People Who Read People: A Behavior and Psychology Podcast31 Mars

MK Ultra: Fact vs fiction, with Stephen Kinzer

Did MK Ultra actually accomplish anything impressive in brainwashing- and mind-control-related areas? Did the US government, as some people claim, create "Manchurian candidates," who would kill on command? In this episode, I talk with Stephen Kinzer, author of “Poisoner in Chief,” a book about the head of MK Ultra, Sidney Gottlieb. We discuss the strange, disturbing reality of MK Ultra—and the many exaggerations made about it over the years. While pop culture and deceptive gurus (like Chase Hughes) spread tales of the program achieving amazing and scary psychological control, Kinzer describes a disorganized and amateurish series of experiments that harmed many people but failed to demonstrate anything impressive. We explore why MK Ultra has become a perfect canvas for all sorts of paranoid ideas and wild speculations, and why the lack of evidence of anything approaching actual mind control hasn’t stopped people from confidently claiming otherwise. If you’ve ever wondered what’s real—and what’s myth—about MK Ultra, you'll probably appreciate this talk.Topics discussed: the myths versus the realities of the MK Ultra program; what makes MK Ultra such a perfect case for people to imagine and believe all sorts of things; what Operation Mockingbird was and its relation to MK Ultra; the hypnotist George Estabrooks and his wild claims of mind control; the idea that Sirhan Sirhan was brainwashed to kill RFK; the likelihood of large plots succeeding in the modern age; the more realistic and banal ways that governments try to “control people’s minds” by persuading and shifting opinions in the modern age; and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Avsnitt(219)

Army Psy-Op veteran talks influence, blowback, psy-op myths, and more

A talk with an Army Psychological Operations soldier about what military psy-op work really involves—and how different the reality is from many people's ideas about the nature of that work. We discuss...

28 Aug 1h 34min

Can computers spot lies better than humans?, with Bennett Kleinberg

Can machines spot a lie better than we can? I talk with psychology researcher Bennett Kleinberg, whose work brings together psychology, machine learning, natural-language processing, and deception det...

11 Aug 1h 4min

Inside a Scientology e-meter auditing session, with Chris Shelton

Former Scientologist Chris Shelton spent thousands of hours using the e-meter to "audit" fellow members of the Church—but what does the device actually measure, and why do Scientologists trust it as a...

1 Aug 1h 29min

How Pete Blair scored 100% in a deception detection study

In a 2014 deception detection study, Pete Blair made 33 judgments—and got all 33 right. That paper was titled “Expertise in deception detection involves actively prompting diagnostic information rathe...

24 Juli 1h 8min

Behaviorally, poker and interrogations are very different

Zach Elwood, author of influential books on poker tells and host of the People Who Read People podcast, joins The Deductionist podcast for a wide-ranging conversation about what we can and can't learn...

10 Juli 54min

Understanding defenses of the polygraph, with David Goldberg

Polygraphs are a controversial tool in criminal investigations: critics argue they're too unreliable to trust, while proponents say that, even if they’re not perfect, they nonetheless can play a valua...

1 Juli 1h 25min

The push for science-based interrogation approaches, with Maria Hartwig and Christian Cory

In real or fictional criminal interrogation scenes, you've probably seen the approach where police barge in and confront the suspect with the evidence, trying to get them to crack and give a confessio...

20 Juni 58min

Reading behavior in The Traitors and other social deduction games, with Zack Davies (UK season 2)

Zack Davies was a standout contestant on the popular reality TV show The Traitors (UK, season 2). The Traitors is what is called a social deduction game, similar to the games Werewolf and Mafia. In th...

13 Juni 1h 4min