An Honest Life, with Micheal Leviton

Intelligence Squared

Arts, News, Society & Culture, News Commentary

4.2 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 10 August 2022

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In an era of fake news and 'alternative facts', the issue of truth and how it is presented to the world has never been more timely. But on a personal level, things are less clear cut. We all tell white lies and withhold info in the name of manners and politeness from time to time and some of the hardest truths can feel very difficult to tell. Micheal Leviton is a writer and musician from Brooklyn whose book, To Be Honest: A Memoir, tells his own story of growing up in a family who, according to Michael, never lied. His upbringing meant that by the age of 29 he could only recall having lied three times in his life. The challenges of being brutally honest on a daily basis have been the basis of much soul searching for the author and also serve as the foundation of a few entertaining tales in his book. He joins Intelligence Squared producer Catharine Hughes to talk about it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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1:07.7	Welcome to Intelligent Squared. I'm Connor Boyle, coming up on the podcast, Michael Levitton,
1:14.0	the writer and author whose work explores why we lie and why honesty might not always be the
1:19.6	best policy as a society. Most people are not explicitly taught how or when to lie as a child,
1:27.6	but whether it's glossing over difficult truths, telling little white lies or sometimes big ones,
1:32.9	lying is something that most of us all end up doing in one way or another.
1:37.3	Writer Michael Levitton grew up in a family that never lied. In the Levitton household,
1:42.5	honesty was the only policy. Following this principle, he lived a life of brutal honesty for three
1:48.3	decades, and by the age of 29, he could only recall ever telling three lies. But in a world
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