True Lies and Genuine Fakes
Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford
Pushkin Industries
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 12 September 2025
⏱️ 44 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In 1998, an art gallery gets a mysterious phone call. The caller claims they have been fooled by a master forger and that many of their prized paintings are fakes. Or are they?
This is the story of the life and lies of the notorious Eric Hebborn. What did he do, and what does that teach us about how we can root out deepfakes without undermining our trust in reality?
For a full list of sources, see the show notes at timharford.com
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:04.0 | What I told people, I was making a podcast about Benghazi. |
| 0:08.5 | Nine times out of ten, they called me a masochist, rolled their eyes, or just asked, why. |
| 0:16.5 | Benghazi, the truth became a web of lies. |
| 0:19.1 | It's almost a dirty word, one that connotes conspiracy theory. Will we ever get the truth about the Benghazi, the truth became a web of lies. It's almost a dirty word, one that connotes conspiracy theory. |
| 0:23.0 | Will we ever get the truth about the Benghazi massacre? |
| 0:25.6 | Bad faith political warfare, and frankly, bullshit. |
| 0:29.6 | We kill the ambassador just to cover something up. |
| 0:32.8 | You put two and two together. |
| 0:36.2 | Was it an overblown distraction or a sinister conspiracy? |
| 0:40.8 | Benghazi is a rosetta stone for everything that's been going on for the last 20 years. |
| 0:48.2 | I'm Leon Nefok from Prologue Projects and Pushkin Industries. |
| 0:52.7 | This is Fiasco, Benghazi. |
| 0:55.0 | What difference at this point does it make? |
| 0:58.1 | Yes, that's right. Lock her up. |
| 1:00.6 | Listen to Fiasco, Benghazi, anywhere you get your podcasts. |
| 1:04.3 | And binge the entire season now, add free with a Pushkin Plus subscription. |
| 1:09.2 | Head to the Fiasco show page on Apple Podcasts or Pushkin.com. |
| 1:13.3 | to sign up. |
| 1:19.1 | Pushkin. |
| 1:26.5 | In one wing of Somerset House, one of central London's grandest palaces, |
| 1:32.3 | the Courthold Gallery displays a selection of its much envied collection of drawings and paintings. |
... |
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