Radiolab - Deception

Episode Date: November 19, 2020

Lies, liars, and lie catchers. This hour of Radiolab asks if it's possible for anyone to lead a life without deception. We consult a cast of characters, from pathological liars to lying snakes to drunken psychiatrists, to try and understand the strange power of lying to yourself and others. Support Radiolab by becoming a member today at Radiolab.org/donate.    

Hello podcast listeners, before we begin this episode, I want to let you know that this story, one of the stories in this episode includes conversation about sexual assault and suicide. Just to warn you. Oh, wait, you're listening. Okay. Got it.

Okay. Got it. Uh. You're listening to Radio Lab. Radio Lab. From W and Y. See? See? See. See. See. Radio from W and Y. Some people like roses and others tulips.

I've always liked snakes. This is Radio Lab, I'm Jad of O'Mrod. And I'm Robert Crowich. And our show today is about deception and we thought we're better to start than with snakes. Oh, this is where you keep all your snakes? Well, it keeps some of them here we have a variety of some lizards you're working with. This is Gordon Burkhardt. He works at the University of Tennessee, a patron visit recently.

And I have several rooms here where we keep a variety of different reptiles. And he's got this one little snake that he likes to show off small guy, but size of a room here where we keep a variety of different reptiles. And he's got this one little snake that he likes to show off small guy, but size of a pencil. Called a hog no snake. These are the hog no snakes. They can see this guy is already starting to go into the display.

He Gordon pops the top off the cage and then does something interesting. But what I'll do is take... He puts a chicken puppet, on his left hand, and then with this puppet. There's a puppet of a chicken. On his left hand, and then with this puppet, he begins to kind of attack the snake or mock attack. Stimulate, like peck near it.

A bird that might be attacking. What happens next is kind of shock you. And you can see now how it's hiding his head a little bit. It's coiling its tail. First, the snake flips over on its back. There he goes upside down. Then, it vomits blood. Blood will even come out of the mouth.

Then, it... who's itself? And now you can notice it's starting to defecate a little bit. It's writhing. And then, it gets really, really... And it'll finally stop still. In fact, it'll stop breathing. And it's all bluff all the show. It was like, wait, that is not bluffing. I touch him. But as soon as we took a few steps back from the cage, the snake pops its head up, goes, on flatens itself. And there it was all live again. And then it'll start to breathe and gaze around. It was lying basically.

That's pretty good. Thank you very much. Although, you know, as the world turns, it was kind of an ordinary lie, really. What? It was. Sure. When was the last time you poohed yourself for a lie? Well, I could lie to you so beautifully you would be on your back tongue out.

No way, because I would catch you. No, you wouldn't catch you. No, you would not. I would totally catch you. I, because I would catch you. I bet. No, you wouldn't catch you. Yeah, what? No, you would not. I would totally catch you. I'm so sorry to tell you this. That's my bad.

I would catch you. No, if it were me, no, you wouldn't. So that's our hour. No, people who lie. And the people who catch them. Not. To get things started and earnest, let us go to every New Yorker's favorite spot.

I love that we're here for it. John F. Kennedy Airport, of course. It's a little place I like to go to get away from it all. I ended up there with a producer, Ellen Horn. We hadn't actually met to come, but the guy that we had been interviewing. The order for a lot to be portrayed by demeanor, there has to be a high emotional end- Right in the middle of the interview, he'd gotten a call.

Hello, hello. Said he had to run. Oh, that's my ride. You really crap, we have more questions, what are we gonna do? So, we decided to jump in the car with him and... There we were. The relaxing presence of men with big guns. Well, yes, there's these guys who look like they're in combat uniform for Iraq

and they have automatic weapons. In case this is Paul Eckman. Eckman, EKM-A-M-A-M. He's a security expert. That's what he would be called down days. And speaking of security, the reason he's here today at JFK Airport is to talk with JetBlue Security, teach them a few things about how they might do their jobs better. Okay.

But... It's an overreported and building. That's a problem. About over in a restaurant. Not, security kicks us out. The only place it seems or allowed to stand, on the concrete medium between two lanes of traffic where Ekman finally pulls out the thing he'd been hoping to show the folks at JetBlue. It's we have your very stylish laptop. It's a simple computer program that he promises about 40 minutes will teach you to peer into a person's soul. So we're going to start.

Click start. Click on the start button. Okay, I'm stepping forward to the computer here. It's loading images. Please wait a bit. Please wait a bit. Waiting for the pitch. Okay. Whoa! I need to see that one again.

That was so fast. Whoa! Whoa! What is that? I'll promise I'll tell you, but let me just keep going with this. All right. To explain, Paul Eckman studies faces. The human face. He's probably studied the face more than anyone.

Up until my work that was published in 78, we didn't really know how many expressions the face could make, and there was nothing like a musical notation for the face. So, about 30 years ago, he began by examining his own face. Very closely to see how many muscles are in there. There are roughly 50. Then he spent the next couple decades trying to figure out how many ways those muscles can combine

to form a facial expression. I developed something called the facial action cutting system, basically a muscular scoring system that you can apply to photographs, film, or real life behavior. You just did a one one two for me. You're numbering my facial expression? The one two is the most common thing in the world.

Just raising your eyebrows up is one two. Five is just raising the upper eyelid. Seven is tensing the lower eyelid. All in all, the human face is capable of 3,000 different expressions. That's what he thinks. And as we sat in his publisher's office in Midtown Manhattan, this is about an hour before the airport incident. One example?

Yeah, he demonstrated a few. Okay, if you fabricate anger, it's very unlikely you'll put in what we call the anger reliable muscle, which most people can't voluntarily move. The anger reliable muscle. What's it is? Yeah, I want to see it. You're tensing. I'm tens I want to see where it is. You're tensing.

I'm tensing the red margin of my lips. Oh, you just look fierce when you do that instantly. So if you want to know someone's mad, look at their lips. Conversely, if you want to know they're happy, like genuinely happy and they're not just faking it, he says, look at their eyelids. Skin in between your eyebrows and your upper eyelid in the genuine

spontaneous and joint smile, that skin moves slightly down. Hard to detect, but visible if you know what you're holding. He just did it when you said that. Anyways, the reason that we were talking about him here in our on-lying is because with all the attention that's being paid these days to finding lies by using fancy brain scanners, Acmen is kind of on a crusade to remind us that you don't have to do that. You don't have to look in the brain because the brain is actually directly connected to the face in ways that we can't control. All of these muscles are activated involuntarily when an emotion occurs without your choice.

Are there things happening on my face, on her face, on any face? That you don't even know about. We don't even know, and I don't see them. I'm not the naked face. Which brings me to my new favorite word. Leakage. Leakage? Leakage.

Yes, it is a word you will hear again and again when you talk to anyone in the field of lie-catching. Take, for example, Barry McManus. Barry Elmick Manus, MCMA in US. He's a long time CIA interrogator. Physiological leakage could be anywhere from sweat gland activity when someone knows that they're misleading you and they break out in a sweat. That's because of the autonomic nervous system that you have no control over. Basically, telling the truth is easy.

That is the crux of it, according to Steve Silberman, a reporter for Wired Magazine. The truth is kind of sitting there in your brain, your brain knows it, you say it, no problem. But your brain has to work harder to generate the lie. There is an effort. And with that, there is always leakage, even in an instantaneous moment. Sometimes you even hear it where a person's breathing pattern will change or the size that people do at what particular time did they do it. If you're not trained to look at it, most people ignore it. But if you've been trained and you know what to look for, according to Barry McMahon,

it will strike you right in the face. Speaking of faces, the particular brand of facial leakage that Paul Ekman specializes in has to do with something that he calls. We call a micro facial expression, a very fast facial expression by 25th of a second. Okay, just as an example, let's just imagine Robert that you're smiling, okay? But on the inside, as those of us who know you can attest,

maybe you've got some rage. A little, a little bit. Yeah, just a little bit. But on the outside you're smiling. Now, a micro expression is when for the tiniest, tiniest moment, a little bit of that inner rage slips out onto your face. And these are just little, like, just fleeting expressions on your face. They're usually pretty extreme, but they're very fast.

It happens constantly, he says, but so fast that most of us don't see it at all. Most of us don't. And when I say most, I mean, I'm at 95% of us miss them. But once you learn that you don't miss them. Once you don't miss them. There's one. According to Ekman, you wake up to the startling possibility that... Ties are everywhere.

It's enough to make a man obsessed. When my daughter was born 27 years ago, I decided that I would take on as a life test to see if I could leave my life without lying. To see whether you could lead your life without lying. Yeah. That sounds possible. It's very tough, but I'm always looking to see whether there's a way I can solve the problem Make some more interesting. I'm just telling a lie is really dull But you could argue that telling a lie is it's just what we do. No, we don't just do that most of the time We lie out of laziness or timidity I got put in a terrible situation I got put in a terrible situation by a friend who had invited me to a dinner party and the company was dull and the food was worse I sure didn't want to go again

So he invites me again about two months later and I say I'm sorry. I can't make it. I'm being polite Not sure I could have made it and he said oh, but we enjoyed having you so much tell me a date when you could make it Now how am I gonna get out of that? How do you stay true to your... I'm prepared. I'm prepared. So I said to him, the truth of the matter is that at this point in my life,

very busy and her friends I've had for decades that I don't get enough time to see, and I really can't pursue new friendships. Tadockman began to walk the path of the honest man, he was faced with a question that has plagued other honest men for centuries, which is, what exactly is a lie? Like, how do you define it exactly? Like, I mean, there are different kinds clearly, and some are definitely more okay than others.

Where do you draw the line? Eventually, he settled on two criteria. A law is a deliberate choice. A deliberate choice. To mislead a target without any notification. So according to that definition, an actor is not a lawyer, although a good actor, I saw a good actor last night in a play.

And I was for a time misled. I even had tears because he had misled me, but I was notified. Right. So, no. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. In a similar way, bluffing at poker, it's not lying because bluffing is in the rules. It's understood. That's part of the game. So, therefore, you are quote, notify. But it depends. Maybe the rules of with my my wife, we're entering our 28th year, my wife taught me that what I'm supposed to say when she comes in with a new dress, I'm not

supposed to say, gee, that's not a flattering cut, or the color is wrong, or that's for someone 20 years younger, all of which might be true. I'm supposed to say smashing. So okay, I've agreed to those rules, and the rules I've agreed to is that I will not tell her the truth. And since we've agreed about that, I'm not lying. So is this like the poker game

where you're allowed to bluff? I'm required to. You're giving yourself a loophole though. Oh, no, no, because she's notified. She knows she can't come on. That sounds like very lawyerly to me. Just then, his phone rings. Hello.

Hello, hello. Oh, that's my ride. We're gonna ride out to JFK with me. Yeah, absolutely. All right, you know, this goes with Pyle McCart, go to the airport, get kicked out. So there we were on the medium, at center strip, at JFK, cold as winter day, and Paul Eckman, finally pulled the thing out of his bag's new technology that he thinks was going to

help our chances of catching liars at the airport. Basically, it is a computer game. It's loading images, please wait. You're shown a face on a screen. The face is fixed in an expression, like a smile, let's say. And then, waiting for the pinch. Okay, pow! Another different expression flashes for a moment.

Whoa, that was so fast, so fast. And then on the screen, you're asked, what was that micro expression? What was it? Surprise? You got it right Let's try another you ready. Okay I need to see that one again. No way actually no no angry All right, let's go and try anger

Started out pretty strong. Okay, here we go. Oh, you're gonna You are in a row. It started out pretty strong. Okay, here we go. How are you going to get three in a row? But then it was all downhill. Oh, I didn't even begin to catch that. Contempt? Wrong. In the end, after several minutes of this,

I ended up getting more wrong than right, which put my micro expression identifying powers at less than chance. I could have flipped the coin and I would have done better. But what if you were good at it? What if you were able to identify the particular expressions? What would you know? Well, I would know, I guess all I'd really know is that they were concealing something,

some emotion. That's it. Yeah. And in fact, on the way over in the car, Ekman said a point blank, if you are looking for some sure fire dead giveaway sign of lying, it's just not there. Because we don't have a pinuck, he has no.

Oh, look, my nose. We don't have something that only occurs when people are lying. Really, so there is not, say, muscle number A19, that if it twitches in a certain way, is a bulletproof hallmark of lying. Nope, that doesn't exist. That's panatheous nerves. Is there something close to it on our faces? No, there are signs of an unusual cognitive load or emotional load, and that can occur for

a lot of reasons, and you're going to find out the reason. So you're never going to be able to have an idiot behind the machine in other words. Nope. Radio Lab will return in a moment. Hi, this is Vanessa and Crystal from Pittsburgh. Radio Lab is supported in part by the National Science Foundation and by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world.

More information about Sloan at www.Sloan.org Thanks! This is Radio Lab, I'm Chad Abumran. And I'm Robert Crowley. Today our topic is Liars and the people who try and catch them. And we've got a tale for you now from our own Alan Horn, a story that she heard from a friend of hers. Robert Crowley. No.

So Jude, your friend Jude? Yeah. With a describe and real quick for us? Jude is a sweet guy. We used to work together. He's kind of a slight fellow with Auburn hair and he's just a really thoughtful trustworthy guy. How do you know?

What do you mean? How do you know that he's trustworthy? Well, you just know, I don't know. Okay, tell me about the story that you told you. Well, this is a story about someone that he dated, and someone who changed him. It's a girl. It's a girl. And how did he meet her?

He met her at a barbecue. A friend's party. And incidentally, it was my birthday. Right. He was at this party. It was his birthday. He meets this girl. Sandy Blonde Hair, blue eyes. And after the party.

A couple days later, he gets a phone call from his friend saying, Do you remember Hope, who was at the party on Sunday? She was asking after you, is it okay if I give her your phone number to tell her how to get in touch with you? Were you flattered?

Of course. So she calls. He asked her out and they went out on a date. I remember thinking to myself, wow, this girl is, she's kind of electric. Vibrant. We're saying yes a lot to each other. We're laughing a lot. Yeah, she just had a wonderful smile.

She would look you right in the eye. I mean, she just had a way of connecting right through to back behind your own eyes and you just felt like you were dealing with it. So they went out again. And then they went out again and pretty soon they're spending all of their time together. And then what happened?

Well, I don't remember when it turned. At some point she started to have a lot of problems. Small crises started to come out. A whole series of things. They were. The problems, insurance problems. You know, I've got a situation where I need to move out of the place where I'm currently living, and it's because my roommates, you know, crazy...

He felt himself sort of pulling back. Yes. Yes. Until one evening, he gets call from Hope, and she's totally panicked. You have to come over, we have something we really need to talk about, and at this point, I have no idea what it is. Now, at this time, but she said, hey, I'm pregnant.

I think I'm pregnant. Well, what does you do? Well, he basically stood up into the right thing. There really was a part of me that was thinking, well, here's the test of a person. He was gonna stand by her and support her through the pregnancy and he said, okay, let's go to the doctor together. I say where when I want to be there and she would say three o'clock at

The doctor's office, but I would say okay, and I would go be there early, you know two forty-five and She would not be there and three fifteen would roll around and three thirty would roll around There I am sitting sort of alone and, and the perceptionist would continue, continue, you know, can I help you? She would say, oh, well, that point was at one o'clock or I would notice on the sign-in sheet that she had actually signed in,

and I could see the handwriting. It was, indeed, it was hopes, and she had signed it two hours earlier. So then did you confront and hope about giving you the wrong payment times? Yeah, oh yeah. Yeah. And as this continued, I? Yeah, oh yeah, yeah. And as this continued, I would say, repeat that for me.

Okay, so three o'clock. I mean, these are moments in crystal clarity of life. You're not losing track of stuff. Then he gets a call from a woman named Leslie. I met Hope off Craigslist actually put out an ad for Arumate. And she moved in with no furniture. She showed up with just all of her stuff in trash bags and then she disappeared, leaving the bags behind.

So it was right around that point where her check bounced and I was like, oh no. And so through mutual friend, she tracked down Jude. I was kind of like, okay, well she has this boy front. She called him, called him and sort of wondered like is he in on this? She had no idea what she's talking about. No.

He didn't even know she had a roommate named Leslie. I mean, who the hell was who? Or, you know, who were you? You owe me money, I know I don't. And she, you know, it was all very confusing. Not knowing what else to do, Leslie decides to go into Hope's room and start looking through her stuff.

And I just thought, you know, I'm just gonna go through this, see what's in here. And that's when I found those notebooks. Spiralbound notebooks and inside literally pages upon pages of different names with different socials next to them. Credit card numbers, mothers made name, birth date, page after page of that kind of information. What exactly was this? These are like crib notes for a con woman. That's when I called Jude and I said, get over here.

What did Jude do at this point? Well Jude knew he had to do something. And I finally got up the courage to confront Hope and say, this is over. My own responsibility here notwithstanding to be, you know, the pregnancies. And what about Leslie at this point, was she... Well, Leslie wondered how many of those people in that notebook, hope had met through Craigslist,

which is where Leslie met her. So she went back to Craigslist and started posting warnings many times a day. Think single white female meets specific heights meets the grifters, you need to lay 20 something gapped close to 5 foot 3 blue eyed blonde. Run away, run away. In fact, warn your hairdresser.

She's posting warning after warning. If you have any information about this person or simply want some empathy, please email at conbyhope at yahoo.com. And Craig took them all down. As in Craig from Craigslist, Greg. Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist. He thought that they were inappropriate,

that they were unfair. We're gonna do the right thing, but everyone has rights. She would post, nope, the drama is not over. He would take it down. She would post. Back to the matter nope, the drama is not over. He would take it down. She would post, back to the matter is that hope is out there somewhere.

He would take it down. But within a few days, in those moments where Craig was in the bathroom away from his desk, people responded. I was starting to get multiple reports and she ripped people off. Every different kind of person from all over the place, yoga instructors, landlords,

car mechanic, spanks, flower shop owners, spas, veterinarian, car rental agency, check cashing place, $50, $1,000, $1,000, $1,000, $1,000, and everybody with the same story. She's one good actor. Our MO seems to be the move in with tons of stuff, Sans Farniture, has to check out of a closed account then bolt when it comes back.

Over the course of several years, there were posting some Craigslist, and there were people who were trying to find and stop. Oh. She got kind of a celebrity following. By the way, we used to get emails like every day from people who were just like, is there any news?

Dude, I love seeing those posts. Can you tell us anything? I'm like, no, she's inviting, sorry. Who Who was this woman? Terry can I get you to introduce yourself just say who you are and what you do? My name is Terry Alaria. I'm a special agent with the Louisiana Department of Justice. Louisiana? How do we get to Louisiana? Well after a few years, hope resurfaced in New Orleans. We had a call in complaint from a lady down in the New Orleans area. Her credit card had been used. Someone had tried to purchase Dell computers and it just started from there.

Every time we talked to one victim, it led to one or two other victims. Hope has almost like a cult following. You know, her MO was that she knew them. She got to know them really well. I've talked a lot of victims and they just don't trust people anymore. A lot of these people did some good human open heart things with her and said, this poor girl, I've got to help her out. And they really let down and they just don't trust people anymore.

And it's sad. You know, not only do you have to worry about clearing up your credit and getting your money back from your banks, you know, you've got to deal with people on the surf now that you don't know, you know, who you're standing next to. Judith had that feeling for a good reason. One of the houses that hope had blown through in San Francisco, he had found something that was really upsetting. I had come across a letter that she had written to my parents but never mailed, just things, veryiled, just things.

Very, very terrible things. But Jude says we're totally untrue. In this letter to his parents, Hope wrote that at one point during the pregnancy, she was having complications and the main symptom was like severe vaginal bleeding and that she was on somebody's living or floor out of mine or hers in this terrible condition and that I had just left totally abandoning the situation in my responsibilities,

just a graphic and ugly depiction of an awful scene. Jude was traumatized. The whole experience he compared to an earthquake. Have you ever been in an earthquake? No, I never. Well, one of the things that happens is that there's these aftershocks after the earthquake. And so for a little while after the earthquake,

you're not sure that when you put your foot down, the ground is still going to be in the same place as it was a minute ago. There were days, I can tell you, there were days when it was significant to hear anybody say anything of any consequence that was just true. To say, I have a carton of milk in my refrigerator that expires on September 17th, and that was true.

It didn't say September 19th or September 15th. It said September 17th. I've had people crying on the phone talking to me about this situation, and they were victim six, seven years ago. People are embarrassed. They're embarrassed, and then they become mad. You know that's when they become detectives. Make a lousy private detective. Where are you now? In front of Hope's mother's house in a bad neighborhood in New Orleans or

a midnight. What's your name by the way, her mom? Oh, Marcia Valentine. And why are you there? Exactly. I could kind of gotten a little obsessed with her. You can't obsess. Yeah. I can't see any else. Number six, 23. Why? I have no idea. I think there was like this having tightness in my chest.

I'm so nervous. There was something about imagining how she was doing all this. I'm so nervous. It was like really fun to imagine. But maybe that's what happens in Leslie too. But like once I started looking, I was able to find a lot of victims, a lot of information, and I wanted to meet her.

Marche a Valentine? Marche a Valentine? I know, I'm thinking where I live. Yeah, I'm not from around here. You're just having a fun looking like that boy. You'd be happy to spook me around here. You're standing on the front looking like that boy. You'd be happy to put more on there. I'll come back later. Okay, next day.

All right, wait a minute. What did you know about Hope at this point? Well, I knew that she had had a daughter. Really? No, is anybody home? Woo-hoo-hoo! Jude's? No, not Jude's.

The timing was all wrong and I had located the father. Well, I'm standing outside of Hope's mother's house. There's three cluster tricycles piled up against a gate. I don't see anyone inside the house. The next morning I went out to find a woman named Ruby. Ruby Moon, I live in New Orleans, Louisiana. Ruby owns a coffee shop. I lived down the street from Hope's mother.

The one Hope came to New Orleans. Her mother, you know, introduced us. Ruby has a kid who's about the same age as Hope's daughter and they go to Montessori together. And when Ruby opened her shop a year ago, Hope did carpool duty. She would pick them up and when we got home about 5.36 o'clock. We'd all eat dinner together and she would spend the night sometimes. And quite frankly, I enjoyed having hope around. A few weeks later, the cops show up to arrest Hope. She had printed a check on her home computer with a made up account number to buy a $12,000 used heart.

Here you are, you really like this woman. Your kids love her and you can't believe it. You don't believe it. And I wanted to stand by her. I wanted to help her. And she hadn't screwed me over. She hadn't done anything to me. So maybe she's turning around.

Well then my husband finds that she's taking a credit card off of the shelf that he put away because the credit card was maxed out and she'd been buying gasoline and paying her phone bills. It wasn't much, it was like $250. It really wasn't much and my husband was like, hope, why? Why didn't you just come to us? Here you are, you're living in a house, you are nanny, you're a friend. We would've given you the money.

And here's where Ruby's situation is so different from the other victims I talked to. She loves Hope's daughter. She can't just walk away. When Hope went to jail for four months, Ruby helped care for her. It's a very, very difficult situation, especially when you're trying to do the right thing. Trying to do the right thing. Ruby hired Hope's mom to work at her coffee shop, even though she's kind of been an awful laytress. I mean, she's worked here for three months,

and she still forgets how to do things. I mean, I don't know. But here's the thing, the effect of a lie, like the real impact, it isn't just that it makes you question that piece of information that you're lied to about. It just that it makes you question that piece of information that you're lying to about. It's that it makes you question everything. What happened next was that I watched Ruby

completely unravel. Because of something that I said. Do you understand that Hope's father was a doctor? Which the detective had told me. Her father was a doctor. My understanding was that he wasn't really a doctor. According to the Attorney General's office, he was. Then Marcia's not a liar, too.

Because she says he was a con man. She says that her father was a con man. It's funny how a piece of information can take on a life of its own. The ground was shifting under Ruby's feet. So then, Marsh is lying. Marsh says he wasn't a doctor. If they say it turned out that he was really a doctor, then, Marsh is lying.

And that may not be information. It means anything at all, you know? And now you tell me that he really was a doctor. I should be getting a call after call. Hey baby, it's Ruby, the handle lady. Can you give me some information? She found anyone she knew with a connection to her. Can I ask you a question and you just say yes or no?

Hi Scott, this is Ruby. I live in New Orleans. You don't know me. I heard some disturbing news that I would like to tell you. Very, very important that you call me back. I'm going to call you back. Please call me back. Mind your way to, too. Please call me back. Hey, I'm freaking out.

It's her talking to her husband. Well, I'm here talking to the reporter and do things that Martian told me aren't true. That hope's dad wasn't really a doctor and he was. I still really don't understand why that one detail shook Ruby so much. I guess Patryle makes you doubt yourself. But it explains something that Judith told me, that he has no new friends, literally, that everyone he feels close to is someone that he met before he met Hope, as if he never trusted his judgment about people again, but that he had no choice but to rely on it from before.

I mean, how could you live in the world without trusting? What sort of world would that be? So I am in front of the Jefferson Parish Courthouse. Hope has a trial this morning. Eighth, forty, I've been here since eight this morning and I haven't as yet seen hope. I have been trying to reach her for a week and a half, left her phone messages, mailed her a letter,

left her a note of the door, nothing. I'm trying to feel like she's not coming. Okay, inside the courtroom, I am watching the door at every person who walks and wondering is it her or is it her? And then she walks in. She walked in. And she's...

Had you ever seen her before this moment? I have seen the pictures of her. What did she look like? What did she look like? And she walked in. And she's... Had you ever seen her before this moment? I have seen the pictures of her. What did she look like? What did she look like? Well, strawberry, blonde hair, blue, pin striped suit, and pointy-toed high heels. She sort of looks like an attorney. Very well put together.

And I watch her look around the squirt room at all of the intimidating and scary-looking people in the court. And I see her see me and she just makes a b-line right for me and walks up to me and says, your Ellen aren't you you've been trying to reach me and I'm so sorry I haven't been in touch and she just sits down next to me and we end up spending the next four hours together. What'd you talk about? The weather mostly. She was very charming. She told me all sorts of things about New Orleans, New Orleans history, and when it comes time for her to stand before the judge and plead guilty, I find myself rooting for her. She gets sentenced to two years in hard labor, but she also gets a couple of days to make arrangements for her daughter just to report to prison at 9 a.m. on Friday morning.

Do you ever get her on the record? Well, I couldn't have my equipment in the courtroom, but while we were in court, she agreed to an interview. But then a few hours before the scheduled interview, she called me until she couldn't make it, moved to the next morning, then the next day, and the next. And while I know I can't trust her, I don't know what else to do. I decided to run to the drugstore,

and buy a tape recorder, and bring it to her. So I go to our mom's house and spend a few minutes with you talking. Hey there. Huh? At least it's a little bit better weather for your for my dress. Yeah, total.'m not wearing it. Hi there. What's your name? What's your name? What's your name? Ellen?

So, um, trying to make it really easy. There's a set recorder. It's got batteries. It's got a cassette in it. I tested it out. It works. Okay. And, um, for the battery? For the bubbles?

Yeah, you've got to put batteries in your bubble thing too. I know. And the bubbles? Yeah, we did! Yeah! And my other thought is, is if you want to just record your thoughts and what... I mean, you know, like I just want to review some space to say what you want to say. So... Okay. And it's all a dress. Got posted, it's all a dress.

Just seal it up and... Um. Yeah. Something. I'm sorry. I like something. I can't give you better milk quality. That was it.

That was my only on the record interview with her. However, before she went to prison, she did send me that cassette tape. It was a really crummy tape, and so we had to use this voice. What do we call that? Noise reduction. We had to use a noise reduction filter to clean it up so you could hear her voice, and it makes her sound kind of ghostly and strange. I have a child who is happy and healthy and good and beautiful and I don't think she could be all about it. I was this horrible monster of the people that I am. On this tape, Hope talks about her daughter a lot.

My life is now part. I wish she said something more satisfying, something that explained why it was that she chose to live this way for so long. But she doesn't. I'm sorry. Hope mailed this tape to me, reported to prison. She was released to date of prison overcrowding, and during Hurricane Katrina, the state of Louisiana, lost her.

About a month after the hurricane, I wrote to the Attorney General's Office and asked if they had any idea where she was. I got a one-word response. No. Radio labs, Eleanor. Alright, so let me ask a question to get us to our next bit. Why exactly would hope lie the way she does? I mean, there was a point in the story

where Ruby, you know, the character said, you know, I would have given her everything she wanted, I would have given her the money, credit cards, whatever, and yet she still did it. So why? Haven't you met people who lie all the time like they just keep doing it and doing it and doing it? It's like they, it's like they can't stop.

Right. Yeah. Exactly. They just can't help it. They feel this impulse that they cannot control. Yeah. The light just tumbles out before they can stop. That is who. Oh, that's Yolling Yacht. She's a researcher at the University of Southern California. In the Department of Psychology and your Science.

And I'm a new mom. No, a really new mom. Her baby's about two months old, and she was nice enough to let us barge in on her maternity leave. To talk with her. Because when she's not playing with a new baby, she is studying the mind of pathological liars.

Which, by the way, means, why don't you use that phrase pathological lying? What is it? What does zero definition have? Yeah, I just said it at a moment ago. It's people who can't stop lying. It's habitual, it's compulsive. And Yarlin's question was, is there something about their brains, their anatomy, that might

explain this compulsion, and she thinks she may have found a clue. In any case, getting a head of myself, first thing she had to do was find a group with people who lie a lot. Why? Oh, to study them? To study them, yeah. How weird do you find sitting pathological liars waiting to be studied? We actually recruit a subject from the temporary employment agency. Like a temp agency? Where, yeah, you know, you would go if you typed 60 words a minute kind of place? Yes, exactly, exactly. This is her notion that she's finding a bunch of liars at a temp agency.

Well, her... It's not ridiculous. That's not ridiculous. That's not ridiculous. That's not ridiculous. That's not ridiculous. That's not ridiculous. That's not ridiculous.

That's not ridiculous. That's not ridiculous. That's not ridiculous. That's not ridiculous. That's not ridiculous. That's not ridiculous. That's not ridiculous. That's not ridiculous. That's not ridiculous. That's not ridiculous. That's not ridiculous. That's not ridiculous. agency or usually people who cannot remain in one job for a very long period of time. That's not true of all people who work at TempAgencies. Most of them are just fine,

but some of them, she figured, keep ending up with the TempAgencies because they just have this problem with their, you know, their lifestyle. The truth is probably. All right, let's keep going. I want to hear how this comes out. Okay, good. So, Yang Ling and her crew went to a couple of time agencies in the LA area interviewed 108 people. That's them all kinds of questions, not just about their employment history, but about their past. No, they're childhood histories.

About their families. Very personal information. She checked their answers to those questions against their family and friends, against their court records, just to see if she could find people whose stories had, you know, inconsistencies, big ones. And in the 108 folks that she queried, she found a pathological liar?

12 actually. 12 out of 108 samplers? Whoa. Are they pathological liars? I don't know, it depends on how you define it. I would hope so. But she found 12 people that she wanted to look at further, she said to them, would you be willing

to come purely around to her basis into the lab and let me scan your brain. And just another day at the temp office. So, um, basically we put people in the MRI scanner and then we scan their brain. Scanned everyone's brains, all 108 participants, the liars and the non-liars, no one knew which group they were in. And she was looking at a particular part of their brains just behind their forehead. Cold. The prefrontal cortex.

This is the part of the brain that processes information. This is where the real thinking happens. Making decisions and more judgment, for example. Now if you zoom into that place just behind your forehead, what you will see are two kinds of brain tissue. You've got gray matter and then you've got white matter. I've heard of gray matter. Yes, well, we think of the brain as being gray, but actually it's two things. It's gray and white. The gray stuff, I'm kind of thinking of it as like the computer processor part.

Yeah. It's these little clumps of neurons that process information. I like computer chips. That's the gray. Where is the white? The white matter is like the connections between all these computer. The white matter in other words is what moves the thoughts around. Gray is where the thinking happens and then white is when you move the thought from here

to there. Exactly. Yes. They transfer information from one end to the other. Okay, so you've got your gray, you've got your white, what Yaline thought she would see when she looked into the brains of people who lie a lot? I thought out we would see a reduction. Just some piece of it not there. Yeah, they're missing something. Specifically, she thought she would find less

gray stuff, less of the thinking stuff. Why would it, why would, why? Because that's what she's seen in other mental disorders that are kind of like this. And if you think about it on a really simplistic level, the grey is where you think your thoughts. And it's also among other things where you crunch your moral calculations. And liars, she figured have trouble in this department. So maybe they have less grey.

That was her notion. OK. But when she got the pictures back what she saw was Such a great increase. It's more and not the gray more white matter More white stuff a lot more 25% like a quarter to a 20 have 25% more connections in their head the non-liers Yes Before we get to what that means what were you thinking when you saw this? I was really bubbling.

I thought this was something. Something. Something. Something. Here's her idea so far. You ready? Yes. She thinks that these extra connections play a crucial role

in a kind of in the moment story telling. That's essentially what lying is coming up with a story on the fly. Let me give you an example, okay? You're leaving work, you're walking down the hall, you're going to the elevator, and an annoying, but nice coworker corners you. Oh, hey, Sally. Corners you in the elevator. Hey!

Asks you out. Um, you know, I've been meaning to ask ask you maybe want to go out with me on Friday? So there you are. Questions dangling in the air. You want to go out with me on Friday? For most of us, right at that moment inside our head and our brains, we're thinking, Oh, show to. Say you're busy.

Say you're busy. Say you're busy. What are you busy with, say something? Think it's not too big. Think it's big. You're just reaching out into the void trying to form a connection with some idea that can help you come up with some excuse. I could say I'm like, oh my god, I'm so excited. Shoot, I'm so excited.

I can't think of anything. Alright, really what you need to do at this moment is you should take a bunch of disparate thoughts on different sides of your brain. Like, me tonight, teeth, dentist, and connect them all together. I'm having some late night dental work. Like that. Okay, okay. We can all do it, given enough time,

but for the pathological liar, she thinks that because they have so many more of these connections to begin with, they get there faster. My mom is visiting that night. I'm eating a friend for sushi. I'm performing in a circus bread and I go club. I use hockey practice.

Yoga. I have to polish the silver. I've got chemo. I think the more connections, sorry, beekeeping, the faster the speed of the processing, you can jump from one idea to another and you can come up with more random stories. She thinks that in the brains of most of us,

we have trouble making those connections. We have, would you have trouble? If I said to you, come on, come on, come on, come on, go out with me on Friday night, would you not be able to come up with a wowser? I would say, yeah, I have to count straws. See, for 39 straw counting, we always, we have about 316 straws so far,

and I'm only doing ones with little red circles on them, so that's 39, sorry. I don't know where those comes, I just happened, I just can't. There you go, see, you've got extra white matter problems. So she's saying this is a cause of lying or an effective lying? Well, she's not sure, and this is a big debate. What she can say is that children, as they grow from age two to age ten, there is a big

jump in their white matter. And that's actually the same age that they developed the skill to lie. Among other things, but you know... To close, let me just ask you, given everything we've just talked about, how do you square this information with being a new mom? I mean, is this your first kid? Yes, it's my first one. Boy or girl? A girl.

What's her name? Zoe. Doesn't it make you wonder a little bit about Zoe and what's going on inside her head? Oh yes, I wonder about that all the time. It's too early to scan her brain, but eventually I will do it. Are you serious? Yes. This is a moral to this.

Never if you're a little baby, have a social psychiatrist as a mother, it would say very, very dangerous thing. Anyway, if she does this, maybe we'll know a little bit more about the nature and nurture of liars, but until then. This is Radio Lab. We'll be back in a moment. Click to scan your brain. Science reporting on Radio Lab is supported in part by Science Sandbox, a Simon's Foundation initiative dedicated to engaging everyone with the process of science.

Hello I'm Chad. And I'm Robert. And this is Radio Lab today on our program, the topic is Liars. All kinds of Liars and now it's time for the liar. We haven't yet mentioned a liar, which might actually be one very familiar to you, Chad. This is the self-deceiver. Hey.

Would you be somebody who lies not to others, but actually lies to oneself. Get my drift. Thanks, Crow, which thanks a lot. What does that even mean to lie to oneself? How would you add that trick? Let me give you a classic example. Let's say that you are madly in love with somebody.

Just conjure up whoever you really, you know, I don't know who. Okay. So now you're in love with her and strange things start to happen. You're at home the phone rings. You pick it up. Hello. And the person on the other end of the line is breathing a minute, hangs up. Next she's suddenly staying late at the office, many nights a week.

Yeah honey, I've got to work late tonight again, don't wait up. Then your friends tell you that they see this woman. So who's this guy? In the company of a man. Did she have a brother maybe? Repeatedly. Dude, come on. In short, all the signs are there and yet despite the evidence you,

Jed, continue to believe, and I mean you truly, truly believe that the woman is being faithful. Well, maybe in this little scenario that you've created for me, I'm just stupid or clueless. Well, I'm not gonna take that away from you, I'm not. But in this case, though, for the sake of argument, let's say you're not clueless. Well, I'm not going to take that away from you. I'm not.

But in this case, though, for the sake of argument, let's say you're not clueless. Okay. Let's say you believe both these things in some different compartments in your head. You believe that she is faithful and at the very same time, you know, you know what's really going on here. What self-deception really is, is that you have two contradictory beliefs. And you hold them at the same time, and you allow one of them into consciousness,

and that you have a motivation for allowing one of them into consciousness. That's Joanna Starrick, she's a psychologist, and we're gonna hear more from her later. All right, so how does that work, then what? What you just said. Back to have two contradictory thoughts in your brain at the same time,

and yet you're only letting them in one. Well, there's an experiment on this subject, kind of an interesting one, and so on. What other experiment? Introduced you to the two guys who did it. Okay. I'm Harold Sackheim, my professor in the department of psychiatry and radiology at Columbia University. Okay, my name is Ruben Gour. I'm a neuropsychologist by training.

Harold Sackheim and Ruben Gour. I'm a neuropsychologist by training. Harold Sakai and Ruben Gour are friends. They met back in 1974. I'm 73. I make that 73. One was a grad student that would be Harold Momose Professor. That's a good teacher. Yeah.

And we started talking. Make a long search art. We did a couple of experiments. In one of them, we played clips of one's own voice and the voices of other people. Here's the experiment. You, the subject, are sitting in a room, okay? And we're going to give you a big red button, and you can press it. Press the button. And out of the speakers in this room, you're going to hear 10 different voices.

And everybody was saying the same thing. The words were the same. Come here. Come here. Come same. Come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here. And one of the voices in this group, one of the many, is you, Chad, you saying, come here. Like there, that was you. Now, when you hear yourself saying, come, press the button. Press the button. Me or not, please.

When you hear your own voice. Come here, come here. Come to one of these in mind. Yep. Come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here. Come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, come here, not me, not me, not me. He missed it. It's a crazy, crazy, crazy. It's hard. You're right. And the people in Harold's study, many of them didn't do too well either.

So they had some trouble recognizing their own voice. All right, bringing home Robert. What's the point of this? Here's what I didn't tell you. When they did this experiment in real life, the real subjects, in addition to having the little push-and-button thing that we gave you, they also had diodes all over their body, measuring,

recorded their physiology, crispiration, sweating, heart rate, stuff like that, blood pressure. And what they found is that when a person failed to recognize his or her voice, nevertheless, their bodies, the sweatbar. Most often the body is going, ah! Their bodies seem to notice their voices,

even though their conscious mind's missed the voices. The body knew, the conscious mind didn't. Two thoughts in the same person. Oh come on now. I mean, I'll give it to you. That's kind of interesting. Thank you very much. But that is not the same thing as lying.

Well, we're just starting here. We're just, this is, now at least grant me this. You can have two different experiences simultaneously. Yes, okay. I grant that you just. So on our way, we're on our way. Ow! Okay, step two.

Harold and Rubin decide to leave the laboratory and go to a bar. Yeah, I believe it was Smokey Joe's. Just to sort of talk things over. Kick back a bit. And to deal with your very question, like, so let's really get to the core of what line to yourself is about.

Exactly. So, they're in the bar and they get kind of drunk. And we were probably pretty drunk. And Ruben proposes, we need to come up with some way to get test subjects, to have one thought, and instantly have a contradict be thought. Maybe we could do that with embarrassment. Maybe we could embarrass them

into having two thoughts at the same time. And yes, and at some point I said, let's ask people questions. Questions so threatening. So uncomfortable that you don't want to tell the truth about them. What questions would those be? Well, we had to get down to dirty. They got drunker and drunker and drunker and they came with a whole bunch of them.

They thought it was riding them down. They thought right there in the bar on the napkin. We were curious. So we took their questions off the napkins so to speak and we brought them out onto the street. Can I ask you some questions while you're waiting? Yeah, sure. So here's what? Have you ever doubted your sexual adequacy? Oh no. And yeah another? Have you ever enjoyed your bowel movements? I've enjoyed my bowel movements.

I think most normal people do. No. Here's another. Have you ever thought of committing suicide? No, just get back at somebody. Yes. No. And another? Ah! Okay, I've never wanted to rape... I've never wanted to rape... I'll be raped by somebody. Come again? No! Absolutely not. Oh, no.

Oh, yeah. Jack? Jack? What kind of question is that? If you answered no to any of those questions, they would say that you're lying to yourself. So they are assuming then that everybody enjoys their bowel movement secretly. Everyone secretly has rape fantasy. That. So they are assuming then that everybody enjoys their bowel movement secretly. Everyone secretly has rape fantasy. That is what they are assuming.

Yes, it was a supposition that these things are universal truths, but it was a supposition that seemed to work. Because that night at the bar, Harold and Rubin stumbled across something. It turns out that how you answer those questions predicts some very surprising things about the kind of person you are about the course of your whole life First of all remember that previous study we talked about with the voices Yeah, it just so happens that the people who were very bad at the voice test failed the voice test

Mm-hmm. They were the very same people who did very badly on the embarrassing questionnaire test they didn't want to admit the stuff. Have you ever wanted to rape or be raped by somebody? No not at all. However when other scientists got a hold of Harold and Ruben's questionnaire and they used it a lot in lots of situations. They dug deeper into the question of what do these people have trouble with truthiness? what happens to them in life, you know? And it turns out that they do a whole lot better

in all kinds of things. Better, better, better, in all kinds of things. Like what? A whole lot of stuff. Like? Can we now say, by the way, that these people are liars? I'm not quite ready to say that, but let's, okay, fine, let's call them liars.

And can you please tell me what the hell you're talking about, what sorts of things did they do better at? Well, just to start, let me introduce you to someone. Okay, my name is Joanna Starrick, and I'm a psychologist. Psychologist and athlete. Yeah, I was actually a swimmer. I was a competitive swimmer at Colgate University,

and I think one of the questions that I was really interested in is, how can you have two people who have the same physiological capacity and then one person over and over again would consistently win or out perform the other. Joanna had heard about Harold and Ruben's questionnaire so she and her research partner, Carolyn Keating, decided to give the embarrassing question questionnaire to the swim team. Yes, just to see what they'd find.

So we gave them that questionnaire at the beginning of the season. And then they trained trying to qualify for the Eastern Athletic Conference Championship. That's the big race of the end of the year. It's a very objective measure. You either swim fast enough during the season to qualify or you don't. And when at the end of the season, Jelana and her research partner, Carolyn, looked at which swimmers did the best, which ones qualified. We did find a bizarre relationship.

The swimmers who said the one, the liars, who said, no, to all these questions. Do you enjoy your bowel movements? No. Have you ever thought about killing yourself? No. Have you ever thought about raping someone? No.

Consistently? They were the winners. The fastest and most successful swimmers, were the ones who owned the questionnaire according to Harold and Rubin, lied to themselves. Yes. I do think a little bit of deception is not necessarily a bad thing. It might even be a crucial thing. And just for example, I want you to listen to these Olympic track athletes.

We got these interview clips from the sound artist Ben Rubin. And listen to how these athletes describe the process of getting ready to race. We believe we're invisible. Because if we go in there with any other thought, there's no chance of us accomplishing our goal. Well, of course, I always win in my thoughts. I have the ability to catch this person.

It's going to happen. Take your head off. Leave your head at home. Leave your brain at home today. When I step on the runway, I just relax myself. You are the best. And I go. And more than sports denying certain facts about the real world around you, according to any number of new studies, produces people who turns out are better at business and better at working with teams. And now here's the real kicker.

They turn out to be happier. People, that question you're served a couple of purposes. One of the things that it taught us is that people who were happiest were the ones who were lying to themselves more. The people who are the most realistic that actually see the world exactly as it is tend to be slightly more depressed than others. Time and time again, researchers have found that depressed people lie less. They see all the pain in the world,

and horrible people are with each other, and they tell you everything about themselves, what their weaknesses are, what terrible things they've done to other people, and the problem is they're right. And so maybe it's the way we help people to help them be wrong. It might just be that hiding ideas that we know to be true. Hiding those ideas from ourselves is what we need to get by.

We're so vulnerable to being hurt that we're given the capacity the store as a gift. Well that's it for us. If you want any more information on anything you heard this out, or check our website, www.radiolab.org. I'm Robert Grillwood. I'm Chad Hepomrod. This is Radio Lab. Thanks for listening. You had two new messages. Radio Lab is produced by Chad Ape and Radumrad with Lulu Miller, Rob Christianson, Helen

Horn, Justin Paul, and Zorn Wheeler. Production support by Amber Ceeley, Laska Kebble, Jed Terrez, Sarah Pelagrini, Ariel Lasky, Heather Redke, Michael O'Reilly, McManus, and Sally Hershipp, special thanks to me, Jude Hoffner, Jane Dymestra, and Scots Robinson. Radio Lab is produced by WNYC, New York Public Radio, and distributed by NPR National Public Radio.