Original version

BBC World Service East Asia

Discovery

Documentaries

Factual: Science & Nature

Factual: Science & Nature: Science & Technology

BBC World Service East and Southern Africa Schedule

BBC World Service East and Southern Africa

BBC World Service Online

BBC World Service Australasia

BBC World Service

BBC World Service schedule for American satellite radio and the Caribbean

BBC World Service Americas and the Caribbean

BBC World Service Europe and the Middle East

BBC World Service West and Central Africa Schedule

BBC World Service West and Central Africa

BBC World Service South Asia

BBC World Service News Internet

Discovery: Richard Wiseman

Magazines & Reviews

Richard Wiseman

13/04/2020 GMT

BBC World Service - Discovery, Richard WisemanSearch BBC

How to spot a liar. Professor Richard Wiseman tells Jim Al-Khalili

Magician and Professor of Psychology, Richard Wiseman tells Jim Al-Khalili how to spot a liar  and why some people are luckier than others.

How do you tell if someone is lying? When Richard Wiseman, Professor of the Public Understanding of Psychology at the University of Hertfordshire, conducted a nationwide experiment to identify the tell-tale signs, the results were surprising. If you want to spot a liar, don’t look at them. Listen to what they say and how they say it. in     If you want to distinguish fact from fiction, radio, not TV  or video  is your friend.  Visual cues distract us from what is being said and good liars can control their body language more easily than their voice. Depressingly, Richard has also shown that our nearest and dearest are the most able to deceive us.  

Richard is a rare breed: a scientist who is also a practising magician. By the age of 17 he was performing magic tricks at children’s parties and a member of the exclusive Magic Circle. He chose to study psychology to try and understand why we believe the unbelievable and spent many years doing research on the paranormal: studying séances, haunted places and extra sensory perception. Could a belief in the paranormal be the price we pay for scientific discovery, he wonders? 
   
Jim Al-Khalili talks to Richard about his magical Life Scientific and finds out more about his work on lying, ESP and luck. Are some people born lucky or is it a mind-set that can be learnt?  

Producer: Anna Buckley

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Discovery

Richard Wiseman

Genres

Formats

Brand

BBC World Service East Asia

About BBC World Service