Welcome to the Very Well Mind podcast. We've interviewed over 100 authors, experts, entrepreneurs, athletes, musicians, and others to help you learn strategies to care for your mental health.

This episode is hosted by psychotherapist and bestselling author Amy Morin. Now let's get into the episode.

Okay. Do you look for clues about whether someone's lying to you?

Do you ever read articles on body language or lie detection to try to learn how to become better at spotting someone who's lying? Have you ever

felt frustrated because you couldn't tell if somebody was telling the truth? If you answered yes to

any of those questions, today's episode is for you. We all know that people lie sometimes. And

despite our attempts to uncover the truth, most of us are really bad at detecting whether someone

else is lying.

So today I'm talking to Dr. Paul Ekman. Time magazine named him as one of the most 100 influential

people in the world. And he's been ranked 15th among the most influential psychologists of the

21st century. He's considered the world's deception detection expert. Often dubbed the human lie detector,

he was the inspiration behind the hit series, Lie to Me. He even trained the TSA in how to detect

deception. He co-discovered something called micro expressions, which we'll talk about a little bit later.

He's worked with the Dalai Lama,

and he's written many books, and we're fortunate to have him on the show today. Some of the

things he talks about are why people lie, the biggest myths about how to detect lies, and how to

actually know if someone is being deceptive. Make sure to stick around until the end of the episode

for the therapist's take.

It's the part of the show where I'll break down Dr. Ekman's strategies and talk about how you can

apply them to your own life. So here's Dr. Ekman on how to tell if someone is lying to you.

Dr. Ekman, welcome to the Very Well Mind podcast. Thank you. I'm excited to talk to you. I'm sure you don't remember

this, but you and I had a phone conversation about eight years ago. I just looked through my email

...