Stuff You Should Know - SYSK Selects: Lying Liars: How Lying Works, Liar

Episode Date: April 15, 2017

In this week's SYSK Select episode, studies find that absolutely everyone lies - some have found as much as a quarter of our daily interactions involve lies. What gives with everyone fudging? Chuck and Josh explore the philosophy, psychology and reality of lying and what constitutes a liar. 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.

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Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey everybody, this is Chuck, and welcome to, I guess this is week three of SYSK Selects, where we give you one of our favorite or maybe a timely episode from our vault that maybe you didn't hear.

And we're curating these individually, and this is my pick, lying liars, colon, how lying works, liar. I think that was, sounds like a Josh title. It's a great one. And this is from June of 2012, and I don't know, I just remember this being a pretty good episode.

And lying is just a pretty interesting concept to me. And so I wanted to make this my selection this week, and I hope you enjoy it. 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. Right?

Yeah. Take it, Chuck. Ha, ha, ha, ha. Josh, that shirt looks great on you today. I just want to say that I really like the checked pattern. Well, I see what you're doing. You're blinking, and you're scratching your face. You look like you have scabies, like my friend Dirty Mitch.

Yeah. But that doesn't indicate necessarily that you're lying. Yes, I'm glad you said necessarily, because they didn't say that in this article, and that was a very important omission. No, they did. They didn't say necessarily. They, meaning Tom.

Tom didn't say necessarily. I had to write it in. Because what we're talking about are potential tells whether or not you can recognize a lie. And people often associate blinking, scratching the face, covering the mouth as surefire indicators, and that's not necessarily the case. No, it's not.

And let's just get that out right now. Because there aren't any surefire behaviors where you're like, oh, you're lying. Like the one I always heard was touching your face. Yeah. Right? It's based on the idea that somebody might do that if they don't normally do that.

Right. Or if before this whole conversation started and a lie, they're placed in a position where they're lying, where they're choosing to lie, and they start doing that, they are now deviating from their baseline behavior. And that's what the important thing is. Exactly. That's where you add the qualifier necessarily.

Like Tom said, like maybe the dude has an eyelash in his eye. That's the reason he's rubbing his eyes, or blinking a lot. So yeah, it's interesting. Or maybe he has rosacea. Yeah. That's why he's scratching his face. True.

Or scabies. Or maybe someone's self-conscious because of a missing front tooth. So they cover their mouth when they talk. I cover my mouth when I talk, especially when I'm eating. Oh, yeah, sure. But you're just not supposed to talk while you eat. Yeah, Emily does that because she can't stop talking ever.

So she'll just talk while she eats and cover her mouth. So I'm not even going to bother to ask you if you've ever lied. I've lied today. Have you? Sure. So have you. I'm sure. Apparently, according to studies I have,

you found a few studies that I thought were a little, let's get into them. OK. I mean, they're surprising. Like one of them found that a quarter of all of our daily interactions involve lies. That's a little high. That is a really high.

Like I really don't think like I'm naive. I went back and just kind of like evaluated my behavior. I'm like, mm, still seems high. Yeah, agreed. So is everyone else lying more than us? Are these just really rotten people that happen to be part of this random sample in the study? Well, you know, you pull up any study on lying,

and you're going to find a different result. Like people lie every 90 minutes. People lie every 90 seconds. They lie twice a day. Right. That kind of thing. Yeah. So little hinky.

Feel the psychology is failing miserably at studying lying is what you're saying. As far as coming up with hard, because I don't think there are any hard and fast rules. I might not lie at all today, or I might lie 10 times tomorrow. If you don't lie at all today, they'll make a movie about you. Yeah, you're right. Don't they make movies like that?

Oh, sure. You either can't lie. Right. Jim Carrey's case. Yeah. Or yeah, that's usually the plot. Yeah. So I guess before we get into the studies,

do you want to talk about what is a lie? Yeah, you dug this up. I like these definitions. So there's this philosopher named Cecella Bach, who is a Swedish philosopher who published a book in 1978 that apparently still to this day is like the authority lying and philosophically speaking. They did a good work in the 70s in psychology, I think.

They were smoking a lot of weed. Is that what it was? Yeah, and she's a philosopher. So this is the philosophical ethical approach to lying, and so Cecella Bach came up with basically a definition of a lie. And she said that it has three features, that it communicates some information.

No, philosophers tend to choose their words carefully. They're like almost the poets of the humanities. Agreed. Especially if you don't include poetry as a humanity. The liar intends to deceive or mislead. Of course. And the liar believes that what they're saying is not true. So they haven't tricked themself into believing

that O.J. believes that he did not kill his wife. Yeah, I don't know. I think that's a different conversation all together, because that begs the question, is it really possible to fully trick yourself into believing something you know is not true? Is it true? You always hear that that can happen.

Like you become so entrenched in that lie for so long that you don't even realize it's a lie anymore. I'd like to see that study on that, though. I'm sure somebody's got one out there. But so you put those three things together, and you have a lie. You're communicating information, right? Yeah.

You're intended to deceive, and you don't believe what you're saying is true. And I'll apologize to O.J., by the way. That was really uncalled for. Yeah, really. Sorry. That was very uncalled for, Chuck. Shame on you for.

No, go ahead. So there's a big debate, though, about whether or not the lie has to have false information to it. Yeah, that's what I don't quite understand. Can you explain that? Yeah, so example, I like your shirt. And I know that you hate shirts that have armpit stains on them.

Right. But I know at the present time, you also have a pinched nerve in your neck, so you can't see very clearly. So I want your shirt. I know you'll give it to me if I tell you there's an armpit stain. I don't think there's an armpit stain.

I don't believe what I'm saying is true. But I say, Chuck, that modest mouth shirt has an armpit stain. You should probably give it to me. And you take it off and give it to me, and the shirt actually has an armpit stain, and someone pops their head in and goes, wah, wah, wah. That was not false information.

I get you. Even though I intended to deceive you, I didn't believe what I was saying. Sure. I was just communicating information. That's the point. But that brings up another philosophical question, like, is a lie of omission, then, a lie?

Because you're not communicating anything in that case. Well, in Tom's article, they talk about the reason the US court systems say the whole truth and nothing but the truth is because a lie of omission sometimes is not as looked down upon, because you're not actually constructing some falsehood. You're just not telling the whole truth. Right.

Interesting. Yeah. A version of a lie. A version of a lie, yeah. You know? Sure. I think, ultimately, you can follow the conclusion is that most philosophers believe that lying is bad.

Oh, yeah. But that there are exceptions to the rule. Like, if a murderer comes up and says, hey, I'm looking for my next victim, have you seen this man? And you have seen this man? And you know where he is? Yeah. Then I'm making this really basic here.

That's his elementary as it gets. But that's an example of when a lie is beneficial. You're thwarting a murder and saving somebody's life. Yes, you should lie. Sure. Or, obviously, a white lie, which kids learn early on, is something you do oftentimes to spare the feelings of someone else.

Right. That top does not make you look fat. I think it's cut just fine. Sure. But maybe you should wear that other one, because you look great in black. Well, I imagine if you're dealing with an intelligent person, you've shown your hand at that point.

Oh, not necessarily. Yeah. But you did mention kids. You mentioned white lies. Yeah. So you found a study, supposedly, according to Tom, around age two or three, we realized that we're not being constantly supervised.

Yeah, like that. Reality exists outside of other people's view. Our reality sometimes does when we go into another room. Sure. Mom's in the other room. I'm still in here playing. Yes. And it becomes clear to us that we

are responsible for conveying that information. But we have a choice, e.g. free will, that allows us to decide whether we convey that information truthfully or dishonestly. Right. Right? Yeah. And then after that, it just takes off like a rocket.

Yeah. This one study found that nine and 10 of the kids that they spied on, and this is just cruel. They put kids in a room with like a stuffed animal, or they called it a soft toy, which was a little creepy, behind them and said, don't look at that behind you. And they would leave the room in videotape. And of course, nine out of 10 kids

turned around and looked at it. And then did it actually say how many of them lied? I don't even see that. I guess they were just told not to look at it. I don't know if it's a lie. Yeah, it's a little hinky. It's not following orders. It's a bane.

All right. Well, how about this? The second part of that study was older kids. They would give them a test with the answers on the back and tell them not to look at the answers, give them a fake answer. And when they were asked to explain the fake answer, they would make up a lie like, oh, I'll learn that in history class.

Right. And actually, the question was who discovered Tunisia. That's one of them. And on the back, the answer was a fake answer, Prasidius Aikman, and so the dumb kids who cheated said, it does, doesn't it? The dumb kids who cheated put that down. But then, when given the opportunity to fess up,

most of them lied. What I disagree with about this study was that it said that the smartest kids told the best lies. How do you qualify the best lies? If it's believable and conveyed in a way that's But that's all subjective with confidence. That's totally subjective. Yeah, you're right.

It's methodologically unsound. But the whole point of these studies was they believe that children who are able to lie have faster developing brains, especially the areas involved in executive functioning. So they believe they concur that a child who lies early on might be more successful later in life. Well, I mean, you could make a case

that lying is basically using your imagination, especially when you're a child. And they have other studies that support the fact that rich people are more prone to lie and manipulate. Rich people are more prone to do a lot of shady stuff. You think? Well, yeah. Yeah, that's how a lot of them get rich.

Huh. You know? Chuck. Yes. You want to talk about why people tell lies, like some of the great categories of lies? The big six. Is that what you call it?

Sure. OK. Number one, Josh, is to conceal a misdeed and stay out of trouble. And even at the advanced stage of 41, this is the reason I will most often lie. Oh, OK. Because I hate being in trouble.

And I will try and cover for myself sometimes. Even though, in the end and in the long run, it's better to tell the truth. Agreed. The short term, you might get away with something, but you're not doing yourself any favors. No. I call these lies of cowardice.

Thank you. It's basically, it sucks. I mean, it sucks that you're having to go through this terrible, uncomfortable moment or whatever it is. But I'm really glad Tom pointed out, at least in the short term, you might not gain an advantage. But overall, there is a positive outcome.

You're building trust by fessing up or whatever. Number two, to preserve a reputation. In the example Tom uses, a drug addict, recovering drug addict who might lie about having gone to rehab or something like that. Or to a prospective romantic partner. And I think that these are kind of understandable to an extent.

It's like, we have walls up. Yeah. If you're just a normal person, you don't walk down the street like, hey, Josh, good to meet you. I spent some time in rehab. Exactly. Like there's just a certain amount. And then once you get to that point,

well, then maybe you are kind of short-shifting somebody who you consider close to, if you're not telling them that. But as you gain trust, then you open up more. Right. Or you should. Sure. Number three, this one, of course, we all get the white lie to avoid hurting someone's feelings.

We already kind of covered that. Number four, to increase stature or reputation. Yeah. These are easily. Yeah, these are just the boastful people. They're like, yeah, I scored 42 in a high school basketball game one time. And I won county in track.

And you're like, you do some investigation. And you realize they weren't even on the track team. Right. And I've realized that when you have a lot of these people in your life, it's time to get introspective, because there's something wrong with the way that you're living. If you have people like this orbiting you a lot.

Those people wear me out. They really do. I've done a pretty good job of shaking everybody like that off. I can't think of anybody in my life, even acquaintance-wise. Yeah, me too. That just makes up lies about themselves. Agreed. And I have known people like that.

Sure. They don't stick around. No, especially once you get out of what your mid-20s is like the edge of where you should be interacting with those people still. Well, and I think that's sort of an immaturity thing too. Like if you're still doing that as you grow older, then you've got some serious problems.

But everyone, when they're younger, probably stretches the truth about things they've done. Sure. But even still, don't you remember like it's just kind of being uncomfortable when somebody was doing this? And everyone in this group that they're talking to is like, we know you're lying. Exactly.

Just please stop. You might as well be putting bamboo shoots under our fingernails. Number five, to manipulate. And this is probably something, like I said, the rich people are more prone to lie. This isn't evasive or defensive. It's to gain something for yourself.

Yeah, it's pretty, it's the most vicious type of lying. Probably so. Because it also can involve telling lies about other people. Right, to get ahead. Right. That's awful. To destroy someone else's reputation. Yeah.

Man, those people. There's a special place in Dante's Circle for you. Agreed. Now those people you start to run into more of, especially as you enter the corporate world. Right. And you know what? They may be the same people who were telling the other lies

when they were younger. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. They just evolved into the manipulators. Yeah. And the last one, Josh, is to control information. And this is what we've mentioned about indirect lying or like withholding parts of the truth.

Right, a lie of omission. Yeah. Which I'm more able to forgive something like that. OK. So that's, as you called it, the big six, huh? The big six. Chuck, kind of one of the running themes that we've had here is that everybody lies.

I don't think that we've, yeah, you said it explicitly. Did everyone lie? Yeah, I bet the Dalai Lama doesn't lie. I don't know. I could see him wanting to preserve harmony or balance or something like that at a diplomatic dinner or something. Right. With one of his followers' feelings

about like, yes, that is a really nice sand mandala. Sure. You know? Yeah, he's putting a lot of high pressure social situations. So at the very least, everyone has little white lies, I imagine, right? Sure. But there are some types of personalities

that are much more prone to lying. The big five. Yes. Like pathological liars. Yes, they are the worst of the worst because they are sociopathic and they don't understand right and wrong. And they have, they're probably really good liars

because they don't understand right or wrong because they're not going to have the stresses associated with guilt and lying. Yeah. Bad people. Yeah, their consciences don't put them through their paces when they're lying because they lack in whole or in part consciences compared to non-sociopathic people.

Right. Number two, I've known one of these people, a compulsive liar. And I really felt bad for them because they almost seem like they can't help it. Yeah, and you would think a pathological liar and a compulsive liar are one and the same. Not true. No, a compulsive liar, a pathological liar

lies as a strategy. It's a means of gaining advantage. A compulsive liar can't help it. Their brain has been trained to lie as a first resort. Even if there's no gain whatsoever in lying, they will still just generally lie. It's their first thing. It's their gut reaction.

This guy knew it was really clear that he lied as a first option as his go-to when he didn't need to. And it was so frustrating. And I had a big brotherly relationship to this guy, so he wasn't a peer. So I tried to help him through that, but I haven't talked to him in a long time. I don't know if it worked.

So you abandoned him? I've bated him. And this, of course, makes sense in his case, too, without getting specific. But it said that living in an abusive environment, relying as necessary to self-preservation, might be where that stems from. And I think that was the case for him.

Yeah, it's like the brain has been trained to lie. Like, this is what you do. But the good thing is, is if you run across somebody in your life who cares enough about you, they can be trained out of you, I imagine. Although I'm sure it's a painful process for both people. Yeah, it's probably a bit like. But you were really waiting for me to say people.

It's cult programming. Narcissists, of course, will lie. These are the people who lie to increase stature and reputation. But they do themselves no favors. Borderline personalities, I thought this one was kind of interesting, they will go through wild mood swings and engage in really risky behavior.

But then they come back down to normalcy, and they're like, oh, I just gambled away our savings account. And then they'll lie to cover those up. And then histrionic personalities, these are people. If you have a true histrionic personality disorder, you are attention seeking, excessively needy for approval and emotional. Yeah.

Apparently women are more prone to be histrionic by a ratio of four to one. Oh, is that right? That's what they say. Or at least to have the disorder. And these are people desperate for attention, like if you walk out the door and I kill myself. That was a great example Tom used.

Yeah, that's a lie. You mean I were on this air tram flight once and we were waiting to take off. And this caterer was backing off of the little, on his little sky ramp. He was backing away from the other door, the catering door. Yeah. And apparently he was still hooked

to part of it or whatever. And the steward was like, no, no, no, no. And he kept going. And she turned around. I was like, well, we're not going anywhere for a while. And the way she said it, you could tell. We were discussing this like neither one of us believed her. We just knew she was wrong.

Because she just threw it out there like, well, we're not going anywhere for a while. And of course, everything was fine within 15 minutes. But the way she sounded, it was going to be like stuck in a tarmac for three hours. And it was weird. We were afforded this glimpse into this woman's true personality.

And I wouldn't have hung out with her. It's a histrionics. She was a bit histrionic. And that was probably low level, you could tell. Right. All right, so stay away from her. 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. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair.

Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back

to the 90s. 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. 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, OK, 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. This, I promise you. Oh, god. Seriously, I swear.

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Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, 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 podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. How can you tell if someone's lying? We've talked about micro expressions. Yeah, we have. In the micro expressions. Micro expressions podcast. Yeah. That was like three years ago.

Yeah. Yeah, it has been. Well, basically, for those people who don't know that we have a good 130, 150 episodes still. Not on iTunes. Not on iTunes. Yeah. The episode we did on micro expressions,

basically, a micro expression is an uncontrollable, fleeting, like millisecond long facial expression that is linked to your true feelings. That was longer than a millisecond. I just made a quick frowny face. That was a grimace. Yeah, was it? You looked like Megan M. Ram.

I don't know if it is. She's on Twitter growing like this. It's hilarious. Anyway, you can't control it. It's linked to your true feelings. And people have been shown to be able to pick up on these without even consciously knowing it. You just get what we would call a gut feeling about somebody.

Because their smile and that sudden fleeting micro expression of contempt back into a smile that you didn't really see, but you're caught, don't add up. Gotcha. And your body's like, why am I having a weird reaction to this person? So that's a micro expression. And they're apparently linked to lies and lying.

So basically, if you have a gut feeling that somebody's lying. You might be onto something. Yes, and it might be because of a micro expression that you saw. Interesting. You know this. I know, but I still find it interesting. I'm not lying.

That's your new thing. Interesting. Did you know that? That I said that. I've been on that for a while. Have I ramped it up lately? Interesting. These are nonverbal cues, by the way, micro expressions.

Another one is a forced smile. And I think we've talked about this, too. That's when you smile with your mouth only. Yeah, that's so creepy. It is. Seeing it, you're just like, what are you doing? You look weird right now. But seeing it described the way Tom wrote it,

which is a perfect description, was creepy to me. Yes, it was. Another thing you can look for is someone's nodding yes during a denial. That could be a dead giveaway. That's terrible. Sometimes it's way more outward. You get literally in a defensive position,

like crossing your arms or turning away from somebody who's questioning you. And fidgeting. Finally, we get to fidgeting. Like, fidgeting is significant if the person is normally calm or doesn't normally fidget. If it's a fidgety, nervous person to begin with, then that doesn't mean that they're lying.

Sure. If they're fidgety and then they get calm, all of a sudden, while you think that they're lying, then you're on to something there. But they're probably the weirdest person in the world. And you should force them into lies just to watch them go from fidgety to normal. Because that'd be really odd to see.

Verbal, sometimes you can pick up on nonverbal cues. Sometimes they are quite verbal. So like, ask me a question. Ask me, why didn't I come over last night and help you with your lawn mowing? That's a terrible question. All right, well, ask me something, Melton. Why did you tell me that the sweet water thing doesn't

have a date when it clearly does? Well, I'll fake it, and then I'll tell you the real answer. OK. Because that actually does have a real answer. So what, you're saying that you looked and saw that my band gig for sweet water didn't have a date on it? Is that what you're asking me? Yes.

Well, I mean, I could tell you right now, exactly, there's a very good reason for that, Josh. Then why don't you liar? So those are some of the not actually verbal cues. Taking too long, not using contractions, repeating the question, basically buying yourself some time. Not using contractions is hilarious to me.

Like, I cannot believe that you want to know why I didn't tell you, why I did not tell you this. And the reason why? The real reason why? No, the reason why you're not using contractions. Well, to draw it out. So your brain can, the other part of your brain can come up with the answer.

That's so hilarious. The real reason why I said that about sweet water is because I just found out two days ago that they have gone with another band and it is officially canceled. No. Yeah. That was a little bummed. Do you want me to talk to somebody?

No. Oh, wow. Now, I was told that one of the reasons why they went with another band is because we didn't have, like, video and things to send to show. I thought you clogged up your 250 gig computer with HD videos. Yeah, but a lot of stuff we don't want to send out.

Oh, is it like a lot of pantsless? Pantsless, El Chivo, this? Yeah, pantsless. Well, I think that stinks. If you're at Sweet Water Brewery right now, shame on you. This isn't them. This is an NGO. This is a fundraiser.

So the fan who wrote in to ask you. Yes. Bumped you? Bumped me. Really? For another band. And I'd looked at the other band, too, like they have a website and videos and.

OK. Lady, stop listening right now. No, don't do that. At least for the rest of the episode. It's OK. It was humbling. Well, I'm sorry that I brought it up, Chuck. That's OK.

Might as well get it out there. I'm glad you did, because you probably thought I was lying to you. I did. All right. Where are we? We are now going to teach people how to lie, which I thought was an interesting feature of this article.

OK, I thought it was interesting. I also refused to do it. I find it wholly immoral to teach people how to lie. Do you want to skip this in? No, but it's still information. I feel like we can say people who are successful at lying tend to do certain things. But teaching somebody how to lie,

I think it's just utterly wrong. Well, I imagine there's been more than one attorney give these instructions to their clients. Definitely. On the stand. But I mean, who likes attorneys? Nobody. Well, we're making all kinds of friends today.

Attorneys in Detroit, especially. P, U. All right, so here's how to lie. So says Tom Schief. No, this is what successful liars do. OK, stay calm. That's what they'll probably tell you before you get on the witness stand.

They'll catch you up. Well, especially with the polygraph. Yeah, sure. Because it measures all those fluctuations in what? Temperature and heart rate. Yeah, yeah, those two things. Just those two. Keep it simple, stupid.

And this one, boy, you see this one. When someone's cooking up a lie, and you know they're lying when they start adding all these details, because they think, well, the more detailed, who could make this up? I was thinking about this, and I was like, while I was reading this, I was going over my own behavior using myself as a model. It's impossible not to, I guess, right?

This I did not get. I tried to think back to any lie or story I've ever told them, if just adding details and information that has nothing to do with anything, I don't get that. Yeah, well, you know it probably means you're not a very good liar. That's a good thing. I hope that's what it means.

But that's like the Eddie Murphy, remember his joke about the ladies caught the guy, the car was at the other lady's house, and it was just, what, me? That's what he kept saying, yeah, but I called you and I called you red-handed, what, me? Oh, yeah? Yeah, and I guess that kind of goes back to it. Keep it as simple as possible.

Richard Pryor apparently also had a little bit where he said that he came in and found his wife or his girlfriend in bed with another guy, and she's like, who are you going to believe? Me, or you're lion eyes. That's pretty good. Remain steady, and this goes back to the you will be, you're being studied by, let's go ahead and use the courtroom

example, like we're coaching you to go on the stand. This jury's going to be watching you. Just remain steady. If you're all fidgety, stay fidgety. People who are good liars tend to remain steady. Right. And what we mean by that is not just like you have to keep a steady hand, that was already covered in staying calm.

People who are good liars continue the behavior that if they were relaxed before a line of questioning started, they're relaxed during it, and they're relaxed after. If they're fidgety, then they're fidgety before, during, and after. Yeah, because they say one of the telltale signs, or one way to trip up a liar, which we'll talk about, is to change the subject and see if you see them relax.

Because they think, oh man, that's over. Thank God. Yeah, Tom says, once the questioning is over, don't suddenly relax and appear relaxed. All right, so I can get down now, off the stand. And then good liars generally are affable, which makes sense. They make people want to believe them.

Because I think if you don't like somebody, it's easier to be suspicious of them. Yeah, well, how many people have gotten away with horrible stuff because they just seem likeable? What about Ted Bundy? How many people, how many more people was he able to kill? Yeah. And he got caught, remember we talked about him before, he

got caught because he went on like just a completely reckless, like, killing Rampage in a sorority house. Yeah, he killed for years before that. Yeah, but he was white, and he had a good haircut. So, I mean, he couldn't have been any threat to anybody. Right. I love that serial killer stuff. I could do like every other show on some aspect of that.

We'll do another serial killer one. OK, so Chuck. Yeah. I will, I don't find it immoral to teach people to tell when someone is lying. Right. So that we can do. Five steps.

The big five. The big five. Part two. And we kind of already talked about establishing the baseline, like if you think someone might be lying in your quizzing them, look at their behavior very closely and determine how they just normally act. And just go ahead and log that in your brain.

That's step one. Right. And I mean, this is like, I guess, this is if you're a professional interrogator. Yeah. Like the lady in that terrible show. Or on Law and Order, the great shows. Or if you're on a jury.

This is good advice. If you sit on a jury, you watch these people. That's a good one too, for sure. Or if you are something, if you are really hell bent on finding out if somebody that you interact with is lying to you and you do a lot of pre-planning, you could do this too. But yes, before you let on, there's a line of questioning

that's going to be coming up. You want to interact with the person and make notes about their behavior. Yeah. Are they a fidgety Joe? Not literally in front of them making notes. Because it'll give you a way. Or if you do do that, just don't let them see what you're

writing. Exactly. All right. So number two is once you've established this to look for deviations from that, pretty much a no-brainer. Yeah. Like, do they start fidgeting all that stuff? Yeah.

Or if they're a fidgety Joe, do they turn into a smooth Samuel all of a sudden? That's weird. That would just be so weird. It would be. It's weirder if they're a smooth Samuel and they turn into a fidgety Joe. There you go.

That's a deviation from the baseline. That's right. Step three, you really got to listen. So they might be pretty steely with their nonverbal cues. So just listen to what they're saying. And is it adding up? If they're spouting off all kinds of details, maybe lead them down a different path and then jump back to those

details and see if they're still on those. And then pick out a detail that seems a little hinky to you, as you would say. And start asking them questions about that because then they may have to lie about the lie. Right. And if none of it's fitting, are they having to make up more information to explain why certain things aren't

fitting into this? And eventually, if you draw the line of questioning out enough, you're going to drive the person totally insane because their brains are going over time. Yeah, the telltale heart, I think, and that would happen in that. They eventually described it. They didn't even know what was going on in those guys.

Oh, yeah, that's right. They were sort of innocently questioning. And it was all in his head. Either that or it was really a phantom heart. Right. I guess you just shouldn't murder. Yeah, boy, that John Cusack movie about Poe looks like one of the worst pieces of garbage

ever made. It really does. Whose idea was that? Let's make a movie about Edgar Allen Poe as a murderous hunter. And I'm thinking John Cusack. Yeah, really. Although I have to say Abe Lincoln, vampire hunter, looks awesome.

Oh, yeah, I totally want to see that. Man, I can't wait to see that. John Cusack's not in that, though, is he? No, but I'm sorry. I saw the preview for the Poe one and for the Abraham Lincoln one right next to each other. Gotcha. I link the two.

And they look similar in mood or tone. Oh, hold on. With everything adding up and drawing it out, one of the other things we talked about, the body language, where a body language might belie what they're really thinking or what they really believe, where if you're denying something but you're nodding your head.

Right. And she talked about Arod or somebody like that who was involved in steroids. And he was on like 20 or 60 minutes and someone broke down their micro expressions. Yeah, and found clearly that he was nodding his head when he said yes or something like that at one point. So humans are so dumb.

Yeah, why are you doing that? Normally, our body language matches up to our thoughts because they're accurate and true. And instinctual. Right, and when we're lying, not only do we have to think about the words we're saying and fabricate this alternate reality that doesn't really exist except in our heads, we also

have to come up with the body language that's supposed to match us being calm, us being truthful, whatever. And so all of this thinky thinky can be confusing to a liar. And if you stretch it out over the course of enough time, a line of questioning, they're probably going to be like, why are you interrogating me or whatever? And you've broken them. And at that point, you just drive the hammer home

and literally beat them to death with a hammer. That's the inevitable conclusion of any line of questioning, right? No, what you could do, though, is pause because a pause in a conversation might make just a regular conversation feel uncomfortable. You talk about the awkward pause. Yeah.

But man, if someone's cooking up a lie and you're asking them questions and you pause, and this is a big time tactic by an attorney with someone on the stand, that will seem like an eternity to those people. Yeah. They may get fidgety or whatever. They'll turn into like Miranda July on that videotape

and you, me, and everyone we know, where she's like, I can do anything right now. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Is that? Did you see that? I did. I enjoyed it. You know what I'm talking about?

I know exactly what you're talking about. So if somebody does that in the middle of a pause during a line of questioning, they're lying. And finally. Or they're adorable and artsy. Right. And are into mumblecore. And then we talked about the last one.

Step five is change the subject and see if you see them visibly relax and then go, aha. Yeah, where they're like, whew. Yeah, and they're like, oh, wait, no, I wasn't relaxing. Right. I'm on meth. Aha. Yeah, that's a good way to catch somebody off guard.

Or you can do the Colombo method. Let them off the hook. Let them calm down. And then turn around and be like, one more question. Oh, is that what he would do? Oh, yeah, every time. That's how we would catch somebody. And that would be like that.

Like they didn't have an answer for that. And it totally caught him off guard. And then he beat him to death with a hammer at the end of every episode. Robert Blake, right? Isn't that Colombo? Peter Faulk. Peter Faulk.

I always get this guy's confused. Robert Blake really did go to jail for murder. Yeah, that's because he really killed his wife. He was Beretta. That's right. I always get this confused. But not with the Rockford files. Oh, no.

That's Jim. Jimmy Garner. Yeah, he's great. All right, so I didn't look at any of the famous lies in history. They were pretty much whatever. Standard. So we talked about the kids study.

I found an interesting link from the University of Southern California, where they found what they believe is proof that the brain structure of a pathological liar is different. They're actually wired differently than the rest of us. Oh, yeah, I could totally see that, because the brain is subject to plasticity. Yeah.

And so structurally, it's different, right? Well, that's what they say. They took subjects, 108 volunteers, and then interviewed them with psychological tests and placed them in different categories of, like, are you a repeated liar? Are you antisocial, and a pathological liar? Or are you normal?

I guess a normal liar. And then they hooked them up to the old MRI, the Wonder Machine, and they found that liars had significantly more white matter and less gray matter, which they believe equates to liars are quicker thinkers. Basically, yeah. White matter is the stuff that transmits the electrical impulses.

They're more equipped to lie. Physically, their brains are more equipped. Yeah. I'm like one big, continuous lump of gray matter. Oh, yeah? I don't think I have any white matter whatsoever. There's a donkey on a ferry that goes across the mighty Mississippi.

That's my neural transmission. With Huck Finn. Yeah. But Huck Finn is really fat and kind of dumb. There they go right now. Chuck Finn. Yeah. 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.

It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound

like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in, as we take you back to the 90s.

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. 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. OK, 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. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS,

because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one.

Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, 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. And then this other thing we've touched on the thinking cap. Transcranial magnetic stimulation. Yeah. And what was that again? TMS. Oh, it's the, it was the thinking cap. We did an episode on this, too, where there's a,

I guess it uses magnets. Magnetic pulses that can target very specific parts of the brain without targeting others. Laying a magnet that can pulse right over a specific part of your brain and go and boom, boom. And then high frequency stuff makes you like, you twitch and stuff like that. Low frequency can like give you a stutter

depending on the region of the brain. It's basically just messing with your brain. Right. And the, the neuro-firing. And it can make you more creative, too. Wasn't that one of them? Yeah, that's what they found. More creative and people could pick out like prime numbers

out of a huge block of numbers. Whether they couldn't do that before. Right, that's right. Or they could draw a horse really well all of a sudden. So apparently if these volunteers were hooked up to the TMS thinking cap machine, let's call it, and volunteered to have their dorsolateral pre-fomal cortex stimulated, which is complex thought

and deception decision making. And they found, and it has two sides, like every other part of the brain. And they found that people who had the left side stimulated lied more often and people on the right side were more likely to tell the truth. And they asked them like obvious questions like what color is this piece of paper?

Lie to me or don't lie to me? And basically it's early in the going here. I think this is from 2011, but they think this could lead to possibly one day instead of people taking a lie detector test, taking a lie prevention test, like hooking them up. And basically you cannot lie to me while you're getting pulse like this.

That is crazy. So did you kill your wife? That is very crazy. Did I? No, I wasn't asking. Although I haven't seen you in a while. She is. Just fine.

I saw her this morning. Good. I'll have her send you an email. Sure. Well, actually it's funny you brought that up because this last little study found that people are only likely to lie and email 14% of the time compared to 37% on the phone, 27% in person, and 20% via text.

And I found that interesting. I find it interesting too. The phone makes sense because it's verbal communication, so you're more frightened. Sure. There's more intimidation, which I think probably is one of the things that leads to lying among people more frequently than anything else, being intimidated.

You're not face to face, which probably helps. Exactly. So the phone is the most lie-laden form of communication. But email is the least lie-laden. And I think it's because you don't have to vocally express it. Plus, the internet makes us all very brassy. Well, plus email too, also, there's like documented evidence that paper trail

or an electric paper trail. Yeah, that's a good point too. Like I wouldn't lie in an email because then somebody could take that email later on and bust me on it. That's true. I would only do that 14% of the time, evidently. Well, I record all of yours in my conversation, so I've got it all documented.

Good. All of it. Oh, bad. I guess that's it. That's all I got. That was a lot. That was a lot online. We covered the philosophical aspects.

You mentioned the brain. We poo-pooed psychology. We talked about the big five, the big six, the other big five. We covered everything in here. Yeah, and let us finish by saying to kids out there, although it may seem like a good idea at the time, it is not a good idea in the long run, and your lie may just make things worse.

In fact, it will very much likely make things much worse on you. Yeah, agreed. To tell the truth. Agreed. It's a good habit to get into as you grow. Oh, yeah. Those are the people who really kind of become the best. Agreed.

Later on. Not necessarily the richest. No. Although that's not the, Richard Branson, never told a lie in his life, probably. But there are riches beyond the dollar. Exactly. That's what I'm driving at.

I'm being honest as well. And the true trust of another person, it doesn't get much wealthier than that. Agreed. If you want to learn more about lying, you can look it up by typing L-Y-I-N-G in the search bar at howstuffworks.com. I said search bar in there.

No lie. This means it's time for Listener Mail. Whoa, Nelly. Whoa, we got a couple of quick announcements to make before Listener Mail. The first is we have, if you've listened to our Halloween episodes the past two years, we do readings that are royalty-free because they're old,

and they're good from Poe and Lovecraft and the like. This year, we want to read one of your horror stories. Absolutely true. And we're going to do that through this long, complicated process by which starting this, well, a little while ago, June 18, and running until July 20, you can submit your own horror fiction. Yeah, that's short.

It's not been published anywhere else, and that is between 3,000 and 4,000 words. That's right. You can send it in an email to howstuffworks.com, underscore contests at discovery.com, right? Yeah, and do yourself a favor. Go read the rules because you don't want to take the time to do this and then be disqualified.

No, there's a blog post on the blogs at HowStuffWorks, and it's titled something like, Stuff You Should Knows, Horror Fiction Contest, colon, get your official rules here. Something like that. And it's got all the rules. It has a pithy introduction to the rules that we came up with. And then the key here, though, is no matter what,

you have to, in the email, write the words, by entering into the contest, I agree to abide by the contest rules. Right. Any email that has a submission that doesn't have those words in it is automatically disqualified. Yeah, and we don't want that because if you've worked on this, we want you to be able to win.

Yeah. It's only open to residents of the US, 18 or older, 18 as of June 18. That's right. But anyway, you send them to us. We're going to read all of them. We're going to judge them. And then we're going to pick the top 16,

enter them into a bracket, and it's going to be like the Thunderdome, until everybody votes on their favorite. And that favorite one is the one we'll read for our Halloween episode. Pretty cool. Great idea, Josh's idea. I think he's already regretting having thought of it

because of how complicated contest are. They really, really are. Yeah. But I don't regret it. No, I'm very anxious and looking forward to it. So Comic-Con 2. What? Yeah, we're going to be at Comic-Con in San Diego.

You're going to Comic-Con? You are too, pal. Oh, that's right. I know. I booked my ticket. Oh, you booked your own? I had people book mine for me. Well, well.

So let's see, we're going to be in Comic-Con on Thursday, July 12, and we're going to do a live podcast at a panel, right? Yeah, right there at the convention center. We do not know what time exactly, but we'll announce that on Facebook and the like in Twitter. And there's supposed to be possibly a special guest, maybe. There's going to be trapezes, monkeys, circus peanuts,

the whole thing. Yeah, we can't announce the guest yet because we haven't locked it down, but hopefully they are in the fringe of society. All right, so Comic-Con horror fiction contest, it's time now for Listener of the Mail. Josh, you're going to call this S-Y-S-K, Teaching America's Utes.

OK. Hi, guys, I'm Jerry. I've written before you even mentioned my podcast, Our List, on your show once. Remember, we were the doppelgangers because we sent you t-shirts that you originally thought were you? Sure.

And it was us. I remember those guys. Anyway, I wanted to write and thank you. Besides being a podcaster, I'm a teacher. My fourth graders were going to be dissecting earthworms and help prepare them for their first ever dissection. I gave them a homework assignment of listening to the earthworm podcast.

Great idea. Many had never listened to a podcast before, and I was wondering how they would react. And the overall response was great. Except for the three that ended up with seizures for some weird reason. They found it funny that you discussed species pronunciation, which turns out I was wrong.

Remember, I said, can't say species? Yeah. Apparently, you can say either. No, I said species. You said it's species or species, or species or species. And I said, no, it's just species. So you were wrong in that. I just wanted to make sure.

I don't really remember, but that's how it went down. They found the facts that you shared amazing. I gave them a questionnaire to fill out. And Mr. Zach just wrote the word questionnaire. Zach. I say, listen, and almost everyone completed their homework, which is no small feat. So thank you for giving me another way

to reinforce my lessons. Now, you may have some new fans in exchange, and that is Mr. Zach at East Cooper Montessori Charter in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. Go. Coops. Add them out. Coops.

Go barrel makers. Yes. Isn't that what Coopers do? Oh, is that a Cooper? Sure. I think so. Man, I hope it is. God, I hope it is.

Thanks, Zach. It was good to hear from you guys again. And where can I find their podcast, Chuck? It's called Our List. On iTunes, probably. Yeah, sure. The easy old Google. Cool.

If we have helped shape children's lives, man, we are crazy for that. Oh, yeah. We always love hearing about that kind of stuff. So we want to hear it. Send it to us. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook at stuffyoushouldknow,

facebook.com slash stuffyoushouldknow. And you can send us an email at stuffpodcastatdiscovery.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 podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts.