May 12, 2026 • 36 mins
From ancient Chinese lie detection methods involving a mouthful of rice, to the clever ways toddlers and birds stretch the truth, to the surprisingly honest way that Charles Ponzi got his start in business, Will and Mango have a whole lot to say about lying (honestly!).
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This episode originally aired on January 25, 2025.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope
and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Guess what, Mango?
Speaker 1 (00:12):
What's that will?
Speaker 2 (00:13):
So I came across this study, and you know I
love a good study, Mango, But this was from researchers
at the University of Wisconsin Lacrosse, and you know I
love University of Wisconsin Lacrosse. And this is a pretty
weird one. So here's what they did. They asked six
hundred and thirty two people to document every single lie
they told over the course of three months.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
That is incredible.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
So what they find out, well, among other things, they
discovered that the number one reason people lied was to
avoid others. Oh, I mean that kind of makes sense
to me, Yeah, it does. And the second most common
reason people lied was for jokes or pranks, which also makes.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Sense, like the time you told me the CEO of
Vegemite was a huge fan of the show and wanted
to send us a lifetime supply of vegemite.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
That is, that's a good example of a lie, yep.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
But from what you're describing, these are fairly like harmless lies, right,
So is a lesson that lying isn't necessarily so bad.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
I do like that that's your conclusion. I mean, the
lesson isn't quite that simple. Like, It's a highly complex
form of social interaction that can serve many different purposes,
and so lies can range from lighthearted and funny to
of course malicious to downright dangerous, depending on the intention
behind them and the cultural context too. So people have
(01:31):
been trying to understand lying for thousands of years, and
it definitely merits more research or at least a podcast episode,
I'd say.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
So, will I do have something to confess?
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Okay, I'm nervous.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
I read that University of Wisconsin the study last week,
and I just pretended I didn't know about it, so
this show would sound better.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Oh man, well, you know what I actually was lying too,
because I knew that you had read the University of
Wisconsin study and I pretended that I didn't. So it's
just like this to an interesting start. But actually it's
the perfect way to kick off an episode about lying.
There is a whole lot to talk about, and I
guarantee from this point forward we will be one hundred
percent truthful.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
So let's dive in.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Hey there, podcast listeners, welcome to part time genius. I'm
Will Pearson, and as always, I'm joined by my good
friend Mangesh hot ticketter and over there in the booth
waving a red hot poker, that's our pal and producer
Dylan fig and he's actually waving it pretty aggressively. I'm
not really sure what he's doing, but it looks a
little bit dangerous. If I'm being honest, I.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Am glad that he's wearing oven mits at least, But
believe it or not, I think I know what he's
trying to demonstrate it. So, okay. Back in the Middle
eight lying was considered a terrible sin, and people, specifically
Christian people, believe that the only way to know if
someone was lying was by testing them with a trial
by ordeal. So, in other words, the accused was put
(03:12):
through a physical challenge, and, according to the logic at
the time, if they were honest, God would prevent them
from getting hurt. Now, one of the ordeals was touching
the person's tongue to a red hot poker. Obviously, this
resulted in a lot of burnt tongues, which was seen
as proof of dishonesty.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Yikes. All right, well, thank you Dylan for that terrifying visual.
It is not common that we see Dylan looking terrifying
as one of the nicest humans on the planet. But
good job there, Dylan. All right, So Mengo, it sounds
like people took lying very seriously back then.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
They definitely did so. Other trials by ordeal included walking
over burning coals and being forced to swallow poison. And
if you're thinking, wow, that seems kind of extreme, this
actually all traces back to Saint Augustine. He wrote a
famous treatise on lying called Online and Augustine argued that
lying is like a disease. It supposedly like destroys your
(04:05):
integrity and puts you in direct opposition to God. He's
also the guy who came up with the idea that
if you always tell the truth, God will actually swoop
in to protect you from the harm. But medieval Europe
didn't invent the idea of testing for truth. They just
kind of took it to this new, more brutal level.
In ancient China, accused liars had to chew a mouthful
(04:26):
of dry rice while someone recited the accusations against them,
and then they'd spit the rice out, and if it
seemed too dry when they spit it out because of
their dry mouth from nervousness. Then that was considered proof
that they had lied.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
What a weird way to like test if somebody's lying.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Yeah, these early lie detectors were very, very ineffective, but
I guess it shows that concern about lying is practically universal. Wait,
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this ancient Hindu text, the yard Javeda, and it dates
(07:41):
back to one thousand BCE and it has tips for
royalty who are worried that their servants are undercover mercenaries
lying about their allegiance. So it says, quote, a person
who intends to poison food may be recognized. He does
not answer questions, or they are evasive answers. He speaks nonsense,
rubs the great toe along the ground and shivers. His
(08:02):
face is discolored. He rubs the roots of his hair
with his fingers, and he tries by every means to
leave the house.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
It kind of feels like they would not be very
good mercenaries if they're doing all that stuff.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
I know. But this gets to something really interesting, which
is that throughout history people have believed that observing someone's
nonverbal behaviors, like their cues of things like fidgeting or
rubbing their nose, that's an easy way to tell if
they're lying. So you don't really need the hot pokers
or the vials of poison, I guess.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
And that's basically the idea behind lie detectors looking for
those sorts of clues.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
Right, yeah, So modern light detectors or polygraphs were invented
in the early nineteen hundreds, but some of the technology
they use was developed in the eighteen hundreds, and all
they really do is measure changes in certain vital signs,
including things like blood pressure, breathing, perspiration. And although they're
still used by law enforcement and government agencies, they're widely
(08:57):
considered a pseudoscience. And that's because the physiological changes they
measure it can be triggered by lots of things like
not just the stress of lying.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Well you think about it, like the fear of being arrested,
or stressed from being interrogated.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
Right. In fact, the ACLU has opposed the use of
polygraph machines for decades, saying they don't work and they're
a violation of people's privacy rights. And remember, the machine
itself doesn't offer any conclusions. It just kind of records
this data for people. But this is the part I
didn't realize. It's that a human polygraph examiner actually has
to interpret that data to decide what it means, Like
(09:31):
is that a normal spike in sweating because the room
is hot, or does it indicate a lie? Which means
the results of a polygraph test can actually be tainted
by human bias, I.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Mean, like crazy bias. It does feel like it's just
so weird that in the twenty first century we're still
using what seems like the same light detection concepts ancient people,
that we just exchanged the dry rice for some sort
of fancy machine. I guess, yeah, pretty much. All right, Well,
you know, regardless of what goes on physically, telling a
lot does require a whole bunch of complicated brain activity.
(10:03):
Like first you have to come up with the lie
and mentally detach yourself from the truth. Then you have
to choose your words and behaviors carefully. Is to sell
the lie and avoid suspicion. And that requires understanding what
your audience knows now and then making guesses about what
they might discover later. Then you have to process the
response to the initial lie and spin out mora lies
(10:25):
is you need to back yourself up. The scientific term
for all of this is called cognitive load.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
That is so funny, like it feels like lying comes
so naturally at this point and you need to write,
but like it sounds exhausting when you put it that way.
So does this mean like there's a specific area of
the brain that controls our ability to lie?
Speaker 2 (10:45):
You know, Actually it's the opposite of this, because there's
this heavy cognitive load. Lying involves multiple areas of the
brain really working together. So these are areas responsible for
critical stuff like self awareness and social cognition. And one
thing that really fast sates me is the fact that
lyne can actually change our memories. That's because memories aren't
set in stone, and so the way we remember something
(11:07):
can be distorted over time, and if a lie is
repeated often enough the truth is then suppressed. It can
actually distort our memory of an event.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
It also explains a lot about history and also like
collective memories.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
Right, it really does.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
I mean you might be wondering how and when do
we develop the ability to lie? And it turns out
there's a whole body of research about little kids and lying,
and we're going to chat more about all of that
right after a quick break.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
Okay, Well, so I know you've done a ton of
research about kids' brains and how they developed the ability
to lie. But first I have to ask, like, did
you tell lies when you were a kid or you know,
can you remember what your kids first lies were? You know?
Speaker 2 (12:01):
I I know that I did. I don't remember a
whole lot of things specifically, but I remember that my
lies that I would tell were usually just like ridiculous
stories like coming in from playing outside or something and
then just making up some absurd story that probably deep
down I felt like my parents knew that I was lying,
but I'd still go for it anyway. But how about you?
Speaker 1 (12:24):
Uh? Yeah, I remember like being four and telling my
mom that I went to see Superman at the movie
theater and like pretending to fly around like it, but
I'd actually seen Return of the Jedi, And when she
found out, she was upset not be excited. See Superman
just because she thought this like innocent kid could never
(12:44):
lie to her, you know.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
Ah, yeah, that's a heartbreaking moment for mom.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Ruby actually had an amazing first lie that I remember.
Like Ruby was also about four at this time, and
Henriett had a birthday party at his school and so
Ruby was like, oh, yeah, we had hake at my
school too. I was like, oh, was there a birthday party?
And we was like no, no, no birthday party. And
I said, oh yeah, then then why was that cake?
(13:09):
And we was like, uh the classroom anniversary. It was
like a classroom niverse and like can I can I
text your teachers to find out about this classroomnniversary? And
we was like no, no, no, they don't.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
Like the text.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
And so I said, you know, oh so, uh so
did you sing the traditional classroom anniversary song? And we
was like yeah, and I said, oh would you sing it?
And Ruby, without like skipping a be goes, it's a
classroom manniversary. It's a classroom manniversary. We do it in
the big building.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
Oh yeah, I heard that one. That's that is a classic.
That's pretty amazing. Ruby.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
So anyway, I think it's time to get to the science.
So let's let's get to it.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
I don't know, I feel like it's time for more songs,
so let's do more of that, all right. Well, the
general consensus is that kids start lying when they're about
two or three years old, and usually they do it
when they've done something that they know they shouldn't do,
but you know, their brains aren't sophisticated enough to take
that extra step of thinking, like will the person I'm
talking to actually believe what I'm saying? And so you
(14:15):
get situations like a toddler standing there covered in paint
and you say, did you open the paint? And they,
of course deny it.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
So at what age does this start to change?
Speaker 2 (14:27):
Usually around four they start to take the listener's perspective
into account, and there's something psychologists called the theory of mind,
which is the ability to reason about other people's mental
states and then act accordingly. So the kid realizes that
you can see the paint and you'll be wondering how
that paint got there, and so they might say something like,
you know, my brother did it, which is a nice try,
(14:48):
of course, but maybe the brothers been upstairs all day.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
So they're close to getting this lie right, but there's
still some holes in the story.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Yeah, usually there are. It actually just is this side
note reminds me of our good friend Adam that talked
about a high school experience when he was sitting next
to a girl that he had a crush on and
he sneezed into his hands. She looks over at him.
He clearly has snot all in his hands, and he
just looks at her and he says, it wasn't me.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Do you remember this story, Yes, it's pretty great.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
I just thought that was such a great response. Anyway,
So things really start to change around seven or eight,
and that's when they can account for a wider range
of facts and contexts like in the lie. So maybe
they say, you know, my brother did it, and you say,
but he's in his room, And then a slightly older
kid has the capacity to react with something like he
(15:43):
came down for a snack and he was playing with
the paint, but then he went back upstairs, you know,
just taking it to another level.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
Really, it is wild to think of little kids like
almost like new versions of AI, Like they just keep
getting told better at lying.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
Yeah, yeah, it's a good way to think about it
like that. That training over time, and it's even more
whild to realize that this is something parents have known
about for a long time. Actually, Charles Darwin wrote about
toddler liars after doing some observational research to his own kids.
This was, of course, back in the eighteen forties. So
what happened is one day he caught his two and
a half year old son coming out of the dining
(16:17):
room with something very obviously wrapped up in a pinafore.
And this is, you know, a dress like garment. And
Darwin says, hey, buddy, what do you got there? And
the kids like nothing, go away, and so Darwin checks
and it turns out he'd stolen a.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Pickle, the old pickle and a pinafore.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
Bit yeah, you know, the whole bit there. But the
point is there's ample evidence that very young children have
the executive functions needed for lying. More complicated skills like
memory and inhibition control. They develop a little bit later,
and that makes their lies more elaborate and believable. And
what researchers have found is that kids with strong cognitive
(16:56):
abilities actually make better liars. So in a weird way,
lying as a sign of reaching important developmental milestones.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
I like the idea of grade school is giving out
stickers for lying. You know, so the only thing cuter
than a toddler telling whoppers is an animal who's trying
to trick you.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
So were you suggesting that animals also lie?
Speaker 1 (17:18):
It kind of depends on what you mean by lie.
So usually when we say someone is lying, we mean
they're knowingly making a false statement with the intent to deceive. Right, So,
animals can't talk, obviously, so they don't make statements the
way we do. But if you expand this definition to
include behaviors, then you know animals do engage in deceptive
behavior all the time. So if you think about possums
(17:40):
when they're threatened, they pretend to be dead. I also
read about this bird called the forktailed drongo, which is
native to the Kalahari Desert in Africa, and when it
sees a predator like an eagle over ahead, it lets
out a squeaky alarm call. Now, other desert animals, including meerkats,
have learned to hide when they hear this alarm as well,
But sometimes the drongo plays a trick. If it sees
(18:02):
a mere cat holding food it wants, maybe like a
nice juicy lizard, it starts squeaking the alarm, and the
mere cat drops the food and runs for cover, and
then the drongo swoops in and takes the meal.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
Wow. I mean that definitely sounds like the bird equivalent
of making a fault statement with the intent to deceive,
don't you think?
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Yeah? So Weirdly, it's the last part that people actually
disagree about whether or not there's intent. So clearly, the
drongo knows that if it makes the alarm call, the
mere cat will run, and the possum knows that if
it lies really still, its predator may walk away. But
some scientists actually call this functional deception, not intentional deception,
and they argue that the intent depends on something you
(18:40):
mentioned a few minutes ago, the theory of mind. And
it's just not clear that animals have the ability to
think about what other creatures know or believe.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
So I guess, in other words, the drongo isn't thinking
if I yell, the dumb meer cat will believe there's
an eagle. It just thinks when I yell, the mere
cat runs.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
Yeah, pretty much. But there have been some stuff that
suggest animals, particularly great apes, may have a theory of mind,
and in one experiment, researchers gave an ape eye trackers
so they could tell where it was looking. And then,
and I swear I'm not making this up, an assistant
in an ape costume ran into the cage area puts
an object under one of the two boxes on the floor.
(19:18):
A researcher pretends to watch this happen and then leaves
the room. And then when this assistant in ape costume
is there alone, he puts the object under the other
box for a moment, and then he picks it up
and runs away. So when the researcher comes back and
reaches for the boxes, the ape looks at him and
then stared at the first box as if he knew
(19:40):
the researcher was expecting the object to be there, which means, like,
you know, the ape is picking up on all these
cues and is more aware of others' behaviors. And actually
there's video of this on YouTube.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
Oh man, I've got to see this. It's such a
fascinating idea. And I also love the idea that like
a guy with several PhDs having to run around and
then a costume pretending to be an ape. So this
is definitely something I'm going to watch all right, So
to switch gears here, Mango, I want to tell you
about lying and culture clashes. So you mentioned earlier that
lying means knowingly making a false statement with the intention
(20:14):
to deceive. That's a good definition, but some types of
deception aren't so clear cut, and the context really does matter.
So omitting information or being purposely ambiguous, those can be
types of lies. Even accurate information can be used in
misleading ways. And the way we interpret these nuances and
the way we assess other people's honesty, it really comes
(20:36):
down to the norms that we've learned from our culture.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
You know, this is a great quote by Montaigne that
Mary actually pointed me too, and it goes, quote the
reverse of truth has one hundred thousand forms, And it
sounds like that, right, Like there's so many ways lie
in just like one way to simply tell the truth.
But can you give me some examples of what you're
thinking about here?
Speaker 2 (20:57):
Yeah, for sure. But by the way, Mary, great quo.
That's pretty awesome. All right. So, according to research, highly
individualistic cultures like the United States, they see lies very
differently than more collective as cultures like many in Asia. So,
for example, an American business manager might consider it dishonest
to withhold negative feedback from an employee, even if it's harsh.
(21:18):
But a Japanese manager might not see it that way
at all, because they're considering potential harm to an employee
and to their relationship. So for them, that's part of
being a trustworthy person. So maybe they downplay the bad
review or delivered an indirect fashion. But if you imagine
an American employee getting vague feedback might make them think,
(21:39):
what are they hiding from me?
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Yeah, and I guess in both scenarios, people are they're
trying to do the right thing, and there's no right,
there's no actually intent to deceive.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
There No, that's exactly right. I mean this extends to
speech patterns too, So most Native English speakers in the
United States consider clear direct language to be a sign
of honesty, and we're a little more suspicious of verbal
meandering or someone using a lot of euphemisms. But that's
just how some cultures communicate. Meanwhile, they might interpret our
bluntness as bad manners. And you know, of course, then
(22:11):
there's body language. So in the US, holding eye contact
is usually considered proof that someone's being honest, but in
other parts of the world that can actually be seen
as rude or aggressive.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
Yeah, well this is a podcast, so so you all
can't see my eyes, but I'm going to use the
straightforward American approach to honest communication. Right now, it is
time for an ad break so we can make money
and keep the show going. That's how honest I'm being.
But we'll be back soon.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Welcome back to Part Time Genius, where we're learning the
truth about lies. All right, so, Mango, what have you
got for us next?
Speaker 1 (22:59):
So far, we've mostly been talking about lies at a
personal level, but lying isn't just about how we relate
to one another. It can also have legal consequences, including
what we call fraud. So under US law, fraud can
be a civil or a criminal matter, depending on the situation,
and in civil cases is defined as a misrepresentation of fact,
either intentional or negligent, and that causes injury or harm
(23:23):
to another person. Criminal fraud usually falls into specific categories
that have their own definition, So you think about things
like financial fraud or insurance fraud, or even something like forgery. Right,
And although none of this is new, technology has caused
the scale of criminal fraud to explode in recent years.
So just to give you a sense, from twenty eighteen
(23:44):
to twenty twenty two, the US federal government lost between
two hundred and thirty three billion and five hundred and
twenty one billion dollars each year to fraud. And that
doesn't even count money lost at the state level. And
that's billion with a B like that is daggering. Yeah,
And if you thought those numbers were big. According to
(24:04):
the World Economic Forum, cybercrime, which often involves fraud, obviously
will cost the world ten point five trillion this year alone.
But even more than the economic impact, there are personal costs.
So you think about identity theft is one of the
most common types of cyber fraud, and in a survey
by the Identity Theft Resource Center, sixty percent of ID
(24:26):
theft victims found themselves struggling to cover their bills in
the aftermath of the incident, and sixteen percent reported feeling suicidal.
It's really a serious problem.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
That is wild, all right. So when you say technology
is driving all this, what exactly mean by that?
Speaker 1 (24:41):
So some of it's the obvious stuff, like we do
our banking online, we give out our email addresses, like candy.
We share personal information on social media and a lot
of us aren't great about checking privacy settings or changing
our passwords, so fraudsters have plenty of material to work with,
and they also have more points of entry to our
lives and our finance is now, but the World Economic
(25:02):
Forum reports that the biggest problem right now is generative AI.
So criminals are using AI language tools to crank out
phishing emails that seem really authentic. They're using AI image
generators to create deep fakes of people's faces that let
them pass identity verification checks. According to a recent FBI warning,
They're even using AI voice cloning to create deceptive audio
(25:24):
clips that quote impersonate a close relative in a crisis situation,
asking for immediate financial assistance or demanding a ransom.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
So, I mean, this is obviously just terrifying, and I'm wondering, though,
before I throw my phone out the window, is there
anything I can do about this?
Speaker 1 (25:41):
So, from a tech standpoint, there's been a lot of
interest in digital identity wallets like that would combine biometrics,
ID documents, personal information to create a secure log in
that you can use multiple places. Proponents say it's like
being asked to show your physical driver's license, so much
safer than easily hacked password. But civil liberties groups the
one that this could mean sacrificing privacy.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
I thought you were just going to say something like
change your passwords. I was kind of hoping that was
where you were going with it.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
I mean, you could do that too, You should do that, actually,
But the FBI has another tip that is so low tech,
it's kind of brilliant, and it's just create a secret
passphrase with your family and close friends. So if you
ever get a call that sounds like me asking you
to wire ten thousand dollars, you can ask for the
phrase to confirm it's me.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
Woh, okay, that's a good idea, all right. With all
of this raises another question, and that's what makes someone
lie or commit fraud, Like, we all know it's wrong,
so why does it keep happening? So Dan Arielli is
a professor of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke, and
he's done a lot of research about this kind of thing.
So he pointed out that our entire legal system operates
(26:47):
on the theory of cost benefit analysis, Like if you
know there's a serious penalty for being dishonest. You'll decide
if it's worth it or not, and you won't do
it if you decide that it isn't. And the problem
here is that it's just not how lying works in
real life, and that's because humans have the ability to
rationalize dishonesty. So Arielli did this experiment with a vending machine.
(27:10):
He set the price mechanism to zero sense, but put
labels on the snack saying that each item costs seventy
five cents. He also taped a sign to the machine
that read, quote, if there's something wrong with this machine,
please call this number, and then he put his own
cell phone number.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
That's clever. So what happened when people use the machine.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
Well, they'd put their money in and the machine would
dispense multiple snacks and return all of their cash, and
not a single person called to report the malfunction, although
Arielli noted that nobody took more than four bags of
free candy either. So his theory is that people were
rationalizing their decision based on previous vending machine experiences, like
(27:50):
we've all had that situation where you put your money
in and it doesn't give you a snack, or as
he puts it, people were just kind of sorting out
the vending karma in the world, I guess.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
I mean, that's pretty fascinating. Although obviously there's a big
difference between taking candy and committing identity theft.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
Yeah, of course, but understanding the ways criminals make sense
of what they're doing could help stop fraud before it
even starts. So, for example, a Reli found that people
would behave more honestly if they spend time reflecting on
their personal morals or their ethics. So he tested this
by asking one group of people to list ten books
they read in high school and another group to recall
(28:29):
the Ten Commandments. Then he gave both groups reward based
tests that included opportunities to cheat, and he found that
people who thought about books engaged in widespread cheating, while
the Ten Commandments group did not cheat at all. So
this is a reminder, don't read kids, you know what
I mean. And so what's really interesting is that he
repeated the test with people who identified as atheists. Because
(28:52):
they didn't know the Ten Commandments. He just had them
swear on a Bible. After doing that, they still didn't cheat.
Speaker 1 (28:59):
That is incredible. So well, we're almost at the end
of the episode, tell me the truth. Did you prepare
anything for the fact? Off?
Speaker 2 (29:05):
I sure did, Mango, Let's get to it.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
If there's one man whose name has become synonymous with dishonesty,
it is Charles Ponzi, and we've all heard his name,
but I thought we'd get into these stories. So Ponzi
was born in northern Italy in eighteen eighty two, and
apparently his family had at one time been pretty well off,
but by the time he came along, they had lost
their fortune. He tried going to university in Rome, but
dropped out and decided to take his chances in America Now.
(29:34):
Ponzi later claimed that he had set sail with two
hundred dollars in savings, most of which he lost on
the ship crossing the Atlantic because he got swindled by
a card sharp Once in the US, though, he bounced
around a series of jobs in low level crimes. But
in nineteen twenty he launched the scheme that made him famous. Basically,
there was this thing called an international reply coupon, which
(29:56):
was like a voucher many countries accepted in exchange for
local postage stamps. Ponzi realized that he could buy cheap
IRCs in Italy and exchange them for more expensive stance
in the US. As he put it in his memoir, quote,
the racket fell into my lap like a ripe apple.
It looked good, luscious. I examined it for flaws, found none,
and I had to bite. I wouldn't have been human
(30:17):
if I didn't. And just to be clear, that part
of the scheme was not illegal. It's just simple arbitrage,
which happens in the stock market all the time. The
problem was when he started tricking thousands of people into
investing in his operation, claiming they'd earn a fifty percent
return in ninety days. Now, every time an investor gave money,
he used it to pay off earlier investors. So people
(30:38):
thought they were getting huge returns and thought it was
all real. And in the first eight months of nineteen twenty,
Ponzi actually made fifteen million dollars, which is about two
hundred and thirty five million dollars in today's money. I
had no idea how much money he'd made.
Speaker 2 (30:51):
That's huge.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
It all came crashing down that August when Boston Post
Reporters launched an investigation that ended in eighty six counts
of mail fraud and a lengthy prison sentence.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
All right, well, speaking of elaborate and profitable lies, the
FTC reports that in twenty twenty two, almost seventy thousand
people were the victims of romance scammers. Now, this is
a type of fraud that often begins on dating apps.
This is where someone lies about who they are, usually
in order to get you to send them money. And
it's an extra malicious form of cat fishing. Now, one
(31:22):
of the trickiest things for a catfisher to explain is
why they can't meet up in person. So, according to
the FTC, they'll often build a fake identity around a
job that keeps them far away. And among romance scammers,
the most popular lie is quote I'm stationed on a
military base in another country. But another one that comes
up a lot is I'm an offshore oil rig worker.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
I mean, I think what's funny about that is it's
going to make online dating so hard for actual oil
rig workers.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
Like every sure I didn't think about that. I feel
so bad for the rig workers just trying to get dates.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
Anyway, I was curious where the word lie comes from,
and it turns out the term white lie is older
than I expected. The first known use occurred on April tenth,
fifteen sixty seven, when an English landowner named Ralph Adderley
wrote a letter to a friend describing his brother in
law by saying, quote, I do assure you he is
unsuspected of any untruth or other notable crime except a
(32:19):
white lie, which is taken for a small fault in
these parts.
Speaker 2 (32:23):
And it's definitely sort of a compliment I think. But
all right, well, for our final fact, here's the story
of a lie that was anything but harmless because it
almost threw off decades of archaeological research. So it was
back in nineteen twelve you have this amateur fossil hunter
named Charles Dawson. He wrote to the British paleontologist Sir
Arthur Smith Woodward, and he was claiming he'd unearthed parts
(32:46):
of a human skull in Piltdown. This was a village
near his home in Sussex. So Woodward helped expand the
excavation and eventually he and Dawson dug up parts of
a mandible, pieces of a skull, and multiple teeth there.
And so intriguingly, some of these teeth appeared to be
larger than a human's but smaller than an apes, and
(33:06):
so it was pointing to the possibility of an ancient
ancestor some five hundred thousand years old. Now, the British
scientific community was understandably excited about the evidence of a
creature dubbed the Piltdown Man, in part because a few
years earlier an ancient pre human jawbone had been discovered
in Germany. Now, in the run up to World War One,
(33:26):
tensions between Germany and the UK were running high, and
so the Piltdown Man was proof of England's importance and
the fossil record until nineteen fifty three, when new dating
techniques showed that his bones weren't all the same age,
and what's more, they were a mix of human and
eight bones. So this was proof of the deception, but
(33:47):
the question was who did it so. Finally, in two
thousand and nine, a paleoanthropologist named Isabelle de Grute used
DNA analysis and CT scanning to get an even closer
look at the Piltdowns samples. Here's what she found. She
found that all the teeth came from one orangutan and
that the bones had been coated in a sort of
(34:07):
putty to make them appear uniform and heavy. Even so,
she concluded that given the consistency of the cover up,
it was the work of one person, Charles Dawson. As
an amateur who dabbled in geology, archaeology and anthropology, he
would have known exactly what a real prehistoric find should
look like, and he had access to samples and to tools,
(34:30):
and as it turned out, he had perpetuated other smaller
frauds that were all an attempt to gain recognition by
the British scientific community.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
That's so weird, you know. I'd heard of Tilton men,
but I'd never realized that they'd figured out that Dawson
was behind it. And I guess he did end up
getting some recognition, but none the way he wanted. Yeah,
you know, if I'm being honest, which I am obviously,
I think he deserved Today's trophy for explaining how kids
become such expert liars. I think that bit of the
(34:59):
story was my favorit today.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
Thank you. It is fun, too fun to think about.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
Well that does it for this episode. If you like
our show, remember to rate and review us on the
Apple Store. Actually, I cannot help. But look at our
reviews and we've been sitting at seventeen ninety nine, seven
and ninety nine reviews, just hovering there for the last
few weeks and it hasn't gone up to eighteen hundred
and so someone out there help us out, help my
OCD out and get it to an even number. Also,
(35:28):
if you want to keep up with us on the socials,
remember you can find us up part Time Genius on
the gram. Anyway, we'll be back soon with another new episode,
but in the meantime from Gabe, Mary, Dylan, Will and myself,
thank you so much for listening. Part Time Genius is
(35:53):
a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. This show is hosted
by Will Pearson and me Mongaysh Heatique and research by
our goodpal Mary Philip Sandy. Today's episode was engineered and
produced by the wonderful Dylan Fagan with support from Tyler Klang.
The show is executive produced for iHeart by Katrina Norvell
(36:13):
and Ali Perry, with social media support from Sasha Gay,
trustee Dara Potts and Viny Shorey. For more podcasts from
Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope
and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Guess what, Mango?
Speaker 1 (00:12):
What's that will?
Speaker 2 (00:13):
So I came across this study, and you know I
love a good study, Mango, But this was from researchers
at the University of Wisconsin Lacrosse, and you know I
love University of Wisconsin Lacrosse. And this is a pretty
weird one. So here's what they did. They asked six
hundred and thirty two people to document every single lie
they told over the course of three months.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
That is incredible.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
So what they find out, well, among other things, they
discovered that the number one reason people lied was to
avoid others. Oh, I mean that kind of makes sense
to me, Yeah, it does. And the second most common
reason people lied was for jokes or pranks, which also makes.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Sense, like the time you told me the CEO of
Vegemite was a huge fan of the show and wanted
to send us a lifetime supply of vegemite.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
That is, that's a good example of a lie, yep.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
But from what you're describing, these are fairly like harmless lies, right,
So is a lesson that lying isn't necessarily so bad.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
I do like that that's your conclusion. I mean, the
lesson isn't quite that simple. Like, It's a highly complex
form of social interaction that can serve many different purposes,
and so lies can range from lighthearted and funny to
of course malicious to downright dangerous, depending on the intention
behind them and the cultural context too. So people have
(01:31):
been trying to understand lying for thousands of years, and
it definitely merits more research or at least a podcast episode,
I'd say.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
So, will I do have something to confess?
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Okay, I'm nervous.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
I read that University of Wisconsin the study last week,
and I just pretended I didn't know about it, so
this show would sound better.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Oh man, well, you know what I actually was lying too,
because I knew that you had read the University of
Wisconsin study and I pretended that I didn't. So it's
just like this to an interesting start. But actually it's
the perfect way to kick off an episode about lying.
There is a whole lot to talk about, and I
guarantee from this point forward we will be one hundred
percent truthful.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
So let's dive in.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Hey there, podcast listeners, welcome to part time genius. I'm
Will Pearson, and as always, I'm joined by my good
friend Mangesh hot ticketter and over there in the booth
waving a red hot poker, that's our pal and producer
Dylan fig and he's actually waving it pretty aggressively. I'm
not really sure what he's doing, but it looks a
little bit dangerous. If I'm being honest, I.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Am glad that he's wearing oven mits at least, But
believe it or not, I think I know what he's
trying to demonstrate it. So, okay. Back in the Middle
eight lying was considered a terrible sin, and people, specifically
Christian people, believe that the only way to know if
someone was lying was by testing them with a trial
by ordeal. So, in other words, the accused was put
(03:12):
through a physical challenge, and, according to the logic at
the time, if they were honest, God would prevent them
from getting hurt. Now, one of the ordeals was touching
the person's tongue to a red hot poker. Obviously, this
resulted in a lot of burnt tongues, which was seen
as proof of dishonesty.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Yikes. All right, well, thank you Dylan for that terrifying visual.
It is not common that we see Dylan looking terrifying
as one of the nicest humans on the planet. But
good job there, Dylan. All right, So Mengo, it sounds
like people took lying very seriously back then.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
They definitely did so. Other trials by ordeal included walking
over burning coals and being forced to swallow poison. And
if you're thinking, wow, that seems kind of extreme, this
actually all traces back to Saint Augustine. He wrote a
famous treatise on lying called Online and Augustine argued that
lying is like a disease. It supposedly like destroys your
(04:05):
integrity and puts you in direct opposition to God. He's
also the guy who came up with the idea that
if you always tell the truth, God will actually swoop
in to protect you from the harm. But medieval Europe
didn't invent the idea of testing for truth. They just
kind of took it to this new, more brutal level.
In ancient China, accused liars had to chew a mouthful
(04:26):
of dry rice while someone recited the accusations against them,
and then they'd spit the rice out, and if it
seemed too dry when they spit it out because of
their dry mouth from nervousness. Then that was considered proof
that they had lied.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
What a weird way to like test if somebody's lying.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Yeah, these early lie detectors were very, very ineffective, but
I guess it shows that concern about lying is practically universal. Wait,
so can I tell you how excited I am to
have Nord VPN sponsoring our little show part time genius.
You know when I get excited, I make lists, and
I'm going to tell you why NORD is so great
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which is especially good for people like me who use
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(05:24):
this is basically like an invisibility cloak that keeps you
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also why I'm going to use this discount code seriously
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read two. It is great for sports fans. If you
listen to the show, you know that Will and I
met as college freshmen and we went to Duke and
(05:45):
also I secretly watch as many college basketball games as
my wife and family will allow me to. Please don't
remind me how the season ended for us, but that
isn't it. I also love watching soccer and tennis. But
when I travel, for like when I went to India
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(06:10):
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three phones and one personal computer, there are a lot
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but also I have like a million devices, so the
idea of spreading this across ten devices is pretty amazing.
It is premium cybersecurity for the price of a cup
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That is NordVPN dot com slash ptg. Or you can
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this ancient Hindu text, the yard Javeda, and it dates
(07:41):
back to one thousand BCE and it has tips for
royalty who are worried that their servants are undercover mercenaries
lying about their allegiance. So it says, quote, a person
who intends to poison food may be recognized. He does
not answer questions, or they are evasive answers. He speaks nonsense,
rubs the great toe along the ground and shivers. His
(08:02):
face is discolored. He rubs the roots of his hair
with his fingers, and he tries by every means to
leave the house.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
It kind of feels like they would not be very
good mercenaries if they're doing all that stuff.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
I know. But this gets to something really interesting, which
is that throughout history people have believed that observing someone's
nonverbal behaviors, like their cues of things like fidgeting or
rubbing their nose, that's an easy way to tell if
they're lying. So you don't really need the hot pokers
or the vials of poison, I guess.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
And that's basically the idea behind lie detectors looking for
those sorts of clues.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
Right, yeah, So modern light detectors or polygraphs were invented
in the early nineteen hundreds, but some of the technology
they use was developed in the eighteen hundreds, and all
they really do is measure changes in certain vital signs,
including things like blood pressure, breathing, perspiration. And although they're
still used by law enforcement and government agencies, they're widely
(08:57):
considered a pseudoscience. And that's because the physiological changes they
measure it can be triggered by lots of things like
not just the stress of lying.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Well you think about it, like the fear of being arrested,
or stressed from being interrogated.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
Right. In fact, the ACLU has opposed the use of
polygraph machines for decades, saying they don't work and they're
a violation of people's privacy rights. And remember, the machine
itself doesn't offer any conclusions. It just kind of records
this data for people. But this is the part I
didn't realize. It's that a human polygraph examiner actually has
to interpret that data to decide what it means, Like
(09:31):
is that a normal spike in sweating because the room
is hot, or does it indicate a lie? Which means
the results of a polygraph test can actually be tainted
by human bias, I.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Mean, like crazy bias. It does feel like it's just
so weird that in the twenty first century we're still
using what seems like the same light detection concepts ancient people,
that we just exchanged the dry rice for some sort
of fancy machine. I guess, yeah, pretty much. All right, Well,
you know, regardless of what goes on physically, telling a
lot does require a whole bunch of complicated brain activity.
(10:03):
Like first you have to come up with the lie
and mentally detach yourself from the truth. Then you have
to choose your words and behaviors carefully. Is to sell
the lie and avoid suspicion. And that requires understanding what
your audience knows now and then making guesses about what
they might discover later. Then you have to process the
response to the initial lie and spin out mora lies
(10:25):
is you need to back yourself up. The scientific term
for all of this is called cognitive load.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
That is so funny, like it feels like lying comes
so naturally at this point and you need to write,
but like it sounds exhausting when you put it that way.
So does this mean like there's a specific area of
the brain that controls our ability to lie?
Speaker 2 (10:45):
You know, Actually it's the opposite of this, because there's
this heavy cognitive load. Lying involves multiple areas of the
brain really working together. So these are areas responsible for
critical stuff like self awareness and social cognition. And one
thing that really fast sates me is the fact that
lyne can actually change our memories. That's because memories aren't
set in stone, and so the way we remember something
(11:07):
can be distorted over time, and if a lie is
repeated often enough the truth is then suppressed. It can
actually distort our memory of an event.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
It also explains a lot about history and also like
collective memories.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
Right, it really does.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
I mean you might be wondering how and when do
we develop the ability to lie? And it turns out
there's a whole body of research about little kids and lying,
and we're going to chat more about all of that
right after a quick break.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
Okay, Well, so I know you've done a ton of
research about kids' brains and how they developed the ability
to lie. But first I have to ask, like, did
you tell lies when you were a kid or you know,
can you remember what your kids first lies were? You know?
Speaker 2 (12:01):
I I know that I did. I don't remember a
whole lot of things specifically, but I remember that my
lies that I would tell were usually just like ridiculous
stories like coming in from playing outside or something and
then just making up some absurd story that probably deep
down I felt like my parents knew that I was lying,
but I'd still go for it anyway. But how about you?
Speaker 1 (12:24):
Uh? Yeah, I remember like being four and telling my
mom that I went to see Superman at the movie
theater and like pretending to fly around like it, but
I'd actually seen Return of the Jedi, And when she
found out, she was upset not be excited. See Superman
just because she thought this like innocent kid could never
(12:44):
lie to her, you know.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
Ah, yeah, that's a heartbreaking moment for mom.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Ruby actually had an amazing first lie that I remember.
Like Ruby was also about four at this time, and
Henriett had a birthday party at his school and so
Ruby was like, oh, yeah, we had hake at my
school too. I was like, oh, was there a birthday party?
And we was like no, no, no birthday party. And
I said, oh yeah, then then why was that cake?
(13:09):
And we was like, uh the classroom anniversary. It was
like a classroom niverse and like can I can I
text your teachers to find out about this classroomnniversary? And
we was like no, no, no, they don't.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
Like the text.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
And so I said, you know, oh so, uh so
did you sing the traditional classroom anniversary song? And we
was like yeah, and I said, oh would you sing it?
And Ruby, without like skipping a be goes, it's a
classroom manniversary. It's a classroom manniversary. We do it in
the big building.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
Oh yeah, I heard that one. That's that is a classic.
That's pretty amazing. Ruby.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
So anyway, I think it's time to get to the science.
So let's let's get to it.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
I don't know, I feel like it's time for more songs,
so let's do more of that, all right. Well, the
general consensus is that kids start lying when they're about
two or three years old, and usually they do it
when they've done something that they know they shouldn't do,
but you know, their brains aren't sophisticated enough to take
that extra step of thinking, like will the person I'm
talking to actually believe what I'm saying? And so you
(14:15):
get situations like a toddler standing there covered in paint
and you say, did you open the paint? And they,
of course deny it.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
So at what age does this start to change?
Speaker 2 (14:27):
Usually around four they start to take the listener's perspective
into account, and there's something psychologists called the theory of mind,
which is the ability to reason about other people's mental
states and then act accordingly. So the kid realizes that
you can see the paint and you'll be wondering how
that paint got there, and so they might say something like,
you know, my brother did it, which is a nice try,
(14:48):
of course, but maybe the brothers been upstairs all day.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
So they're close to getting this lie right, but there's
still some holes in the story.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Yeah, usually there are. It actually just is this side
note reminds me of our good friend Adam that talked
about a high school experience when he was sitting next
to a girl that he had a crush on and
he sneezed into his hands. She looks over at him.
He clearly has snot all in his hands, and he
just looks at her and he says, it wasn't me.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Do you remember this story, Yes, it's pretty great.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
I just thought that was such a great response. Anyway,
So things really start to change around seven or eight,
and that's when they can account for a wider range
of facts and contexts like in the lie. So maybe
they say, you know, my brother did it, and you say,
but he's in his room, And then a slightly older
kid has the capacity to react with something like he
(15:43):
came down for a snack and he was playing with
the paint, but then he went back upstairs, you know,
just taking it to another level.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
Really, it is wild to think of little kids like
almost like new versions of AI, Like they just keep
getting told better at lying.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
Yeah, yeah, it's a good way to think about it
like that. That training over time, and it's even more
whild to realize that this is something parents have known
about for a long time. Actually, Charles Darwin wrote about
toddler liars after doing some observational research to his own kids.
This was, of course, back in the eighteen forties. So
what happened is one day he caught his two and
a half year old son coming out of the dining
(16:17):
room with something very obviously wrapped up in a pinafore.
And this is, you know, a dress like garment. And
Darwin says, hey, buddy, what do you got there? And
the kids like nothing, go away, and so Darwin checks
and it turns out he'd stolen a.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Pickle, the old pickle and a pinafore.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
Bit yeah, you know, the whole bit there. But the
point is there's ample evidence that very young children have
the executive functions needed for lying. More complicated skills like
memory and inhibition control. They develop a little bit later,
and that makes their lies more elaborate and believable. And
what researchers have found is that kids with strong cognitive
(16:56):
abilities actually make better liars. So in a weird way,
lying as a sign of reaching important developmental milestones.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
I like the idea of grade school is giving out
stickers for lying. You know, so the only thing cuter
than a toddler telling whoppers is an animal who's trying
to trick you.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
So were you suggesting that animals also lie?
Speaker 1 (17:18):
It kind of depends on what you mean by lie.
So usually when we say someone is lying, we mean
they're knowingly making a false statement with the intent to deceive. Right, So,
animals can't talk, obviously, so they don't make statements the
way we do. But if you expand this definition to
include behaviors, then you know animals do engage in deceptive
behavior all the time. So if you think about possums
(17:40):
when they're threatened, they pretend to be dead. I also
read about this bird called the forktailed drongo, which is
native to the Kalahari Desert in Africa, and when it
sees a predator like an eagle over ahead, it lets
out a squeaky alarm call. Now, other desert animals, including meerkats,
have learned to hide when they hear this alarm as well,
But sometimes the drongo plays a trick. If it sees
(18:02):
a mere cat holding food it wants, maybe like a
nice juicy lizard, it starts squeaking the alarm, and the
mere cat drops the food and runs for cover, and
then the drongo swoops in and takes the meal.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
Wow. I mean that definitely sounds like the bird equivalent
of making a fault statement with the intent to deceive,
don't you think?
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Yeah? So Weirdly, it's the last part that people actually
disagree about whether or not there's intent. So clearly, the
drongo knows that if it makes the alarm call, the
mere cat will run, and the possum knows that if
it lies really still, its predator may walk away. But
some scientists actually call this functional deception, not intentional deception,
and they argue that the intent depends on something you
(18:40):
mentioned a few minutes ago, the theory of mind. And
it's just not clear that animals have the ability to
think about what other creatures know or believe.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
So I guess, in other words, the drongo isn't thinking
if I yell, the dumb meer cat will believe there's
an eagle. It just thinks when I yell, the mere
cat runs.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
Yeah, pretty much. But there have been some stuff that
suggest animals, particularly great apes, may have a theory of mind,
and in one experiment, researchers gave an ape eye trackers
so they could tell where it was looking. And then,
and I swear I'm not making this up, an assistant
in an ape costume ran into the cage area puts
an object under one of the two boxes on the floor.
(19:18):
A researcher pretends to watch this happen and then leaves
the room. And then when this assistant in ape costume
is there alone, he puts the object under the other
box for a moment, and then he picks it up
and runs away. So when the researcher comes back and
reaches for the boxes, the ape looks at him and
then stared at the first box as if he knew
(19:40):
the researcher was expecting the object to be there, which means, like,
you know, the ape is picking up on all these
cues and is more aware of others' behaviors. And actually
there's video of this on YouTube.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
Oh man, I've got to see this. It's such a
fascinating idea. And I also love the idea that like
a guy with several PhDs having to run around and
then a costume pretending to be an ape. So this
is definitely something I'm going to watch all right, So
to switch gears here, Mango, I want to tell you
about lying and culture clashes. So you mentioned earlier that
lying means knowingly making a false statement with the intention
(20:14):
to deceive. That's a good definition, but some types of
deception aren't so clear cut, and the context really does matter.
So omitting information or being purposely ambiguous, those can be
types of lies. Even accurate information can be used in
misleading ways. And the way we interpret these nuances and
the way we assess other people's honesty, it really comes
(20:36):
down to the norms that we've learned from our culture.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
You know, this is a great quote by Montaigne that
Mary actually pointed me too, and it goes, quote the
reverse of truth has one hundred thousand forms, And it
sounds like that, right, Like there's so many ways lie
in just like one way to simply tell the truth.
But can you give me some examples of what you're
thinking about here?
Speaker 2 (20:57):
Yeah, for sure. But by the way, Mary, great quo.
That's pretty awesome. All right. So, according to research, highly
individualistic cultures like the United States, they see lies very
differently than more collective as cultures like many in Asia. So,
for example, an American business manager might consider it dishonest
to withhold negative feedback from an employee, even if it's harsh.
(21:18):
But a Japanese manager might not see it that way
at all, because they're considering potential harm to an employee
and to their relationship. So for them, that's part of
being a trustworthy person. So maybe they downplay the bad
review or delivered an indirect fashion. But if you imagine
an American employee getting vague feedback might make them think,
(21:39):
what are they hiding from me?
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Yeah, and I guess in both scenarios, people are they're
trying to do the right thing, and there's no right,
there's no actually intent to deceive.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
There No, that's exactly right. I mean this extends to
speech patterns too, So most Native English speakers in the
United States consider clear direct language to be a sign
of honesty, and we're a little more suspicious of verbal
meandering or someone using a lot of euphemisms. But that's
just how some cultures communicate. Meanwhile, they might interpret our
bluntness as bad manners. And you know, of course, then
(22:11):
there's body language. So in the US, holding eye contact
is usually considered proof that someone's being honest, but in
other parts of the world that can actually be seen
as rude or aggressive.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
Yeah, well this is a podcast, so so you all
can't see my eyes, but I'm going to use the
straightforward American approach to honest communication. Right now, it is
time for an ad break so we can make money
and keep the show going. That's how honest I'm being.
But we'll be back soon.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Welcome back to Part Time Genius, where we're learning the
truth about lies. All right, so, Mango, what have you
got for us next?
Speaker 1 (22:59):
So far, we've mostly been talking about lies at a
personal level, but lying isn't just about how we relate
to one another. It can also have legal consequences, including
what we call fraud. So under US law, fraud can
be a civil or a criminal matter, depending on the situation,
and in civil cases is defined as a misrepresentation of fact,
either intentional or negligent, and that causes injury or harm
(23:23):
to another person. Criminal fraud usually falls into specific categories
that have their own definition, So you think about things
like financial fraud or insurance fraud, or even something like forgery. Right,
And although none of this is new, technology has caused
the scale of criminal fraud to explode in recent years.
So just to give you a sense, from twenty eighteen
(23:44):
to twenty twenty two, the US federal government lost between
two hundred and thirty three billion and five hundred and
twenty one billion dollars each year to fraud. And that
doesn't even count money lost at the state level. And
that's billion with a B like that is daggering. Yeah,
And if you thought those numbers were big. According to
(24:04):
the World Economic Forum, cybercrime, which often involves fraud, obviously
will cost the world ten point five trillion this year alone.
But even more than the economic impact, there are personal costs.
So you think about identity theft is one of the
most common types of cyber fraud, and in a survey
by the Identity Theft Resource Center, sixty percent of ID
(24:26):
theft victims found themselves struggling to cover their bills in
the aftermath of the incident, and sixteen percent reported feeling suicidal.
It's really a serious problem.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
That is wild, all right. So when you say technology
is driving all this, what exactly mean by that?
Speaker 1 (24:41):
So some of it's the obvious stuff, like we do
our banking online, we give out our email addresses, like candy.
We share personal information on social media and a lot
of us aren't great about checking privacy settings or changing
our passwords, so fraudsters have plenty of material to work with,
and they also have more points of entry to our
lives and our finance is now, but the World Economic
(25:02):
Forum reports that the biggest problem right now is generative AI.
So criminals are using AI language tools to crank out
phishing emails that seem really authentic. They're using AI image
generators to create deep fakes of people's faces that let
them pass identity verification checks. According to a recent FBI warning,
They're even using AI voice cloning to create deceptive audio
(25:24):
clips that quote impersonate a close relative in a crisis situation,
asking for immediate financial assistance or demanding a ransom.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
So, I mean, this is obviously just terrifying, and I'm wondering, though,
before I throw my phone out the window, is there
anything I can do about this?
Speaker 1 (25:41):
So, from a tech standpoint, there's been a lot of
interest in digital identity wallets like that would combine biometrics,
ID documents, personal information to create a secure log in
that you can use multiple places. Proponents say it's like
being asked to show your physical driver's license, so much
safer than easily hacked password. But civil liberties groups the
one that this could mean sacrificing privacy.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
I thought you were just going to say something like
change your passwords. I was kind of hoping that was
where you were going with it.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
I mean, you could do that too, You should do that, actually,
But the FBI has another tip that is so low tech,
it's kind of brilliant, and it's just create a secret
passphrase with your family and close friends. So if you
ever get a call that sounds like me asking you
to wire ten thousand dollars, you can ask for the
phrase to confirm it's me.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
Woh, okay, that's a good idea, all right. With all
of this raises another question, and that's what makes someone
lie or commit fraud, Like, we all know it's wrong,
so why does it keep happening? So Dan Arielli is
a professor of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke, and
he's done a lot of research about this kind of thing.
So he pointed out that our entire legal system operates
(26:47):
on the theory of cost benefit analysis, Like if you
know there's a serious penalty for being dishonest. You'll decide
if it's worth it or not, and you won't do
it if you decide that it isn't. And the problem
here is that it's just not how lying works in
real life, and that's because humans have the ability to
rationalize dishonesty. So Arielli did this experiment with a vending machine.
(27:10):
He set the price mechanism to zero sense, but put
labels on the snack saying that each item costs seventy
five cents. He also taped a sign to the machine
that read, quote, if there's something wrong with this machine,
please call this number, and then he put his own
cell phone number.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
That's clever. So what happened when people use the machine.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
Well, they'd put their money in and the machine would
dispense multiple snacks and return all of their cash, and
not a single person called to report the malfunction, although
Arielli noted that nobody took more than four bags of
free candy either. So his theory is that people were
rationalizing their decision based on previous vending machine experiences, like
(27:50):
we've all had that situation where you put your money
in and it doesn't give you a snack, or as
he puts it, people were just kind of sorting out
the vending karma in the world, I guess.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
I mean, that's pretty fascinating. Although obviously there's a big
difference between taking candy and committing identity theft.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
Yeah, of course, but understanding the ways criminals make sense
of what they're doing could help stop fraud before it
even starts. So, for example, a Reli found that people
would behave more honestly if they spend time reflecting on
their personal morals or their ethics. So he tested this
by asking one group of people to list ten books
they read in high school and another group to recall
(28:29):
the Ten Commandments. Then he gave both groups reward based
tests that included opportunities to cheat, and he found that
people who thought about books engaged in widespread cheating, while
the Ten Commandments group did not cheat at all. So
this is a reminder, don't read kids, you know what
I mean. And so what's really interesting is that he
repeated the test with people who identified as atheists. Because
(28:52):
they didn't know the Ten Commandments. He just had them
swear on a Bible. After doing that, they still didn't cheat.
Speaker 1 (28:59):
That is incredible. So well, we're almost at the end
of the episode, tell me the truth. Did you prepare
anything for the fact? Off?
Speaker 2 (29:05):
I sure did, Mango, Let's get to it.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
If there's one man whose name has become synonymous with dishonesty,
it is Charles Ponzi, and we've all heard his name,
but I thought we'd get into these stories. So Ponzi
was born in northern Italy in eighteen eighty two, and
apparently his family had at one time been pretty well off,
but by the time he came along, they had lost
their fortune. He tried going to university in Rome, but
dropped out and decided to take his chances in America Now.
(29:34):
Ponzi later claimed that he had set sail with two
hundred dollars in savings, most of which he lost on
the ship crossing the Atlantic because he got swindled by
a card sharp Once in the US, though, he bounced
around a series of jobs in low level crimes. But
in nineteen twenty he launched the scheme that made him famous. Basically,
there was this thing called an international reply coupon, which
(29:56):
was like a voucher many countries accepted in exchange for
local postage stamps. Ponzi realized that he could buy cheap
IRCs in Italy and exchange them for more expensive stance
in the US. As he put it in his memoir, quote,
the racket fell into my lap like a ripe apple.
It looked good, luscious. I examined it for flaws, found none,
and I had to bite. I wouldn't have been human
(30:17):
if I didn't. And just to be clear, that part
of the scheme was not illegal. It's just simple arbitrage,
which happens in the stock market all the time. The
problem was when he started tricking thousands of people into
investing in his operation, claiming they'd earn a fifty percent
return in ninety days. Now, every time an investor gave money,
he used it to pay off earlier investors. So people
(30:38):
thought they were getting huge returns and thought it was
all real. And in the first eight months of nineteen twenty,
Ponzi actually made fifteen million dollars, which is about two
hundred and thirty five million dollars in today's money. I
had no idea how much money he'd made.
Speaker 2 (30:51):
That's huge.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
It all came crashing down that August when Boston Post
Reporters launched an investigation that ended in eighty six counts
of mail fraud and a lengthy prison sentence.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
All right, well, speaking of elaborate and profitable lies, the
FTC reports that in twenty twenty two, almost seventy thousand
people were the victims of romance scammers. Now, this is
a type of fraud that often begins on dating apps.
This is where someone lies about who they are, usually
in order to get you to send them money. And
it's an extra malicious form of cat fishing. Now, one
(31:22):
of the trickiest things for a catfisher to explain is
why they can't meet up in person. So, according to
the FTC, they'll often build a fake identity around a
job that keeps them far away. And among romance scammers,
the most popular lie is quote I'm stationed on a
military base in another country. But another one that comes
up a lot is I'm an offshore oil rig worker.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
I mean, I think what's funny about that is it's
going to make online dating so hard for actual oil
rig workers.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
Like every sure I didn't think about that. I feel
so bad for the rig workers just trying to get dates.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
Anyway, I was curious where the word lie comes from,
and it turns out the term white lie is older
than I expected. The first known use occurred on April tenth,
fifteen sixty seven, when an English landowner named Ralph Adderley
wrote a letter to a friend describing his brother in
law by saying, quote, I do assure you he is
unsuspected of any untruth or other notable crime except a
(32:19):
white lie, which is taken for a small fault in
these parts.
Speaker 2 (32:23):
And it's definitely sort of a compliment I think. But
all right, well, for our final fact, here's the story
of a lie that was anything but harmless because it
almost threw off decades of archaeological research. So it was
back in nineteen twelve you have this amateur fossil hunter
named Charles Dawson. He wrote to the British paleontologist Sir
Arthur Smith Woodward, and he was claiming he'd unearthed parts
(32:46):
of a human skull in Piltdown. This was a village
near his home in Sussex. So Woodward helped expand the
excavation and eventually he and Dawson dug up parts of
a mandible, pieces of a skull, and multiple teeth there.
And so intriguingly, some of these teeth appeared to be
larger than a human's but smaller than an apes, and
(33:06):
so it was pointing to the possibility of an ancient
ancestor some five hundred thousand years old. Now, the British
scientific community was understandably excited about the evidence of a
creature dubbed the Piltdown Man, in part because a few
years earlier an ancient pre human jawbone had been discovered
in Germany. Now, in the run up to World War One,
(33:26):
tensions between Germany and the UK were running high, and
so the Piltdown Man was proof of England's importance and
the fossil record until nineteen fifty three, when new dating
techniques showed that his bones weren't all the same age,
and what's more, they were a mix of human and
eight bones. So this was proof of the deception, but
(33:47):
the question was who did it so. Finally, in two
thousand and nine, a paleoanthropologist named Isabelle de Grute used
DNA analysis and CT scanning to get an even closer
look at the Piltdowns samples. Here's what she found. She
found that all the teeth came from one orangutan and
that the bones had been coated in a sort of
(34:07):
putty to make them appear uniform and heavy. Even so,
she concluded that given the consistency of the cover up,
it was the work of one person, Charles Dawson. As
an amateur who dabbled in geology, archaeology and anthropology, he
would have known exactly what a real prehistoric find should
look like, and he had access to samples and to tools,
(34:30):
and as it turned out, he had perpetuated other smaller
frauds that were all an attempt to gain recognition by
the British scientific community.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
That's so weird, you know. I'd heard of Tilton men,
but I'd never realized that they'd figured out that Dawson
was behind it. And I guess he did end up
getting some recognition, but none the way he wanted. Yeah,
you know, if I'm being honest, which I am obviously,
I think he deserved Today's trophy for explaining how kids
become such expert liars. I think that bit of the
(34:59):
story was my favorit today.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
Thank you. It is fun, too fun to think about.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
Well that does it for this episode. If you like
our show, remember to rate and review us on the
Apple Store. Actually, I cannot help. But look at our
reviews and we've been sitting at seventeen ninety nine, seven
and ninety nine reviews, just hovering there for the last
few weeks and it hasn't gone up to eighteen hundred
and so someone out there help us out, help my
OCD out and get it to an even number. Also,
(35:28):
if you want to keep up with us on the socials,
remember you can find us up part Time Genius on
the gram. Anyway, we'll be back soon with another new episode,
but in the meantime from Gabe, Mary, Dylan, Will and myself,
thank you so much for listening. Part Time Genius is
(35:53):
a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. This show is hosted
by Will Pearson and me Mongaysh Heatique and research by
our goodpal Mary Philip Sandy. Today's episode was engineered and
produced by the wonderful Dylan Fagan with support from Tyler Klang.
The show is executive produced for iHeart by Katrina Norvell
(36:13):
and Ali Perry, with social media support from Sasha Gay,
trustee Dara Potts and Viny Shorey. For more podcasts from
Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Part-Time Genius News
Hosts And Creators
Will Pearson
Mangesh Hattikudur
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