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SYSK Selects: How Lie Detectors Work · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Hello there, it's me Josh and for this week's s
0:03
Speaker 1: Y s K Selects, I've chosen our classic episode on
0:07
Speaker 1: Lie Detectors. It's a pretty nifty little episode about a
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Speaker 1: pretty dodgy piece of forensic science with a wow of
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Speaker 1: a backstory. It is classic stuff you should know, so
0:19
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoy. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know,
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Speaker 1: a production of My Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
0:33
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me
0:36
Speaker 1: is always as Charles to be Chuck Bryant liar you
0:40
Speaker 1: you could tell there's the ways you can find out
0:43
Speaker 1: Chuck Um. We'll get to that in a minute. This
0:46
Speaker 1: is stuff you should know. Let me finish, Okay, and
0:49
Speaker 1: it's you lie. Remember that guy, Yeah, Joe joey Pants
0:54
Speaker 1: or whatever the congressman's name. Yeah, Saturday Night Live a
0:57
Speaker 1: funny skit that he had gotten a whole group of
0:59
Speaker 1: people to all stayed up at once, wasn't the deal?
1:02
Speaker 1: Tell it? And well, yeah, and he supposed he had
1:05
Speaker 1: a whole group of senators that we're gonna all stand
1:07
Speaker 1: up and yell you lie. And then he was the
1:10
Speaker 1: only one that did it. That's because he was out
1:12
Speaker 1: of the room when they were like, no, we can't
1:14
Speaker 1: do that, that's funny. Yeah. So um, oh, we're talking
1:19
Speaker 1: about a lot of detectors. But let me take you back,
1:22
Speaker 1: all right to a little place in time and space
1:26
Speaker 1: called the jazz age early nineteen twenties. Yeah. No, that's
1:33
Speaker 1: the beat Knicks that did that. Okay, Um, I'm sure
1:36
Speaker 1: a jazz person snapped their fingers at one point. Sure, um,
1:40
Speaker 1: but not like that, all right. It was more like
1:44
Speaker 1: like Coltrane style, just like that. Anyway. This is Chuck
1:49
Speaker 1: in Berkeley, California, at u c l A, Berkeley, And
1:54
Speaker 1: there is a place there called, um, the College Hall,
1:58
Speaker 1: which was a women's dorm. And in that year there
2:02
Speaker 1: were a theft, a string of there was a string
2:06
Speaker 1: of um thefts, cash rings, um, pretty much anything of
2:11
Speaker 1: value went missing for a little while there. And uh,
2:16
Speaker 1: there's a man working at the Berkeley Police Department in
2:19
Speaker 1: the girl's dorm. Yeah, okay, called College Hall. There was
2:22
Speaker 1: a man working in the in the Berkeley Police Department's
2:25
Speaker 1: name is John Larson. And John Larson was the first
2:28
Speaker 1: cop ever to have a pH d. And he had
2:32
Speaker 1: gotten interested in this device called a cardio neumo psychograph
2:40
Speaker 1: which had been invented just a few years before by
2:42
Speaker 1: another guy named William Marston. And William Marston was a
2:47
Speaker 1: lawyer in a Harvard shrink and he also as an
2:51
Speaker 1: aside creative wonder Woman with her Lasso of truth. Really,
2:55
Speaker 1: he's the guy who invented the what's now called the polygraph.
3:00
Speaker 1: What about the wonder Woman? He created Wonder Woman, the character.
3:04
Speaker 1: He was kind of a renaissance man. But that's William Marston.
3:07
Speaker 1: John Larson works at the at the Berkeley Police Department
3:10
Speaker 1: and he's become interested in this thing, the cardio neumo psychograph,
3:14
Speaker 1: and he realizes, okay, this is a perfect chance to
3:18
Speaker 1: apply it. So he rounds up, you know, some suspects.
3:21
Speaker 1: He does some some normal police work and finds out
3:23
Speaker 1: who the suspects are in this in this hall, and
3:27
Speaker 1: he rounds him up, brings him down the station, and
3:28
Speaker 1: he starts hooking people up to this um this machine.
3:32
Speaker 1: And he gets to this one woman, her name is
3:35
Speaker 1: Helen Graham, and guilty, yes, pretty much is what he does.
3:40
Speaker 1: He goes, ms. Graham, this machine is saying that you're
3:43
Speaker 1: that you took this, that you you took the money,
3:45
Speaker 1: you know, did you? Um and he said that he
3:48
Speaker 1: noted on the machine a sharp dropping blood pressure followed
3:51
Speaker 1: by a sudden rise. And then after that this woman
3:54
Speaker 1: flew into a rage. She tried to attack the machine.
3:57
Speaker 1: She went crazy. So they they basically stringer along for
4:01
Speaker 1: a few days, and then finally she confesses, and it's
4:04
Speaker 1: the first time that a polygraph was ever used to
4:06
Speaker 1: to um solve a crime. Ever, that that was probably
4:11
Speaker 1: the heyday because before the people knew what it was,
4:13
Speaker 1: they could just say this machine says that you're guilty,
4:16
Speaker 1: and they would be like, oh my god, that's exactly right.
4:20
Speaker 1: Very early on, some of the early proponents, specifically a
4:23
Speaker 1: guy named a Leonard Keeler, um recognized the placebo effect
4:28
Speaker 1: value before anyone knew there was a placebo effect, but
4:30
Speaker 1: the placebo effect value of a polygraph. That just the idea,
4:35
Speaker 1: if you believed in this machine and that it could
4:37
Speaker 1: rude outlies, then it could force you to confess just
4:41
Speaker 1: being hooked up to it. You weren't going to pass it.
4:44
Speaker 1: They should have called it the guilt box. They called
4:46
Speaker 1: it the magic lie detector is one of the one
4:49
Speaker 1: of the things that they called it. Yeah, Leonard Keeler
4:51
Speaker 1: called it that he worked with John Larson at the
4:54
Speaker 1: Berkeley Police Department, and eventually, over time John Larson saw
4:58
Speaker 1: the what he considered the true youth behind the light
5:00
Speaker 1: detector and the fact that it kept being cold light detector,
5:03
Speaker 1: which is driving him crazy. Um, and he eventually distanced
5:07
Speaker 1: himself from it later on in his career. Um, but
5:10
Speaker 1: Leonard Keeler ran around marketing it to anyone and everyone saying,
5:14
Speaker 1: just having this is going to not only help you
5:17
Speaker 1: hire um, more more truthful, forthright people, but it's going
5:23
Speaker 1: to keep them in line while they're working for you,
5:25
Speaker 1: because they know you've got access to this thing and
5:27
Speaker 1: you can strap them to it at any time. Yeah,
5:30
Speaker 1: so that's where the polygraph came from. Yeah, there's a
5:32
Speaker 1: little prehistory to just to give them their due. Uh.
5:35
Speaker 1: In eight Cesaire Lambroso, he's an Italian criminologist. He measured
5:42
Speaker 1: changes in blood pressure for police cases. In a nineteen
5:45
Speaker 1: o four a device by Vittorio Binosi measured breathing and
5:51
Speaker 1: so they were early nineteen hundreds, late eighteen hundreds. They
5:54
Speaker 1: were kind of on the scene of of measuring these things.
5:57
Speaker 1: And Dr James Mackenzie in nineteen o six first mentioned
6:02
Speaker 1: the word polygraph with his instrument that he didn't use
6:05
Speaker 1: to root out the truth, but for uh he did
6:09
Speaker 1: use it when giving medical examination though. And then right
6:13
Speaker 1: before the polygraph was the unigraph unigraph, which was part
6:17
Speaker 1: of what's still used today in the polygraph. Um, it
6:21
Speaker 1: measured respiration. Pretty cool, yeah, um, but then you add
6:26
Speaker 1: to it a couple of other things and you got
6:28
Speaker 1: the polygraph. We could stop here. This is interesting enough
6:31
Speaker 1: right now. So there's no uh you really, there's no um,
6:36
Speaker 1: no one walking the planet who has anything to do
6:39
Speaker 1: with polygraphs that call them lie detectors, And anyone, even
6:44
Speaker 1: the most ardent defender of polygraph technology would correct you
6:51
Speaker 1: if you called it a lie detector. They would be like,
6:53
Speaker 1: it's it's not a lie detector because you can't detect
6:56
Speaker 1: a lie. It's possible. The whole basis of a polygraph
6:59
Speaker 1: is that it is a set of um medical instruments
7:03
Speaker 1: that used to measure changes in things like your heart rate,
7:07
Speaker 1: your respiration, UM and sweatiness. Basically, I would fail. Um, well,
7:13
Speaker 1: a lot of people do fail, and we'll get to that.
7:16
Speaker 1: But um, oh, because you're sweat that's okay. They would
7:21
Speaker 1: they would even hook me up. Um. So when you're
7:28
Speaker 1: hooked up to this machine, the whole point is that
7:30
Speaker 1: it measures these physiological changes in the idea that there
7:33
Speaker 1: you're going to undergo physiological changes based on the concept
7:37
Speaker 1: that a person hooked to this machine who is guilty
7:41
Speaker 1: will experience fear that they're going to be detected. So
7:45
Speaker 1: this machine is designed to detect that fear. That's right,
7:49
Speaker 1: which is really round about. But for a century almost
7:55
Speaker 1: these things were used, um and abused, and it took
7:58
Speaker 1: a while for people that to catch on that. There's
8:01
Speaker 1: a lot to criticize here with polygraphs, Yeah, for sure.
8:24
Speaker 1: All right, so let's get into this um. First of all,
8:27
Speaker 1: we need to point out that analog polygraphs are what
8:30
Speaker 1: you have long seen in movies and TV when they
8:34
Speaker 1: have the little jittery looks like a seismograph on the
8:37
Speaker 1: on the paper scrolling by, and uh, you're hooked up
8:41
Speaker 1: to all these different things on your chest, in your
8:43
Speaker 1: forehead and your fingertips. These days they do that digitally,
8:47
Speaker 1: but it's basically still the same technique. They just don't
8:52
Speaker 1: use the little scrolling needle. Do They have a name
8:55
Speaker 1: for that. It's called an inkfield pen. It is. Yeah.
9:00
Speaker 1: But the three things that they do, Josh, They measure
9:03
Speaker 1: your respiratory rate, as you said, They take newmgraphs, which
9:06
Speaker 1: are rubber tubes filled with air time around your chest
9:10
Speaker 1: and your abdomen, and that is going to measure whether
9:13
Speaker 1: or not you're you know, you start breathing heavy essentially
9:16
Speaker 1: when you get nervous. It monitors your breathing pattern and
9:19
Speaker 1: any changes to it, and it does it pretty cleverly. Right. Yeah.
9:22
Speaker 1: With bellows, it they're filled with air. So when you
9:25
Speaker 1: when you breathe in real deeply or have a change,
9:28
Speaker 1: it's going to displace that into the bellows and that
9:31
Speaker 1: will Originally that was attached, the bellows were literally attached
9:35
Speaker 1: to the mechanical arm that showed the change. These days,
9:38
Speaker 1: as a it's a transducer that converts it digitally electronically, right,
9:43
Speaker 1: it converts it to an electrical pattern, right, Yeah, that
9:46
Speaker 1: probably just says for the same thing. Yeah, um no,
9:50
Speaker 1: I think it looks a lot like it if you look.
9:52
Speaker 1: There's a picture of a modern one and it looks
9:56
Speaker 1: just like But yeah, it's not. It's not a paper
9:58
Speaker 1: read out any longer, which is kind of interesting. Like
10:01
Speaker 1: this technology hasn't hasn't changed on a very fundamental basis
10:06
Speaker 1: for like a hundred years almost. Yeah, I mean the
10:08
Speaker 1: early one from Mackenzie in nineteen o six. They say
10:11
Speaker 1: that a lot of the same components are still very
10:13
Speaker 1: similar today. Right. Um. You also are going to have
10:17
Speaker 1: so you're gonna have two tubes, one around your chest,
10:19
Speaker 1: one around your abdomen. It's um keeping an eye on
10:22
Speaker 1: your breathing. Um. You're going to have a blood pressure
10:25
Speaker 1: cuff which um, which keeps an eye on your heart
10:30
Speaker 1: rate and your blood pressure, and it does it through sound, right. Yeah,
10:34
Speaker 1: I didn't realize this. So when you're when the blood
10:37
Speaker 1: comes in and out of your veins, it creates sound,
10:39
Speaker 1: and sound can also be used to displace air, causing
10:44
Speaker 1: a bellows to contract, which again moved the arm on
10:48
Speaker 1: the scroll and now is created or turned into an
10:52
Speaker 1: electrical pattern. Um, but it's the same thing, but it's sound,
10:56
Speaker 1: which I just think is very neat. Well, and what's
10:58
Speaker 1: also neat is the sweat one. I figured they would
11:01
Speaker 1: have some sort of like a moisturerometer just to detect moisture,
11:06
Speaker 1: but it's called galvanic skin resistance or GSR or electrodermal activity,
11:12
Speaker 1: that's right. And they hook up these fingerplates to galvanometers
11:15
Speaker 1: and they are basically measuring the skin's ability to conduct electricity.
11:20
Speaker 1: And if your skin is moist, it's going to be
11:23
Speaker 1: able to conduct electricity easier. And that's what they're measuring there.
11:26
Speaker 1: It's like the ones the little um heart rate monitors
11:30
Speaker 1: that they clip to your fingertips in the hospital, but
11:34
Speaker 1: these things measure electricity instead, uh, which if you are dry,
11:40
Speaker 1: you're going to conduct less electricity, if you're wet, you're
11:44
Speaker 1: going to conduct more. So since you have so many
11:47
Speaker 1: pores on the end of your fingers and you sweat
11:49
Speaker 1: when you're nervous. There you got done. So you put
11:54
Speaker 1: all this together and um, it paints this picture. It's
11:57
Speaker 1: the A. C. L U among other people, have decried
12:00
Speaker 1: as just what are you doing here? Basically is what
12:04
Speaker 1: the A C l U says, right, Um, what what
12:09
Speaker 1: you have is a picture of a person who is
12:13
Speaker 1: undergoing stress, maybe feeling embarrassment, is maybe just scared to
12:18
Speaker 1: be there, uh, maybe doesn't like having things wrapped around
12:22
Speaker 1: his or her chest. Um, maybe doesn't really like the
12:27
Speaker 1: person asking the questions. The results of these these UM
12:32
Speaker 1: changes in pattern. The data is totally subjective, that's right,
12:37
Speaker 1: which makes polygraphs totally subjective, which takes it in large
12:41
Speaker 1: part out of the realm of science. Yeah, voodoo science
12:45
Speaker 1: is what they call it. And uh, all the proponents
12:48
Speaker 1: will say that a well trained forensic psychophysiologists which is
12:52
Speaker 1: the examiner, can get through all that to still get
12:56
Speaker 1: a good result. They're like, yeah, they know all this stuff,
12:59
Speaker 1: and if you're good, then you can factor that in
13:02
Speaker 1: and still get a good result. So let's talk about
13:05
Speaker 1: what the forensic psychophysiologist does. There's apparently I've seen anywhere
13:10
Speaker 1: between five thousand and ten thousand of them in the
13:12
Speaker 1: US at any given time, UM, and some of them
13:17
Speaker 1: belong to professional organizations. I think probably maybe half or third,
13:23
Speaker 1: depending on where you are on the on the estimate,
13:27
Speaker 1: UM belonged to any number of professional organizations. Some have
13:32
Speaker 1: no accreditation whatsoever, um, but are still able to open
13:36
Speaker 1: up shops depending on the state there in. Some states
13:39
Speaker 1: have zero laws about being a forensic psychophysiologist a k
13:43
Speaker 1: A polygraph examiner. That's right, but there is also some
13:48
Speaker 1: there are programs out there. Uh. The who wrote this article,
13:51
Speaker 1: Kevin bondser I don't know. I think so he he
13:54
Speaker 1: UM interviewed a guy who founded the Accidon Academy exit
14:00
Speaker 1: Haunt as a manufacturer of polygraphs, and they founded this
14:03
Speaker 1: academy as well, where um, you go through a certain
14:07
Speaker 1: amount of training to become a forensic psychophysiologist. And he
14:11
Speaker 1: actually interviewed that guy. Yeah, his name's Bobb Lee Lee. Uh,
14:16
Speaker 1: and Lee says that if you come to their academy, UM,
14:19
Speaker 1: you have to have a baccalaurea degree bachelor's right, or
14:23
Speaker 1: you have to have at least five years investigative experience
14:26
Speaker 1: and an associate's degree. Um, you have to take a
14:30
Speaker 1: ten week course, and after you complete the ten week course,
14:35
Speaker 1: you have to carry out twenty five polygraph examinations and
14:39
Speaker 1: submit them to be reviewed. Uh. So these are like
14:42
Speaker 1: real life ones. I guess you're working with your local
14:45
Speaker 1: police department or whatever. Maybe you're already a cop UM
14:49
Speaker 1: and you have to submit it to the Accident Academy
14:52
Speaker 1: board for a review. And then once they're all reviewed
14:55
Speaker 1: and everybody's all thumbs up, you are a life since
15:00
Speaker 1: I guess. But you're not licensed because there's no licensing body. Um,
15:04
Speaker 1: you are you graduate? I guess is is what they
15:08
Speaker 1: call it. So that's as accredited as it gets. I guess.
15:14
Speaker 1: And like you said, Um, proponents of polygraph testing say
15:19
Speaker 1: that there, if you're a good FP, you're gonna be
15:22
Speaker 1: able to structure everything correctly so that you can see
15:25
Speaker 1: past somebody who's just who sweats a lot like you,
15:28
Speaker 1: or who gets stressed out easily like me, Um, and
15:32
Speaker 1: design your questions appropriately, and you're gonna be able to
15:35
Speaker 1: to to figure out whether this person is deceptive or not.
15:40
Speaker 1: So how how would you do that? Chuck? Well, we
15:43
Speaker 1: should talk about the test itself. I guess. Uh, you're
15:46
Speaker 1: gonna you're gonna go in and you're gonna get a
15:48
Speaker 1: pretest before you get strapped up to anything. Could take
15:52
Speaker 1: about an hour. This is just you and those the
15:54
Speaker 1: only two people in the room. You're not surrounded by
15:56
Speaker 1: folks like in the movies and stuff, although a movie
16:00
Speaker 1: sometimes it's just two people, I guess. But the pretest
16:03
Speaker 1: that you're just going to get an interview basically about
16:06
Speaker 1: basically about why you're being investigated. Uh, they're also gonna
16:10
Speaker 1: be profiling you and checking you out and just seeing
16:13
Speaker 1: what kind of questions you respond to and what might
16:16
Speaker 1: make you nervous, just so they'll be better informed about
16:19
Speaker 1: how to properly question you once you're all strapped in
16:22
Speaker 1: right and the pretest where you're just kind of hanging
16:25
Speaker 1: out with them casually, the examiners also kind of getting
16:28
Speaker 1: info out of you that you might not be aware of, like, um,
16:31
Speaker 1: if you are uh, if you talk leisurely about your
16:36
Speaker 1: favorite beer at one point and how you like it
16:38
Speaker 1: a lot, and then later on it also comes up
16:41
Speaker 1: that you have to drive a lot um, they might
16:44
Speaker 1: come up with it. They might use that for a
16:46
Speaker 1: control question, UM, which could be something like have you
16:49
Speaker 1: ever driven under the influence of alcohol? And a control
16:52
Speaker 1: question is something where you would have to admit guilt um,
16:56
Speaker 1: and you may not want to, but it's such a
16:59
Speaker 1: broad question that just about anybody is guilty of it,
17:02
Speaker 1: like have you ever lied to somebody? Have you ever
17:05
Speaker 1: um stolen anything? That kind of thing, So where if
17:08
Speaker 1: you say no, they now have a baseline for what
17:12
Speaker 1: it looks like when you lie. That they can make
17:15
Speaker 1: a reasonable assumption that you have just lied. And any
17:19
Speaker 1: of the data UM captured on the polygraph they're going
17:23
Speaker 1: to use to analyze everything else off of. And that's
17:27
Speaker 1: pretty much it. That's the test, and afterward you have
17:30
Speaker 1: the post tests where they look at all the data
17:33
Speaker 1: and chart out whether or not they think you're deceptive
17:37
Speaker 1: and aware. Like on this question you were deceptive. On
17:40
Speaker 1: this question you may have been deceptive. It's kind of
17:42
Speaker 1: hard to tell. On this one you definitely were deceptive.
17:45
Speaker 1: So so, and it's all in it's all in relation
17:48
Speaker 1: to that control question, that baseline, right, So if you
17:52
Speaker 1: if your deception, if you if on questions where I mean,
17:56
Speaker 1: they're going to have to talk to the police as
17:58
Speaker 1: well too and say what do you want to know
18:00
Speaker 1: out of this person? So they'll design questions around that
18:02
Speaker 1: as well. Um, so they may have a question like, um,
18:05
Speaker 1: are you wearing a blue shirt? That may be question one,
18:08
Speaker 1: it's irrelevant, right. Question two is, um, have you ever
18:13
Speaker 1: lied to your boss? That's the control question, and then
18:15
Speaker 1: question three is something like you know, did you steal
18:19
Speaker 1: the cookie from the cookie jar? Like that's the one
18:21
Speaker 1: that the cops want them to ask. They'll compare the
18:24
Speaker 1: results of Q three against Q two and if they're
18:29
Speaker 1: the same or you can't really tell, that's in UH
18:33
Speaker 1: in that that's an UH inconclusive tests. So that's it.
18:38
Speaker 1: I mean, like you said, that's that's polygraph. It's pretty easy,
18:57
Speaker 1: it is. It's Uh, it's um jar ringly easy, considering
19:01
Speaker 1: that it's used in legal cases a lot, right, Yes,
19:04
Speaker 1: that's true. Um. People try to to battle the LDE
19:08
Speaker 1: detector in various ways or a little tricks that the
19:11
Speaker 1: Internet says works, like taking a sedative or putting any
19:15
Speaker 1: perspirint on your fingers, which seems like they would make
19:18
Speaker 1: you wash your hands, Uh, putting attack in your shoe,
19:23
Speaker 1: and anytime you get asked a question, every single time
19:25
Speaker 1: you stomp on the tack. And the idea is that
19:28
Speaker 1: you're just gonna skew the tests so they all look
19:30
Speaker 1: the same, so your body has the same reaction no
19:33
Speaker 1: matter what's going on, like they I guess, if you
19:36
Speaker 1: press on the tack, your physiological response could overwhelm any
19:39
Speaker 1: response to the question. Right. Um, Like I said, there,
19:45
Speaker 1: these these things are used in legal cases, but with caveats. Right.
19:49
Speaker 1: If you undergo a polygraph, Uh, whether you fail or pass,
19:55
Speaker 1: it doesn't really matter legally speaking, right, um, because of
20:01
Speaker 1: unless you're in New Mexico. Yeah, this is the only
20:03
Speaker 1: state that allows it just openly. Like if you take
20:06
Speaker 1: a polygraph like, it's admissible in court yeah, every other state. Um.
20:10
Speaker 1: Usually the both sides have to agree on it being
20:13
Speaker 1: admitted or um. The judge has to say, yeah, we're
20:17
Speaker 1: gonna admit this one, right, Yeah. And federally, the judge
20:20
Speaker 1: decides whether or not they're going to admit it, right,
20:24
Speaker 1: And I guess state judges kind of follow that federal
20:27
Speaker 1: ruling of polygraphing. Yeah, And it's sort of a crapshoot
20:31
Speaker 1: if a federal judge is gonna allow it or not.
20:33
Speaker 1: There's no precedent really to where they say we have
20:36
Speaker 1: to or we don't have to. Right. So, what are
20:39
Speaker 1: the problems with this um? The problems with a polygraph
20:47
Speaker 1: um or that it's subjective, Right, that's a big one.
20:50
Speaker 1: But also because there because it's subjective, you can get
20:54
Speaker 1: what are called false positives and false negatives. Yeah, and
20:58
Speaker 1: you don't want that because then the test itself is
21:01
Speaker 1: just not valid. Right. Uh. But I mean that a
21:04
Speaker 1: lot of people use that as evidence that polygraph polygraphy
21:09
Speaker 1: shouldn't be done at all, that it's not valid. False
21:12
Speaker 1: positive and polygraph thing is when you find somebody who
21:18
Speaker 1: is deemed deceptive but was telling the truth. False negative
21:22
Speaker 1: is when somebody who wasn't telling the truth UM is
21:26
Speaker 1: deemed truthful. Like Gary Ridgeway, the Green River killer. They
21:30
Speaker 1: had him for a little while and gave him a
21:32
Speaker 1: polygraph and he passed and they let him go and
21:34
Speaker 1: he went and killed a bunch more women. All right,
21:36
Speaker 1: that's right. I didn't know that. Actually, Yeah, there's also
21:40
Speaker 1: the uh. You know, the federal government is the largest
21:43
Speaker 1: uh consumer of these exams, and if you work for
21:46
Speaker 1: the federal government, you've probably had one to get the job.
21:49
Speaker 1: But you can't do that in the private sector thanks
21:51
Speaker 1: to the Polygraph Protection Act Employee Polygraph Protection Act in
21:55
Speaker 1: the late eighties, they said, you can't force your employees
21:59
Speaker 1: to do this US. You can request it, but if
22:02
Speaker 1: they don't want to do it, you can't fire them
22:04
Speaker 1: because of it. You just can't do it, right, not
22:07
Speaker 1: in private land, right unless you have a contract with
22:10
Speaker 1: the government, and then that's not valid. But yeah, the
22:14
Speaker 1: the federal government is the largest opponent to him in court,
22:19
Speaker 1: but also the largest consumer. And imagine that, UM. And
22:23
Speaker 1: there's been a lot of cases that shaped its admissibility
22:26
Speaker 1: or not. But the polygraph it seems like it's kind
22:29
Speaker 1: of honest way out. I wrote an article about UM
22:32
Speaker 1: M R I being used as lie detectors, and that's
22:35
Speaker 1: starting to kind of come into fashion the more we
22:37
Speaker 1: start to understand, like how lies are born in the brain,
22:40
Speaker 1: being able to see it and saying this is the
22:43
Speaker 1: pattern that will happen. UM. If this person is lying
22:47
Speaker 1: and then that pattern happens, they say, what, we know
22:49
Speaker 1: you're lying. We just saw that live form in your brain.
22:52
Speaker 1: That makes sense, yes, But at the same time, people
22:54
Speaker 1: who understand MR eyes say, is way too early to
22:59
Speaker 1: be doing that. And even if we can do it
23:01
Speaker 1: with accuracy, there are a lot of moral and ethical
23:05
Speaker 1: questions to it as well that we need to address.
23:08
Speaker 1: First always uh and then penile plus demography. What's that? So?
23:14
Speaker 1: Remember the the UM newmeographs that go around the chest
23:18
Speaker 1: and the abdomen. Imagine one of those that goes around
23:22
Speaker 1: the penis and it does the same thing. It the
23:24
Speaker 1: text changes in contraction and girth. It's a perfect way
23:29
Speaker 1: to put it UM and it's used to detect arousal.
23:33
Speaker 1: They use it for UM sex offenders. It's under at
23:36
Speaker 1: least as much attack as regular UM polygraphs. But I
23:42
Speaker 1: wrote this blog post called UM using science to root
23:45
Speaker 1: out late in homosexuality among homophobes. A study at U
23:49
Speaker 1: g A used UH penile pleas plesismography UM to find
23:55
Speaker 1: if anyone who they had deemed homophobic be came aroused
24:00
Speaker 1: to inexposed to homosexual pornography. Yeah, it's it's one of
24:06
Speaker 1: the better posts I've ever written. Cheese, all right, that's
24:09
Speaker 1: our future. I guess peno pleathismography for everyone, everyone with
24:15
Speaker 1: a penis at least and then chuck. Lastly, I want
24:18
Speaker 1: to encourage everybody, if this has piqued your interest about
24:22
Speaker 1: lie detectors, to go watch the shoe Court shoe store
24:26
Speaker 1: job interview clip from Mr Show on YouTube. You remember
24:30
Speaker 1: that one. It's very good weather friend Paula Thompkins and
24:33
Speaker 1: he has a breakthrough. Was seeing that one? Yeah, yeah,
24:38
Speaker 1: good old p f T yep. And that's it for
24:41
Speaker 1: lie detectors, right, Yeah. I want to take a test.
24:43
Speaker 1: If there's someone in the Atlanta area that administers these
24:46
Speaker 1: and would be willing to give me a lie detector test,
24:49
Speaker 1: I would love to do that, Okay, and I'll watch
24:54
Speaker 1: yes UM as long as I can, you know, approve
24:57
Speaker 1: the questions or not approve them. But I don't want
25:00
Speaker 1: to be like rooted out as some miscreant. That's a
25:04
Speaker 1: little late for that. Just keep it above board. UM.
25:07
Speaker 1: If you want to know more about lie detectors and
25:10
Speaker 1: play with some Lie detector flash animation, you can do
25:13
Speaker 1: that by typing in lie detector on this in the
25:17
Speaker 1: search bar on how stuff works dot com and UM,
25:21
Speaker 1: that means it's time for listener mail. That's right, Josh.
25:25
Speaker 1: This is from Brad and Brad. If you remember, we
25:27
Speaker 1: had a list of suggestions from a listener not too
25:31
Speaker 1: long ago that thought our podcast could be a lot
25:33
Speaker 1: better if we changed a few things. Brad has some
25:36
Speaker 1: suggestions of his own of how we can make the
25:39
Speaker 1: podcast better. We should both have nicknames zazz up the
25:42
Speaker 1: actual name like welcome to stuff you should Know with
25:45
Speaker 1: j C and the Dingo, sit back while getting a
25:50
Speaker 1: big helping of knowledge from Chucko and the Duck. I
25:54
Speaker 1: second the suggestion to remove the personal anecdotes should be
25:57
Speaker 1: moved to a separate podcast called the Josh and Chuck Memoirs.
26:01
Speaker 1: Daily one hour podcasts can recount your lives from birth
26:04
Speaker 1: to present, focusing on depressing stories that are marginally factual.
26:08
Speaker 1: It's in development, Chuck, please your raise your voice one octave,
26:13
Speaker 1: Josh lower yours one octave. What okay? So now this
26:18
Speaker 1: is how I talk to the opening of the podcast
26:21
Speaker 1: should be a description of what each of you ate
26:23
Speaker 1: that day and the number of trips to the bathroom.
26:26
Speaker 1: This allows the listener to keep track at home. Hedgehogs,
26:30
Speaker 1: brain surgeons, arcades, and Bolivian politics are underrated, under sorry,
26:35
Speaker 1: underrepresented on your podcast at least should be about these subjects.
26:40
Speaker 1: Do not exclude listener mail. Instead, create a quieter audio
26:43
Speaker 1: track reading the listener mail and overlay it on the
26:46
Speaker 1: rest of the podcast. That way, listeners can hear both
26:50
Speaker 1: the mail and the main content at the same time.
26:53
Speaker 1: This is a pretty good idea. Why not set the
26:55
Speaker 1: pod we literally driving people in Spain? If we did that,
26:58
Speaker 1: why not set the podcast to a backdrop of tribal
27:01
Speaker 1: drums and jungle animal noises would give it an exotic feel.
27:05
Speaker 1: That's over the listener mail track, over the whole thing,
27:09
Speaker 1: So that'd be three tracks deep. Yes, and it would
27:12
Speaker 1: lead to suspense for the listener to wonder if you
27:14
Speaker 1: will be eaten by jaguars? Uh. And it was clear
27:18
Speaker 1: from the podcast on Mummies neither of you had ever
27:20
Speaker 1: been mummified. Please refrain from explaining topics that you don't
27:23
Speaker 1: have personal experience with. And then the final suggestion, just
27:27
Speaker 1: retail episodes of this American Life that went that last
27:32
Speaker 1: one went down like the Dave Glitterman top. Finally, so
27:35
Speaker 1: that's Brad, Thanks brand. Those are all great ideas. Three
27:39
Speaker 1: tracks all in one, streaming at once together listener mail
27:42
Speaker 1: quietly to podcast and tribal drumming and jungle noises. Yes, um,
27:48
Speaker 1: let's see. If you have access to a polygraph and
27:52
Speaker 1: want to hook chuck up to it, let us know.
27:55
Speaker 1: You can let us know on Facebook at facebook dot com,
27:58
Speaker 1: slash stuff you Should Know, You can tweet to set
28:00
Speaker 1: s y s k podcast, and you can send us
28:03
Speaker 1: a regular old email at stuff podcast at how stuff
28:07
Speaker 1: works dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production
28:12
Speaker 1: of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for
28:15
Speaker 1: my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
28:17
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows