Lab 003: Lie to Me

What's the last lie you told? I generally don't lie. I feel like I'm an honest person. So so that lie? What lie that you just told?

I feel like if you want to call trying to make someone happy a lie, then.

Then yes, you're lying. It's a lie. Regardless of your intention, you're lying. I don't. I don't think that's how that works. I can tell when you're lying. You always go.

Like, yeah, it looks good, Yeah, come on, it'll be fine. I think you should wear that outfit. And so whenever you start climbing those octaves, I know you're lying.

To be kind, I think that there are good lies and there are bad lies, and I think I tell nothing but good lies.

Glinda the good Witch, still a witch. I'm t T and I'm Zachiah.

And from Spotify Studios. This is Dope Labs.

Hey friend, Hey banana breadhead.

Okay, listen, I shared on the last episode, and y'all out here calling name on the comment.

Oh y'all been roasting in the comment and I am bid up. We said it was a safe space, but my god.

Do we need to lay out the rules for that?

These comments really made me smile, but it also reignited the kid's frustration in that moment, and so she's upset all.

Over again with tt not with y'all.

Okay, banana breadhead, Let's get to today's topic.

What are we talking about today? Today, we're talking about lies.

America doesn't run on duncan It runs on lies. That's right, who run the world?

Lies? People have been lying for a long time, though.

I remember an episode of The Flint Song where Fred Flinstone lied to Wilma and said that he had lost his wallet when really he had lost all his money in a poker game. Yep, Who's gonna get bronis Sorosberger's propeller.

Even though people have been lying since the Flotstone days, it does feel like lately things have been getting worse.

Lately.

I've been feeling like some of these lies that are being told on the Internet are ratcheting up to a whole new level that we have never seen before.

The stuff with Jesse.

Smullett, Oh gosh, I mean, we don't want that to be true, Like we hope that he's not lying, but if he is, but.

He's not the only one. Line.

If he is lying, he's not the only one because at First, the Chicago Police Department said he paid these guys.

We have the check.

Then they released the image of the check and it says on the memo line personal training. Huh, I would pay trainers for personal training, right, and I would use.

A check to do that. Well, I don't use personal checks neither. It's twenty nineteen exactly, you don't have venmo.

And then there's this whole messy triangle with Tristan Thompson and Chloyd Kardashian and Jordan.

Woods right right, Jordan's said that she lied to Chloe about what happened that night because she was trying to protect her, and so she's saying it feels like more of a nuanced lie.

Would you call that a Glinda the good Witch line in that case? No, that's not a Glinda the good Witch lie. Okay, that's a lie.

And so then the question is have we always been lying this much and now the internet's just catching us in our messy webs or.

Has the barometer for what's socially acceptable shifted?

It's like, now we're accepting it more. Everybody's lying. So it's just like, huh, okay, and not.

Just accepting it, but like propping those folks up, exalting those people that are telling those you should.

Be a congressman, you know what, you should be president?

Right, everybody's lying, and we're just like, oh, okay, sure, sure, including you all.

We ask you guys on Instagram to let us know what your best, worst, and biggest lies you've ever told.

Then a lot of you responded, I like this one.

Somebody said I'm getting food for me and my husband, but they were really just ordering two meals for themselves.

Another person said, I told my parents I was still a verse when I got married.

Somebody said that they've lied about having plans instead of telling somebody they didn't just want to deal with their drama.

This person said the lie that they told was it was one time I swear it's over.

Oh here's a lie biomission.

Somebody says I didn't precisely lie, but I just didn't tell because the person didn't ask, right, So let's start.

The recitation with what we know, which is that everybody lies.

A twenty fifteen study published in the Dreurnal Act of Psychological found that half of people between the ages of eighteen and forty four, so most of y'all tell one to five lies per day, but we also know that when it comes to lying, there are varying degrees. Lying is not a one size fits all activity.

So Zekiah, what type of liar do you think you are?

I'm prone to hyperbole, like similar to soldier boy, you know, like I feel like if somebody has on the outfit. You remember when we were all going out that time, yes, and my friend didn't have she didn't have a clothes to go out.

She was like, I don't know, can I wear this? I don't even remember what it was. It was something that was like a screen printed tea and just some regular jeans, and I was like, you're gonna be edgy.

Yep, I'm versed out laughing because I was just like, oh my goodness.

And that was hyperbole.

Like the most accurate thing to say was you're going to be dressed different from the other people at the bar, right you.

Will stand out slightly because most people will not be wearing that.

But I think it is okay, and to me it is okay. Yeah, she wore, she wore and she was just fine. What about you? What kind of lies do you spind?

I feel like the types of lies that I tell are always just never that big of a deal, Like it's always like, yeah, it would be like somebody made some type of food and I take a bite and I don't like it, but I know that they worked really hard on it. I was like, it's really good. I really like it, and I will eat the whole thing. And I feel like that is a good lie. I think there's good lives and bad lives, and I think I only tell good lies because I'm just trying to.

Make people feel good. Doesn't that count for something?

It counts for something, But now it makes me dumb. I have to look you right into the pupil when No tell me something he's a good cook. I've never not be like, peel your eyelids back.

Let me see. Is it the truth? Is that how you really feel? Did you really like it? But nah?

Man, I feel like some lies are okay. And I think that when you're trying to make somebody feel good about themselves that you should get a pass on that lie.

Hmmm, this is feeling very situational under which conditions?

Well, okay, maybe that's a good question for us to answer today, Like is it ever okay to tell a lie.

Yeah, And I want to know what's going on inside our brains when we tell a lot?

And also like why do we lie? What's the motivation behind it?

Are people born liars? Or do you become one based on your surroundings and how you grow up? So like nature verse nurture, So.

Like if your mama's a liar, is you going to be.

A whole family liar? They got bad blood? Lion blood, that's that lion family down the street.

And then why do we choose to believe lies even when we know that they're not true? She not answering the phone and it ain't cut. She out with her girls. Okay, so let's find out. Today's guest for our dissection is Yamede House.

My name is Yamedae House and I am a nationally board certified clinical counselor.

A Yamade started her career in school counseling, working with at risk youth while earning her master's degree. During that time, she did her practicum at a women's maximum security prison and.

It was women from all walks of life, like nurses and it folks and you know, like people with master's degrees and then people with no degrees, you know.

And that's what inspired her to focus specifically on women's work. And Yamede has been working with women on all sorts of issues for over five years. And one of the first things she told us is that there are no accidental liars right. Lying is not as easy as you would think.

Basically, the brain does more work to lie than it does to tell the truth.

So let's say I ask you a question, for instance, do you like the meal I prepare for you this evening, and then you decide to.

Lie to me. I feel like you're targeting me.

This may be true, but a Yamade says it's a fourth step process to tell a lie.

The first step is that I know the truth in my head. Now, I told you that I love your cooking. But for the sake of explanation, let's say that I find the food a little bit SALTYA.

Okay, what's the second step. Your brain's gotta decide if it wants to tell the truth.

So, like I imagine saying it's a little salty, and you get really mad and it makes me feel a certain way, and I don't want to feel that way, So I decide I'm gonna say something else, which brings us to the third step.

Then you will have to create the new fact. So your brain comes up with a new narrative that's actually the opposite of how you feel about my food.

And finally I open my mouth and I say the lies, something like, this is the best.

Meal I've ever had in my life. And don't forget to turn it up a few octaves. You know how you do, right, I have to become peek at you my life according to you. That's exactly how so the process takes.

Twice as much brain power as it does to tell the truth. When I'm telling the truth, I have the thought the food is salty, and I just say it.

The food is salty, but my food isn't. Okay, soakia it was the best meal I ever had. Perfect.

But even after you tell the lie, your work's not over. In fact, you're now creating even more work for your brain.

Line is stress. You have to keep up the lie.

You have to be able to remember and access all the lies that you've told.

Basically, our mind just becomes a rolodex of lies, and anytime someone asks you a new question, you have to shuffle through all those cars to make sure your answer is in line with all of the FIBs you've been telling people.

What I want to know is is what's actually going on inside of my brain when I'm telling this lie, like which parts of my brain are being activated?

All right, let's zoom in for the purpose of today's lab. We're gonna think of the brain as made up of two main components, the white matter in the middle, and then the gray matter that's all around it on the outside.

Gray matter is made up of nerve cells in your brain, and nerve cells receive and process stimuli or signals from outside or inside your body, and then they tell your body how to react. For example, if you touch a hot stove, the nerve cell will process that stove is hot and direct your body to pull your finger away.

But the nerve cells don't work without being able to communicate with each other. In order for them to talk to each other, they have to send messages, and the space through which they send those messages that's your white matter. The white matter in your brain is sort of like a rubber coating around a copper wire. It insulates the gray matter and helps ensure the messages get where they

And as Yamade says, there's also a connection between white matter and the brain and lying. There is some science behind it that says that people who have more white matter in their brain it's easier for them to lie. That makes sense because lying is work, and white matter makes it easier for your brain to do all the mental gymnastics needed to lie.

And there are studies that say it's actually possible to increase the amount of white matter in your brain, like if you exercise more or learn a new skill. The same is true for lying. The more your brain does it, the more white matter you create, and the easier it gets. So you just keep laying those bricks building a house of lies.

So you keep practicing, and pretty soon you'll be what Kobe Bryant is to basketball, the black Mamba of liars.

Right, this is like a new first date question. So I'm gonna be saying, I'm gonna ask people like, do you know your white matter percentage?

Right? Have you? When was your last MRI skin? Right?

If it's so much work, then why do we lie? Yamade says, there's two main reasons why we're lying to each other. When we talk about it from a psychological standpoint, it's about power and control.

You're either controlling what you want people to feel or do, or you're trying to gain some power as it relates to what you can and can't attain.

Like another meal at my house. I'm always down for another meal at your house.

So when even if it's something minute, like when somebody says, hey, how are you, when you're saying, oh, I'm fine, things are good and things are terrible, for instance, you're controlling the situation. You're trying to control the conversation so people don't dig any deeper.

I knew it all this time.

You've been telling me my outfit looks good or you like my food, and you've been controlling me while everybody thinks that you're the good guy.

But what about power though? How do people use lying as a power move? When do you think about power and lying? Let's take the best example.

We have the president.

He is the most powerful man in the world, and he continues to lie about winning the popular vote, about how many people showed up to his inauguration, or you know Russia, Why because if he tells the.

Truth, the truth that he be lying, then in the simplest form, his power may diminish because he's no longer an authority.

Right.

That's the reason why he's so like gung ho about this whole wall thing. And he told everyone that he was going to build this wall and that Mexico was going to pay for it. And if he doesn't build this wall, then in his mind he feels like he's going to lose some type of power. At this point, I think he'll say that anything is a wall, just to maintain that it could be a bed of roses, and he'll be like, my wall is working.

So now we understand the motivation behind lying and what's going on in your brain when you do lie. When we come back from the break, we're going to talk about the more extreme side of lying, the kind of line that can affect the course of your life or land you in jail. Stay tuned, so we're back and ready to talk about the more extreme side of line. So everybody lies, and you know, for some people is

There are some diagnoses where lying is a symptom or a behavior of the diagnoses. These diagnoses that a Yamide is talking about fall under the category of personality disorders. A personalorder is a deeply ingrained pattern of behavior that makes it really hard for people to have long term relationships or function in society. The most common personality disorders include antisocial personality disorder, which is also called sociopathy, and narcissism.

Like Billy McFarland from The Fire Festival.

When you watch the documentary, like all of a sudden, he started buying like Mazaratis, and he wanted to be a celebrity, and he wanted to rub elbows and he had all.

This prestige, And this is just a disclaimer.

Yamaday is not Billy's counselor, and we're not diagnosing him with a personality disorder.

We're not those kind of doctors.

When I saw the sheer levels of I'm just trying to get this money, I don't care about y'all lies that.

Were being told exactly, I could not believe it.

How can you sit there and tell these bold face lies when you have taken tens of thousands of dollars from people and you know for a fact that this thing ain't happening, and you're still like, cute, up the music, turn.

It up, loud, turn the music up. I'm like, Broy, you can't play the music over that. There's no ten for these people. There's no villain. You gave me a cheese sandwich and I paid ten thousand dollars to come here.

Right, I was thinking about the Ballou challenge, right when Balow got caught posting a bunch of lies on Instagram, trying to stunt in the streets. So did you see where they're showing people in this other I can't remember what country it is, but like they're paying to go and take pictures of themselves on private jets, but they never leave the runway, like just to look like I'm out here.

Yeah, man, And that is typical narcissistic behavior. But for sociopaths, the motivation is a little bit different.

Our sociopaths are going to be people who will lie because they have no conscience, so they don't care how it makes you feel, because at the end of the day, it's about self preservation. Sociopaths don't have empathy, and that's the ability to stand in someone else's shoes and understand how they feel. This means they can lie without feeling any of the guilt or remorse that many people experience.

Still, sociopaths can be really hard to spot. So basically, people who are sociopaths tend to be extremely charismatic. They know how they're supposed to act. Lots of times, sociopaths have the inability to create to create meaningful relationships, so they might be a really nice person, but nine times out of time they don't have any friends. So you may be thinking, these are such terrible people. We see you over there judging, But.

From a scientific perspective, there's some important content to think about. That actually makes these people a pretty fascinating group.

Biology does not make any mistakes. There are sociopaths for a reason. Sociopaths are always going to make sure that they will survive, and they.

Will when it's the zombie apocalypse. I need somebody who's gonna save the human race. Not out here trying to save a pregnant soundra Bullock right from the cus.

Like bird box, right exactly.

We don't need any tender ronies. It's time for a rough ride up right right. So regardless of why someone is lying, what about the people that are receiving the lies? What makes us continue to believe lies? Like even though we know you didn't get a six pack from that flat tummy tee, We're still gonna.

Like your posts. I'm gonna come back and see what you're posting tomorrow.

Because it costs more to not believe it. Lots of times, we live in this space called emotional mind.

In the emotional mind, your feelings outweigh everything else, right, So the facts don't matter.

Yeah, you only care about what makes you feel good. Does that sound familiar to any of you?

That's the biggest part of therapy is for some folks is just having them believe the truth. And so when we say that, we're really talking about believing and connecting with what we see and what we hear and all of our senses, and not necessarily with the emotion. I don't know if this is emotional mind, but this is a time when t T told a partial lot, not really a lot. She just said some things, and my

I have an emergency. These are the words that I said. This is a key on the phone.

I said, Hey, I need you to meet me at your house, like right now, And she said, is everything okay? And I said, I'm not sure. Can you please just come here now? I really, I really need to talk to you.

In my mind, I was like, something's happened. TT killed a man and we will have to hide the body. And naturally I'm the person you call for.

That, right So, But what's the kid didn't know is that on the other side of that phone, I was with our good friend Brittany, and Brittany wanted to surprise the kid because the kid was getting a really big award that weekend, and so she drove up. She messaged me and said, hey, I want to surprise the Kia, but I need you to get her to come home. And so that was what TG's plan was, to get me to come home. I said, what do you want me to say? And Brittany says, say anything. Tell her

It'll be okay. So I called the kid and told her it's an emergency.

And then she came flying down the road I did, and pulls up to her house and walks up to me nervous.

I can see it in her face.

I can't tell you the things that ran through my head. Okay, A knife in.

My in my console, Oh my god.

And I was like, what if she brought someone to the house and she wants me to kill them on the spot.

This is the type of friend. As a kid, She's ready to kill a man at any time. Okay, So run up, get done up. That's the motto.

So that was quite a bit. That was a lot for me. You know Zakia like this is not my forte. I was just like yes, more socious tell us all about it.

The thing that's scary to me is that people's understanding the fact is always changing, and that's not how we operate.

You know, no, not a scientists, fact is fact. As scientists, it's our job to uncover new facts. We don't just make stuff up. We don't just pull it out of nowhere. It is rooted in a lot of other facts.

I do feel like facts used to It used to be like that's a fact, it's undisputable. Like right now we're both wearing black shirts which happened to be from Dope Blaps podcast dot com. Go and get one. But now I feel like there's somebody, there's a troll in the room waiting to say, actually that's just a dark.

Gray or likes it is ridiculous.

It's like people out here are not testing anything and just saying this is the truth.

This is my truth. So it's the truth. It's like no drugs.

Through the through the border, huh, based on what right?

What evidence do you have? You have no evidence. You just heard it from your neighbor.

You s hearing this caravans crossing the border at this spot every day, all right, So that means every day I should be able to go to this border and there should be caravans, no excuse, because if that is the fact, it should be reproducible. I should be able to see it within that time scale that you told me over and over and over and over again. And that's how you establish a fact. It is something that

What's lovely? Is it just to you everywhere? Oh?

So that means that it's lovely to you because you prefer sunshine, But I prefer sunshine and rainbow. So to me, it's not a lovely day.

It's just to day. It's just a day.

And so when people say, oh, o, Zakia, don't say it like that. Hey, I'm gonna say it plain all right, like that's it. I'm just gonna tell you straight up. I don't like that people like, oh, this is so nice, isn't it. I'm not having a good time.

I'm ready to go home. I'm ready to go home.

People say I can't wait to see you, Well, I'm only about eighty percent excited about seeing you, and sometimes people don't want that extra information.

Ruthless, no.

So one thing that we need to mention is that after every single episode, on the Friday after the episode, this day after, we post a cheat sheet.

I know some of y'all made it through school, but you probably didn't study like you were supposed to.

This is basically she's talking about, I'm looking at yes, Okay, I didn't study enough, but continue.

It's a visual like cliff notes, but a visual.

So we take the major scientific content from the episode and represent.

It visually for you guys to see.

Yes and Zakiya she's being modest, she illustrates the whole thing, and she is very very good.

So you guys have to go back and see.

It's on our Instagram, it's on our website, and it's on our Facebook page. So go and take a look at the cheat sheet at Dope lazpodcast dot com.

That's right.

Our producer is Jenny Rattle at MAAST. Mixing and sound design is by Hannes Brown.

Our consulting producers are Rayka Murphy and Graham Griffith.

Our original theme music is by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex Sugiura. Additional music by Elijah Lex Harvey.

Special thanks to our guest expert a Yamaday House. To learn more about her practice, Sabano, visit sabano dot com. That's s A B A n O h T T is on Twitter at Doctor Underscore T s H O and you can find zakiya at z said so And if you love the show, don't forget to follow us on Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcast. Dope Labs is a production of Spotify Studios and Mega Owned Media Group, and is executive produced by us T. T Showdea and Zekiah Wattley. When I was a kid, I

Okay, so could you say liar? We can say we can say liar.

I want I'm putting a poll on Instagram. I want to know who could say liar and who had to say storyteller.

I couldn't say shut up.

Ooh, I couldn't say but we had to say hind parts.

Yeah,