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American Innovations

Lie Detector | The Heart of a Liar | S43-E1

American Innovations

Wondery

Steven Johnson, History, Kids & Family, Education For Kids, Science

4.64.1K Ratings

🗓️ 25 February 2021

⏱️ 41 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Humans are shockingly bad at telling whether or not someone is lying. That’s why, a century ago, psychologists and criminologists developed machines to detect lies for us, by measuring blood pressure, pulse, and breathing rate. Their lie detectors promised to revolutionize the criminal justice system. But is it really possible for science to separate truth from lies?

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Transcript

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0:00.0

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0:03.6

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0:08.9

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0:11.6

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0:13.2

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0:18.2

one week early and ad free in the Wundery app. Download the Wundery App in your Apple or Google Play mobile

0:25.6

app store today. It's May 7,

0:35.0

May 7, 1984, Seattle, Washington.

0:40.0

In the King County Sheriff's Headquarters, Deputy Dave Reicert stares through a one-way mirror into an interrogation room.

0:48.0

He sips lukewarm coffee from a styrofoam cup.

0:51.3

Watching as a colleague inside the room tightens a blood pressure cuff around the right

0:56.0

bicep of a person of interest named Gary Ridgeway. Another deputy sidles up next to Reichart and nods at Ridgway.

1:04.3

I mean, he does kind of look like someone who kills prostitutes, right?

1:16.0

Reichart takes in Ridgway. He's scrawny, with light brown hair flopping over his forehead, narrow eyes, and a wisp of a mustache lining his upper lip. He does have a certain rat-like quality to him.

1:21.4

I'll give you that, but I don't know, I still think the cab drivers are man, not this guy.

1:26.8

Over the past two years, police have discovered more than two dozen bodies in the wooded areas outside Seattle near the Green River.

1:36.1

Girls and young women, many of them prostitutes or runaways. All of them strangled.

1:43.0

Reichart and his colleagues have a prime suspect, a cab driver who admits to knowing five of the victims.

1:49.0

But a witness says they saw one of the victims get into a pickup truck similar to the one

1:53.6

Ridgeway drives so to cross every T and dot every I they've brought him in for

1:58.6

questioning and to give him a lie detector test.

2:03.0

The polygraph operator straps a cord around Ridgway's chest

...

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