Isaac Blessing Jacob, Gioachino Assereto
For the third week, I’m turning to another of the handful of big, unavoidable narrative podcasts out there. If you already listen to podcasts, there’s a decent chance you’re already listening to Radiolab. But I’m going to reach back to an early episode called Deception.
Radiolab has sort of broken away from these kinds of shows. At the outset, their episodes looked at the science behind almost impossibly broad subjects: morality, stress, memory and the like. But as they’ve moved forward the episodes have narrowed and the show has wandered away from its focus on science. Stories about a premature birth, child custody, and the language behind war are some of their best work.
But for now, on to Deception.
This episode is broken into three segments but it feels closer to five. The part about microexpressions—facial movements that hint at underlying emotions—is one of my favorite produced interviews, in part because it seems like it almost didn’t happen. The tape with Jad trying out the microexpression game on the side of a road is great, but I kind of doubt that’s how they were expecting the show to go. It’s spontaneous (and probably a bit frantic) but it translates into a great scene.
But the episode’s gravitational center is a segment about a con artist and pathological liar. The reporter Ellen Horne uses this brilliant comparison of earthquakes and aftershocks to explain what being conned is like. In the interest of avoiding spoilers I’ll leave it at that.
Deception came out in Radiolab’s fourth season—they’re on fourteen now—but it isn’t up on iTunes. They do host about 150 other full length episodes and shorts though. If you want to hear Deception you can stream it here or download the whole thing on Radiolab’s website.