Woman's Hour - Late Night Woman's Hour: Instinct

Episode Date: February 22, 2017

"The hackles on the back of my neck stand up and the orange warning signs come on."You know the feeling. It's the emotional equivalent of seeing something out of the corner of your eye. So fleeting you're not sure it's real. She's lying, it says. Or maybe, don't call him back. Or perhaps just, something's not right.So do you trust it, this feeling, or brush it aside? And if you do trust it, what do you call it? Instinct or intuition? Sixth sense? Your bulls**t detector?Whatever name you prefer, there's no doubt that - historically speaking - it gets a mixed press. At best perhaps, it's the preserve of animals. At worst, it's downright witchy. By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes. Because after all, where does it come from, this information? Some kind of dialup to the spirit realm? Or could there be a scientific explanation?Lauren Laverne and guests businesswoman Hilary Devey, neuroscientist Sophie Scott, anthropologist Kit Davis and former detective Mo Dowdy explore the benefits and frustrations of trusting your instincts.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2. And of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme. Peak danger. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

You know the feeling. It's the emotional equivalent of seeing something out of the corner of your eye. So fleeting you're not sure it's real. She's lying, it says. Or maybe don't call him back. Or perhaps just something's not right. So do you trust it, this feeling? Or do you brush it aside? And if you do trust it, what do you call it?

Instinct or intuition? Sixth sense? Your bullshit detector? Whatever name you prefer, there's no doubt that, historically speaking, it gets a mixed press. At best, perhaps, it's the preserve of animals. At worst, it's downright witchy. By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes. Because, after all, where does it come from, this information? Some kind of dial-up to the spirit realm? Or could there be a scientific explanation? Tonight on Late Night Woman's Hour, I want to explore the benefits of trusting your instincts. Businesswoman Hilary DeVay became a

national treasure overnight on the TV show Dragon's Den, deploying a weapons-grade bullshit detector to devastating effect. Neuroscientist Sophie Scott studies voices, speech and laughter at University College London, and as a result is even better than most mums at judging when her son is lying to her. Mo Dowdy is a retired detective inspector with 30 years of police work in CID, Fraud Squad, Drug Squad and Northumbria Crime Squad, including

undercover work behind her. Kit Davies is an anthropologist at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. Welcome all. Thank you. Thank you. All right, so I'm going to throw an open question to the floor to begin. Can anybody describe what instinct or intuition feels like for you when it happens? I think you just know, you know.

I think when I was coming down here I was thinking goodness, what's this going to be like? There's a Sunderland supporter in the room. Sorry about that. I think you do, you just know. And you know that you can't take your eye off it. You've got to look at it and you've got to respond to it.

I think there's always some action or some spoken word that immediately puts your hackles up and makes you think. What kind of thing, Hilary? Beware. Well, I'll give you a scenario. I recently had a meeting with a guy in France and we had in Paris actually and it was all very pleasant on the Chantalizé and it was a business dinner business meeting and just towards the end of the meeting he candidly told

me that he'd been banned from driving through driving under the influence but he still drove from Belgium to Paris every week once a week even though he was banned so that was my kind of warning that was my alert that was kind of like my do not touch, do not go, my amber light flashing thing. Christ, let's get as far away from this guy as I can possibly get and never, ever, ever do I want to do business with him. OK, all right. Sophie, you're nodding, what do you think? There was some really nice applied psychology on this

from the police, wasn't there, when they did a study looking at people parked in disabled parking bays who were not disabled and what they found when they ran the plates and the cars was something like 30 percent of them had criminal records and quite a high percentage of those were actively wanted by the police at that time and it's been on the basis that if somebody will break one law they'll break lots of laws. You don't just do it randomly. So exactly that, that kind of, what you know what that means in terms of just extrapolating from this,

if you would do that so blatantly against something so serious, then what else would you be capable of? You absolutely should listen to that. You're absolutely right. And, you know, Hilary, I hear that, that there could be that little umbrella can kind of go on with a word,

but sometimes it doesn't even take that. Sometimes it can just be a feeling. It can be a look, a kind of shiftiness. I word but sometimes it doesn't even take that sometimes it can just be a feeling it can be a look a kind of shiftiness i mean what do you think kit well i think i mean one of the things i think we do is pick up on clues that come physically from the other person a lot depends upon how well you know or don't know the person so if it's a person who is normally kind of a liar or a cheat they they'll either have, they might so often look uncomfortable or guilty that they look guilty even when they're not guilty because they know they've done something, maybe not the thing that you're suspecting them of having done. So I

think there's that. And we're reading these things, you know, as you were saying, Mo, where you just have, it's like spidey senses is the way i sort of think of it that something happens that tells you that there's something not right i mean kit you're an anthropologist obviously this is this isn't a culturally specific thing is it does every kind of culture has their own version of instinct do you think everyone i think because we're social creatures everyone you know in every society there's a way in which we're kind of trying to see how we come over to other people and other people are doing this. So there's all kinds of information that's going on in an interaction. And we're really trying to understand about trust, how much

confidence we can have in one another, whether what you see is what you get. And of course, our own desires fit into that because you may be hooked up to a liar and you just hope that they're not a liar. And so you don't want to believe that they are a liar. So you spend a lot of time struggling with that. But I think that's the same because trust is so fundamental to our sense of reality. Sophie, can you, I mean, as a neuroscientist, can you give us a bit of insight into what's happening in that kind of moment? That spidey sense that Kit described, what is that? Absolutely. There does seem to be in our brains at least two different ways that we process information.

And I mean, perceived stuff. So the stuff that you're really aware of right now, that probably is when I'm talking, it feels like I'm really aware of the words I'm saying. And that tends to be like where your focus is. I'm talking it feels like I'm really aware of the words I'm saying and we that tends to be like where your focus is I'm understanding you but there's also all this other stuff you're picking up from people you're processing you're perceiving in people that you can be a lot less aware of and one of those is their aspects of their emotions that they might be trying to control so the psychologist Paul Ekman discovered if you look at he did a huge amount of work on processing how we get information about emotion from the face. And he found if you record people speaking about an emotional event and you slow the film down, you get these little bursts of emotion. In fact, it's emotion people are trying to mask. It's something that they're really trying to stop coming through and is getting through in these tiny little bursts.

You lose just a little bit of control over your face. And if you train in how to spot these, it's called facial affect coding. You can then learn to spot these and you can watch people and actually detect them. But even if you don't detect them in the way that you're aware of, we still notice them at some level. And very often that's what you're picking up on. So you might not think oh hang on they just looked actively frightened or they looked aggressive but actually that's you you're still

reacting to that you're picking up on that and that's because exactly like kit says we're social animals the most important stuff around us is the people around us and how they're reacting to us so often we're doing that in a positive way you know if you're talking to someone you like you'll start to mirror all these different aspects of their behavior back to them and they'll do it to you yeah and that's like the positive side of it you know you don't notice you're doing it but it's actually helping things so these processes how do you differentiate then fact from fantasy when because really life's a big stage isn't it it? And all of us can play a role. Everybody, and I believe everybody in society is capable of that. I think that does happen.

Everything's a performance at one level. The way we use our voices is absolutely a performance, the way we're kind of conducting ourselves. But if you look at how the brain system is actually involved in this, the voluntary brain systems that, say say control me talking right now, they are different from the much less voluntary brain systems that are actually associated with my emotional state. Yes. And actually a lot of the time when somebody's behaving, you see the two interplaying.

Yeah. So when I leak emotion in my voice, and it can be really hard actually to keep your real emotions out of your voice yeah or you're doing it with your face that you're actually seeing the interface in the voluntary stuff they all all that role playing that we're all doing all the time little flashes of what's actually also going on to keep coming through yeah more has there been a time when you shouldn't have trusted your instincts but you did you know the evidence was pointing one way but something in your gut was telling you this. You know, the evidence was pointing one way, but something in your gut was telling you this isn't right. Yeah, absolutely. Obviously, there's so many examples of this,

but there's one that I recall in particular, and it was someone who was arrested for... He'd murdered, or allegedly murdered his girlfriend. All of the evidence was suggesting it was him. There was no- one who was saying, oh, it can't be him. You know, everything was pointing to him. I happened to interview him at the time, and I firmly believed that he was innocent. And, you know, when you come out of an interview situation like that, and you go to a major investigation team, because I was not the rank that I was when I left at that time,

people are saying, oh, it's just because you're a woman, you know. You're thinking, you're feeling sorry for him, you're doing this, that and the other. I said, look, I honestly believe that he's innocent. There must be some other explanation for this. And I don't know what it was, but further inquiries were made and other things happened. And eventually it was proved that the guy was, was innocent, you know, completely innocent. It was someone else altogether and they had nothing to do with each other. So, you know, that, that's certainly one case in

point, but I mean, you know, there's certainly one case in point but I mean that you know there are so many that you that you can think of but that one was such a high profile case it was a major investigation and you know I had to say it and you must have gone over that afterwards after you were proved right and and try to pinpoint the moment, the look, the... You know, what it was, that kind of feeling that you had. Yes, but again, it's very difficult. I don't know whether I could put my hand on my heart and say, yes, it was because he did that

or because he got upset about that. It was none of those things. Really, he should have been guilty. It's as similar as that. He should have been guilty, and he wasn't. Is that a crucial ingredient in being a police officer, that ability to pick up on that kind of spidey sense that we were talking about, that moment of, you know,

even in the face of evidence, that points to something different? Well, that's a difficult one, because you need to look at the evidence. That's what you're there for. You're there to look at the evidence, to investigate the crime, to take all of the evidence gathering that goes on at the scene.

All of that stuff is done. Then you look through all the statements and you work out who's done what and who could have been responsible, who might not have been. You look at the house-to-house inquiries, you do all of that. But there is still something that you have to say to yourself, that is an important part of policing.

It's an important part to keep you safe, if nothing else. It's something you can't... I can't put my finger on it. Did you recognise that? Because I saw you nodding when Sophie was describing that kind of dissonance between what somebody's saying and their real feelings kind of coming through in fits and starts. As a police officer, I think you develop a very, very fine tuning and after X number of years, you know, and it never leaves you. And if you're on night shift

you develop this sense even more than that and then after night shift it kind of goes away again and then it comes back and that that's because you know the situations you're going to be in are slightly different on different shifts you know about that fine-tuning mode well again it's it's it's nearly impossible to describe but you you kind of if you if you think of it like if you're driving fast for example and you girls shouldn't do that at all but if you you know if i if i was driving fast i'm thinking all of the time and there's there's like a video running in my head about problems that are coming up cars that I'm overtaking, all that sort of stuff. And you do that as a police officer walking through your night shift. You know, you're not taking your eye off the road or the situation for a moment.

And that's the key. And that's the key when you're doing anything in scary situations. You never relax. You know, you never take your mind off what you're doing. And that hopefully keeps you in a safe place. So, Hilary, how important has it been for you in your business career to trust your instincts and to be able to tune into them? It's imperative, it's prerequisite, it's what's expected of a business person in any event um i mean i i would

think it would roll into hundreds of times i'd have been what you call done over had i not had the hackles on the back of my neck stand up and my orange warning signs come on so when you're talking about that kind of hackles on the back of your neck moment, I mean, have you always gone with that? Have you always gone with your gut? Always, always, always, always. And has it ever let you down? Never.

Never, ever, ever. And what about... And the only times that I have, I've let myself down by ignoring it. Right. And by thinking, wanting to think better things. So what about business? I mean, this is the distinction, I suppose, between kind of business life and personal life,

because I guess for many of us, you know, we can be one kind of person at work and then at home completely different. Have your instincts... Most people are, aren't they? Have your instincts served you just as well in your personal relationships? No, absolutely not. I'm absolutely appalling at it.

I'm terrible. Absolutely terrible. In fact, if there was an award in this country for the person who got it most wrong in their personal life, it should go to me. No, come over here and sit next to me. There's a spot right here i cannot take any prizes at all um i'm terrible in what way terrible i'm a sucker for a sob story

my instincts told me not to marry on three occasions and i did okay and what happened? A few million pound less. Few properties less. What was your instinct telling you and how did you respond to it? Kick them into touch. So you knew that it wasn't going to work out somewhere deep down?

Yeah, why did I do it? I still don't know. You live and learn and I have lived and i have learned that's really funny i know it's not funny but it is funny i could write you a book that's hysterical hillary please do kit for all that you know about instinct as an anthropologist i mean has have you kind of applied those lessons in your personal life? Well, I have to say I do now, but rather late in the game. It's because I think one of the things about falling in love or a kind of a romantic attachment that makes it different from every other kind of relationship, is that there's a sort of romance about the future that's kind of coming into play,

and you tend then to want the other person to be what you need them to be in order for this feeling to be fulfilled. And as a result, and I think especially, it's so interesting to me how people have written self-help books about it, how intelligent people and women who have great insights, who are great people to work with, who are sharp judges of character, turn up with these creatures that everybody is. You know what I mean? Well, we're going to make a committee because I've decided that for,

I've been married twice, and if I should ever do this again, I want you four ladies to be my vetting panel because I am such a bad judge. Absolutely. You know, we have a series. I'd do that. That would be fabulous. I'm in a civil partnership with someone I've been with for about 30 years. So I'll be there.

More could be front and center, I think, you know. She's got the CV to back it up. But we'll have them pitch, and then you guys can come and tell me. And if you tell me no for once i will believe you and i will yeah well listen so why is this then that you know we are able to allow ourselves to kind of tune into our intuition at work but not in our personal lives but kind of override it in our personal lives sometimes why does that happen well i think it probably can happen to us anywhere but we sometimes in our we care more about certain outcomes i suspect in our personal lives you know

we want love to be real we want someone to like us if we like them and we and hope hope is a painful human emotion and it's so hard to get rid of sorry i'm hitting the microphone it's so hard to get rid of it and it endures and it hangs around and if there's even a shred of possibility around the edges of a jagged hole of not hope you will cling on to that thing and humans are amazing for we set out to confirm that we're right about something we pretty much never try and rule things out let's just see if i'm wrong about that we just don't think that way it's not how we work So if you combine that together with hope, we will keep, even if everything is, we've got all the klaxons are going off

and yellow lights are flashing, it will not matter. If that's really where our heart, our hope is taking us, we will overrule all of it. I have never heard anyone make optimism sound so depressing. I think it's so depressing. I was going to say that. But a lot of the time it's very useful.

But if things, you know, when it hangs around after everything else is really telling you, no, let this one go, it's painful. That's when it goes wrong. I mean, it's interesting, isn't it, with intuition and kind of instinct, there is this idea that came from somewhere of women's intuition and women kind of having being more keyed into their instincts where does that come from and why kids i mean anthropologically we'd say it's because women do the emotional labor of the family and of the household and of human

beings and that it doesn't matter you know that happens cross-culturally everywhere in the world you look it's the women women who are looking after things. And when you think even what we do in terms of nurturing infants, the first thing we're doing is reflecting back to an infant what it's showing us. So the baby is crying and we make a crying face. And then the baby knows what crying looks like because it sees us. And so we do that all the time. And then I think it means that we always think that we can find a way. Since if life is an experiment and a relationship is an experiment, there are so many

confounders in any complicated relationship, especially say marriage or children. You're constantly trying to figure out, is it this? Is it that? If I did this, if I did that, it takes years to figure out before you finally say, okay, that's it. I'm done. You know what I mean? I may not have done everything I could do, but I've done everything I'm going to do about this. So if women are kind of culturally,

if the roles that women play mean that they have to kind of use their instincts more, has that led to people mistrusting instinct itself in societies? I mean, you know, there are some theories, aren't there, about this kind of link between ideas about witchcraft and people's suspicion that women might be witches and that being kind of linked to women using instincts and unconscious. I do think that there's a lot about intuition that leads directly to suspicion and that if people can't see, I mean, with the dawning of a kind of very rationalist mode of doing things, that became one way of discrediting a kind of tacit knowledge. But it goes back to the kinds of things that actually we've all been talking about in different domains, which is that first you have the feeling, then you seek the evidence, because suspicion is just the start. It's just the beginning of the whole process.

This is the kind of unconscious process. Yeah, and then you want some proof. And I think if we even, when I was thinking about this program, one of the things that came to mind are some of the many things in Shakespeare, but certainly Othello, where Iago, who's a brilliant judge of character and who constantly casts doubt in other people's minds, not just Othello's, but other characters in the play as well. Everybody trusts him because he reflects back to them what they want to hear about themselves. And yet when Othello is unsettled and doubts his wife, he seeks evidence. He needs evidence. Iago has cleverly snitched this handkerchief from Desdemona. And so he can produce this. Once you have the evidence, it stops being suspicion. It

becomes knowledge. And then you have to do something about it. So in some ways, you're almost happier with the suspicion because at least you can say, ah, well, So in some ways, you're almost happier with the suspicion because at least you can say, ah, well, maybe it's me, maybe it's this, maybe it's that. Once you know it's not you, then if you don't do something about it, you're a chump. And then, you know... Sophie, what do you think about this idea

that intuition might be more associated with women historically? I don't know if I do empirically think we can support it. So if you look at people's ability to read emotions, or say, for example, do this PC microexpressions, men are as good at it as women. And when I do tests of authenticity and emotion, men are as good at it as women. If you look at who can spot liars, no one can spot liars.

Men are as bad as it is women if you look at who can spot liars, no one can spot liars, men are as bad as it is women and then often you know, men do it, we consider it to be clubability and charmingness and someone who can really, you know kind of get the best out of a situation that's all the same kind of interpersonal skills but it's not, we're not kind of

saying oh that's just because that's, you know, women can do that, so we label it differently we label it, it's like everybody gossips but men get to call it networking, you know, that's just because that's, you know, women can do that. So we label it differently when we label it. It's like everybody gossips, but men get to call it networking. You know, it's the same. OK, yeah, I agree with that because I think some women, you know, I am not that kind of woman. In fact, if I think that someone is, you know, showing some kind of emotion, I go, you know, this is not my cup of tea.

You know, I miss all those signs, and sometimes I do that deliberately, if I'm being honest, whereas my partner will notice all of those things. Did you not notice this? And I'll go, no. But I probably did, but I didn't... And I think you're absolutely right. Hilary, tell me about this idea of a kind of bullshit detector.

When I interviewed the artist laurie anderson she said that one of her rules for life was you've got to have a really really good bullshit detector and i guess in the music industry and in the art world that's very important business i'm guessing you have to have a you have to have a really really good one how can you tell when someone's lying i mean sophie said nobody can spot liars, but, you know, you must have kind of learned a thing or two. You can't spot liars. I'm not in test. You can't. People are at chance.

It's not easy. And it doesn't mean to say you can't get to it, but just empirically, even I, you know, I think I'd work on this and I was like, oh, I'll do this, it'll be fine. I failed completely. People just aren't good. Because people don't do only one thing when they're lying. But you will have concrete examples.

Well, shut up. Sorry. No, I believe you can. Because if you go over the ground that they've actually first recited to you, you will find if they're lying, there'll be some chink. That's exactly it. So it's like a cognitive interview, then, isn't it? It's like if I was interviewing you, I would be saying, well, tell me what you did, in very broad terms,

and then I'd bring it right down to when you left, what time was it, which way did you turn, what were you wearing? So that, you know, what you're doing is, you're not kind of guessing, because I don't think that's as simple. Do you think it's any different in normal? No, I think that you do that. You're doing that cognitive interview. It's just you're asking different questions

that are based on the information you need. So you're asking someone to literally put themselves in the story that they're telling you, effectively, and asking for a level of detail that they couldn't kind of confect. It'll take them longer. They'll have to work it out. They'll have to think about it. Because we have a cultural belief that people do things when they're lying.

We think liars look away. Whereas, in fact, if anything, liars tend to look at you because they want to know if the lie is working. Or they touch their face. They don't. None of that works. Lie detectors don't work. Or they look to the left. I always thought that was a strange one.

Wouldn't it be easier? They look to the left. So people don't look to the left? I thought it was when you're recalling information from... No, no. Look to the left, do you look to the right? No, I think that's absolute rubbish. I think the only way to do it is to do your homework.

Exactly, and exactly what Hilary and you both just went with completely different ends of things. You take them through the story and you keep going back through it and if they make errors or they can't work it out, they take too long, you will notice. That's right. You'll spit that out immediately. And you tend to, you know, before you even start

to commence that journey with them, something's happened. Yeah. Something has, some alarm bells rang to make you actually go through that. That's right, yeah, while you go more detailed. So can we transpose these skills into other arenas then? You know, not a police interview or a kind of business transaction, but our interpersonal relationships, you know, at work and at home. Can we get better at tuning into our instincts and should we?

I think I once went to a talk by a police officer who came to give us a talk at work and she was talking about personal safety. She said, you know, you think there's something wrong. There probably is something wrong. Don't wait around to find out. And I actually found that incredibly useful advice for life. I use it quite often at work because there is a reason why you're picking that up. don't wait round to find out. And I've actually found that incredibly useful advice for life. I use it quite often at work because there is a reason why you're picking that up.

Maybe it's something somebody else is doing, maybe it's something about the situation, maybe it's something you're doing. But you should pay attention to it and take a step back and think about it. So I actually try and reflect on it when it happens, when you pick up the alarm bells. Clearly you should all do it when you're looking for husbands as well.

Too late now, she's told me before, not married. Kate, what about using our instincts in social settings, at parties, for example? Kind of going back to what Sophie was just saying, yes, I think the main thing is the idea of stepping back. Human beings wish to be understood. People want to be understood. But in order to really understand them, you need to kind of shut up yourself and just stop thinking that it's so much about you. And then and once you do that,

you see the little things that people have put out for you. And you can just kind of take those little threads and the great tapestry of conversation and just give a little pull to one and see what happens you know really zero in on on those the processes that sophie was describing earlier and read people exactly and sometimes the whole facade comes tumbling down because people want you to know that it's terrible or that it's not the way it seems. Sophie, the studies that you've done, has that changed the way that you approach people and that you kind of conduct yourself in social situations? It does make me think about it and sort of...

I tend to go back and chew over things. This is a ridiculous example. When I was a teenager, I had a dream that my father, who worked in a carpet factory had fallen into a loom and I said oh dad I dreamt that he fell in a loom he went how did you know and he had and he got trapped and and he was and he was my father was like this he was so embarrassed about it just didn't tell anybody but he was black and blue and what I'd clearly picked up on was he was in pain he was in tremendous pain and he was walking with real difficulty and he hadn't said anything there's obviously a lot of stuff up and I picked up on

that and what else could have happened to him you know my subconscious had just worked away on it and so I try not to like be really really pathologically weird in my interactions with people but it has made me I think a lot more about how conversations work and I think a lot about laughter in conversation and I try and pay attention to it not in a way I'm going oh that sounded like posed laughter I don't think that was spontaneous laughter I think you could have stopped at any time I don't think that was the involuntary midline vocalization system in control yeah I don't quite go there but I do I do you know it's made me it's particularly actually in situations when things go wrong. So if I, I've started noticing why I find people's laughter irritating.

It's almost never actually anything weird about their laughter. It's almost. What's that about? Because I've experienced that. You wonder, you think, why? Yeah. You know, as someone I know who's always kind of going, oh, ha, ha, ha. And I thought, oh, they laugh so inappropriately.

Their laughter, that's inappropriate. And what I realised was it's not them, it's me. I don't like them and I don't join in when they laugh and normally we join in with laughter. So they're putting laughter out there, ha, ha, ha, and I'm like, uh-uh, you're not getting my laughter. We don't have that kind of relationship. But the thing is I attribute

it to them and in fact we do it with laughter all the time we will think so-and-so is hilarious they are just amazing oh they make me laugh what we mean is I really like so-and-so and I laugh when I run it's our own emotion we're describing but we attribute it to them and that can be good or bad and that so it has kind of started to make me think about that. And as I say now, I made everybody really uncomfortable about their laughter, but it's been very interesting and a kind of accompaniment of introspection to my rather boring normal science.

And Hilary, what about you? I mean, all these years of kind of trusting your instincts, reading people, you must carry that over into social situations and into, you know your personal life when you get to know people. And I think, like it or not, you do get to a scenario through years and years and years of doing that and behaving like that that you actually meet somebody and you think oh I don't really like this person. Whereas 30 years ago, I'd have never, ever admitted that.

Would you have been more keen to please, do you think? Or is it something to do with that? I don't think I'd have recognised that 30 years ago. I think 30 years ago, I'd have tried to make them like me. Yeah, exactly. Whereas now, if I don't like them, I'm quite happy to turn my back on them and walk away. Yeah.

Mo, what do you think about that, I wonder? Nowadays, my sort of activities are with people who... Most of the people I meet now are nice. That's the really interesting thing. So these sort of little nerve endings that say, I don't like that or I'm not very happy about that, they're hardly even there.

I'm sure they've disappeared somewhere, you know, wherever. It might be like a phantom limb though. Every now and again, you might just get a little crackle. You hear an irritating laugh. I'm Sarah Trelevan, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered.

There was somebody out there who's faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this?

From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story. Settle in. Available now.