Stuff You Should Know - How Lie Detectors Work

Episode Date: September 1, 2011

Instead of actually detecting lies, polygraph machines sense physiological variations, ostensibly brought on by guilt. The results are subject to interpretation, and therefore controversial. Join Josh and Chuck as they investigate the polygraph. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Flooring contractors agree. When looking for the best to care for hardwood floors, use Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner. The residue-free, fast drying solution is specially designed for hardwood floors, delivering the safe and effective clean you trust. Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner is available at most retailers where floor cleaning products are sold and on Amazon. Also available for your other hard surface floors like Stone, Tile, Laminate, Vinyl, and LVT. For cleaning tips and exclusive offers, visit Bona.com slash Bona Clean. The War on Drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call,

like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid work. Be sure to listen to The War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me is always is Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Liar. You could tell. There's ways you can find out, Chuck. Sure. We'll get to that in a minute. This is Stuff You Should Know. Let me finish. Okay. And it's You Lie. Remember that guy? Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Joey Pants or whatever the congressman's name was. Yeah, Saturday Night Live had a funny skit that he had gotten a whole group of people to all stick up at once. Wasn't it the deal? Yeah, tell it. And well, yeah, and he supposedly had a whole group of senators that were going to all stand up and yell, you lie. And then he was the only one that did it. Yeah. That's because he was out of the room when they were like, no, we can't do that. Yeah, I think that was it. That's funny. Yeah. So we're talking about lie detectors. But let me take you back. All right. To a little place in time and space called the Jazz Age, early 1920s. Yeah. No, that's the beat. Next, that did that. Okay. I'm sure a jazz person snapped their fingers at one point. Sure. Okay.

Okay. But not like that. All right. It was more like Coltrane style. Just like that. Gotcha. Anyway, this is 1921, Chuck, in Berkeley, California at UCLA Berkeley. And there is a place there called the College Hall, which is a women's dorm. And in that year, there was a string of thefts, cash, rings, pretty much anything of value went missing for a little while there. And there's a man working at the Berkeley Police Department. This is in the girls dorm? Yeah. Okay. Called College Hall. Gotcha. There's a man working in the in the Berkeley Police Department. His name is John Larson. And John Larson was the first cop ever to have a PhD. And he had gotten interested in this device called a cardio pneumo psychograph, which had

been invented just a few years before by another guy named William Larson. And William Larson was a lawyer and a Harvard shrink. And he also, as an aside, a creative wonder woman with her lasso of truth. Really? He's the guy who invented the what's now called the polygraph. But what about the wonder woman? He created Wonder Woman, the character? Yes. He was kind of a Renaissance man. But that's William Larson. John Larson works at the at the Berkeley Police Department. And he's become interested in this thing, the cardio pneumo psychograph. And he realizes, okay, this is a perfect chance to apply it. So he rounds up, you know, some suspects, he does some some normal police work and finds out who the suspects are

in this in this hall, right? And he runs him up, brings him down the station, and he starts hooking people up to this, this machine. And he gets to this one woman. Her name is Helen Graham. And guilty. Yes, pretty much is what he does. He goes, Ms. Graham, this machine is saying that you're that you took this that you took the money, you know, did you? And he said that he noted on the machine, a sharp drop in blood pressure, followed by a sudden rise. And then after that, this woman flew into a rage. She tried to attack the machine. She went crazy. So they they basically string her along for a few days. And then finally she confesses. And it's the first time that a polygraph was ever used to to solve a crime ever. I don't don't try to heyday, because before the

meet people knew what it was, they could just say this machine says that you're guilty. And they would be like, Oh, my God, no, that's exactly right. Yeah, very early on, some of the early proponents, specifically a guy named Leonard Keeler, recognize the placebo effect value before anyone knew there was a placebo effect with the placebo effect value of a polygraph. Yeah, that just the idea if you believed in this machine, and that it could root out lies, then it could force you to confess just being hooked up to it, right? You weren't going to pass it. They should have called it the guilt box. They called it the magic lie detector is one of the ones that they call it. Yeah, Leonard Keeler called it that he worked with John Larson at the

Berkeley Police Department. And eventually, over time, John Larson saw the what he considered the truth behind the lie detector and the fact that it kept being called lie detector, which is driving him crazy. Yeah, sure. And he eventually distanced himself from it later on in his career. But Leonard Keeler ran around marketing it to anyone and everyone saying just having this right is going to not only help you hire more, more truthful, forthright people, but it's going to keep them in line while they're working for you because they know you've got access to this thing and you can strap them to it at any time. Wow. Yep. So that's where the polygraph came from. Yeah, there's a little prehistory to just to give them their due. Yeah. In 1895, a Cisare Lambroso.

He's an Italian criminologist. He measured changes in blood pressure for police cases. Okay. And in 1904, a device by Vittorio Benossi measured breathing. And so they were early 1900s, late 1800s. They were kind of on the scene of measuring these things. And Dr. James McKenzie in 1906 first mentioned the word polygraph with his instrument that he didn't use to root out the truth. But for he did use it when giving medical examination. So. And then right before the polygraph was the unograph. Unograph. Which was part of what's still used today in the polygraph. It measured respiration. Pretty cool. Yeah. But then you add to it a couple of other things and you got the polygraph. We could stop here. This is interesting enough right now. So there's no,

really? No. There's no no one walking the planet who has anything to do with polygraphs that call them lie detectors. And anyone, even the most ardent defender of polygraph technology would correct you if you called it a lie detector. They would be like, it's not a lie detector. Because you can't detect a lie. No. It's impossible. The whole basis of a polygraph is that it is a set of medical instruments that use to measure changes in things like your heart rate, your respiration and sweatiness. Basically. I would fail. Well, a lot of people do fail. We'll get to that. But because of your sweat. Yeah. That's okay. They would even hook me up. They just got to it. You look so good. Yeah. You're so sweaty right now. So when you're hooked up to this machine,

the whole point is that it measures these physiological changes and the idea that you're going to undergo a physiological change is based on the concept that a person hooked this machine who is guilty will experience fear that they're going to be detected. Right. So this machine is designed to detect that fear. That's right. Which is really roundabout. But for a century almost, these things were used and abused. And it took a while for people to kind of catch on that there's a lot to criticize here with polygraphs. Yeah, for sure. But they're still used. The war on drugs impacts everyone. Whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy. Number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told

me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah. And they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course, yes, they can do that in on the prime example. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil asset. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Welcome to season two of Ruthie's

table four. I'm Ruthie Rogers, the founder, chef and now podcaster of the river cafe in London. In this series, I will be talking with amazing people, hearing their food stories, discussing the role food plays in all their lives. My stepfather said cooking is not a profession. My agent of the time, he sat back and he said, well, I'll tell you something, Judy. You didn't get the OBE for cooking. Because it was such an unabashed expression of my father's love for us. Like there was no denying it. I think the best thing about the river cafe kitchen is that you come in the morning and you don't know whether you're going to be on the grill or whether you're cooking pasta or cooking dover souls and pigeon in the wood ovens.

That really keeps you on your feet. So listen to Ruthie's table four every Tuesday on the iHeart radio app on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. So let's get into this. First of all, we need to point out that analog polygraphs are what you have long seen in movies and TV when they have the little jittery looks like a seismograph on the paper scrolling by and you're hooked up to all these different things on your chest and your forehead and your fingertips. These days they do that digitally, but it's basically still the same technique. They just don't use the little scrolling needle. Do they have a name for that? It's called an ink filled pen. It is. But the three things that they do, Josh, they measure

your respiratory rate. As you said, they take pneumographs, which are rubber tubes filled with air, a timer on your chest and your abdomen, and that is going to measure whether or not you're, you know, you start breathing heavy essentially when you get nervous. It monitors your breathing pattern and any changes to it. And it does it pretty cleverly, right? Yeah. With bellows, it they're filled with air. So when you, when you breathe in real deeply or have a change, it's going to displace that into the bellows and that will originally that was attached. The bellows were literally attached to the mechanical arm that showed the change these days. It's a transducer that converts it digitally, electronically. Right. It converts it to an electrical pattern,

right? Yeah, but it says why the same thing. Yeah. Um, no, I think it looks a lot like it. If you look, there's a picture of a modern one and the graph, it looks just like, but yeah, it's not, it's not a paper read out any longer, which is kind of interesting. Like this technology hasn't it hasn't changed on a very fundamental basis for like a hundred years almost. Yeah. I mean, the early one from McKinsey in 1906, they say that a lot of the same components are still very similar today. Right. Um, you also are going to have, so you're going to have two tubes, one around your chest, one around your abdomen. Yes. That's, um, keeping an eye on your breathing. Yes. Um, you're going to have a blood pressure cuff, which, um, which keeps an eye on your heart

rate and your blood pressure. And it does it through sound, right? Yeah. I didn't realize this. So when you're, when the blood comes in and out of your veins, it creates sound and sound, can also be used to displace air, causing a bellows to contract, which again, move the arm on the scroll and now is created or turned into an electrical pattern. Yeah. Um, but it's the same thing, but it's sound, which I just think is very neat. Well, and what's also neat is the sweat one. I figured they would have some sort of like a moistureometer just to detect moisture, but it's called a galvanic skin resistance or GSR or electro dermal activity. That's right. And they hook up these finger plates to galvanometers and they are basically measuring the skin's ability

to conduct electricity. And if your skin is moist, it's going to be able to conduct electricity easier. Yes. And that's what they're measuring there. It's like the ones, the little heart rate monitors that they, they clip to your fingertips in the hospital, but these things measure electricity instead. Yes. Which if you are dry, you're going to conduct less electricity. Yeah. If you're wet, you're going to conduct more. So since you have so many pores on the end of your fingers and you sweat when you're nervous, there you go. Done. So you put all this together and it paints this picture. It's the ACLU among other people have decried as just, what are you doing here? Basically is what the ACLU says, right? Um, what, what you have is a picture of a person who is

is undergoing stress, maybe feeling embarrassment is maybe just scared to be there. Maybe doesn't like having things wrapped around his or her chest. Yeah. Um, maybe doesn't really like the, uh, the person asking the questions. The results of these, these, um, changes in pattern, the data is totally subjective. That's right. Which makes polygraphs totally subjective, which takes it in large part out of the realm of science. Yeah. Voodoo science is what they call it. And, uh, although proponents will say that a well-trained forensic, uh, psychophysiologist, which is the examiner can get through all that to still get a good result. Yes. They're like, yeah, they know all this stuff. And if you're good, then you can factor that in and still get a good result.

So let's talk about what the forensic psychophysiologist does. There's apparently, I've seen anywhere between 5,000 and 10,000 of them in the U S at any given time. Yeah. Um, and some of them belong to professional organizations. I think probably maybe half or a third, depending on where you are on that, on that estimate, right? Um, belong to any number of professional organizations. Some have no accreditation whatsoever, um, but are still able to open up shops depending on the state there. And some states have zero laws about being a forensic psychophysiologist, AKA a polygraph examiner. That's right. But there is also some, there are programs out there. Uh, the, uh, who wrote this article, Kevin Bonser? No, no, no. I think so.

He, he, um, interviewed a guy who founded the Exiton Academy, Exiton is a manufacturer of polygraphs. Right. And they founded this academy as well, where, um, you go through a certain amount of training to become a forensic psychophysiologist. And he actually interviewed that guy? Yeah. His name's Bob Lee. That's Lee. Lee. Uh, and Lee says that if you come to their academy, um, you have to have a baccalaureate degree, bachelors, right? Or you have to have at least five years investigative experience and an associate's degree. Um, you have to take a 10 week course. And after you complete the 10 week course, you have to carry out 25 polygraph examinations and submit them to be reviewed. Uh, so these are like real life ones. I guess you're working

with your local police department or whatever. Maybe you're already a cop. Um, and you have to submit it to the Exiton Academy board for review. And then once they're all reviewed and everybody's all thumbs up, you are a licensed, I guess, but you're not licensed because there's no licensing body. Um, you are, you graduate, I guess is, is what they call it. Right. So that's as accredited as it gets, I guess. And like you said, um, proponents of polygraph testing say that they're, if you're a good FP, you're going to be able to structure everything correctly so that you can see past somebody who's just, who sweats a lot like you or who gets stressed out easily like me. Um, and design your questions appropriately. And you're going to be able to,

to figure out whether this person is deceptive or not. Yeah. So how, how would you do that, Chuck? Well, we should talk about the test itself, I guess. Uh, you're going to, you're going to go in and you're going to get a pretest before you get strapped up to anything. Right. Could take about an hour. This is just you. And those are the only two people in the room. You're not surrounded by folks like in the movies and stuff. Yeah. Although the movie sometimes is just two people, I guess. But, uh, the pretest, you're just going to get an interview basically about, basically about why you're being investigated. Uh, they're also going to be profiling you and checking you out and just seeing what kind of questions you respond to and what might make

you nervous just so they'll be better informed about how to properly question you once you're all strapped in. Right. And the, uh, pretest when you're just kind of hanging out with them casually, the examiner is also kind of getting, uh, info out of you that you might not be aware of. Like, um, if you are, uh, if you talk leisurely about your favorite beer at one point and how you like it a lot. And then later on, it also comes up that you have to drive a lot. Um, they might come up with a, they might use that for a control question, um, which could be something like, have you ever driven under the influence of alcohol? And a control question is something where you would have to admit guilt. Um, and you may not want to, but it's such a broad question

that just about anybody is guilty of it. Like, have you ever lied to somebody? Have you ever, um, stolen anything, that kind of thing. So where if you say no, they now have a baseline line for what it looks like when you lie, that they can make a reasonable assumption that you have just lied and any of the data, um, captured on the polygraph, they're going to use to analyze everything else off of. That's pretty much it. That's the test. And afterward you have the post test where they look at all the data and chart out whether or not they think you're deceptive and aware. Like on this question, you were deceptive on this question. You may have been deceptive. It's kind of hard to tell on this one. You definitely were deceptive. So, so, and it's all

in, it's all in relation to that control question, that baseline, right? Yeah. So if you, if your deception, if you, if on questions where, I mean, they're going to have to talk to the police as well too and say, what do you want to know out of this person? So they'll design questions around that as well. So they may have a question like, are you wearing a blue shirt? That may be question one. That's irrelevant, right? Right. Question two is, have you ever lied to your boss? That's the control question. And then question three is something like, you know, did you steal the cookie from the cookie jar? Like that's the one that the cops want them to ask. Right. They'll compare the results of Q three against Q two. And if they're the same or you can't really tell that's

an, uh, in that that's an, uh, inconclusive test, right? So that's it. I mean, like you said, that's, that's polygraph. Pretty easy. It is. It's, uh, it's, um, jarringly easy considering that it's used in legal cases a lot, right? Uh, yes, that's true. Um, people try to, to battle the lie detector in various ways. There are little tricks that the internet says works, like taking a sedative or putting any purse print on your fingers, which it seems like they would make you wash your hands. Uh, putting a tack in your shoe and anytime you get asked a question, every single time you stomp on the tack and the idea is that you're just going to skew the test. So they all look the same. Yeah. So your body has the same reaction no matter what's going on. Like they, I guess if you press

on the tack, your physiological response could overwhelm any response to the question, right? Exactly. Um, like I said, there, these, these things are used in legal cases, but with caveats, right? If you undergo a polygraph, uh, whether you fail or pass, it doesn't really matter. Legally speaking, right? Um, because of, unless you're in New Mexico, yeah, this is the only state that allows it just openly, like if you take a polygraph, like it's admissible in court. Yeah. Every other state, um, usually the both sides have to agree on it being admitted or, um, the judge has to say, yeah, we're going to admit this one, right? Yeah. And federally, the judge decides, uh, whether or not they're going to admit it,

right? And I guess state judges kind of follow that federal ruling of polygraphing. Yeah. And it's sort of a crap shoot. If a federal judge is going to allow it or not, there's no precedent really to where they say we have to, or we don't have to. Right. So what are the problems with this? Um, the, the problems with a polygraph, um, or that it's subjective, right? That's a big one. But also because they're, um, because it's subjective, you can get what are called false positives and false negatives. Yeah. And you don't want that because then the test itself is just not valid. Right. Uh, but I mean that a lot of people use that as evidence that polygraph polygraphy shouldn't be done at all. That it's

not valid. Yeah. Uh, false positive in, in, uh, polygraph thing is, uh, when you find somebody who is deemed deceptive, but was telling the truth, false negative is when somebody who wasn't telling the truth, um, is deemed truthful, like Gary Ridgway, the green river killer. They had him for a little while and gave him a polygraph and he passed and they let him go and he went and killed a bunch more women. All right. That's right. I didn't know that actually. Yeah. Well, good for him. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take to America's public enemy. Number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute, uh,

2,200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah. And they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss y'all. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Welcome to season two of Ruthie's table four. I'm Ruthie Rogers, the founder,

chef and now podcaster of the river cafe in London. In this series, I will be talking with amazing people, hearing their food stories, discussing the role food plays in all their lives. My stepfather said cooking is not a profession. My agent at the time, he sat back and he said, well, I'll tell you something, Judy, you didn't get the OBE for cooking. Because it was such an unabashed expression of my father's love for us, like there was no denying it. I think the best thing about the river cafe kitchen is that you come in the morning and you don't know whether you're going to be on the grill or whether you're cooking pasta or cooking devisals and pigeon in the wood ovens that really keeps you on your feet. So listen to Ruthie's table

four every Tuesday on the iHeart radio app on the Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. There's also the, you know, the federal government is the largest consumer of these exams. And if you work for the federal government, you've probably had one to get the job. But you can't do that in the private sector, thanks to the Polygraph Protection Act, Employee Polygraph Protection Act in the late 80s. They said, you can't force your employees to do this. You can request it. But if they don't want to do it, you can't fire them because of it. You just can't do it. Right. Not in private land. Right. Unless you have a contract with the government, and then that's not valid.

Right. But yeah, the federal government is the largest opponent to them in court, but also the largest consumer. I imagine that. And there's been a lot of cases that shaped its admissibility or not. But the Polygraph, it seems like it's kind of on its way out. I wrote an article about MRI being used as lie detectors. Oh, really? And that's starting to kind of come into fashion. The more we start to understand like how lies are

born in the brain, being able to see it and saying, this is the pattern that will happen if this person is lying, and then that pattern happens, they say, well, we know you're lying. We just saw that lie form in your brain. That makes sense. Yes. But at the same time, people who understand MRIs say it is way too early to be doing that. And even if we can do it with 100% accuracy, there are a lot of moral and ethical questions to it as well that we need to address first. Always.

And then penile plus demography. What's that? Yeah. So remember the numerographs that go around the chest and the abdomen? Imagine one of those that goes around the penis and it does the same thing. It detects changes in contraction and girth. That's a perfect way to put it. Yeah, wow.

And it's used to detect arousal. They use it for sex offenders. It's under at least as much attack as regular polygraphs. But I wrote this blog post called Using Science to Root Out Late in Homosexuality Among Homophobes. A study at UGA used penile plethysmography to find if anyone who they had deemed homophobic became aroused when exposed to homosexual pornography. Wow. Yeah.

It's one of the better posts I've ever written. Geez. All right. That's our future, I guess. Penile plethysmography for everyone. Maybe. Everyone with the penis at least. And then Chuck, lastly, I want to encourage everybody, if this has piqued your interest,

about lie detectors, to go watch the shoe store job interview clip from Mr. Show on YouTube. Oh yeah. You remember that one? Mm-hmm. That was very good. My friend, Paul F. Tompkins, and he has a breakthrough. Oh, is he in that one? Yeah.

Good old PFT. Yep. And that's it for lie detectors, right? Yeah, I want to take a test. If there's someone in the Atlanta area that administers these and would be willing to give me a lie detector test, I would love to do that. Okay. And I'll watch.

Yes. As long as I can, you know, approve the questions. Yes. Or not approve them, but I don't want to be, like, rooted out as some miscreant. That's a little late for that, Chuck. Just keep it above board. Um, if you want to know more about lie detectors and play with some lie detector flash animation, you can do that by typing in lie detector on this in the search bar on howstuffworks.com.

And that means it's time for listener mail. That's right, Josh. This is from Brad. And Brad, if you remember, we had a list of suggestions from a listener not too long ago that thought our podcast could be a lot better if we changed a few things. Brad has some suggestions of his own, of how we can make the podcast better. Uh, we should both have nicknames. We do.

That zazz up the actual name, like welcome to stuff you should know with JC and the dingo. Sit back while getting a big helping of knowledge from Choco and the duck. Uh, I second the suggestion to remove the personal anecdotes. Should be moved to a separate podcast called the Josh and Chuck memoir. A daily one hour podcast can recount your lives from birth to present, focusing on depressing stories that are marginally factual in development. Chuck, please your raise your voice. One octave Josh lower yours.

One octave. What? Okay. So now this is how I talk. I talk. The opening of the podcast should be a description of what each of you ate that day and the number of trips to the bathroom. This allows the listener to keep track at home.

Uh, hedgehogs, brain surgeons, arcades and Bolivian politics are underrated under, sorry, underrepresented on your podcast. At least 20% should be about these subjects. Do not exclude listener mail. Instead create a quieter audio track, reading the listener mail and overlay it on the rest of the podcast. That way listeners can hear both the mail and the main content at the same time. This is a pretty good idea.

Why not set the pod? It would literally drive people insane if we did that. Why not set the podcast to a backdrop of tribal drums and jungle animal noises? It would give it an exotic feel. That's over the listener mail track? Over the whole thing. So that'd be three tracks deep. Yes.

And it would lead to suspense for the listener to wonder if you'll be eaten by Jaguars. Uh, and it was clear from the podcast of mummies neither of you had ever been mummified. Please refrain from explaining topics that you don't have personal experience with. And then the final suggestion, just retell episodes of this American life. That went, that last one went down like the Dave Letterman top 10 list. So that's Brad. Thanks, Brad. Those are all great ideas.

Tell me a cheat. Three tracks all in one, dreaming at once together. Listener mail quietly, the podcast and tribal drumming. Yes. And jungle noises. Yes. Um, let's see. If you have access to a polygraph and want to hook Chuck up to it,

let us know. Yeah. You can let us know on Facebook at facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast and you can send us a regular old email at stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join How Stuff Works staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry.

It's ready. Are you? The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed.

They call civil answer for it. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Langston Kermit. Sometimes I'm on TV. I'm David Boreen. I'm probably on TV right now. David and I are going to take a deep dive every week into the most exciting groundbreaking and sometimes problematic black conspiracy theories.

We've had amazing past notable guests like Brandon Kyle Goodman, Sam J, Quinta Brunson and so many more. New episodes around every Tuesday. Many episodes out on Thursdays where we answer you, the listeners conspiracy theories. Listen to my mama told me on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast.