We look at lies, liars, and lie catchers, and ask: can you lead a life without deception? In this episode, we consult a cast of characters, from pathological liars to lying snakes to drunken psychiatrists, to try and understand the dark trait of deception.
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39 Comments
this podcast is broken. i am unable to download this via iTues or my browser and cannot listen to it as streaming audio either.
yeah, i would appreciate it if you all could get it up. i listen to radio lab while travelling and am about to get on a plane for 13 hours. cheers.
This episode downloaded to my iTunes, but the downloaded episode is only 17 minutes and 59 seconds long, and cuts out right in the beginning of the second act/chapter type thing. Right as they start talking about ‘the friend jude’
Yep, still broken at midnight. Won’t download at all for me on iTunes.
Help I need a Radiolab Fix and it won’t play
aaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Yea… I need to hear the rest of the episode!! Mine played to 50:37… help… (downloaded in iTunes).
Same problem… stopped at around 53 minutes. I had the same problem last week, too. Is there a way to prevent this from happening in the future?
Getting a ‘The network connection was refused’ through the iTunes fetch. :- /
By the definition of a lie that this episode touches on, couldn’t it be construed that hope itself is also a form of lying?
Great episode… but I missed the war of the worlds episode last week and it still isn’t posted. very sad.
It seems to me that the week’s news about Elliot Spitzer is a perfect example of the effect that Joanna Starek uncovered in her research. Politics is at least as competitive as swimming. The same ability of self-deception that made Spitzer a success in politics also allowed him to believe that what he was (allegedly) doing was not wrong, or at least that he would not be caught.
I downloaded off iTunes… or rather, iTunes did, automatically, and its working just fine. They must of fixed it, becaused mine goes to 59:36
Toward the end, this episode mentions that people who are willing to deceive themselves are more likely to be happy. But because the people in this episode lied to align themselves with perceived social norms, is it fitting that they’d also lie about being happy?
Olivia, maybe “Ignorance is bliss” has a more profound meaning now.
As a therapist self deception and less depression is fascinating. People who see and speak more openly, according to the podcast, tend to be more depressed and win less swimming races. Are there some web references on this I would love to explore it some more.
The deception ep is 29 minutes long, and cuts out during Hope’s story.
I thought the sound in this particular episode was great. I mean, the sound in the series in general is always very good, but in particular I loved the sound of zooming into the prefrontal cortex. That electronic chirping, mechanical clattering, the liquidy low whoosh, and that busy little tune playing in the background actually made me chuckle. Awesome theater of the mind material.
Also, the part in the first segment where the sound of rage “leaks” into the sound of a smile actually made me jump. I thought it worked really well in terms of translating the concept into sound.
WAIT A MINUTE!!! There is no advantage to having the capacity to tell the truth?! Yes, I might not be the best athlete or the best at business. I may have been sadder at times than those who walk around in some kind of haze, but when I have joy it is real joy. It is not a deception of joy. I think understanding oneself makes life more real, more clear. Along with the pain comes empathy and the capacity to be a true friend… To see others as they are and accept them… To see and not turn away from the ugliness in myself or others helps me be a better friend, a more empathetic person, a genuine companion. Rigorous honesty is, after all, a huge part of healing from emotional pain. The ability to look honestly at ones own faults and accept oneself as she is has been an achievement that has taken a great deal of effort to get to. In that acceptance of the fact, for example, that I sometimes enjoy my bowel movements gives me a freedom to be who I am and show you. You can know the real me and in turn I can know you and we don’t have to hide.
Let’s hear the episode about the virtue of honesty… how about that?
It’s interesting that nobody in the show or in the comments has mentioned the word “denial”. This is EXACTLY what we’re talking about and I thought it was a pretty well-understood phenomena. Just ask any 12-stepper.
Denial is crucial for humans to function properly - if we reflected on all the realities of life, we’d probably all give up.
But Denial is also dangerous. Just as athletes may deny “reality” to deceive themselves into winning (and thus change “reality”), addicts deny “reality” to deceive themselves into believing they aren’t slowly killing themselves.
And I find the idea that people who deceive themselves are “happier” is something that can easily be misconstrued. What does it mean to be “happy”?
I can tell you that I’m on of the melancholy people who don’t deceive themselves as much. I dwell too much about the true reality things. (And that can really lead to some existential crises ;).
But I don’t know if I’d say I’m “unhappy”. I just find it hard to descend into the fiction that everything’s just peachy and I should just live my little life and go to work and excersize and get a raise and promotion and just run in the hamster wheel.
Frankly, I find that boring.
BTW - kudos to RadioLab. This was a really beautifully done piece. I have always liked the show, but this one in particular I found very poignant, very profound and very compelling.
Congratulations on a job well done.
ok… I am not saying I didn’t like the show. I LOVE it. I just wanted to make the point that HONESTY is the virtue not DECEPTION which is pretty much how the piece ended. Implying that somehow the self-deceivers are superior. I just don’t buy that. I would rather walk through life with my eyes open. Seeing life as it really is and embracing all of it. I’ve been that way since I was a kid. It made for a pretty sad childhood, but if you REALLY have your eyes open to the truth? the good becomes more and more apparent. There is a perspective that enters into the conversation. I can choose to see and concentrate on the good things in life. It’s not that I don’t see the bad, I just choose to look for the good and focus on it. Some would call that self-deception. I choose to call it optimism.
so, I have to wonder, what does that make actors? How would our brains look? just a curiousity.
The best season yet! You guys have really hit your stride. I’m stunned by the amount of work that must go into each episode - it really shows. Congratulations on the incredible evolution of this ground-breaking show.
What happened to Hope?
A reply to cindy:
I think the point was not to promote self deception as some sort of virtue, but just to recognize it as a tool or method by which we humans can choose to adopt or create a new reality. It allows us to ignore discouraging thoughts that may be perfectly valid, but may unnessarily derail us from accomplishing something really good.
PMS and self-deception:
This sounds exactly like whats going on in my brain for one week every month- All of a sudden, things that were just as true yesterday but didn’t bother me, now fill my thoughts and become the center of the universe making me feel pesimistic and depressed.
I’d be curious to see studies on self deception and how women’s brain function changes throughout their cycle.
The idea that my gonads have more control over my consiousness than I do really irks me. But on the postiive side, I look at PMS as a periodical reality check.
PS. ANOTHER INCREDIBLE EPISODE!!!!!!!!
artfull, thought provoking, funny, smart, and wholly enjoyable -bravo
I only received 10 minutes of this episode on my itunes, and when i came to the site, i saw it was supposed to be like an hour! hey! come on! don’t … roll. like that! i wanna get the whole thing and more on the podcast, automatically, without having to come to the site to find out there’s much more to the show
you’re disrupting my podcast-listening equilibrium! i deleted the 10 minute piece to try to get the 59 minute and change piece and somehow itunes doesn’t want to.
well i finally gave up and listened to it on my computer. great episode, but slightly sad in how i had to move some fingers around to make it work. that’s a lot of work and my fingers are tired now.
I had the same issue with a truncated file. Mine was about 31 minutes in length and cut out in the latter part of the “Hope” story.
I have had this issue with other podcasts of late, like This American Life, where the downloaded file is only a fraction of the entire episode.
I wonder if this is an issue with iTunes, not just with Radiolab’s podcast. I would love to know if there is any resolution.
Great story, I couldn’t get out of my car. Why? I know someone very very close to me that I love dearly and still continue to hope that she will turn herself around and stop lying to the ones she says she loves and love her back. thanks
Are they repeating old Radiolab shows? There’s one on War of the Worlds from 3 years ago in the archives to stream.
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2004/05
i was engaged to a pathological liar. it was so brutal when it all came crashing down. said he had cancer and didn’t. it took me over a year to fully process most of the feelings. i still feel jumpy. i still have dreams that i’m beating the crap out of him from time to time. i’ve never really had anyone to talk about it with. my friends just kind of nod when ever i bring it up. listening to ellen’s friend’s story was pretty amazing for me.
Patrick-
You’ll find our new episode on War of the Worlds to be quite different from the old one. Same theme, but new voices, new stories, and oh yeah, it’s our first-ever LIVE episode. We hope you enjoy!
Folks with the truncated file problemo-
You can download an mp3 of the whole episode directly from our website. Just click “Download MP3″ here:
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2008/02/29
In the meantime, we’ll look into what’s happening with iTunes.
This just in from the web team… The truncated file problem last week may have been a symptom of WNYC’s audio server being under load — we are getting another audio server to supplement it. There’s also a chance that it was due to a brief server outage we had last week, if you were downloading right before the server died, that would have caused the problem. We’ll keep ya posted if we found out anything else. Thanks for letting us know!
Why was Ellen so nice to HOPE the woman who lied and stole from everyone?
for the life of me I can’t imagine why she treated her so nicely.
anyone?
In response to Michael (comment 34), I, too, was surprised by how I responded to Hope, after meeting DOZENS of people who told heartbreaking tales of how she’d betrayed them. (My favorites were the off the record stories…oh my, oh my…the trail of wreckage this woman left in her wake is enormous!)
I suppose that when it came down it I was less interested in demonizing her, stopping her, catching her and more interested in UNDERSTANDING her.
The only other insight I can give is that she’s a very anxious person and I felt sorry for her. I suspect that her nervous and worried manner has drawn sympathy from many, many of the people who she may have taken advantage of, or even stolen from.
For those who have asked what became of her, I’ve learned that she is now back in good standing with the state of Louisiana, I believe she’s still on probation, although no longer living in that state. I do think she has a right to try to make an honest living, so I’m not inclined to say much more than that about her whereabouts. I suspect we’d all be wise to take precaution when choosing roommates, taking personal checks, and generally trusting strangers whatever name a stranger may offer.
I thought this show was extremely interesting. I have been diagnosed with multiple personalities which each have their own truths. These truths may seem to be lies to the other alters but yet they all come from the same brain. I also suffer from depression, like many people with DID (formerly called Multiple Personality Disorder). I wonder if I would be considered more truthful or a liar by the USC’s standards of grey vs. white matter in the prefrontal cortex.
I am a very successful business speaker–I’ve spoken before a few people, rooms holding thousands, and live broadcasts with tens of thousands. I’ve been asked to make speeches without preparation or warning. I’ve been asked very difficult questions during live broadcasts.
And I’ve always been very, very successful. What I’ve said has changed thousands of people’s lives, positively and dramatically. Those who I’ve impacted, or have experienced my presentations, cannot imagine that this ability is learned rather than innate. But I did learn, early in my career, one skill upon which this is built: I can genuinely believe a lie I make to myself, EXACTLY as the athletes in the broadcast were described. It is this: I believe with every iota of my being that every single member of my audience loves me with all their heart, as a babe loves its mother, or two lovers love each other. While I am before my audience I have absolutely no doubt that this is true, no doubt whatsoever.
Did I miss something? What in the world is that horrible sound at around the time: 11:10 ?
So that’s why depression is on a rampant rise in our society. We’re either slowly, finally admitting the truth to ourselves or simply running out of the energy required for keeping up the pretence that our Emperor, although obviously a nudist, is a democratically elected representative subject to the laws and limitations on his power as in a constitutional democracy. I actually feel slightly less depressed after that realization. Truth does set one free - even when you find the truth is the liars who believe or can make others believe the lies expected of them by societal norms are those who do better in a truth-challenged culture of denial such as ours…at least until global warming catches up and extincts 90% of the species currently alive, likely including us if we remain de-facto in denial we have to radically change. Keep up the good work - and thank-you!
Public uncovering of such seemingly unlikely verities is indeed cathartic, almost to the point of hope, for the rest of us miserable truth-mongers.