12. The Allusionist

This is sort of a Part II of the Criminal post I wrote earlier. Allusionist 23: Criminallusionist features Criminal host Phoebe Judge to talk about the language of crime and deception.

Host Helen Zaltzman has been bringing in fellow Radiotopia shows recently to highlight the network’s podcast pledge drive. She’s also doing a live chat on Product Hunt next week with Radiotopia collective founder Roman Mars. Looks like they really know how to do cross promotion for the digital age.

The Allusionist is quickly becoming one of my favorite podcasts. The premise is Ellen — who has a witty British personality with dry humor —puts words under a microscope and inspects why we say the things we say. It’s kind of like what Song Exploder does for music, but for language.

Given the subject matter of her episode this week, I thought it would be fun to take three topics from the show and play two truths and a lie.

Polygraph machines are remarkably accurate

Fear and alarm can provide tell-tale signs that you are lying. The polygraph is a device that records how fast your breathing, your respiration rate and how much your chest is moving. Because communication is about 90% nonverbal, when you are lying your body will trigger an unconscious physiological response that is recorded by the polygraph machine to indicate deception. Polygraphs or “lie detector” machines have been adopted by law enforcement over time because the results have proven accurate as an interrogation technique.

You can tell if someone’s lying by asking about their senses

If someone tells you a story, you can use a technique called “cognitive interviewing” to ask about what they have seen, heard, smelled, thought, touched or tasted. This provides more complex detail without suggesting anything specific to the person you are interviewing. Turns out, if you’re telling a made-up story, even one that’s well rehearsed… you can’t complete this interview.

Word count can give away a lie

As you are thinking harder about monitoring what you are saying it has the side effect of reducing the thing that you have to say. If you plug a transcript into a computer to count response length and words, the computer can detect a lie 80% to 85% of the time. In contrast, trained law enforcement professionals from Homeland Security, the FBI or other intelligence groups are rarely better than 54% correct — basically a flip of the coin.

See if you can spot the deception. Write a response saying which one you think is a lie!