Stuff You Should Know - How Police Interrogation Works

Episode Date: September 23, 2014

Every year, police across the U.S. get thousands of criminals to confess to their crimes. The trouble is, the procedure that almost all departments use is grounded in bad science and can produce false confessions. Learn about ways of making you talk. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and Noel, I guess producer Noel is over there,

which makes this stuff you should know. Jerry's on the beach, good for her. Yeah. And I'm jelly. Yeah, it'd be nice to be on the beach right now. Sure would, podcasting on the beach. Yeah. Jerry's a beach person, for sure, isn't she?

Is she? Mm-hmm, okay. She was flip flop like in the dead of winter. Yeah, that's true. The beach person, she's got nice feet though. Can I say that? I guess. Like I'm fired for saying that.

I don't think so. Okay. If you said it like alone in a room or something and she didn't feel like she could leave, you'd probably get fired for that, but. Yeah. Saying it on the podcast to everybody, it's probably in the clear.

Okay. We'll find out, I mean, she edits these, so. She'll say, thanks, Chuckers. There you go. So, Chuck. Yes. Have you ever been interrogated by the police? No.

That's good. No. It's a good way to be. I was shaking down on the street once, but they didn't ask us any questions. Stop and frisk? Yeah. In New York?

In Athens. Hmm. Just walk into the car after being out, threw us all against the wall, frist us, then left. Sure was a real cop. Yeah, they were cops, man. I was like, what's going on?

I don't even know. I still don't know what happened. Well, I guess they were just stopping and frisking it. Little known fact, Athens, Georgia's the real home of stop and frisk. Well, five minutes after it happened, we didn't care, you know? Yeah.

These were college days. Yeah. Now though, you must be burning with a sense of injustice over the whole thing. Nah. Well, I ask you if you've ever been interrogated by the police, because we're about to talk about police interrogation, so it seems appropriate.

And before we get started, I have some side reading that I think might interest some people. Okay. There is a New Yorker article called The Interview. Yeah. There's one called Joe Arity, was the happiest man on death row. It's in westward.

There's something called Brooklyn's Baddest, which is in GQ. And then, lastly, looking left or right doesn't indicate you're lying in Smithsonian. So all those articles are awesome, and they all have something to do with this police interrogation, which is, it turns out, becoming an increasingly controversial subject.

Yeah, and I think this probably brings our police suite to a close, or close to it, don't you think? I think so every time. I know, and I didn't even know this existed, and then I saw it, and it turned out to be one of the more interesting ones, I think. Yeah, and it kind of falls into this law enforcement category, into the subcategory of largely debunked

armchair psychology techniques. Yes. Like, polygraph. Yeah, we did that. Fingerprints. We did that. Truth serum. We did that.

Yeah. Like, there's all these episodes that we've done out there about just law enforcement techniques. We're doing them. We're like, oh, wow, this should not be the way it is. Yeah. And apparently, police interrogation's similar. Yeah, it's a bit of a shake down.

So, let's talk about this. Like, in the United States, there is a long and storied history of rather intense interrogation. And I think, you know, this comes before the United States, too, we did a medieval torture episode as well. There were plenty of interrogations going on. We did the Spanish Inquisition. That was pre-United States.

Yeah, I would say that falls under the banner, though, of police and crime. Interrogation. Yeah. Right. So, the United States, though, has, will carry it on the torch of basically beating suspects up to get confessions.

Yeah. This is where the term the third degree comes from, actually. Like, when somebody's like, hey, why are you giving me the third degree? Yeah. They may or may not know it, but they're speaking about interrogation techniques

that cops used to use. Yeah, those third degree techniques, a lot of them were involved deprivation. Like, or, you know, the one where they shine the bright light in your face, that's old school. Yeah. That's an old movie trope. Yeah.

But, you know, no access to food and water. Long periods of isolation. We might beach up a little bit. We might threaten you. That's the third degree. Right. And then, starting in about the 30s, the public started to say,

I don't know if this is such a good idea, because I might end up in a police interrogation one day and I don't want to get beat up. And then the, I guess, the straw that started to break the camel's back came in 1937 in the case Brown versus Mississippi, where Brown said, hey, your thug cops tied me up to a tree and whipped me more than once.

Not just whipped me more than once, strung me up in a tree to whip me more than once. This happened repeatedly, and I don't think that the confession they got should stand. Yeah. The Supreme Court said, we agree with you. Yeah, it was he and his two buddies were accused of murdering, they were tenant farmers,

murdering their boss, basically. Of course, they were black guys and the boss was a white guy, so they were pretty determined. And we'll see over and over, a lot of these cases of coerced false confessions are mainly because someone really wants to tab somebody as the criminal.

Well, yeah, for a lot of different reasons, there can be a sense of injustice. Yeah. There can be a genuine conviction that this person is guilty. Yeah. And then there can be the case clearance percentage that a cop needs to keep up with.

There's a lot of reasons why a cop might say, you need to confess. Yeah, I think a lot of them too, that I've seen documentaries on at least are because of the public, like, hey man, we really need to finger somebody for this because people are scared. And who better than this person

who might not be too smart or might be kind of poor and can't afford and doesn't representation, doesn't know what's going on. So let's just run them up. Run them up, ring them up. Sure, run them up a flagpole. Right, and see if it sticks to the wall. Yeah, but despite the fact that it is not easy

to get someone to confess, they estimate between 42 and 55% of suspects do confess. And that's the one thing you don't wanna do and up to 55% still do it. Yeah, so we should say supposedly up to 80%, 80% of suspects in the United States waive their right to silence and counsel. Yeah, that's just agreeing to be interrogated.

Right. Not necessarily confessing. Right, yeah. So, but you can get around the whole idea of a false confession or of being coerced into confessing or whatever, just by remaining silent, not being part of that 80%.

Demand your lawyer. I mean, we're gonna give you some tips, not how to get away with a crime, but some tips on if you are rounded up and put in a room, there are some things you can do. Right. This is a public service announcement with guitars. By the 1950s, the confessions that were involuntary,

they considered involuntary, not just if you were beaten and threatened, but if you were, all the deprivation, third degree techniques were no longer allowed, like even if you couldn't use the bathroom. Or if you've been promised something in return for confessing. Sure, we'll go easy on you, buddy.

Or if you'd even just been threatened, that counts as coercion too. Yeah. And so in about the 50s, the United States said, hey, this kind of gentler interrogation technique thing is starting to work out. Let's put a bow on the whole thing and say that for a confession to be admissible,

the confessor has to sign it. Yeah. And say, yeah, I didn't do anything under coercion. This is my own full free confession. And here's my signature. Which helped, but certainly didn't stop false confessions. Right, yeah. So the thing is, law enforcement replaced

the physical coercion with what amounts to, plainly, is psychological manipulation. And it's predicated on the idea that when you are saying you didn't do something and you're guilty, you are going to become stressed out. And that stress is derived from anxiety over knowing you're guilty and having to lie. Because when you're being interrogated

and you're denying that you're guilty, the cops don't just say, oh, okay, well, thanks for coming by. Sure. If they think you're guilty or they want to think you're guilty, they're going to keep pressing you. Like interrogations aren't necessarily brief things, right? So the more they press you, the more stressed you should get

and the more stressed you get under this idea of interrogation technique, the more obvious it is that you're guilty, which means the more they press. So this feedback loop starts, right? Yeah, I mean, they're basically relying on a few basic human, things inherent to humans, tendencies inherent to humans. One is you're going to probably open up more to someone who is like you.

Two, if you start talking, it's going to be hard to stop. And three, if you're telling the truth, it's going to be harder to lie. Right. So they kind of prey on that with some age old techniques like the good cop, bad cop. Right, if you feel like you're being persecuted, but then you're also being rescued by somebody else,

you're going to identify with your rescuer, trust them. That's a classic move. And here's the thing, like a lot of this stuff, like the good cop part is predicated on this complete and utter deception that that cop understands where you're coming from and sympathizes with you. That cop does not sympathize with you. That cop may understand where you come from,

but he or she probably despises that. And they are not your friend. But the whole, one of the whole points of interrogation is for the cop to pretend like they're right there with you. They understand where you're coming from. They feel for you. This is just, you're jammed up and I want to help you get out of it.

Oh yeah, you see, I mean, if all this sounds super familiar from every TV show or movie you've ever seen is because it's been written so much that it's almost, like they don't need to do their own, like writers don't even need to do their own research into how this is done. Because it's just how it is in the movies. How it is in the movies is how it is in real life.

When I was reading this, I was like, oh yeah, I've seen that before. I've seen that technique before. It made me actually researching this article made me appreciate that there are some TV cop show writers out there who like really do their homework. Oh yeah. Like The Wire.

Sure. Like it was a little more nuanced. Like Law and Order, what is it? I don't watch those. The one with Vincent D'Onofrio. Oh, I can't remember what it's called. Criminal Minds. Something like that, it's not it.

Like it's a little more overt. Right. But it's, all the factors are there. Yeah, another one of the try and true techniques is maximization. That's when they try to scare you. If you've ever heard like, oh, you're pretty Josh. They're gonna love you in prison.

I hear that almost every day. That is a classic maximization. Or just, they're gonna throw the book at you for what you've done. Unless you start playing along, you're gonna get the max penalty. Exactly. They may also go the exact opposite route,

which is minimization, which is to create the idea that society will commiserate with you. Because anybody in your position would have done the same thing. Right. You know, like that little old lady was asking for her purse to be taken, you know? And this day and age and this economy?

Yeah. That kind of thing. Polygraph was used for a while, and they still use that, but most times, if you listen to our show on polygraphs, they're not admissible in court. So a man named John Reed, he was a polygraph analyst, said, you know what, there's a lot of things that happen during a polygraph exam

that we can use without the machine just to root out the truth or lies. Yeah, basically John Reed said, hey, I've noticed through all of my experience, all of these things that a person who is guilty, or who confesses at least, goes through. And here's some ways to really make this more efficient, to make them react more strongly,

to get them to confess faster, more forcefully. And he came up with what are called the Reed technique, nine steps of the Reed technique. Register trademark of John E. Reed and Associates. Yeah, really, because John E. Reed and Associates is like this business that's still very much around. Yeah, I don't know if I need to say that, but. It is their technique, yeah.

And they train the CIA, the FBI, the local law enforcement. They're like the, in the United States, the Reed technique is the gold standard for police interrogation. The problem is, it is also being increasingly proven to be based on basically armchair psychology and not science. It's going through the same thing right now

that a lot of the forensic sciences are going through. There's like based on intuition that doesn't really hold up to scrutiny. And I should say, the Reed technique has not been across the board debunked. And it makes sense in a lot of ways, but there are studies out there that have said like, this doesn't really hold up.

Yeah, he defends it. He says it's a very sound technique, but false confession comes from improper use and bad police work. Yeah, and it's not necessarily like the Reed people are treated like they're out to get anybody and everybody. The Reed technique is criticized because the whole foundation that's built on

is the presumption of guilt. And it has been shown to prove or produce false confessions. That's right. And we'll get to the Reed technique in a minute, but after this message, we're gonna talk a little bit about some of the earlier parts of the process. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new I Heart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass.

The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help.

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or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, if you sit down in a room to get interrogated by the cops, one thing that they're probably gonna start doing is lying to you and saying, we have evidence that they may not have, we have witnesses that put you at the scene that don't exist. Basically, with a few exceptions,

cops can lie and say whatever they want in there, and that is gonna make someone nervous, even though you wore surgical gloves when you broke into that house, if they say your fingers are all over the place, you're gonna start second-guessing yourself and get nervous. And even if you weren't in that house ever

and you know that you weren't in that house, you're gonna start to wonder if maybe you suffer from blackouts and do horrible things like this cop is saying while you're blacked out. And yeah, the courts have upheld the cop's right to deceive. And I've read about a study that found that 92% of 630 detectives in the US and Canada that were polled say they use false evidence ploys,

where they're saying 92%. Yeah, I'm surprised it's not 100. Yeah, you would guess. I mean, maybe the other 8% were just like, they didn't even look at what they were saying. But yeah, you can, and they do say, we have your fingerprints, we have a witness, we have DNA.

They can completely lie about what they have and that they have it on you to get you to confess. That's right, because after you confess and sign it, it doesn't matter. You can't say, well, that cop said he had evidence, it doesn't matter. And the whole legal basis for this idea, for letting the cops deceive is this longstanding notion

that no innocent person would ever sign a confession, even if they were lied to about physical evidence of their guilt being at the scene of the crime, because they know they're not guilty. The problem is that longstanding idea is coming under more and more scrutiny and is being found to be not the case. Like people, it's been shown,

people will, when lied to in situations like that, they will confess to things that they did not do. I know, it seems crazy for people like you and me, because I know I would never do that. But I'm not mentally challenged or I'm not poor and I haven't, there's a lot of reasons why someone might falsely confess. Yeah, and I think though, also,

it's not just necessarily like going, how you are going into it. Like, yes, a lot of the mentally ill people make up a decent amount of false confessions. Same with mentally handicapped, cognitively impaired people. People of low socioeconomic status. There are a lot of factors that set you up

to be more likely to give a false confession. Not knowing your rights. But if we took you and ran you through a long enough interrogation with people who knew what they were doing, who knows what you would sign? I'd be all right. We'll see.

Because I understand this all. I know my rights, I have a very strong mind. Well, you would probably say I want a lawyer. Well, yeah, I'd just end it all. And then I'd be like, I don't know any lawyers. Do you know a lawyer? I have an entertainment attorney, does that count? They know lawyers.

Yeah, exactly. This is the whole network. So once they bring you in the room, the room itself, and this is all from Reed's manual. He wrote a manual in 1962 with a Northwestern law professor named Fred Inbao called Criminal Interrogation and Confessions. I imagine every writer in Hollywood has a copy of that on their shelf.

But the room that you see on TV, that's what they suggest. Nothing on the walls, a very plain desk, a very uncomfortable chair on one side, two chairs on the other for the detectives, that one-way mirror that's gonna serve a purpose of letting people spy on you and just to make you nervous, even if there's no one on the other side.

And put you out of reach from, this one I didn't really, had never really noticed, but out of reach from just light switches and maybe the AC, what do you call those? Thermostat. Thermostat. Just to make you feel powerless. It's all a mind game to make you feel helpless.

Okay, so far, seems pretty intuitive, pretty logical. Like if you can't flip the lights on and off, it's not something I would think that I would wanna do right then, but maybe knowing, seeing that it was that far away would just give me this, reinforce the idea that like, I couldn't even if I wanted to, because it's all the way over there.

That's probably a smaller one. You know, the detective in between me and that light switch. Yeah, exactly. But it makes sense, but I point that out because that's the read technique. Right. Stuff like that. Sure.

Keep the light switches away from the criminal because it'll make him feel helpless. Right. Does it? Sounds a little hinky. But it makes sense in a way. Sure. That is the read technique in encapsulating.

So let's continue Chuck. So that was, that's just the room. Yeah, yeah. That they suggest. If you follow the read technique to a T, and this is one of the saving graces of it, you are supposed to do what's an initial interview. Right.

And if you're the detective and you go into an initial interview of an interrogation, you are, the read technique tasks you with going in without a presumption of guilt yet. Yeah. That's the point of the initial interview is you're supposed to be sizing your guy up. Yeah.

Determining for yourself as a seasoned investigator, whether you think initially they're guilty or innocent. I'm sure that happened some. Yeah. There was another study that found that it's often skipped as well. And they just start like hammering right away. Well, yeah.

You're throwing out the potential for this person to be treated as possibly innocent. Right. You're not sizing up. You're going in assuming they're guilty. So, but if you do go through that initial interview, the other point of it is that you're supposed to be creating a baseline.

Yeah. Which I think is that showed up in the polygraph one too. Yeah, yeah. Which isn't surprising because John Reed was a polygraph expert for a while too. Yeah. And you've been gracious yourself, you know, in the first few minutes by this point.

Like if you're in Philadelphia and your suspect has on like a Philly's cap, you might talk about the game last night. Right, exactly. That throws back to the suspect being more likely to trust someone that shares their same views that they feel they can identify with. So the detective will do whatever they can

to make it seem like, oh, you're a Catholic. I'm a Catholic too. That kind of thing, you know? Yeah. And so once you've got a little bit of rapport going on is when you're going to set your baseline. And I thought this was pretty interesting. You don't, and I'm going to start looking for this

on cop shows to see if they don't overtly talk about it. If they're just how good they are with their, you know, with their acting. Because if they're looking at the eyes, then they're going to be accurate because that's one of the ways supposedly you can create a baseline. You're going to ask some questions

that require memory recall. And you're going to ask other questions that require more creativity. And you're going to look at where their eyes go. Supposedly, if your eyes move to the right, that is just recall because you're, I guess, looking in the direction of your memory center of your brain.

If it's more creative, you might look to the left. And then you're going to use these later on to see if your suspect is creatively making up a lie. They might look to the left. Or if they're just truthfully recalling something, they might look to the right. Is that bunk? Yes.

All right. It's very dangerous too, because they, that is incredibly widespread. It's a popular misconception. If you ask anybody, if you move your eyes a certain way, does it indicate you're lying? Most people are going to say, yes, yeah, it totally does. I can't remember if it's right or left,

but if you look a certain way, it means you're lying. So that's a longstanding thing that's based actually on a self-help philosophy from the 70s. Oh, really? It's nothing to do with science. And actually, Richard Wiseman, who we incorrectly said did some research that proved that ghosts exist in our ghost episode.

Yeah, that guy, he's done some ones to debunk this. He did a couple of studies. And in one of the studies, he found, he used footage of people who were holding press conferences searching for lost relatives, but the person pleading for their relative's return was later convicted of like killing or kidnapping their relatives.

So they were obviously lying. They were committing a huge lie in front of the public. And he found that they were just as likely to look to the left or the right. There was no correlation whatsoever. Yeah, I'm sure there are facial cues of pantomimes if you're Christopher Walken, but it all depends on the person too, right?

Yes. Like you could be really good at lying. Yeah. Or really good at throwing people off with facial cues. Yeah, or the idea that your eyes move in a certain direction at all because you're coming up with a lie or because you're remembering something might not.

It doesn't mean anything necessarily. Yeah, we also did one of micro expressions. This is a culmination of a lot of shows I'm realizing. Yeah, it really is. So that was another one. You've got the baseline set. You're watching the eyes, even though you really shouldn't be.

But for the most part, you're seeing what your suspect appears like when they're stressed. Or I'm sorry, when they're relaxed. Oh, yeah, yeah. And the reason you're creating this baseline of what they act like when they're relaxed is because if you ask them questions

and they answer them and appear relaxed, then supposedly they're telling the truth. Again, this is predicated on some faulty ideas because here's the problem. Anxiety is not necessarily linked to lying. Yes, you may appear anxious if you're lying. Yeah. But that doesn't mean that if you're anxious, you're lying.

Right. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, I would do that. I would do the Chuck technique would be the fast thing. Like I would set him up all calm and be like, okay, did you watch the game last night? Yeah? Oh, cool.

Why'd you kill that old lady? Yeah, you like the Phillies? Yeah. Yeah, it was a pretty good game, huh? You think they're gonna go far yet? Did you kill your wife? Oh, wow. Boom.

That was pretty good. You almost said yes. Yeah, really? And you didn't kill your wife? No. I mean, geez, that was thrilling. The Chuck technique. I like the Colombo.

What's that? Oh, well, you're just like, that's great. I'm glad you like the Phillies. I just want to thank you for coming by. It was good to meet you. Right. If we need anything, can we call you? And they're like, yeah, here's my card.

And they're so relieved that they get to leave. And then you're, oh, I'm sorry, one more thing. Why'd you kill your wife? Was that Colombo did? Yeah, he was a little better at it than I was. No, that's pretty good. He would say, there's one other thing. It's just not making sense to me.

If you didn't kill your wife, why were you found standing over with the knife? Yeah, so that's what Colombo would do. Catch them off guard. Like really get them to let their guard down. Yeah. I like that. And he's, I know, Colombo was,

I was about to say he went on and killed his wife, but that was Robert Blake. Yeah, that was Beretta. Yeah. What was his technique? I don't know. I never watched Beretta. Check your gun with the maitre d' and then,

isn't that what he did? No, what'd he do? I think he left his gun with the maitre d' suppose, or that's what he said he did. Like, you know, I'm here, table for two. Here's my coat and here's my gun. Yeah. Well, you hang on to that for me.

Will you be my alibi? I think we're at the read technique now, right? We are. So the other stuff was from the book that's based on the read technique. Yeah. Criminal interrogation and confessions, but now we are at the actual read technique,

the nine point technique. Yeah. That is designed to maximize discomfort, which leads to more frequent confessions. Yeah. It's very illegal in a lot of European countries for children. Which it should be, because that's another risk factor

going in that can produce false confessions as age. Of course, yeah. And we'll get to some of those later. Those are kind of maddening when you read about like a 14 year old that's interrogated without their parents for like a full day. Yeah. But it happens.

So step number one in the read technique is the confrontation. And this is after the initial interview, you're gonna present the facts of the case. You're gonna tell them about the evidence, what they're faced with, all the evidence against them. Even if you're making some of it up, you might wanna invade their personal space at this time.

If you're Matthew McConaughey. And then you start looking for things like fidgety suspect. They look in their lips or they like mussel with their hair. And then if you're an investigator, you might say, all right, I've got this guy just where I want him. That guy ran his fingers through his hair. He's guilty.

Exactly. And that's kind of part of the issue that a lot of critics of the read technique bring up, is that basically if you strip nonverbal stuff out, then you got some sound stuff there. Right, right. The biggest problem is when you're trying to read nonverbal cues because it's not rooted in science.

Rooted in armchair psychology and pop science. Totally. So the idea that somebody's fidgeting means they're guilty in their lying, not necessarily, they could be fidgeting because any human being would be really uncomfortable when placed in that situation and interrogated by cops who are experts at it.

Right. So step number two is theme development. And you're gonna be a little more soothing here with a softer voice. And this is when you come up with some theories and a story maybe of why they committed this crime. Yeah. You just couldn't go on any longer knowing

your best friend had sex with your wife. You just couldn't live with that, could you? And if the suspect latches onto that in some verbal or nonverbal ways and they'll continue, if they don't, then they'll just create another theme. Yeah, and the detective will basically just kind of, while they're creating the story for the suspect to latch onto,

they're also actively listening to the suspect to see if the suspect will latch onto it in any way, shape, or form. And if they don't, they try another one. If they do, then they start to kind of beef that one up. And that leads to alternatives, which actually comes later. Yeah. But in the meantime, one of the main techniques

of the read technique is stopping denials. But I didn't do it, Josh. Yeah, listen. I'm telling you, I was, what? Imagine my finger on Chuck's lips right now. That's why. I could never do that. No, you stop denials because it creates

a sense of hopelessness. Yeah. Like, don't you feel hopeless with my fingers on your lips? So hopeless, you have no idea. It makes you feel hopeless that you don't even have the opportunity to reason with this cop. Yeah, you can't defend yourself. Not at all.

So you have a sense of hopelessness. Plus, the other upside, if you're an interrogator, is that you're keeping the person from talking, meaning they also can't ask for counsel then. I don't see why people don't just do that. The first thing over and over, say, I need a lawyer. I need a lawyer. I need a lawyer.

I read this article in, I think, The Stranger? Aren't they out of Seattle? I don't know. It wasn't a great article. It was kind of, it was just kind of misleading. Like the author really wanted you to sympathize with the guy who was guilty and didn't really reveal that he really was pretty guilty toward the end.

But it had this really great explanation for why people don't ask for a lawyer in this article. Makes you seem guilty? Yes, really. And I've seen it before, but this article really got the point across that this guy was like, I mean, he'd done some stuff before. Like I think, like he was, he dabbled in drugs

and like ran an illegal poker game and stuff like that. Sure, like malfeasance. Yeah, and he, so enough so that he was like, he knew he was technically guilty in the eyes of the law, but not for this thing that they wanted him on. Right. So he was, he had that guilt to begin with, and then these cops saying like,

you're gonna really look guilty if you ask for a lawyer. Yeah, that's true. That's one, and then the other aspect was, if you lawyer up, we can't help you. Oh yeah, I've seen that one on TV. You talk to us, that's the only way we can help you get out of this jam. Yeah, so we bring a lawyer in here.

And we want to help you get out of this jam. Like we know, we might, we would have done the same thing you did. Yeah, but the cops never want to get you out of a jam. No. That's not what they're trying to do. And so what they were saying was like, if you clam up, this, like who knows what's gonna happen

to you. Yeah. They were doing all sorts of really effective psychological manipulation. And the guy they were talking to was a lawyer's son. Yeah. And this guy who, like 40 years old, a lawyer's son. And so he'd known his whole life to ask for a lawyer.

And even this guy didn't immediately ask for a lawyer because these cops got him. You know, I probably wouldn't either actually. If I was arrested today after work and obviously completely innocent of anything. Wouldn't that be mind blowing if that happened? And I was completely innocent. I would, at first, my first instinct would probably be like,

I need a lawyer. I didn't do anything. Yeah. Like why, why did that expense? Well, I think that's another aspect of the initial, initial consultation. Yeah. That initial discussion where it's like,

oh, it's all friendly. We're talking about the Phillies. Yeah, yeah. Why would you need a lawyer for that? All right. I retract my statement. I get it now. But you should stick to your original statement,

no matter what. I know. Like you have a right to counsel and there's no reason you should not invoke it. Your punishment is not gonna be worse for asking for a lawyer. Yeah. You should open up.

You sound like one of those legal commercials. I call Josh Clark. That reminds me. We should do, and we should mention the ACLU episode. That was a pretty good one too. Yeah, man. This thing is just so many tangential podcasts. So the stopping denials,

that's a big part of the read technique. Yep. And then there's something that's similar that John Reed noticed, but is a little nuance. There's a difference. And that's objections to read. Denials were different than objections and objections were something

to be treated differently as a result. Yeah, an objection that example they gave here was like, I would never rape somebody because my sister was raped and it destroyed our family. Yeah. So of course I wouldn't do something like that. Right, so to a cop, that's not a denial. A denial is like, I didn't do that.

I didn't do that. That's not me. You got the wrong guy. Those are denials and the cop would try to stop you from completing those sentences. That objection you just said is a denial, but it's encapsulated with... Like a reason.

Yeah, a justification, something to it. Do you remember when you used to take multiple choice tests in high school? They always said that if you don't know the answer, usually the one with the most verbiage, the one with the most words is the right one. I never heard that. It's true.

That was not good at taking tests either. Well, we need to get in the way back machine. You can go take some more multiple choice tests knowing that now. But I think that's kind of the same premise for an objection. It's not just a denial. There's more to it. And the fact that somebody put that much more thought

into it means that there's something to that. So a cop will take that and cultivate it and try to turn that around. And they would say, I know you love your sister and you stood by her while she was raped. So of course this wouldn't be like a recurring thing. This is just a one-time thing that you did and you were out of your head or whatever

because you care about your sister. So you would never do this all the time or something. Right, exactly. And so all of a sudden, you're giving the suspect something to latch on to. Something for them to basically re-enter society to an extent. Because at this moment, especially if they're guilty,

they are totally on the outs with society. And the sole representative of society and who's speaking with them right now is the cop that's interrogating them. And everybody wants to be included. Yeah. And if you don't, then you're a sociopath and they're going to get you anyway.

Well, yeah, but they're going to have a hard time through interrogation. So number five is getting the suspect's attention. Are these the real titles or is this just the liberties of the author of this article? I don't know. Well, we'll call it getting the suspect's attention. And this is when you pretend to be

the ally of the suspect. Because at this point, they're probably looking for a way out. And that's when you might go, hey, man, I get it. If I caught my best friend having sex with my wife, I'd kill him too. I understand where you're coming from. And maybe a little pat on the shoulder, a little rub on the back, or maybe a pat on the back.

And just some reassurance. I get to where you're coming from, man. It could happen to any of us. And you're in big trouble at that point. Yeah, and that's probably going on throughout. Yeah, and the themes run, these all overlap quite a bit. But if there's an objection that you've noticed that you're working, you've turned around and you're working,

that objection with an extra layer of compassion and commiseration can, I guess, really start to ensnare the suspect a lot more. Yeah, it's weird because I'm repulsed by a lot of this, but I'm also very impressed by what I've seen on TV what you can tell is someone who's really good at it. Oh, yeah, it's effective. It's like an art form.

There's, I believe, something like 80%, or 76% of suspects who are interrogated in this manner when you take out people who invoke their Miranda rights. Confess. Like, it has an enormous confession rate. And there's a lot of people who, the vast majority, the study I saw, or the number I saw, is 99.6% of those confessions are from guilty people.

That's something like 0.04% are false confessions. The problem is there's still such thing as false confessions. There's no safeguards. It just so happens that the false confessions are in that small of an amount. Yeah, and that percentage isn't high, but if you think about how many people are interrogated, that's like several hundred per year in the U.S.

Up to several hundred per year. That's a lot of people. And that's in falsely. Yeah, and it's not like that those people just, it gets found out at trial or somewhere down the road that they're innocent. Like those people may spend the rest of their lives in jail. At the worst case, they may be executed,

which has probably happened in the history of the U.S., although it hasn't been irrefutably proven yet. Yeah, and you can listen to how the Innocence Project works from June 2010. We interviewed Paula Zahn. Oh yeah, that's right. I wish I'd known a lot more about the Innocence Project back when we did that episode.

Yeah. Like I kind of got it and understood it, but just over the last few years, I've kind of, I've understand it even more. Yeah. I wish I would have known better than. It's still a good episode. We talked to Paula Zahn.

Yeah, she's a real pro. Yeah. Steve's on sister. No, it's not, is it? No. Okay. That's how rumors get made. Well, I just liked her like 50% more after you said that.

Oh yeah. Yeah, I love Steve's on. He's great. All right, and back to the read technique. At this point, number six, the suspect might lose resolve. And this seemed really obvious to me. If the suspect has his shoulders hunched

or has got his head in his hands or is crying, then you've got them just where you want them as an interrogator. Right, you are going to get your confession. Whether it's a false confession or not, that's not guaranteed by these outward signs. Again, if you strip away the non-verbal stuff from the read technique, it's pretty good stuff.

And apparently this is where you really want to regain their attention. Like if they start crying, like force them to look you in the eye. Right. Because I guess that works, that increases the stress level. So remember we talked about that theme development? Yeah.

It's like, here's what happened, you know? Yeah. And they object to that, and then you take that objection, you turn it around, and they start to latch on to that theme, couched in that objection. You take that next, and as you're developing it, it becomes one of two or more alternatives.

But basically, you're taking the theme that the person latched on to. Yeah. And you're making that the minimal example. Yeah, it's almost like a good cop, bad cop version of reasons why you did it. Exactly. So it's, you shot that lady in the back

because she was a horrible person. Yeah. Nobody is going to think that you did it because you're- You just wanted the insurance money. Exactly. Yeah. That anybody in your position would have done this, and everyone's going to understand.

This is why you did it. Not this horrible reason, this reason. This reason society can live with. Maybe you'll go to jail for a year or two, who knows. But when you come out, everybody's going to say, hey, that Bernie guy is okay. I would have shot that old lady in the back too. Did you see that movie?

Yeah. That's good. It's not, hey, that Bernie guy needs to burn in hell for the rest of his life because he killed some poor old lady for her insurance money, you know? So with the cops sitting there saying, here's what we're saying you're agreeing to,

here's this horrible interpretation that I can't control, but this I've created and sculpted with your help. So let's throw this horrible big thing away, and this thing that doesn't seem nearly as bad- Is what the press will hear. Yeah, we'll start to put it down on paper. Yeah, but here's what you're not thinking about. What you're doing is it's the same in both cases

as you're confessing to a murder. And you are just at a point to where you think, man, that sounds way better in a newspaper than this other thing. And also it's coming out of the mouth of this detective that is appearing to commiserate with you, that is empathize with you, that maybe told you on the side like, hey, I hated that old lady too and I'm glad you did it.

A cop can totally say that and to win the trust of the suspect. So all of these factors combined, all of a sudden you have a story, you have a narrative, you're working out with the cop, you may not even realize that that's what's going on. And then the cop's going to say, I have a piece of paper and a pen here,

and I want you to write down what we just talked about. I want you to write down your confession. Yeah, well, they're gonna bring someone else in there first. Well, there's probably already someone else in there. They may bring a third, a new person in there to try and force them to retell their story, which they probably won't want to do. And that's when you can introduce like,

hey, you don't want to tell the story again to this new detective, I know you're tired. Just here, take this pen. Exactly. Don't stab me with it. By this time, the person will likely want to do just about anything to get out of that room. And from writing and signing this confession,

there's salvation on the other end. There's a light at the end of the tunnel. Even if it's possibly jail. Yeah. They can get out of this room. They can get out of this horrible interrogation. They may promise like a hot meal. Yeah.

Like something as simple as that can get someone to sign a confession at the end of a long, long day. Right. So you've got the written confession. You have it signed. They probably have to sign an additional waiver that says I didn't write this under coercion

or else they'll include that in the confession. And then you have basically what amounts to a slam dunk conviction in court. Yep. And that is the read technique. And we're going to talk about some real cases of interrogation right after this break. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new I Hard Podcast,

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Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the I Hard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, Chuck, so that's the read technique. Yep, you've got your perp. Super effective. And it has been used in plenty of cases. Like we said, the number that I saw

is like 0.04% of confessions or false confessions, which is extraordinarily small, which means that a lot of truly bad guys get caught through the read technique, right? That's right. And there's this one in this article on how stuff works, how police interrogation works. And it's with a woman named Nicole Michelle Frederick.

It's between her and a detective named Victor Lauria, and it takes place in Detroit in September of 2003. And Nicole Michelle Frederick was the stepmom to a two-year-old daughter, and the two-year-old daughter had shown up in the hospital, I believe, unresponsive. With bruises all over her body. Had clearly been physically abused,

and the stepmom was saying she falls down a lot. Like, I don't think anybody hurt her. Like she just gets bruised like that, and it certainly wasn't me, but not only was it not me, I don't think it was anybody. The little girl just falls down, she does it to herself. And with that, Detective Lauria took her to be blaming the victim,

that she was trying to go free by blaming this little girl for being clumsy. Well, clumsy and difficult. Yes. Which a detective can then latch onto as reprehensible as that sounds. Yep. By trying to get some empathy going like,

hey, I get it, you know? Like, this is a tough baby. Yes. And I'm sure it's trying, and it's very difficult. So all of a sudden, Detective Lauria has this, I guess this theme, this justification that was set up by the suspect. Yep.

And he starts to play it out. He's saying like, this girl, she was a difficult baby. She's crying, you lose your head for a minute, and you get a little rough. And you know, it could happen to anybody. And Ms. Frederick says, nah, that's not right at all. Yeah. Nobody hurt this kid.

I don't understand why you don't believe me. You seem to be not listening to me. Which, from what I understand, you're in the danger zone right there in your interrogation. Sure. If somebody's saying, if they're pressing back their own reality onto you, the detective, you're not in control right then.

They are. So Lauria started to look for another theme. And it was along the same lines, but rather than losing your head for a minute, it was a split second. Something happened in a flash of a minute, or flash of a second. And she perked up a little.

Yeah, she started to latch onto that one. Yeah, so then he knew he had her in a pretty tough spot. And she started nodding her head. He sets up the alternative and said, you know what? If you don't explain this thing, everyone's gonna just assume that you're this awful, abusive person. I think people might understand more though, because everyone's been there.

If it was just a split second thing and you lost control, people are gonna get that. So those are the alternatives all of a sudden. And then it came out that her daughter had brain damage. It was likely not gonna die. And then all of a sudden, the suspect started saying, oh, they're gonna get me for murder. Yeah, well, he pointed out to her,

he's like, by the way, you haven't even asked about the condition of your daughter. Right. And she was like, no, I have, I totally have. And he's like, no, you really haven't. And she's like, well, how is she? Yeah. He's like, she's not gonna make it.

And that's when she goes, oh no. Yeah. I'm gonna be tried for murder. And she was and found guilty. She confessed, I believe, right? Yeah, she admitted to shaking a baby and then said out loud, I killed the little girl, I killed her.

Right, so she was convicted of killing her two-year-old stepdaughter. And last I saw, I found an appeal in 2005 that was denied. That was the last I saw of her after her conviction. So it does work. And Detective Laurie followed all of these steps and got a bad guy in this case. Yeah, and so a lot of times it goes down

just like it should, but it is super controversial, which we've talked about some. And you mentioned at the beginning, one of the biggest problems is it's guilt presumptive. It's they go in there thinking, all right, this person's, the goal of the interrogation is to get a confession, not to find out whether or not someone did something.

Right. In most, in many cases, they go in there thinking this person's guilty and if you're going in there thinking you're guilty, even if you don't mean to, you're gonna start to filter out any reasons why they might be innocent, even if they're good reasons and valid reasons.

Yeah. And that ain't no good. No, it's not, that's, well, it's pretty huge flaw, really. Even if it does result in only 0.04% of false confessions. Yeah, and you also mentioned that the whole purpose of the interrogation is to make someone stressed and uncomfortable.

And then when you notice people behaving stressed and uncomfortable, that's a presumption, an indicator of guilt supposedly. When it's like you said, what you call a feedback loop. Right. So, you know, I wanna make you stressed and uncomfortable. You're being stressed and uncomfortable. That means you're guilty.

Exactly. Yeah, it's an odd way to approach things. It's coercion. And then there's also been a lot of people to point out that a lot of these techniques are the same thing that are used in brainwashing. Which we did a show on. Yeah.

July 2009. Did a brainwashing show. Invading a personal space. Not allowing the person to speak. Using contrasting alternatives to have them come to make them feel like they're making a decision or that they have a choice or some sort of power. I think you brainwashed me in that episode too, right?

Yeah. We did a little role play. Yeah, it was awesome. Man. I turned you into a prep. That was five years ago. Yeah. And then positioning confession as a means of escape.

Oh yeah. That was like the last step, I think, before resolution. Right. Was to say like just like denounce your family or whatever and you'll be saved or something. Right. In this case, it's signed this thing and man, you're gonna get that hot meal

and that cigarette I promised you. Yeah. The thing is, is like we said, it does produce false confessions and I saw somewhere that 20 to 25% of people who've been exonerated with DNA evidence gave a false confession. Wow.

So people go to jail for years for this kind of thing. Well, here's a few of the more famous cases. Peter Riley in 1973, was an 18 year old whose mother was murdered. I think no siblings and no father. So like the only parent he'd ever known. And after eight hours of interrogation by Connecticut police,

he confessed to brutally murdering her and was convicted on manslaughter based on the confession alone. There was no evidence, no motive. Medical findings suggested that there were at least two attackers and the town really got behind him apparently and like said, this kid didn't do this. He's not that kind of guy.

And let's have bake sales and raise money. And Arthur Miller, the famous playwright, lived in the town and he championed it because he did a lot of work with ACLU. And eventually new evidence came out that exonerated him and he was set free after three years in prison. Three years, not too bad. That's better than Earl Washington Jr.

Who in 1982, he was described as, and please everybody, I'm using scare quotes here. He was described by psychologists as mildly retarded. He had an IQ of 69, which is a whole other kettle of fish that doesn't mean anything anyway. But he confessed to raping and murdering a 19 year old woman under interrogation. He was convicted on the confession alone, right?

Yeah. Just on the confession. Well, a lot of these are. And spent 18 years in prison. Some have been on death row and was apparently rescued from the executioner with like nine days to go. Yeah, but at the same time, as a jury, what are you to do when someone says, I did this?

You know? Yeah. I mean, hopefully. I don't know. Maybe add some other evidence too. No, I agree. The thing is, is Earl Washington's thing, he was, somebody else was caught doing it using DNA.

That's been a huge change to this kind of thing. It's at least exonerated people like free and clear. But that brings up another problem with false confessence. Not only do innocent people go to jail, guilty people stay free. And they accumulate more victims over time. You know? Like how many more children would that lady in Detroit

have abused if she'd gotten off or something, you know? I mean, like, and the guy who created the read technique actually had a false confession and wrongful conviction under his belt, a guy, if you read the article, the interview in the New Yorker. The first thing it talks about is this guy in the 50s who was in jail for 20 years for murdering his wife, even though he didn't do it,

who was interrogated by John Reed himself. Wow. Yeah. So the guy who actually did do it went on to rape pregnant women and commit all these other horrible crimes that he wouldn't have done had he been caught the first time or had the cops still been looking for him.

Wow. That's the point. Yeah, it's a huge point. I mean, like, it's not just innocent people in prison. It's guilty people out still. Yeah. If you really want to see this all firsthand, I highly recommend the documentary

from Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, and David McMahon, The Central Park Five. And this is the famous story in 1989 of five young African-American men who were sent up the river for a rape in Central Park and they did not do it. And it's a great documentary and it just summarizes

how you can get a false confession very nicely. And it all plays out and you see these interviews and get really angry. And, but that was definitely a case of sort of like with the Atlanta child murders, like people are scared to go into Central Park now. And we've got these five youths who aren't so smart and they're poor and we can, we think they did it.

And I don't care what the evidence says, we need to finger them for the crime and put them all over the news. So people will feel safe again. But they were eventually exonerated thanks to DNA again. And they spent, depending on which guy, between six years and 12 years in prison, and really great documentary.

And I think it's on Netflix. It is. It is. Have you seen it? Yeah. Yeah, it's a good one. So check this, we've basically been talking mostly about the read technique, but there are alternatives.

There's some law enforcement agencies have lost faith in the read technique. And in Britain, apparently in 1990, there was a bunch of false confessions that came to light. And the British government said, we need to figure something else out. So they created a blue ribbon task force and said, come up with an alternative to the read technique.

Which ironically is a technique in the read technique. But what they came up with was called peace. Which this is the worst acronym of all time, but preparation and planning, engage and explain, account, closure, evaluate. Clearly spells peace. P-E-A-S. Yes.

So they came up with it after a couple of years. And by 2001, it was pretty widespread. But the peace technique is predicated on the idea that you're not going after a confession. I love this technique. Like you as an investigator, an interrogator, you're going in to just get the whole story out. And as much detail as possible.

And you're not going after a confession. You're not accusing the person of the crime. You're being polite. And here's another thing. And a lot of people think that this will cure false confessions almost in and of itself. Videotaping the confession from beginning to end. And so what the cops do is they interview the suspect.

They say, well, what about this? Here's a discrepancy. What about this? And they're not being accusatory. They're just putting everything out there. And letting this person explain it in front of the videotape, or in front of the video camera. And then the tape is shown to a jury.

And the jury apparently decides whether the person is lying or not. Yeah. And this is all built on the, what I think is a pretty rock solid theory that it is really hard to lie and lie and lie and keep it all straight and keep it all in that congruous line that's believable. At some point, if you keep talking and you're lying a bunch,

you're going to mess up. And that's what they prey on. Especially if you've just spent the last eight hours like drinking cruddy coffee and eating a few ho-hos and being asked questions by interrogators, even if they're being polite. Like, yeah, you're going to have a really hard time keeping up with what you've already said.

Yeah. Like you've got to be a real skilled sociopath to lie for hours and hours and hours. Yeah. And then they'll bring them in again a week later and say, you know, let's have some more tea and let's sit down and talk. And a week later, you might forget

some of the things you said. Oh, yeah. And the cops have the video and they're writing down all the details. Seems pretty solid to me. Yeah. So good on you, Brittain. And there are some people here in the US

trying to teach it to cops here. But apparently it's just like word of mouth and the particular jurisdiction has to be down with it and support it. And it's just not super widespread here yet. I mean, the read technique isn't the force of law. It's just the gold standard. It's the one that everybody uses.

I want to be like the cops on the shows. Well, yeah, exactly. I don't want to do the piece technique. In Canada, I found a completely different technique, too. It's called the Mr. Big Technique. Have you heard of it? No. It's extremely involved.

Basically, you, the suspect, will meet an undercover cop who's posing as a criminal while you're out and about and free and easy or whatever, or maybe while you're being booked, whatever. And you guys are gonna become friends. And over the course of the next several months, this undercover cop is going to gain your trust and get you to ultimately confess.

That shows how little crime there is. They're like, so would you cut down your neighbor's tree? Right, exactly, for like, they can spend like three months on a single confession, you know? Yeah, but it's called the Mr. Big Technique. And actually, the reason it's called Mr. Big is in its ideal form, you, the suspect, are become like kind of criminal compatriots

with this undercover cop who then introduces you to Mr. Big, this crime boss who wants you to step up to the next crime level, but is gonna get you to talk about this murder that you did or whatever, and then you confess it and you're being secretly taped and you don't know it and you've just entrapped yourself. Man, I love Canada. Mr. Big, I might have to move there, man.

Yeah, are you gonna stick around after Toronto or Vancouver? I might, just adopt the country. So we said earlier we were gonna give some tips. I think we'd be remiss if we didn't. These seem a little silly, but they recommend you just don't talk, you don't talk. They said, imagine the words I invoke my rights

to remain silent, paint it on the wall, and stare at them. Yeah. Ask for counsel, ask for a lawyer, and then the number five thing they say to do is cultivate hatred for your interrogator. Who's that from? Peace Help Beagle or something weird like that? It's, yeah, it's for recommendations

for animal rights activists who get arrested. Oh, gotcha. So, yeah. It seems kind of basic to me. It is, but I think it's one of those things where they can't easily go out the window when you're in that situation, you know? Yeah.

And again, if you're in the United States and you invoke your right to counsel, that's that. Like the cops are, they have to stop. And if they don't, that's a big problem. I kind of perversely want to know how I would hold up. I know it's no laughing matter, and I shouldn't joke around about it, but I would like to be interrogated.

Just to see. So, I guess that's it. If you want to learn some more about police interrogation, check out this article, Police Interrogation, on howstuffworks.com. It's a good one. And you can find that by using the search bar, of course. And since I said that, it's time for Listener Mail.

I'm going to call this Jittery Joes. Oh, yeah. Coffee. Hey guys, hope all is well. My wife, Cassie, and our big fans, y'alls, and we've been listening for years. This summer we took a two month honeymoon to Southeast Asia.

It was a blast. Your podcast kept us sane. Thanks for that. We sent you a postcard from Angkor Wat in Cambodia. It was bought there, written in Borneo, and mailed from Malaysia. I remember that. So it was well traveled.

Anyway, we live in Athens, and love to hear your stories about Athens. We actually live in Five Points on the Shortcut Road, where Chuck told about his mystery creepy old lady ghost story. I drive by there every day, and I always keep an eye out for her. So scary.

But my day job is with Jittery Joes Coffee Roasters, a local Athens institution. And he brought a huge box of coffee. Good stuff. And shirts and hats, and hand delivered it to the office. And I think he was surprised to know that I remember when Jittery Joes first opened.

So he was like, oh, well that was before my time. I think he didn't think I was as old as I was. But I remember Jittery Joes opening up. It was a big deal. It was like the first kind of good indie coffee house in Athens. I didn't know they were the first, but I'm not surprised.

The first one I remember at least. But he suggests the Sumatra Wahana. He said it's unlike any coffee I've ever had. People either love it or hate it. So that is from Mike Lord. And you can just look up Jittery Joes online. I'm sure you can order this stuff. Yeah, you definitely can.

Thanks for the coffee, Mike. It's good. Yes. And thank you to your wife Cassidy for all the support. Yeah. If you want to give Chuck and I free stuff, we are happy to accept it. You can get in touch with us to ask

for our physical mailing address, and we'll give it to you, okay? Yeah, I have to say, showing up at the office unannounced was a little weird, but since he had a huge box of coffee, it was all for good. Oh yeah. So you come bearing gifts.

It's like social lubricant gifts are, especially good ones like Jittery Joes coffee. You can get in touch with us via Twitter at S-Y-S-K podcast. You can join us on facebook.com. So I said, you should know. You can send us an email at stuffpodcast at HowStuffWorks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web,

StuffBeShadow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point,

but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to, Hey Dude, the 90s called, on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast

Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast

and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say, bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.