from playing outside or something and
Speaker 2: then just making up some absurd story that probably deep
Speaker 2: down I felt like my parents knew that I was lying,
Speaker 2: but I'd still go for it anyway. But 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, you know.
Speaker 2: Ah, yeah, that's a heartbreaking moment for mom.
Speaker 1: Ruby actually had an amazing first lie that I remember.
Speaker 1: Like Ruby was also about four at this time, and
Speaker 1: Henriett had a birthday party at his school and so
Speaker 1: Ruby was like, oh, yeah, we had hake 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 can I can I
Speaker 1: text your teachers to find out about this classroomnniversary? And
Speaker 1: we was like no, no, no, they don't.
Speaker 2: Like the text.
Speaker 1: And so I said, you know, oh so, uh so
Speaker 1: did you sing the traditional classroom anniversary song? And we
Speaker 1: was like yeah, and I said, oh would you sing it?
Speaker 1: And Ruby, without like skipping a be goes, it's a
Speaker 1: classroom manniversary. It's a classroom manniversary. We do it in
Speaker 1: the big building.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I heard that one. That's that is a classic.
Speaker 2: That's pretty amazing. Ruby.
Speaker 1: So anyway, I think it's time to get to the science.
Speaker 1: So let's 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, like will the person I'm
Speaker 2: talking to actually believe what I'm saying? And so you
Speaker 2: get situations like a toddler standing there covered in paint
Speaker 2: and you say, did you open the paint? And they,
Speaker 2: of course deny it.
Speaker 1: So at what age 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 called 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 it, which is a nice try,
Speaker 2: of course, but maybe the brothers 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 this 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 remember this story, Yes, it's pretty great.
Speaker 2: I just thought that was such a great response. Anyway,
Speaker 2: So things really start to change around seven or eight,
Speaker 2: and that's when they can account for a wider range
Speaker 2: of facts and contexts like in the lie. So maybe
Speaker 2: they say, you know, my brother did it, and you say,
Speaker 2: but he's in his room, And then a slightly older
Speaker 2: kid has the capacity to react with something like he
Speaker 2: came down for a snack and he was playing with
Speaker 2: the paint, but then he went back upstairs, you know,
Speaker 2: 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 told better at lying.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's a good way to think about it
Speaker 2: like that. That training over time, and it's even more
Speaker 2: whild to realize that this is something parents have known
Speaker 2: about for a long time. Actually, Charles Darwin wrote about
Speaker 2: toddler liars after doing some observational research to his own kids.
Speaker 2: This was, of course, back in the eighteen forties. So
Speaker 2: what happened is one day he caught his two and
Speaker 2: a half year old son coming out of the dining
Speaker 2: room with something very obviously wrapped up in a pinafore.
Speaker 2: And this is, you know, a dress like garment. And
Speaker 2: Darwin says, hey, buddy, what do you got there? And
Speaker 2: the kids like nothing, go away, and so Darwin checks
Speaker 2: 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 as a sign of reaching important developmental milestones.
Speaker 1: I like the idea of grade school is giving out
Speaker 1: stickers for lying. You know, so the only thing cuter
Speaker 1: than a toddler telling whoppers is an animal who's trying
Speaker 1: to trick you.
Speaker 2: So were you suggesting that animals also lie?
Speaker 1: It kind of depends on what you mean by lie.
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 Kalahari Desert in Africa, and when it
Speaker 1: sees a predator like an eagle over ahead, it lets
Speaker 1: out a squeaky alarm call. Now, other desert animals, including meerkats,
Speaker 1: have learned to hide when they hear this alarm as well,
Speaker 1: But sometimes the drongo plays a trick. If it sees
Speaker 1: a mere cat holding food it wants, maybe like a
Speaker 1: nice juicy lizard, it starts squeaking the alarm, and the
Speaker 1: mere cat drops the food and runs for cover, and
Speaker 1: then the drongo swoops in and takes the meal.
Speaker 2: Wow. I mean that definitely sounds like the bird equivalent
Speaker 2: of making a fault statement with the intent to deceive,
Speaker 2: don't 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: mere cat will run, and the possum knows that if
Speaker 1: it lies really still, its predator may walk away. But
Speaker 1: some scientists actually call this functional deception, not intentional deception,
Speaker 1: and they argue that the intent depends on something you
Speaker 1: mentioned a few minutes ago, the theory of mind. And
Speaker 1: it's just not clear that animals have the ability to
Speaker 1: think 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 meer 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 stuff 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: cues and is more aware of others' behaviors. And actually
Speaker 1: there's 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 and
Speaker 2: then a costume pretending to be an ape. So this
Speaker 2: is definitely something I'm going to watch all right, So
Speaker 2: to switch gears here, Mango, I want to tell you
Speaker 2: about lying and culture clashes. So you mentioned earlier that
Speaker 2: lying means knowingly making a false statement with the intention
Speaker 2: to deceive. That's a good definition, but some types of
Speaker 2: deception aren't so clear cut, and the context really does matter.
Speaker 2: So omitting information or being purposely ambiguous, those can be
Speaker 2: types of lies. Even accurate information can be used in
Speaker 2: misleading ways. And the way we interpret these nuances and
Speaker 2: the way we assess other people's honesty, it really comes
Speaker 2: down to 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 truth has one hundred thousand forms, And it
Speaker 1: sounds like that, right, Like there's so many ways lie
Speaker 1: 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 quo.
Speaker 2: That's pretty awesome. All right. So, according to research, highly
Speaker 2: individualistic cultures like the United States, they see lies very
Speaker 2: differently than more collective as 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 right,
Speaker 1: there's no actually intent to deceive.
Speaker 2: There No, that's exactly right. I mean this extends to
Speaker 2: speech patterns too, So most Native English speakers in the
Speaker 2: United States consider clear direct language to be a sign
Speaker 2: of honesty, and we're a little more suspicious of verbal
Speaker 2: meandering or someone using a lot of euphemisms. But that's
Speaker 2: just how some cultures communicate. Meanwhile, they might interpret our
Speaker 2: bluntness as bad manners. And you know, of course, then
Speaker 2: there's body language. So in the US, holding eye contact
Speaker 2: is usually considered proof that someone's being honest, but in
Speaker 2: other parts of the world that can actually be seen
Speaker 2: 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 that
Speaker 1: doesn't even count money lost at the state level. And
Speaker 1: that's billion with a B like that is daggering. 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 and our finance is now, but the World Economic
Speaker 1: Forum 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 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 going to say something like
Speaker 2: change your passwords. I was kind of hoping that was
Speaker 2: where you were going with it.
Speaker 1: I mean, you could do that too, You should do that, actually,
Speaker 1: But the FBI has another tip that is so low tech,
Speaker 1: it's kind of brilliant, and it's just create a secret
Speaker 1: passphrase with your family and close friends. So if you
Speaker 1: ever get a call that sounds like me asking you
Speaker 1: to wire ten thousand dollars, you can ask for the
Speaker 1: phrase to confirm it's me.
Speaker 2: Woh, okay, that's a good idea, all right. With all
Speaker 2: of this raises another question, and that's what makes someone
Speaker 2: lie or commit fraud, Like, we all know it's wrong,
Speaker 2: so why does it keep happening? So Dan Arielli is
Speaker 2: a professor of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke, and
Speaker 2: he's 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 Arielli 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: Arielli noted that nobody took more than four bags of
Speaker 2: free candy either. So his theory is that people were
Speaker 2: rationalizing their 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 so what's really interesting is that he
Speaker 2: repeated the test with people who identified as atheists. Because
Speaker 2: they didn't know the Ten Commandments. He just had them
Speaker 2: swear on a Bible. After doing that, they still didn't cheat.
Speaker 1: That is incredible. So well, we're almost at the end
Speaker 1: of the episode, tell me the truth. Did you prepare
Speaker 1: 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 in low level crimes. But
Speaker 1: in 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 stance
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 twenty,
Speaker 1: Ponzi actually made fifteen million dollars, which is about two
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty five million dollars in today's money. I
Speaker 1: had no idea how much money he'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: This is where someone lies about who they are, usually
Speaker 2: in order to get you to send them money. And
Speaker 2: it's an extra malicious form of cat fishing. Now, one
Speaker 2: of the trickiest things for a catfisher to explain is
Speaker 2: why they can't meet up in person. So, according to
Speaker 2: the FTC, they'll often build a fake identity around a
Speaker 2: job that keeps them far away. And among romance scammers,
Speaker 2: the most popular lie is quote I'm stationed on a
Speaker 2: military base in another country. But another one that comes
Speaker 2: up a 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 dating so hard for actual oil
Speaker 1: rig workers.
Speaker 2: Like every sure I didn't think about that. I feel
Speaker 2: so 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: And it's definitely sort of a compliment I think. But
Speaker 2: all right, well, for our final fact, here's the story
Speaker 2: of a lie that was anything but harmless because it
Speaker 2: almost threw off decades of archaeological research. So it was
Speaker 2: back in nineteen twelve you have this amateur fossil hunter
Speaker 2: named Charles Dawson. He wrote to the British paleontologist Sir
Speaker 2: Arthur Smith Woodward, and he was claiming he'd unearthed parts
Speaker 2: of a human skull in Piltdown. This was a village
Speaker 2: near his home in Sussex. So Woodward helped expand the
Speaker 2: excavation and eventually he and Dawson dug up parts of
Speaker 2: 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 deception, but
Speaker 2: the question was who did it so. Finally, in two
Speaker 2: thousand and nine, a paleoanthropologist named Isabelle de Grute used
Speaker 2: DNA analysis and CT scanning to get an even closer
Speaker 2: look at the Piltdowns 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 an attempt to gain recognition by
Speaker 2: the British scientific community.
Speaker 1: That's so weird, you know. I'd heard of Tilton 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 favorit 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: thank you so much for listening. Part Time Genius is
Speaker 1: a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. This show is hosted
Speaker 1: by Will Pearson and me Mongaysh Heatique and research by
Speaker 1: our goodpal Mary Philip Sandy. Today's episode was engineered and
Speaker 1: produced by the wonderful Dylan Fagan with support from Tyler Klang.
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