The Lying Game

Could you take your finger from your dominant hand and trace a queue on your forehead upper case if you're wondering, okay, with just my finger now, with like a sharpie or something you can do with the sharper if you want, but I wouldn't recommend it. Okay, just unless you want some extra flare today. All right, there we go done. Okay. What I want to know is the little tail on the queue? Which side did you draw it on? Let's see it was on the right side. Ah, very revealing. Um. Okay,

you are apparently not a good liar. Oh okay, I know it sounds weird. I mean, I'm sure you're gonna explain how this works. But this is this is the thing right right side for the little thing on the queue. That means I'm a bad liar. But if I had not left on you, you would have been impressed by I would have been like, okay, if you had drawn it on the left, that would have meant that you were anticipating the way that it was going to look

to me. Um. And this is actually the Q test from the Guardian article The Truth about lying and Laughing.

Why isn't this done in job interviews and just you know in general, you know, like anytime you meet a new person, you should just require that they draw a Q on their forehead or everyone be labeled according any like the sneeches, because people will get hip to it and then they'll start training themselves to to draw it on the right or the left every now and then and then ends up playing out exactly like the sneeches, where everyone has different versions of the queue on their

head and nobody knows what's white, but for the next five minutes it's super secret and you can try it on anybody that you know. UM. So it is interesting where the person places that tail, because uh, it's a really a test of something called self monitoring, and high self monitors draw of the letter queue. So, like you said, on the on the left so that someone can see it,

and others on the right and so high. Self monitors are concerned with how other people see them, and they are usually able to adapt their behavior to suit a situation in which they find themselves. And they're skilled at manipulating, i e. They're good liars. So what is a lie? Right? And we need to get down to it? And and this is such a fascinating subject really, I mean, on the surface, it doesn't sound so much because the line

is such an everyday part of our lives. Even if you're not a liar or a you know, or or someone who just lives and breathes lies, you still kind of do It's it's and I think like a great example of this and some and people are gonna be split on this. But the movie The Invention of Lying the Ricky Gervais, I did not see that um has you know, immensely talented cast. I'm I'm a big fan of stuffers done in the past, but I was really

disappointed in the film. I felt like it didn't really deliver the funny and it didn't really deliver on anything all that um mentally amusing either. So do you think that it got to the heart of lying, though in a way it did through failure. I feel like and and and again. I'm sure I've heard people that were like, oh, that film was brilliant, but I think the film by trying to create a world where there was no lying even and then the whole thing is that it's it's

our world, except there's no lying in it. And then one guy accidentally innvinced the lie lying and it becomes this big thing. Uh, and again it gives them all these powers, but they weren't really like like, you can't envision our world without lying, Like everything falls apart, and then humor becomes really hard to pull off as well. And um, and I think we really have to take a step back and look at what lying is and just what how powerful a force it is, because I mean,

we effortlessly lie. Even if you don't lie all that much, it's really easy to roll one off. But I really encourage everyone in this podcast to take a step back and really think of it in different terms. Well, I think most people think of it in a negative light, right, because it's not good to lie, right and normally normally, but I think what we're going to explore is when it is good and why it's actually necessary to our very existence. Yeah, so yes, so indeed, let's first get

rid of the whole. I mean, we almost need a different word for it, um and different words being economical with the truth. Yeah, but that kind of feels like a lie in itself. It is. Well, any euphemism for a lie is a lie. Right. Well, there you go. That actually breaks down some of the stuff here about the linguistic power of lying, because so many parts of language are really akin to lying, like as simile is kind of is akin to lying in a way, you know.

And then uh, is so many figures of speech. Uh, whether you're saying, um, that guy literally stabbed me in the back, of course you're using language incorrectly in this case. But but it's a complete lie. And and even if you said, man, he's stabbing in the back and you're not um, and you're not adding that literally, that totally screws it all up. Even if you're just just using that that bit of speech there, you're lying. But but you're using a lie to make a point and make

a comparison. Well, there are different types of flying too. You can do it sometimes, um, to avoid responsibility and recussions, right. Uh yeah, And this is this is kind of like the like a basic Hey did you unloved the dishwasher? Yeah, I unloaded the dishwasher. Well that now you get called

on that. What's a better Well, just I think you had a good example the other day where you said, yeah, in grade school that you had drawn something on the floor, and to avoid the repercussions of that, you you fingered another kid in the class and said, ah, he did it. Well, it was a little more to Harris in that because I wrote his name on the floor, So I was I was planning ahead with this crime. Um, so yeah,

I framed this guy. Better example would be when I cut my sister's hair when I was like, I don't know, it's like four or something, and she was a couple of years younger than me, and uh I she had like pigtails, and I cut one of them off with a pair of scissors, and I put the scissors in the pigtail in her hand and framed her for it, and uh yeah, watch out for you man. So there's

an example. I framed her because I wanted to avoid the wrath of my mother, right right, So that's that's a that's one of the reasons why you would do it to save your reputation, right, you might a lie to save your rep avoid hurting someone's feelings. Yeah, classic white lie, boost your ego. And when I say that, you know it could be sort of information you present about yourself via Facebook, Um, you know anything really and that that's kind of a lie we tell ourselves to

you get into this whole area of lies. Is not just something that uh we use externally, but we we reflect in on ourselves and you get into this whole weird area of just the manipulation of our world view, in our in our perceived reality via lies. Yeah, and we'll talk about self deception to why that's important, um in a bit as well. But we also do it to manipulate people we allowed to manipulate. And we we lie in the sense that we control the amount of

information given. Sometimes we don't always tell the whole truth, right, or if someone asks us a question, we don't uh necessarily say oh yes or no, or you know, you might just even remain quiet and let them make an assumption. This is this is interesting. I have to I was gonna wait till later about going to mention Uh, this book I've been reading um is called Embassy Town by China uh Melville. He's a British author of sci fi

and fantasy. But it creates a scenario where you're kind of an invention of lying scenario where you have an alien race that have a really alien language that involved like it's very difficult for the people in this book, the humans to communicate with the alien species. And uh, the aliens have evolved so that they don't have they don't have lies in their language, they don't have like

they're they're intrinsically trustful species. And so you have, uh that these aliens are really impressed by humanity's ability to lie. Like they're really amused by it, especially when humans lie, well mainly when humans lie in their language because they've they're incapable of doing it themselves. So to hear somebody say something that is not true like totally blows their mind because it's I mean, it's like, uh, it's like

an hallucination or something like a psychedelic experience. They're saying something that's not true, but everything that we like, imagine if everything you could say is true and you were incapable of lying and you heard somebody lie, and you know, but that it was a bold faced lie, like if they said the skies purple and it clearly wasn't. Like is that kind of situation where they're like, whoa, the

sky is purple? No it isn't. Oh my goodness, and they're getting this kind of uh uh, you know, this dissonance playing in their head, and so they they they they themselves, these aliens try to work up to lying, so they'll do things like they'll they'll they'll just they'll drop the last part of a sentence, or they'll they'll sort of they'll omit information from a sentence in an attempt to sort of work their way up to telling

a full phase a lie. Well that's interesting and UM, I mean when when I hear you talk about it that way too, it makes me realize how much we are always constructing our own reality, so through our own perceptions, but also actively through lying, UM, And how that would be weird to aliens who are like, huh, they're they're creating these little stories. Just essentially what that is. UM, You might be surprised to know that there's some some

jarring stats on how much we lie. UM. According to the Science channels The Truth about Liars, which is a really interesting documentary. One out of every four conversations that lasts more than ten minutes will contain a lie. Wow, this doesn't bode well for our podcast if we we generally go thirty minutes. So that's what four lives at least. This is my second conversation that's going to be longer than ten minutes, by the way, So for me, I mean,

I'm already at the anti men and women line equal portions. Um. And then there's another bit of information out there again from that Guardian article, The Truth about Lying and Laughing, and it says that four and five lives remain undetected, that more than people have lied secure job, and that more than sixty of the population have cheated on their partners at least once. What I don't, I mean, maybe I'm just a Pollyanna over here if I'm really surprised

by that. Um. And then people were invited to keep a detailed diary of every conversation that they had in a two week period, and the results suggested that most people tell about two important lives each day, and that a third of conversations involves some form of deception. Well, you know there, I can definitely see where they're what's a big lie is like a lot of big lies saying like, hey, are you done with that assignment yet? Yeah, it's done. I just need to tweak it a little bit.

Yeah they didn't qualify that, right, I mean because a white lie we all survived by, probably on a daily basis. Yeah, yeah, yeah, whether or not you even know you're doing part of being polite, you know, right, you want to pretend to interest in a particular conversation or um or just you know, it's sometimes lying is kind of just a lie by

a mission knowing when to keep your trap shut. Well, well, you know, if I'm interviewing someone and they're going on along soliloquy about something and they go, you know this and that, I don't say there, no, I don't know. Can you tell me about it instead of me just going to google later on? I mean, I'm just trying to get an interview out of that person. Said, you need those encouraging spurts of oh yeah, which we tend

to do in conversation anyway. I mean, if you've ever been a cocktail party and someone starts talking about something you find yourself, you know, your head nodding in any cocouragement, which some people take is like, oh, they knew exactly what I'm talking about here, I'm kind of I'm doing it now, right you arguing it? But but but oh yeah yeah we we we. The lies are an essential part of our our daily life. Now, they are rather

different from deception. However, like just blanked in deception is it's a little different because you have very simple plants and animals that use deception, that have evolved to deceive prey or predators and in order to better suffrive a hostile environment. Um Like it just like a carnivorous plant that doesn't look like something that's gonna eat an insect. It looks like a meal rather than a predator. Like that's an example a very simple deception. Bugs that look

like they have eyes in their back. You know, any form of camouflage that's deception. But it's not necessarily a lie. I mean, it isn't a lie in the case of an insect. Allies tend to involve um greater brain power and UM, and you generally need to look to, of course, the masters of of lies, humans or some of our hominid brethren. Yeah. Actually that just reminded me of two examples. One is a Porsche spider, which I think they would be great like card game players, like a poor face.

When hunting fellow aracnets, they actually do a little bluffing game. They sneak up on an arachnet and they wait until another vibration ripples through the web to disguise their own like a breeze, and then they're able to also mimic the vibrations of other species, so their launches fulled into

approaching them and the belief that they've actually found a meat. Example, so like the first example is like in a horror movie where the person is in a creaky house and somebody's following them, but they're keeping pace with their footsteps and then suddenly they do a like a misstep and then they hear the creak of the person behind them, right or the wind goes through the door and it makes the door close, you know, creekly close, and little

did they know this, but it was behind the door. Yeah, so that's a good example. And then U two apes Cocoa and Michael. They both used deception via their sign language skills, and one example, Coco broke out a toy cat, Are broke up a toy cat, and then signal to indicate that had been broken by one of her trainers, and then another one, Michael ripped a jacket belonging to a trainer, and then when when he was asked who

was responsible, he signed that it was Coco. Oh yeah, so you see, I mean deception is is a big part of how the animal world and how how we navigate all of our circumstances, and it definitely gives us

an evolutionary leg up, so to speak. Yeah, and it's uh, you know, it comes down in a lot of ways to being able to empathize, you know, and the and what we call the theory of mind, which is, you know, the the ability to to look at another animal or or or human especially and being able to recognize that there is a mind there, and being able and being able to sort of try and put yourself in their shoes, um, trying to figure out like how they are they are

seeing the world around them. And then of course lying involves trying to use that to your advantage, Okay, because if you can inhabit that person's worldview, you can better construct a lie or a story. Right, you can kind of think of like I tend to think of the world view people's world views is kind of this bubble that surrounds them, you know, like this artificial reality, um, this virtual world. And and yeah, if you can empathize with somebody, the better you can empathize with somebody, the

better you can understand their worldview. And uh. And therefore you know, you can use that. You can use it for a positive effect or or an extremely negative effect that depending on what your your scheme is. But in a way, it's like theory of mind. It's it's in a way it's reading a mind. It's it's being able to see what that mind consists of and and what that person may or may not be thinking about anticipating

to anticipation. I mean that's key. That's the I mean, that's the evolutionary point here, is that if you can understand what that other person's mind is doing, then you have the advantage in a survival situation. Yeah, and this

is interesting too that lyne has other psychological benefits. Um, there's scientific evidence that shows that depressive people are more honest with themselves and uh than than nondepressive people who are mentally healthy people, and that when people recover from a depression, they become less honest, assumably or presumably around

the circumstances of that depression. So I kind of read that as you know, you sort of need to create a story for yourself in order to kind of get over that that bad patch in your life, huh, or to a certain extent, like the less you're caring about life. It's it's kind of like you start, you get depressed. Maybe you're not caring about your physical appearance as much during that depression, and so you're not you know, you're

not doing personal maintenance. But then also by not lying enough, you're you're falling out on your worldview maintenance, because the world needs to be carefully groomed and uh and and tweaked with just the right ensemble of lies. That's interesting. Yeah, you're sitting around your in your your your bathrobe, presumably unwashed. Yeah, not lying to yourself, and it's just a matter of shaving up and and uh, putting on a happy smile. I suppose, Um, Yeah, faking until you make it right. Yeah,

fake it to make You've talked about that before. Evolutionary biologist David Livingston Smith, also from the documentary UM The Truth About Liars, talks about in biological terminology, you have a deceiver in a sucker. Suckers don't do well. So that's really his his scientific terms. Yes, he says that these are the evolutionary biological terms for lung, a deceiver

and a sucker. It's it's a pretty high brow there. Um. So those of us who are especially skilled at manipulating others, like politicians, they're they're like the stage magicians of our fantasies. I think that's interesting how he phrased that, tend to be the most successful people because they're skilled at deception. So again here here we're talking about the benefits of lying, and then that people who tend to be more six us, we are better liars. And again that that phrase, they're

like the stage magicians of our fantasies. They're they're creating this world and inhabiting our own worlds, as you pointed out, and presenting a fantasy that we can buy into, that we cannot help but buy into because we have something called the truth bias, in which we want something to be true. So we're already sort of it's weird. We're hardwired to lie, but we're also hard wired to say, yeah, I believe that, I want to believe you, which makes

us like the ultimate suckers. So hey, we're gonna take a quick break here and when we come back, why we are lousy liars? This presentation is brought to you by Intel Sponsors of Tomorrow, and we're back. So why are we lousy liars? Because we cannot help but to give ourselves away in many different ways. One is is micro expressions, which you've probably heard about before. Yeah, this is the whole like thing like look at somebody's brow

they're talking to you. Yeah. It's basically like yeah and involuntarily excuse me, involuntary muscle movement um that discloses an emotion and under one of a second. So you have to be particularly adept at reading someone's face in order to see this, or you could have like a camera and then slow moment and try to figure it out. But people really do do this. They cannot help themselves.

So if someone is trying to hide the fact that they are feeling shocked or they're they're fearful of something, that emotion is going to cross their face flicker across their face even though they have a huge smile on. And that's another thing to look at too, is that when someone is smiling, they're engaging their their eye muscles, and so a fake smile. You'll see that the smile is there, but the eyes aren't actually moving. There's there's very subtle um indicators there that will show you like

that person is is smiling through fear um. So that's that's one of the reasons why we're crappy liars. Oh that's like there was a bit on Modern Family where they're talking about like reacting to the other person's jokes and about how they'll be smiling with their their mouth but out with their eyes. Oh. I didn't see that, but you and we've all done it at one point, right.

You know how that feels too. It feels weird. You're like, okay, I'm doing the thing, and you're trying to I mean, you're trying to manually manipulate all of these things that normally occur naturally, like when I naturally respond to something funny.

I'm not really I'm not cautious. I'm not going going like all right, qu smile now, all right, now, eyes look at the person who just made a joke, all right, and then do the ha ha, you know, because like we've thought you were creeped out by laughter yoga because it's it's fake laughter, right, it doesn't ring true, and so it's just creepy. Um. But yeah, I mean, you don't have your neurons firing, you know, to those particular muscles saying hey, come on, guys, let's get engaged because

you really think this is funny. So it's a little bit like having botox eyes. Yeah, I mean that on the other side, unless you're like a complete alien, I guess, and you just have to fake everything. But well, yeah, that you just steal someone else's face and that circumstance. Um, there's another tell, which is your speech. If you will naturally try to distance yourself from a situation, if you are lying, which means the personal pronouns I, me, and

myself you will cease to use, which is really interesting. Um, so you're trying to distance yourself. And they've seen this

over and over again. There's a scientist named Jeff Hancock, and he plotted um, George Bush's speech patterns and what he said over like a year period and he found that the months before, uh, the Iraq War, that George Bush had a significant drop in the use of what they call truthful pronouns, the I, me and myself in the three months preceding my record, and then when war broke out, you can see on this graph, all of a sudden he went back up to his the radular

place where he would use those personal pronouns again. So he was in those three months preceding the Iraq War using distancing pronouns. So like before just lying at the normal level for a politician, and then right before the war when they're presenting the evidence, the idea is that and the justification for the war the weapons of mass destruction,

all that the lying was. Yeah, the extrapolation is that when he was talking about weapons of mass destruction, he was using distancing verbiage, which means which is usually indicator of length. And but then when war broke out and he ceased to be talking about weapons of mass destruction and I was talking about the war, that the personal pronouns I, me and myself, the truthful pronouns returned. Huh. See, now this really makes me think about again about like

the power of language, what we're talking about here. Um, there's a bit from one of our Scott Baker's books where he's talking about he's trying to make a point about about philosophy and and about out in this fantasy series about magic. He says that philosophy is the act of making language confirmed to the world, whereas magic is making the world conform to language. And I can't help but feel when we're when we tell a lie, that's what we're doing the latter, We're trying to make the

world confirmed to conform to our language. And uh and in doing that, I mean it's in the same way that in a fantasy world, like casting a spell would require a great deal of physical energy and mental concentration, telling a lie, uh involved seems to involve that as well, because we are we are summoning our all of our our mental faculties two remake the world to either remake

the past, the present, or or some semblance of the future. Um. And and again this may sound a little bit like, you know, an overstatement of the obvious, but but I think it's kind of amazing the more you think about it. Like when you tell a lie, you are in a way like wounding the timeline. Yeah, it's interesting. There's a field of linguistics called psycholinguistics that talks specifically about this, which I think we should probably do a podcast on

at some point. UM. And it is fascinating. Again, it's the way that we're creating these stories and influencing the way someone thinks about something. UM. And usually we're doing that through speech, but we can also do it through writing and UM. Another good way to ferret outlying and writing is that there's a third more use of negative emotions.

So we're talking about emails here basically, UM. And Again there's the researcher went through all of this data and basically said, look at you know, you know here all these different categories, and what we're beginning to see is that people who are allowing in emails UM, for example, have a lot of negative emotions expressed, and there are more references to he, she and they. Again there's backing

away from the eye me and myself and UM. There's actually software being developed by Cornell University to help the technicalize and email communications. The government is very interested in this, by the way, of course, but a general baseline of how you can detect a lie is you can also look for clues like the person is is giving you

way too many details. So yeah, and again this, I mean, this is like a classic example of I think you see this in you see this in the in various storytelling and especially in comedies where the person is telling a lie and so they have all this, they have the setup, they have the story in their head, and if the person is buying the lie without thinking about they're like, all right, I get it, you went you didn't go to the video store or whatever. You know.

But but but it's like in the act of creating something that wasn't real, we have to really create it. We have to uh, we we have to really engage in in what I've seen referred to as mental time travel. Well, but really before before you talk about that, because that's really cool. Um, just like you're talking about in setting up that um that circumstance that the lie, you also will notice that people will start speaking slower because it's giving me them more time to think and they're not

using contractions. So, I mean, that's fascinating that your brain all of a sudden it just drops the contractions just to gain like a split second. So it can be like and uh, yeah it was red and yeah it was nighttime and yeah sure I was here. Um. Yeah, that's it's amazing this um, this idea of mental time travel. Um that that I'm referring to. Hear. Um, Let's see, I was reading about this, uh in Behavioral and Brain Sciences and it's the work of Thomas Sudan North and

Michael C. Core Ballas. And I'm just gonna read this quick bit here, he says. They they're talking about just the evolution of of of of human memory and how it works, they says, to explain why the cognitive arms race seems to have persisted longer in humans than another primates,

resulting in apparently unique cognitive skills, including perhaps mental time travel. UM. A potential explanation is that once early hominance obtained a certain level of ecological dominance, perhaps partially through technological advances as as discussed earlier, Uh, they were faced with increased competition for their own from their own species. Humans uniquely became their own principal hostile force of nature. All right,

So that's pretty easy to follow. Basically, we're, uh, we're in this point we have to compete with other humans rather than other animals. All right, then they continue this may have resulted in a runaway social competition between and within groups towards greater intelligence and enhanced abilities for both cooperation and deception. These may have included the ability to entertain alternative, alternative future scenarios, which is basically what they're

talking about mental time travel. Uh. This this idea that, um, we need to be able to form an idea false idea of what may happen in the future, so that we can, you know, we can predict what will happen in the same way that we need to be able to contemplate somebody else's mind in order to outsmart them or manipulate them. Um. But yeah, and then they also meant they also in theory of mind and also communication itself.

So I really like the idea of thinking about it as a as as mental time travel, you know, and that and that when you're telling this lie, you're having to slow down, your your language is changing, the construction is changing, because you are you're you're you're traveling in time to a certain extent. You're you're tinkering with with the timeline. It just really fascinates me. It is, Yeah,

I mean, that is what you're doing. And again it's the anticipating and trying to predict the future, which is is a so so amazing that we're manipulating at that level in those split seconds. That to me is is pretty wondrous. UM. And in every culture too. I was looking around, I was I was thinking, is there some sort of language, like I just think like languages is closely linked to all this. Uh. Might there be a culture that does not have line And the closest you

can you can come there. There's a tribe called the Paraha people Um and their indigenous hunter gathered group in Amazon and they have a really like a really unique language like there's nothing else like it on on earth. Um. It has just eight consonants, three vowels UM. And you know it's a it's a complex array of tones, stresses, syllables. Um. It can be it can be sung, hum or whistled. And it it's striking in the number of things that it doesn't happen Like. They don't have numbers. Uh, they

don't have concepts of counting. Uh, they don't have color. Um, the simplest Uh, they have the simplest pronoun inventory. That's known they don't have relative tenses and that this is really key. They don't have creation myths or fiction. Uh they and uh in their individual or collective memory is no more than two generations in the past. So it's like it's very stripped down. And that's just the mere fact that they don't have fiction, that they don't have

these creation myths. I was thinking, like maybe this is maybe they'll wonder if they have lies. But they lie all the time. They like the some of the guys that that spent time with them, um and in particular, like you know, learn their language. Uh, Like they said, these guys would like to them all the time, just to kid around with them. So I mean, it's just a form of entertainment, yeah, form of entertainment. But it's

it's also it's it's independent of like linguistic ability. Like I wonder if we were lying to each other, you know, probably before we even have the ability to really converse with well. I mean, I think it's part and parcel of existence really. I mean, you'd have to be a

species of one not to lie. You know, as soon as there are two of you, lies begin, and you know, call me um a negative Nelle but I just think it's a really important part of being part of a community or a culture, or you know, any sort of really even an organism. You know, you've got to be able to cooperate together, and part of that is actually lying. Um. And when I say lying, it's more like social lying in order not to hurt someone's feelings or so on and so forth. You know, to try to keep keep

the momentum of what you're trying to create together going. Um. I did want to mention a couple of technologies that can help detect lying, and we all know lie detectors. That's that's probably the first thing people think of. M R I. Um. You know that's been used. Actually, let's used in India, I believe in their court systems. Um not. I don't believe there's any other country that has adopted that. Yeah, we talked about this in a previous podcast. Yeah. Yeah.

But then there's something called a laser Doppler vibrometer, which just sounds weird, and it's a laser directed at the carteroid artery, which is your main blood flow to the brain, and it measures blood flow and heart rate and is intended for use in interrogation, in border crossings, in security checks. So again there are ways to to figure out, you know, from a behavioral perspective, if someone's lying, and then there's

all these different things physiological that we can look at. Um, there's something else called an interrogator simulator, and that uses thermal imaging to measure breathing and blood flow around the eyes, because when we're stressed, our blood flow changes and you can really see that in those areas. And then at the same time that it's measuring all these things, there's a computer that asks questions and then assesses these physiological responses.

So again it's like they're minor, little acts of sorcery that we carry out because they're they're they're they're kind of unnatural. They're little unnatural acts that that change the world around us. Yes, and yeah, still that we know humans are so variable that any one technology you could probably beat. Right, there's nothing, there's no bulletproof method here

so far. So which leads me to the whole uh point here is that if you if you want to lie with gusto, there are a couple of different things that you can do to make it convincing. Okay, okay, So one is don't And I'm not saying, hey, go out and lie. I really am not. I'm not advocating that, um, but if you were to, you would want to not

deviate from your behavior baseline. Okay, okay. So that means like you know, if you usually react in one way to something, you you want to be pretty consistent, like if you if you're generally see did at a meeting? Don't stand up to lie? Yes? That is going to weren't you a lot of unwanted Notice a special hat? When when did you decide to lie to everything? You put a liar hat it It says I'm lying right now.

Don't don't put that hat on. Um. This is interesting develop a rapport with a person with whom you are lying to, which is again it's that whole like you were talking about empathizing and trying to inhabit that person's world, because then once that person feels some sort of connection with you and that you understand um or you understand that person, that they're less likely to say, oh yeah, they're they you know they're lying because you're like, no,

they wouldn't lie to me. We've got a rapport going again, not too many details. And then this was really interesting. There's a Russian spy who was undergoing a polygraph from the US government and he asked his his Russian counterparts for advice, and what they told him was surprisingly simple and elegant, which was get a good night's sleep and rest and go into the test rested and relaxed, be nice to the polygraph examiner, develop a rapport and be cooperative,

and try to maintain your calm. And he passed with blind colors. So sometimes it's just as simple as that. It is just which is actually not so simple, because you're regulating your your your blood pressure, in your heart rate and all that good stuff, you know. Another example that comes to mind of of of the tell tale of a lie being that the liar has added a lot of extra information, is that when you have people um call or these days it's more email and sick

for the day. It seems like my past experiences with this as a as a manager or that where that that you know, if someone needs a sick day'd be like, I'm sick, I can't come to work today, and you're like, all right. But if it's like a long explanation where it's like I woke this morning, I couldn't get out of bed, and then I had to. You know, it's like if you if it's a whole paragraph of explanation,

and then then you're your malarkey alarm starts. I'll also say I will add to that to you, having managed for for a couple of years now, um that if if the term diarrhea is included in there, that's a telly because that no one wants to ask no question, yeah, like diarrhea say no more. Yeah, because nobody has ever responded with do you really have diarrhea? Yeah? Yeah, But you know you've got to be pretty close to your to manage to your manager to say I have diarrhea.

Well in the first place, well not necessarily, I think you can. That's the thing. You throw it out there and it's like, whoa, they told me they had diarrhea. That's that's it's a back away thing. Yeah, So there you go. Another tip. Yeah, I think would actually work. Yeah, I think it would work better on people that you're not that well acquainted with. There's more of a shock factor. Yeah. Yeah, all right, let's get to some more shock factors with

some listener mail. Oh are we there already we are unless you have, um let me think. I mean, basically, it's just such a rich subject. I feel like we could just go on and on about we could we could talk about kids and how they develop lying and how they're you know, not the instant cherubs that we know them to be, although they're pretty cool. Yeah, and uh and and also the whole you're talking about, like

how do you get get at lying? I mean, there's a whole other podcasts we're gonna get to about false memories. But but that's that ties into a number of these things here, Like you get in the whole situation of like how many times do you have to lie to yourself before you believe it? The lies we tell ourselves

and then believe to get through through life exactly. And also the formation of false memories is very much tied into this idea of mental time travel and that I'm going to predict the future and create this version of the future and play around within and self deception and cognitive dissonance, right, trying to lessen those uncomfortable feelings that you have by line line line All right, Yeah, let's

hit the listener email. First up, we have an email from Andrew Andrew says, Hi, guys, I'm a fifteen year old from the UK and was wondering if you had any suggestions for books I could read. You often cite books on your show. So and then the email cuts off, but then he emails back, I know that you should have some good suggestions for me. Thanks in advance, Andrew. Um, sorry about the email being in two parts. Also, physics is my favorite subject. Smiley face. All right, Andrew, Uh, well,

what are your suggestions? Well? Um, along the physics line, one book that comes to mind is The Physics of Superheroes by James Kakalios. That's k A k A l I O s Uh. He's the author of the amazing Story of Quantum Mechanics and uh yeah, this is uh, it's this is a really cool book. Like he just goes through like various examples of superhero powers and goes really in depth about how it might work or plant with more. And it's a it's it's really entertaining and

it's shot full of physics. Uh. And then just in general, like in terms of you know, we have we've talked before about how science fiction and science are closely uh inter link. I feel like fifteen years old, that's perfect time to read. To read doon if you haven't already. Oh yeah, yeah, that's your go to right, yeah, that's I mean, it's like, I can't how can I recommend anything else that happened first recommended in it? Right? Yeah,

it's true. It's true for me. I would say. Check out a book called The Big Questions Physics by Michael Brooks. It's pretty cool. It kind of couches all the different questions and physics in a in a really interesting way, UM engaging way, Like what is time? Um? Is one of the questions that it tries to answer. Um. Do we live in a simulation? We've talked about that before? Am I unique? What is the God particle? Um? Those are all really interesting physics related questions that Michael Brooks

tries to answer, and somewhat related is John Horgan's Rational Mysticism. Um. That is, spirituality meets science in the Search for Enlightenment. Again, the God particle is discussed in that. So if if you're really heavy Andrew, you can you can switch over to John Horgan's Rational Mysticism. It's good stuff, all right. So we're gonna go and wrap it up. I'm gonna remind everybody to check out our Facebook and Twitter page.

We are Blow the Mind on both of those and we put a lot of work into making sure they're also two cool links up to the stuff on the web as as well as updates on what we're working on, so be sure to check that out. If you enjoy the show, and feel free to drop us a line at Blow the Mind at house stuff works dot com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.