October 14, 2017 • 36 mins
In this week's SYSK Select episode, ever since people have had secrets, other people have been looking for ways to get it out of them. Law enforcement and chemistry alike have searched for a drug that can remove the ability to lie. Join Josh and Chuck as they check in to see how it's going.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey everybody, it's me Josh and for this week's s
Y s K Selex, I've chosen one on truth Serums,
which originally came out in April of two thirteen. Turns out,
well we always thought was a truth serum was actually
just a handful of goofballs. Enjoy. Welcome to Stuff you
(00:22):
Should Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and
welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. And there's Charles W.
Chuck Bryant back in the saddle again. Man, it's been
a while. That was a goat boy being whipped. That's you.
(00:44):
Here's the goat boy, right. Do you remember goat boy
from Sarry Life? Yes? What was his name? I don't
Jim Brewer, Yeah he was goat boy, wasn't I think so?
Was it called goat boy? Great? Classic SNL character? Agreed? Yeah, uh, agreed,
that's pretty good. Thanks. Um, how are you doing? Oh
(01:06):
I'm great. Man. Inject me with truth sermon, asked me,
and then you'll get the truth may or may not
work though, And it's not even serum, you know. Um,
We've got a a pretty cool case coming up where
this is going to be used. Uh well cool, Well, no,
but I'm saying, like, thank you for correcting me, because no,
(01:26):
it's not cool, it's interesting, sensational. Yes, And uh, this
is actually what made me think that we should do
something on truth serum was the James Holmes case, the Aurora,
Colorado batman shooter, Um, who has been saying that he's
insane or acting insane ever since he was caught. But
a lot of people think, maybe he's not so insane, right,
(01:48):
And uh, a judge just recently in the middle of
March approved um him to be tested under narco analysis,
which is narco interrogation, really is what it is. It's
unusual these days in the US for something like that
to happen, and a lot of folks are saying, what's
up with this judge, like are you for real? Yeah?
(02:09):
And it turns out that there is a very long history,
especially in the twentieth century, of people using what has
been popularly dubbed truth serum, but incorrectly dubbed truth serum
because it doesn't necessarily generate the truth or um cover
the truth. And it's not a Siah. Yeah, watery part
of coagul little blood is that right? Is that all
(02:30):
it is? I believe so, and I think there's a
plant based serra as well. But either way, none of
that is none of the truth storm drugs that they
use our serums. No, and we should probably get out
of the way right now that um LSD not a
truth serum or a truth drug. Uh okay, well, now
that's what I think most people think about when when
(02:52):
you think of being interrogated under the influence of drugs
that they give you LSD and started shouting at you.
I had no idea about this, but it reminds you.
You know, you harken back to the days of the polygraph.
When that first started, it was like, well, okay, society
is saying, what we shouldn't beat people with rubber hoses
(03:12):
to get the truth out of him anymore, and it's
possible that this isn't even the truth. They're just saying
what we want to hear because they want us to stop.
So let's try some other techniques. And as a result
you had the polygraph truth serums, which we're gonna call
incorrect or no, that's what they're called, basically, UM because
there isn't really a clinical name for him, is there UM?
(03:35):
I don't know n narco analytic gold drugs. Well that's
kind of like the Yeah, I just made that up,
but that's really what it is. So basically there's two
reasons why you would use truth serums, and they come
down to narco analysis and narco interrogation. And the one
I should say that James Holmes is going to undergo
is I guess kind of a combination of both, because
(03:57):
they're trying to get at the truth of a sanity
um and but at the same time it will be
interrogative because he's a suspect in a massive murder trial.
Although I would say that's just the psychological because the other,
the probative truth is they're trying to get a revelation
of a crime. Oh yeah, I guess that's true and
(04:17):
not necessarily their mental state. Yea. So those are those
are the two differences. Is are you trying to say,
you know, inject you and say did you steal the painting?
But yeah, that's a good art art theft podcast on
that or um like some sort of psychological truth that
they're trying to uncover about themselves, right uh. And that one,
(04:42):
as far as truth serums go, is probably the one
where it's the drugs will be most effective. Yeah, because
it's kind of unlocking like an unconscious um revelation a person,
like uncovering a neurosis that maybe they didn't understand that
they had and now it's there's some sort of catharsis
(05:04):
that these drugs have allowed to just kind of let
their guard down. Now they're they're flowing out with a
catharsis and they're feeling better afterward. Yeah. And most of
those studies to have been uh not been on like prisoners,
but maybe volunteers and things, so it's a more friendly environment.
So maybe they get further that way. But we'll get
to all that, all right, So let's let's talk about
(05:24):
the the history of this chuck um, they're not so old,
the idea of using drugs to get the truth out
of somebody. And actually there was a Texas doctor doctor
house for real, Yeah, the real doctor house house. He
uh he was a Dallas, Texas doctor um and obstetrician
and uh back when he was delivering babies. They were
(05:48):
using a combination of chloroform, morphine and a scope al amine,
which you may have heard of before if you've ever
taken um uh motion sickness drugs that patches opolamin Yeah. Uh,
and he noticed that when women were on this combination
of drugs, they tended to be very candid and forthright
(06:09):
u with stuff. Sometimes they didn't have anything to do
with the child birthring process. And doctor House said, hey,
I wonder if you could use this on criminals. Yeah,
and truthful that's the most important part. Well, yeah, they
found out that they were accurate, and so yeah, he said,
you know what, who's who's not forthcoming and who doesn't
(06:29):
tell the truth are lying lying criminals, right, so maybe
we should and get them pregnant and then give them
scopeful a mean, actually not to get them pregnant. And uh,
he sort of resisted the whole truth storm thing. Uh.
Supposedly that came about in the Los Angeles record was
when it was first used. But yeah, he eventually would
(06:51):
come around and embrace that term and use it himself,
because you know, once things take hold in the public consciousness,
you just sort of have to give in. Yeah, and
he he in that way kind of resembles though that
the inventor of the polygraph, for the guy who brought
all these disparate parts of the polygraph together. William Molton Marston,
the guy invented Wonder Woman, just kind of became a
(07:13):
promoter of his law enforcement tool. Yeah, but he found
out that it worked the first time, not by getting
a bunch of guilty guys found guilty, but of a
study with three men who said they were innocent. Uh,
he gave them the scope l amine Um, I guess,
interrogated them, found that they still said no, I'm innocent,
(07:36):
all three of them, and then they later got off
even though like all the evidence was it was against them.
They didn't get off because of the truth serum. That
was a separate study. He just kind of compared the
two and said, Hey, this is gonna work like Gangbusters. Yeah,
and despite that, I guess sort of success. Um. I
guess he certainly touted it as such. But um, there
haven't been a whole lot of studies on scope amin um.
(07:58):
Just a few different cases as they've actually had, like
police interrogations using scope amine. And interestingly, and I totally
by this because it kind of harkens back to old movies.
Just the threat of it was sometimes enough to induce
like a confession, and that reminds me the movies of
the guy approaching like with a needle in his hand,
scorting it in the air and saying you, you know,
(08:19):
if you have as of making a talk, and also
they go, well screw it, I'm just I don't want
that junk. And I wonder if it's if it's because
they had committed so many crimes that they hadn't been
caught for they didn't want to implicate themselves in a
bunch of other ones, and they were just being utilitarian
saying I'll give you this one. I bet it was
more they were just like you know, it became a
big thing in the public consciousness, like true storm, and
(08:40):
so they didn't know what was going on right. Well, also,
if they were using it um enough that it had
gotten out how unpleasant the whole experience was, maybe that
was what they were protecting themselves against because um, there
were a lot of psychological um effects, including falling asleep, UM,
strong with that, babbling what's wrong with that? Becoming delusional
(09:02):
and having hallucinations um. And then the physiological effects far
outlasted the psychological effects, and you would have probably dry socket.
I get the impression of the mouth. Your mouth was
so dry that like your your saliva glance dried up
to which is extraordinarily painful. Yeah, and that they would
(09:23):
actually use that in surgery too, because they wanted you
to have dry mouth form surgery. But also like headaches,
rapid heartbeat, board vision. It didn't last long as a
truth storm because of these reasons. It didn't despite doctor
House's efforts that did kind of follow the wayside. But
if you are um interested in scopeal, I mean, there's uh,
(09:44):
basically a legend that Colombian drug gangs use this. If
you go down, yeah and you order a coke, you
better watch them pour it because they will dose you
with scope. They being Colombian drug gangs, they're living in
the nineteen twenties. Yeah, and they I guess one of
the effects that it has is um amnesia. And but
(10:06):
you're still conscious and moving around and hanging out and
using your A T M card to get the money
for them because you're very forthcoming with whatever is asked
of you. It sounds like one of those things like
the old White Traveling wives tales, like it definitely does
sound like that, and I'm sure it is largely but
I read a Vice magazine article on it and supposedly
(10:27):
the author went down to Colombian found all this stuff
out firsthand. It was pretty opening. Have you ever seen
Flirting with disaster? Yeah? Remember that Mary Tyler Moore had
the story about on the highways, they'll bump you in
the car and then get you to pull over and
rob you. And then they get bumped on the highway
and they think it's there being rob but they're not.
I don't remember her in that. Yeah, she was the
(10:48):
adoptive mother of the Ben Stellar character. Yeah, she's great.
Um so scope mean ex scope means out. Up. Next,
we have everyone's favorite truth surum barbite wits. And they
were discovered not barbiturous, but they to use them like.
This was discovered by accident by Arthur Lovenhart and uh
(11:09):
he was at the University of Wisconsin, Go Badgers, and
he was doing some experimenting with respiratory stimulants and injected
a dude who was catatonic, mute, and rigid, and all
of a sudden he loosens up, opens up his eyes
and talks a little bit, and they think, wow, you know,
this could be a big deal. This seems like this
(11:31):
drug woke this guy up, and we are getting information
out of him about his life. Maybe we can use
that as a truth term. So they started to UM.
A guy named Clarence W. Muhlberger ahead of the Michigan
Crime Detective Detection Laboratory and East Lansing started using barbiturates.
And these are UM. If you hear of truth serum
(11:53):
being used in any narco interrogation, including James Holmes, is
UM you you're you're there talking about the use of barbiturates.
These are the only ones who have been proven to
even possibly uncover some sort of truth in an interrogation. UM.
So you've got uh amma barbital, thiopental and sicco barbaital
(12:16):
and UM. Any of these three a k. Yellow jackets,
pink ladies, goofballs, red devils, all those guys, any of
them should be in the hands of an expert capable
of um producing some sort of truth or at least
get somebody talking. And they aren't quite sure how, but
they think possibly that the cerebrum UH is detached. The cerebrum,
(12:39):
which monitors the higher functioning of the cerebellum, is detached,
and so doesn't say things like you don't want to
say that you should probably stop talking now. That's what
they think is happening. So they have used those with
some success, uh, anecdotally or I guess not anecdotally, but
in experiments. But they still have the battle of actually
(12:59):
using them in an investigation because courts aren't prone to allow,
you know, a confession if you were doped up. It depends.
I mean, this judge in the James Holmes Aurora, Colorado
trial said, go to it. I signed off on it,
which means that it should be it should be admissible
in that judge's courtroom. You know, well, that's not a
(13:20):
confession though, that's they're looking for his psychological wellness. Again,
it depends, and I kind of have I've been thinking
about what you're saying. I don't. I don't know, because
they right, But is he faking? Is he malingering? And
this is how how barbiturates have been used as truth
rooms in the past. Um one of the first cases,
one of the first studies, was carried out by a
(13:41):
couple of people named Gerson and Victor Off and they
use sodium amatol to interview seventeen suspective malingers at Fort Dix,
New Jersey, basically some uh, some army guys who were
thought to just be lazy and shiftless and faking an
injury so they didn't have to do army stuff anymore. Right,
So they gave these guys sodium amatal and they found that, Um,
(14:05):
they were a forthcoming, seemingly against their will about their
conditions about faking it or not right, that is true. Uh.
They did not tell them they were going to be
taken as they sprung it on him. Yeah, like a
minute before. Yeah. And they interviewed them before they took
the amatal at all by psychiatrists, So I think they
wanted to get just a comparison. I guess. I don't
(14:27):
know if you call it the control because it was
the same people, but at least a control interview. Then
they dosed them up and they said they had no
no saying this. They had to do it. That's right, Um,
and it different. The difference between that and the therapeutic
is who wrote this? Do we have an author's name?
(14:48):
His name he works for the CIA, is George Memorrell.
So Mr Memorrell points out that the setting and the
type of patients and the kind of truth is going
to make all the difference. So it depends on what
you're looking for and what kind of setting, because, like
I pointed out earlier, when it was like student volunteers,
it's way more friendly. And a lot of them reported like, oh,
(15:10):
I feel you fork, and this is great, I'll tell
you whatever you want, not criminals who are hiding a crime. Yeah.
So um Bemor points out that the rapport between the
interviewer and the interviewee is extremely important and important anyway,
you know. Yeah, and that one of the flaws, or
one of the significant points about that Fort Dick's interview
(15:32):
um Or experiment was that these people still fessed up
to being the lingers, even though there was a hostile
attitude towards the interviewer, because they didn't have any choice
in the matter and the guy sprung it on them. Yeah,
and they also manipulated them. And I think this is
one of the reasons that I didn't find any cases
where the court had actually admitted a confession drug induced confession. No.
(15:56):
I mean I saw sorts of uses, but never one
said all right, we put the scot on drugs and
he confessed and we can use that. Did you find
the Yeah, there's a in in the eighties of New
jerseyman shot his ex girlfriend at point blank range. Um
and he uh said that he had seen the devil
when he did it. Uh, And he used a NARCO
(16:18):
interview to basically have his sentence cut in half and
it worked. But again, that was psychological wellness. That wasn't
confessing to a crime even right, No, that they he
was guilty. There was psychological wellness or what I'm saying
a single case where the confession under a drug was allowed,
(16:40):
So I see what you're saying. And yeah, it also
said that the judge is um judge didn't allow any
use of the words truth, serum, or um or barbiturate
or anything like that. But the psychologists and psychiatrists who
gave their opinion of this guy were allowed to use
that NARCO interview to help form their opinions exactly. But yeah, yes,
(17:01):
so I guess it is just kind of um a
tool that you can't use in court, but you could
use to kind of further explore other evidence, right well.
And one of the reasons, which is what I was
getting to, was that the they would manipulate people like
when these soldiers were coming out of the state to
a more fully conscious state. They would lie to them
sometimes and say, hey, you already confessed like all this
(17:24):
stuff like in zero dark thirty. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, because
you have amnesia, you don't form any memories. You're physically
incapable of forming memories when you're under the influence of
barbiturous at a certain point. Yeah. They think they've used
this before on terror suspects, like in the eighties. And uh,
of course it was a big part of mk Ultra,
(17:46):
our favorite sure government program of all time. H Um, So,
(18:18):
I guess we should say, what what? There's different stages
to being under the influence of barbiturates, right, there's the
sedative stage. There's unconsciousness where you are hyperactive but you're unconscious,
but you're you got the Jimmy legs. Uh, there's unconsciousness
without reflex even anxious stimuli. And then the last one
is death. So uh, I can't help out at that point, right.
(18:42):
And you can also see why you would want to
have a skilled physician president at this interrogation because this
is a possibility which killing somebody. Um with using it.
Sure you can't just like the Joe cop can't administer
this stuff, right, And Joe cop even if he could,
couldn't just give you pills. This has to be done
(19:02):
through an injection. And what they do is they take
you into the sedative stage, which can be um divided
into three planes. Uh, well, bemoral does at least. Plane
one is there's no really obvious effect. Plane two is cloudiness, calmness,
you're kind of a little high. You forget everything, yes,
but you still kind of have your wits about you,
is from what I can tell. Plane three slurge, slurred
(19:26):
speech like that, you're right, I'm on the third plane
man um old thought patterns are disrupted. You have an
inability to integrate or learn new patterns. Also four memories,
poor coordination, and you're unaware of painful stimuli. And this
is what they call the psychiatric work stage. They get
you to this stage, which only lasts for like five
(19:46):
or ten minutes, and then well, I'm sorry, they get
you to unconsciousness, that first stage of unconsciousness, and then
as you come back out of it, you pass through
that third stage and they started asking you questions. Then
as you start to become more and more conscious, they
inject you again and make you unconscious, and then you
come back out of it, and they may do this,
like several times there was one psychotic prisoner who was
(20:09):
given a graham and a half of barbiturous and um
over the course of this interview. So I mean, that's
that's that's probably a pretty long interview that the guy underwent,
and that's a lot of barbituous you know, well, yeah,
but that and that's one of the problems. These are
heavy drugs and like the back to the Fort Dick soldiers,
some of them experienced delirium and fantasies and delusions and
(20:33):
said that they have kids that they didn't have and
that I'm gonna kill my stepfather who was already dead.
So it's kind of like sort of just throw it
all out the window if at that point, you know, well,
they don't know what's the truth and what's not exactly,
So I guess what they'll do is they'll put you
into sleep, bring you out, and ask you questions, and
they probably write down everything you said, and then you
(20:56):
they'll go back in fact check that kind of stuff
and see what they can use against you or or
in addition to probably as you're coming out. Finally at
the end of the interview, yeah, there there may be
some things that they know. Like if they suspect you
of something and you say something that implicates you, they
they'll they'll probably work that up pretty hard when you
have no memory of it, or they'll just lie and say, yeah,
(21:18):
you were you admitted to a lot of stuff. Do
you want to talk a little more about it exactly?
And you think you have you ever? Have you ever
been with you me when she's coming out of like
twilight sleep for a procedure or anything. No, she's she's
been there for me. That's good stuff. Yeah, that's where
you get the good stuff. Yeah, if if you ever
do have some questions ready, um or your tape recorder,
(21:40):
Like Emily had to go under not too long ago,
and uh, I went in and I was I was
like typing everything she was saying to me because I
wanted to read it to her later. At funny, she
thought they were throwing her a party and um, because
they had like the curtain that they pulled around the
hospital bed, you know, and she thought that they were
decorating for her party. And I wish I remembered everything
she said as real funny and then you know, when
(22:01):
I have my tooth done. I said all kinds of
crazy stuff to the doctors. Yeah, I'm sure that's the
best part of their day. Are the recordings of that? No,
I don't think so. You may records me when I'm
talking in my sleep. Yeah, it's really intrusive, man, And
then she'll play it for me the next morning and
laugh and laugh, and you'll delete it. No, she's got
it all on tape still. Really, yeah, I would get
(22:22):
rid of that stuff. I'm trying to. I don't know
where she keeps it. Um. All right, So you pointed
out one thing that they actually did mention in the
article too, is that persistent and careful questioning is the
only way that you're going to reduce these ambiguities that
are going flying around like. It's not just like a
regular interrogation. You have to understand that this person is
(22:43):
heavily drugged and you gotta weed through a bunch of
stuff to get to what may or may not be
the truth. And here's the big thing about using NARCO interviews,
narco analytical interviews. If you're a skilled interrogator, you should
be able to get all this from the same person
(23:04):
without the use of drugs. Well, that's what they say
to right. Yes, to the experts said, I would have
eventually gotten to this point had I just done it clean, Yeah,
had I had enough time, or had had we had
somebody in there who knew what they were doing more
to interrogate the person, we would have gotten the same thing.
So yeah, I have the same impression that barbiturates are
shortcut as far as getting like probitive truth. Um. You know,
(23:26):
if you using like a narco interview or interrogation, Um,
it's it's a little bit of a shortcut, but it
also makes it much harder, like you were saying, for
even the most seasoned interrogator, because there's so much baffling
stuff that they include that may or may not be true,
that may or may not be related to anything that
that can actually kind of cloud the truth more than
(23:49):
if they were just sitting there line. Yeah, while and
if you're just Joe cop, you may not be some
trained psychologists and a lot of times it helps we
threw that stuff. I think Joe cops just say away
from the barbaituits in the suspects. At the same time,
you know, um Ben's adrine has actually been used as well.
You wouldn't think stimulants would be effective if you were
(24:11):
trying to question someone. But ben zadene and methodrene they
found potts. Oh yeah, yeah, I mean it's hardcore speed,
pharmaceutical speed. It was what Neil Cassidy like died doing
ben bead and scopel amine. Is that right? How weird
(24:32):
at this wedding? I just saw that On the Road movie.
This made me think of that, remember him dying in
on the Road. Especially, he didn't die in on the Road,
but he died. You know. Neil Cassie was the real
dude that the character was, but in real life he
died at some wedding in Mexico. And it's sort of
but it's not necessarily in the movie. You'll just have
(24:52):
to see it. So, uh is it movie again? Um?
I mean, are you on the Road fan? Yeah? I
mean it's very faithful and it's very beautiful and the
casting was great. Okay, that was what I was worried
about the most. They do a good job with it,
and but you know how tough it is to make
a coherent, like traditional movie out of that book. So
(25:13):
I think he did a good job. I enjoyed it.
So anyway, hardcore speed was used for a while because
they thought that there was so little time for them
to consider formulating a lie, that people when they're on
the speed would just barf out everything as quick as
they can and just talk talk talk talk talk. Right,
So if you're gonna do that, you could still maybe
(25:36):
formulate a lie even though you're talking really fast. Let's
put the barbituates and the methamphetam means together and see
what happens. And I think he mentions at least one
study that found like, yeah, it kind of works a
little bit at the very least wild r if you're
a mild um. I just finished their auto biography, by
(26:00):
the way, really, yeah, that's what made me think of it.
Oh it's amazing, is it really? Yeah? That's cool. I'm
surprised those dudes are alive. Let's just put it that way.
I'm sure. Um so. J. M. McDonald he's a psychiatrist
(26:44):
in Denver and he's had a lot of experience with this,
and he is one of the people that that is
pretty hardcore against the confession aspect of it, Like, we
can use it for a lot of things, but we
can't use it too as the truth of a confession
of a crime. That's just sort of his stance. Here's
why he do you remember the psychopath? I said that
(27:06):
got a graham and a half of barbiturous. This guy
was um, totally in control. He was completely self possessed,
as I think they put it um throughout this interview,
and actually was asking more than once like hey, can
I have another injection? I have a feeling he was
a serious drug user. Yeah, or at the very least
he was after that, sound like he had experience. So
(27:27):
he he and he that he didn't give up anything.
And what what McDonald thinks, and what I think a
lot of psychiatrists believe, is that if you are a
very self possessed person with the strong mind and I
guess the strong will you might put it, you're not
going to give up anything all the way until unconsciousness.
They can knock you out and you're not going to
(27:48):
say it. He even faked amnesia as part of the
whole ruse. Right, have you seen um side effects? Not yet?
That's good. You don't even say anything else, no, no,
no spoilers, Yeah all right, uh yeah, well you're exactly right, though,
he uh, he faked all this stuff, and if you're
neurotic on the other hand, or the kind of person
(28:10):
who is prone to confess, like a guilty conscience type anyway, right,
exactly like you. You You you feel relief by by by
telling people things, and you're more likely So it depends
on who's asking what they're asking, who the who the
person under the drugs is uh, A lot of different
factors on whether or not it's legitimate at all. So Chuck,
(28:32):
like we said, this is a CIA white paper from
that we're working off of. It's a white paper, yeah, um,
and it was recently declassified. Pretty cool paper if you
ask me. Um, although there it is really kind of
all over the place. Um the structure. Sure, I've become
an admirer of it. I know you're not, but I
(28:54):
like the guys in the CIA. He's not a professional writer.
He did a fine job. So he uh he he
points out that, Okay, I'm in the CIA. How do
we use this for the CIA? And he says that
it has been used before for example, um, to find
out if a foreign subject knows a language that you
(29:16):
say they're not, like, maybe they're actually a foreigner, a
double agent or something like that. You get like, I
don't know speaking English, and then all of a sudden
you get them under the thanks for the drugs exactly
so they can sniff out someone who says they don't
speak your tongue. Um. And he says that the one
of the problems is you're gonna have a hostile interrogation
(29:40):
and rapport like the the some of the guys in
this field of psychiatry've done studies on this show. It's
really important. But he kind of comes to the conclusion
that if you use a doctor, you have automatically somebody
that's universally trusted to some extent. And if you use
a doctor to conduct these inner views, you're probably gonna
(30:01):
have a little more poor And if it's a doctor
who knows what they're doing with interrogations, then yeah, this
could be kind of useful. The problem is is in
the West, as he puts it, the use of truth
serums is not it's not it's frowned on. It seems
unfair the Iron Curtain though, right, They wasn't Russia big
(30:22):
into it. No, he found the CIA writer found that
there was two mentions of Russia uh and truth serums,
and in one of them they said Russia doesn't use
these I don't buy that that's what he says. He's
the CIA author, so you'd think he would know, you know,
was that from the Comrade files didn't down there right?
(30:42):
Or was it like real information he was doing it.
I guess he was doing a survey of publicly available stuff.
So I'm sure that Russians wouldn't be like, yeah, we
use this stuff all the time. Chief Um, he did
say that, Okay, if we're not going to use it,
our guys should be aware of what the of possibly
(31:03):
having to experience this. And there's only one way to
train somebody, and that's to do it to them. So
I'm wondering, as a result of this paper, how many
CIA agents have been you know, dosed up with barbiturous
and given the third degree, because that's what this recommendation was.
Just like, if you're an agent, you should be tested
(31:25):
on this, and not only will you know it, give
the agent the the firsthand experience, and you should videotape
it so they can see they didn't actually talk about this,
so they can't be manipulated into saying, oh, you said
a bunch of stuff. Still no, right, But also it
gives the agency, the awareness of like how much this
person is going to give up under under interrogation when
(31:48):
they're drugged, And maybe they shouldn't be sent to Latvia,
maybe they should just be sent to Brazil instead. That's
a good point. So like testing the dudes to see
how they would react in the field in case they're
in some back room somewhere, right and um femoral yeah
he uh. He also suggests re member, we said LSD
doesn't work as a truth serum. He suggested that agents
(32:11):
possibly be given LSD, so if they're about to be
dosed with truth serum, they can take some LST and
just start going crazy, is how he puts it. In essence,
all of this stuff they say will be bizarre and unreliable. Wow. Yeah,
pretty cool stuff. Huh you got anything else? I think
that's about it, man. Yeah, I'm curious to see how
(32:31):
this Holmes trial what happens with that, because there's so
little like I think it was. Uh, well you said
you got the idea from seeing that. Yeah. I was
gonna say it was coincidence, but I guess not. There's
very few cases to even draw upon these days, so
well done. Well done to YouTube can't wait to see
what happens Holmes, So Truth Serum. We'll keep an eye
(32:54):
out for the James Holmes thing. Uh. If you want
to learn more about Truth Serum, you can try the
search bar how stuff works dot com. But you may
also want to read this CIA white paper, Truth, Drugs
and Interrogation by George Bimmerell. Uh. And it's from September
published by the CIA. Uh. And now it's time for listeners. Yes, Josh,
(33:21):
I'm gonna call this one. Uh. I can't remember what
this is. That's what you gonna call it. Wait, wait,
let me stop your for a second. Before we get
to listener mail. Um, we need to give a shout out.
Remember how we said, remember our horror fiction contest, could
I forget? And we said that any of the people
who entered as thanks, if they went on to publish anything,
let us know, and we would tell everybody. Well. One
of our horror writers, Melissa Maninny, has a sort of
(33:44):
a short story called The Hangar that's included in an
anthology of women horror writers called Mistresses of the macam.
It's available on Amazon dot com and on Dark Moon
Books dot com. So go check that out. Um, yeah, excellent, Melissa, congratulations. Okay,
now it's time for listening email. Sorry, that's right, Um,
(34:05):
we are going. I was able to title it in
that brief break this is uh Aaron's grandpa is we
I'm gonna call it hey guys. Today at work, I
was re listening to older podcasts when I heard how
tickling works and I was delightfully surprised to hear you
call out for stories about Disney, in particular fascinating ones
about the dark side. Um. This isn't one of those emails, however,
(34:27):
but my grandpa Ron Brown worked as an actor for
Disney in the late sixties to the late seventies, making
movies and TV shows with animals, and also behind the
scenes doing animal taming to a point and training. He
was well known for being able to train bears, but
most love for his strange assortment of critters he would
bring home from work to entertain my mom and her
siblings during her childhood. She had a pet squirrel, skunk,
(34:50):
and multiple pigs that would make their home in her bed. Uh.
He was the lead in two movies which I I
am almost positive you have not heard of. Charlie the
Lonesome cougar and left he the dingling links and I
haven't heard of either one of those Disney was pumping
about though. You know, even though he never made it
(35:10):
big in Hollywood in his older years, he would always
tell interesting stories hanging out with John Wayne or how
he was One time in an elevator with Walt Disney himself,
he chickened out telling him how much he loved all
the time spent working for him. When he moved to
a Sequim, Washington, he helped move retired show bears up
to the Olympic Game Farm, where he would continue to
(35:32):
train them an impressed tourist while making bears do fun tricks.
And anyways, I love my grandpa very much and I
mostly just wanted to share these memories of him that
have been passed down to my favorite podcasters. So that
is from Aaron, and she a cinephoto two of Grandpa
Ron with John Wayne. So he wasn't making that up. Wow,
(35:54):
it's pretty cool. So Aaron, we love stories about cool
grandpa's and thanks sure, thanks, and thanks to your grandpa
for being a cool grandpa. Um, if you want to
tell us about your cool grandpa or any cool relative
that hasn't a pretty interesting story, whether it relates to
the podcast or not, we want to hear. You can
tweet to us at s y s K podcast. You
(36:16):
can join us on Facebook, dot com slash stuff you
Should Know, and our home on the web is our website,
appropriately titled stuff you Should Know dot com. For more
on this and thousands of other topics, is it how
stuff Works dot com
Hey everybody, it's me Josh and for this week's s
Y s K Selex, I've chosen one on truth Serums,
which originally came out in April of two thirteen. Turns out,
well we always thought was a truth serum was actually
just a handful of goofballs. Enjoy. Welcome to Stuff you
(00:22):
Should Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and
welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. And there's Charles W.
Chuck Bryant back in the saddle again. Man, it's been
a while. That was a goat boy being whipped. That's you.
(00:44):
Here's the goat boy, right. Do you remember goat boy
from Sarry Life? Yes? What was his name? I don't
Jim Brewer, Yeah he was goat boy, wasn't I think so?
Was it called goat boy? Great? Classic SNL character? Agreed? Yeah, uh, agreed,
that's pretty good. Thanks. Um, how are you doing? Oh
(01:06):
I'm great. Man. Inject me with truth sermon, asked me,
and then you'll get the truth may or may not
work though, And it's not even serum, you know. Um,
We've got a a pretty cool case coming up where
this is going to be used. Uh well cool, Well, no,
but I'm saying, like, thank you for correcting me, because no,
(01:26):
it's not cool, it's interesting, sensational. Yes, And uh, this
is actually what made me think that we should do
something on truth serum was the James Holmes case, the Aurora,
Colorado batman shooter, Um, who has been saying that he's
insane or acting insane ever since he was caught. But
a lot of people think, maybe he's not so insane, right,
(01:48):
And uh, a judge just recently in the middle of
March approved um him to be tested under narco analysis,
which is narco interrogation, really is what it is. It's
unusual these days in the US for something like that
to happen, and a lot of folks are saying, what's
up with this judge, like are you for real? Yeah?
(02:09):
And it turns out that there is a very long history,
especially in the twentieth century, of people using what has
been popularly dubbed truth serum, but incorrectly dubbed truth serum
because it doesn't necessarily generate the truth or um cover
the truth. And it's not a Siah. Yeah, watery part
of coagul little blood is that right? Is that all
(02:30):
it is? I believe so, and I think there's a
plant based serra as well. But either way, none of
that is none of the truth storm drugs that they
use our serums. No, and we should probably get out
of the way right now that um LSD not a
truth serum or a truth drug. Uh okay, well, now
that's what I think most people think about when when
(02:52):
you think of being interrogated under the influence of drugs
that they give you LSD and started shouting at you.
I had no idea about this, but it reminds you.
You know, you harken back to the days of the polygraph.
When that first started, it was like, well, okay, society
is saying, what we shouldn't beat people with rubber hoses
(03:12):
to get the truth out of him anymore, and it's
possible that this isn't even the truth. They're just saying
what we want to hear because they want us to stop.
So let's try some other techniques. And as a result
you had the polygraph truth serums, which we're gonna call
incorrect or no, that's what they're called, basically, UM because
there isn't really a clinical name for him, is there UM?
(03:35):
I don't know n narco analytic gold drugs. Well that's
kind of like the Yeah, I just made that up,
but that's really what it is. So basically there's two
reasons why you would use truth serums, and they come
down to narco analysis and narco interrogation. And the one
I should say that James Holmes is going to undergo
is I guess kind of a combination of both, because
(03:57):
they're trying to get at the truth of a sanity
um and but at the same time it will be
interrogative because he's a suspect in a massive murder trial.
Although I would say that's just the psychological because the other,
the probative truth is they're trying to get a revelation
of a crime. Oh yeah, I guess that's true and
(04:17):
not necessarily their mental state. Yea. So those are those
are the two differences. Is are you trying to say,
you know, inject you and say did you steal the painting?
But yeah, that's a good art art theft podcast on
that or um like some sort of psychological truth that
they're trying to uncover about themselves, right uh. And that one,
(04:42):
as far as truth serums go, is probably the one
where it's the drugs will be most effective. Yeah, because
it's kind of unlocking like an unconscious um revelation a person,
like uncovering a neurosis that maybe they didn't understand that
they had and now it's there's some sort of catharsis
(05:04):
that these drugs have allowed to just kind of let
their guard down. Now they're they're flowing out with a
catharsis and they're feeling better afterward. Yeah. And most of
those studies to have been uh not been on like prisoners,
but maybe volunteers and things, so it's a more friendly environment.
So maybe they get further that way. But we'll get
to all that, all right, So let's let's talk about
(05:24):
the the history of this chuck um, they're not so old,
the idea of using drugs to get the truth out
of somebody. And actually there was a Texas doctor doctor
house for real, Yeah, the real doctor house house. He
uh he was a Dallas, Texas doctor um and obstetrician
and uh back when he was delivering babies. They were
(05:48):
using a combination of chloroform, morphine and a scope al amine,
which you may have heard of before if you've ever
taken um uh motion sickness drugs that patches opolamin Yeah. Uh,
and he noticed that when women were on this combination
of drugs, they tended to be very candid and forthright
(06:09):
u with stuff. Sometimes they didn't have anything to do
with the child birthring process. And doctor House said, hey,
I wonder if you could use this on criminals. Yeah,
and truthful that's the most important part. Well, yeah, they
found out that they were accurate, and so yeah, he said,
you know what, who's who's not forthcoming and who doesn't
(06:29):
tell the truth are lying lying criminals, right, so maybe
we should and get them pregnant and then give them
scopeful a mean, actually not to get them pregnant. And uh,
he sort of resisted the whole truth storm thing. Uh.
Supposedly that came about in the Los Angeles record was
when it was first used. But yeah, he eventually would
(06:51):
come around and embrace that term and use it himself,
because you know, once things take hold in the public consciousness,
you just sort of have to give in. Yeah, and
he he in that way kind of resembles though that
the inventor of the polygraph, for the guy who brought
all these disparate parts of the polygraph together. William Molton Marston,
the guy invented Wonder Woman, just kind of became a
(07:13):
promoter of his law enforcement tool. Yeah, but he found
out that it worked the first time, not by getting
a bunch of guilty guys found guilty, but of a
study with three men who said they were innocent. Uh,
he gave them the scope l amine Um, I guess,
interrogated them, found that they still said no, I'm innocent,
(07:36):
all three of them, and then they later got off
even though like all the evidence was it was against them.
They didn't get off because of the truth serum. That
was a separate study. He just kind of compared the
two and said, Hey, this is gonna work like Gangbusters. Yeah,
and despite that, I guess sort of success. Um. I
guess he certainly touted it as such. But um, there
haven't been a whole lot of studies on scope amin um.
(07:58):
Just a few different cases as they've actually had, like
police interrogations using scope amine. And interestingly, and I totally
by this because it kind of harkens back to old movies.
Just the threat of it was sometimes enough to induce
like a confession, and that reminds me the movies of
the guy approaching like with a needle in his hand,
scorting it in the air and saying you, you know,
(08:19):
if you have as of making a talk, and also
they go, well screw it, I'm just I don't want
that junk. And I wonder if it's if it's because
they had committed so many crimes that they hadn't been
caught for they didn't want to implicate themselves in a
bunch of other ones, and they were just being utilitarian
saying I'll give you this one. I bet it was
more they were just like you know, it became a
big thing in the public consciousness, like true storm, and
(08:40):
so they didn't know what was going on right. Well, also,
if they were using it um enough that it had
gotten out how unpleasant the whole experience was, maybe that
was what they were protecting themselves against because um, there
were a lot of psychological um effects, including falling asleep, UM,
strong with that, babbling what's wrong with that? Becoming delusional
(09:02):
and having hallucinations um. And then the physiological effects far
outlasted the psychological effects, and you would have probably dry socket.
I get the impression of the mouth. Your mouth was
so dry that like your your saliva glance dried up
to which is extraordinarily painful. Yeah, and that they would
(09:23):
actually use that in surgery too, because they wanted you
to have dry mouth form surgery. But also like headaches,
rapid heartbeat, board vision. It didn't last long as a
truth storm because of these reasons. It didn't despite doctor
House's efforts that did kind of follow the wayside. But
if you are um interested in scopeal, I mean, there's uh,
(09:44):
basically a legend that Colombian drug gangs use this. If
you go down, yeah and you order a coke, you
better watch them pour it because they will dose you
with scope. They being Colombian drug gangs, they're living in
the nineteen twenties. Yeah, and they I guess one of
the effects that it has is um amnesia. And but
(10:06):
you're still conscious and moving around and hanging out and
using your A T M card to get the money
for them because you're very forthcoming with whatever is asked
of you. It sounds like one of those things like
the old White Traveling wives tales, like it definitely does
sound like that, and I'm sure it is largely but
I read a Vice magazine article on it and supposedly
(10:27):
the author went down to Colombian found all this stuff
out firsthand. It was pretty opening. Have you ever seen
Flirting with disaster? Yeah? Remember that Mary Tyler Moore had
the story about on the highways, they'll bump you in
the car and then get you to pull over and
rob you. And then they get bumped on the highway
and they think it's there being rob but they're not.
I don't remember her in that. Yeah, she was the
(10:48):
adoptive mother of the Ben Stellar character. Yeah, she's great.
Um so scope mean ex scope means out. Up. Next,
we have everyone's favorite truth surum barbite wits. And they
were discovered not barbiturous, but they to use them like.
This was discovered by accident by Arthur Lovenhart and uh
(11:09):
he was at the University of Wisconsin, Go Badgers, and
he was doing some experimenting with respiratory stimulants and injected
a dude who was catatonic, mute, and rigid, and all
of a sudden he loosens up, opens up his eyes
and talks a little bit, and they think, wow, you know,
this could be a big deal. This seems like this
(11:31):
drug woke this guy up, and we are getting information
out of him about his life. Maybe we can use
that as a truth term. So they started to UM.
A guy named Clarence W. Muhlberger ahead of the Michigan
Crime Detective Detection Laboratory and East Lansing started using barbiturates.
And these are UM. If you hear of truth serum
(11:53):
being used in any narco interrogation, including James Holmes, is
UM you you're you're there talking about the use of barbiturates.
These are the only ones who have been proven to
even possibly uncover some sort of truth in an interrogation. UM.
So you've got uh amma barbital, thiopental and sicco barbaital
(12:16):
and UM. Any of these three a k. Yellow jackets,
pink ladies, goofballs, red devils, all those guys, any of
them should be in the hands of an expert capable
of um producing some sort of truth or at least
get somebody talking. And they aren't quite sure how, but
they think possibly that the cerebrum UH is detached. The cerebrum,
(12:39):
which monitors the higher functioning of the cerebellum, is detached,
and so doesn't say things like you don't want to
say that you should probably stop talking now. That's what
they think is happening. So they have used those with
some success, uh, anecdotally or I guess not anecdotally, but
in experiments. But they still have the battle of actually
(12:59):
using them in an investigation because courts aren't prone to allow,
you know, a confession if you were doped up. It depends.
I mean, this judge in the James Holmes Aurora, Colorado
trial said, go to it. I signed off on it,
which means that it should be it should be admissible
in that judge's courtroom. You know, well, that's not a
(13:20):
confession though, that's they're looking for his psychological wellness. Again,
it depends, and I kind of have I've been thinking
about what you're saying. I don't. I don't know, because
they right, But is he faking? Is he malingering? And
this is how how barbiturates have been used as truth
rooms in the past. Um one of the first cases,
one of the first studies, was carried out by a
(13:41):
couple of people named Gerson and Victor Off and they
use sodium amatol to interview seventeen suspective malingers at Fort Dix,
New Jersey, basically some uh, some army guys who were
thought to just be lazy and shiftless and faking an
injury so they didn't have to do army stuff anymore. Right,
So they gave these guys sodium amatal and they found that, Um,
(14:05):
they were a forthcoming, seemingly against their will about their
conditions about faking it or not right, that is true. Uh.
They did not tell them they were going to be
taken as they sprung it on him. Yeah, like a
minute before. Yeah. And they interviewed them before they took
the amatal at all by psychiatrists, So I think they
wanted to get just a comparison. I guess. I don't
(14:27):
know if you call it the control because it was
the same people, but at least a control interview. Then
they dosed them up and they said they had no
no saying this. They had to do it. That's right, Um,
and it different. The difference between that and the therapeutic
is who wrote this? Do we have an author's name?
(14:48):
His name he works for the CIA, is George Memorrell.
So Mr Memorrell points out that the setting and the
type of patients and the kind of truth is going
to make all the difference. So it depends on what
you're looking for and what kind of setting, because, like
I pointed out earlier, when it was like student volunteers,
it's way more friendly. And a lot of them reported like, oh,
(15:10):
I feel you fork, and this is great, I'll tell
you whatever you want, not criminals who are hiding a crime. Yeah.
So um Bemor points out that the rapport between the
interviewer and the interviewee is extremely important and important anyway,
you know. Yeah, and that one of the flaws, or
one of the significant points about that Fort Dick's interview
(15:32):
um Or experiment was that these people still fessed up
to being the lingers, even though there was a hostile
attitude towards the interviewer, because they didn't have any choice
in the matter and the guy sprung it on them. Yeah,
and they also manipulated them. And I think this is
one of the reasons that I didn't find any cases
where the court had actually admitted a confession drug induced confession. No.
(15:56):
I mean I saw sorts of uses, but never one
said all right, we put the scot on drugs and
he confessed and we can use that. Did you find
the Yeah, there's a in in the eighties of New
jerseyman shot his ex girlfriend at point blank range. Um
and he uh said that he had seen the devil
when he did it. Uh, And he used a NARCO
(16:18):
interview to basically have his sentence cut in half and
it worked. But again, that was psychological wellness. That wasn't
confessing to a crime even right, No, that they he
was guilty. There was psychological wellness or what I'm saying
a single case where the confession under a drug was allowed,
(16:40):
So I see what you're saying. And yeah, it also
said that the judge is um judge didn't allow any
use of the words truth, serum, or um or barbiturate
or anything like that. But the psychologists and psychiatrists who
gave their opinion of this guy were allowed to use
that NARCO interview to help form their opinions exactly. But yeah, yes,
(17:01):
so I guess it is just kind of um a
tool that you can't use in court, but you could
use to kind of further explore other evidence, right well.
And one of the reasons, which is what I was
getting to, was that the they would manipulate people like
when these soldiers were coming out of the state to
a more fully conscious state. They would lie to them
sometimes and say, hey, you already confessed like all this
(17:24):
stuff like in zero dark thirty. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, because
you have amnesia, you don't form any memories. You're physically
incapable of forming memories when you're under the influence of
barbiturous at a certain point. Yeah. They think they've used
this before on terror suspects, like in the eighties. And uh,
of course it was a big part of mk Ultra,
(17:46):
our favorite sure government program of all time. H Um, So,
(18:18):
I guess we should say, what what? There's different stages
to being under the influence of barbiturates, right, there's the
sedative stage. There's unconsciousness where you are hyperactive but you're unconscious,
but you're you got the Jimmy legs. Uh, there's unconsciousness
without reflex even anxious stimuli. And then the last one
is death. So uh, I can't help out at that point, right.
(18:42):
And you can also see why you would want to
have a skilled physician president at this interrogation because this
is a possibility which killing somebody. Um with using it.
Sure you can't just like the Joe cop can't administer
this stuff, right, And Joe cop even if he could,
couldn't just give you pills. This has to be done
(19:02):
through an injection. And what they do is they take
you into the sedative stage, which can be um divided
into three planes. Uh, well, bemoral does at least. Plane
one is there's no really obvious effect. Plane two is cloudiness, calmness,
you're kind of a little high. You forget everything, yes,
but you still kind of have your wits about you,
is from what I can tell. Plane three slurge, slurred
(19:26):
speech like that, you're right, I'm on the third plane
man um old thought patterns are disrupted. You have an
inability to integrate or learn new patterns. Also four memories,
poor coordination, and you're unaware of painful stimuli. And this
is what they call the psychiatric work stage. They get
you to this stage, which only lasts for like five
(19:46):
or ten minutes, and then well, I'm sorry, they get
you to unconsciousness, that first stage of unconsciousness, and then
as you come back out of it, you pass through
that third stage and they started asking you questions. Then
as you start to become more and more conscious, they
inject you again and make you unconscious, and then you
come back out of it, and they may do this,
like several times there was one psychotic prisoner who was
(20:09):
given a graham and a half of barbiturous and um
over the course of this interview. So I mean, that's
that's that's probably a pretty long interview that the guy underwent,
and that's a lot of barbituous you know, well, yeah,
but that and that's one of the problems. These are
heavy drugs and like the back to the Fort Dick soldiers,
some of them experienced delirium and fantasies and delusions and
(20:33):
said that they have kids that they didn't have and
that I'm gonna kill my stepfather who was already dead.
So it's kind of like sort of just throw it
all out the window if at that point, you know, well,
they don't know what's the truth and what's not exactly,
So I guess what they'll do is they'll put you
into sleep, bring you out, and ask you questions, and
they probably write down everything you said, and then you
(20:56):
they'll go back in fact check that kind of stuff
and see what they can use against you or or
in addition to probably as you're coming out. Finally at
the end of the interview, yeah, there there may be
some things that they know. Like if they suspect you
of something and you say something that implicates you, they
they'll they'll probably work that up pretty hard when you
have no memory of it, or they'll just lie and say, yeah,
(21:18):
you were you admitted to a lot of stuff. Do
you want to talk a little more about it exactly?
And you think you have you ever? Have you ever
been with you me when she's coming out of like
twilight sleep for a procedure or anything. No, she's she's
been there for me. That's good stuff. Yeah, that's where
you get the good stuff. Yeah, if if you ever
do have some questions ready, um or your tape recorder,
(21:40):
Like Emily had to go under not too long ago,
and uh, I went in and I was I was
like typing everything she was saying to me because I
wanted to read it to her later. At funny, she
thought they were throwing her a party and um, because
they had like the curtain that they pulled around the
hospital bed, you know, and she thought that they were
decorating for her party. And I wish I remembered everything
she said as real funny and then you know, when
(22:01):
I have my tooth done. I said all kinds of
crazy stuff to the doctors. Yeah, I'm sure that's the
best part of their day. Are the recordings of that? No,
I don't think so. You may records me when I'm
talking in my sleep. Yeah, it's really intrusive, man, And
then she'll play it for me the next morning and
laugh and laugh, and you'll delete it. No, she's got
it all on tape still. Really, yeah, I would get
(22:22):
rid of that stuff. I'm trying to. I don't know
where she keeps it. Um. All right, So you pointed
out one thing that they actually did mention in the
article too, is that persistent and careful questioning is the
only way that you're going to reduce these ambiguities that
are going flying around like. It's not just like a
regular interrogation. You have to understand that this person is
(22:43):
heavily drugged and you gotta weed through a bunch of
stuff to get to what may or may not be
the truth. And here's the big thing about using NARCO interviews,
narco analytical interviews. If you're a skilled interrogator, you should
be able to get all this from the same person
(23:04):
without the use of drugs. Well, that's what they say
to right. Yes, to the experts said, I would have
eventually gotten to this point had I just done it clean, Yeah,
had I had enough time, or had had we had
somebody in there who knew what they were doing more
to interrogate the person, we would have gotten the same thing.
So yeah, I have the same impression that barbiturates are
shortcut as far as getting like probitive truth. Um. You know,
(23:26):
if you using like a narco interview or interrogation, Um,
it's it's a little bit of a shortcut, but it
also makes it much harder, like you were saying, for
even the most seasoned interrogator, because there's so much baffling
stuff that they include that may or may not be true,
that may or may not be related to anything that
that can actually kind of cloud the truth more than
(23:49):
if they were just sitting there line. Yeah, while and
if you're just Joe cop, you may not be some
trained psychologists and a lot of times it helps we
threw that stuff. I think Joe cops just say away
from the barbaituits in the suspects. At the same time,
you know, um Ben's adrine has actually been used as well.
You wouldn't think stimulants would be effective if you were
(24:11):
trying to question someone. But ben zadene and methodrene they
found potts. Oh yeah, yeah, I mean it's hardcore speed,
pharmaceutical speed. It was what Neil Cassidy like died doing
ben bead and scopel amine. Is that right? How weird
(24:32):
at this wedding? I just saw that On the Road movie.
This made me think of that, remember him dying in
on the Road. Especially, he didn't die in on the Road,
but he died. You know. Neil Cassie was the real
dude that the character was, but in real life he
died at some wedding in Mexico. And it's sort of
but it's not necessarily in the movie. You'll just have
(24:52):
to see it. So, uh is it movie again? Um?
I mean, are you on the Road fan? Yeah? I
mean it's very faithful and it's very beautiful and the
casting was great. Okay, that was what I was worried
about the most. They do a good job with it,
and but you know how tough it is to make
a coherent, like traditional movie out of that book. So
(25:13):
I think he did a good job. I enjoyed it.
So anyway, hardcore speed was used for a while because
they thought that there was so little time for them
to consider formulating a lie, that people when they're on
the speed would just barf out everything as quick as
they can and just talk talk talk talk talk. Right,
So if you're gonna do that, you could still maybe
(25:36):
formulate a lie even though you're talking really fast. Let's
put the barbituates and the methamphetam means together and see
what happens. And I think he mentions at least one
study that found like, yeah, it kind of works a
little bit at the very least wild r if you're
a mild um. I just finished their auto biography, by
(26:00):
the way, really, yeah, that's what made me think of it.
Oh it's amazing, is it really? Yeah? That's cool. I'm
surprised those dudes are alive. Let's just put it that way.
I'm sure. Um so. J. M. McDonald he's a psychiatrist
(26:44):
in Denver and he's had a lot of experience with this,
and he is one of the people that that is
pretty hardcore against the confession aspect of it, Like, we
can use it for a lot of things, but we
can't use it too as the truth of a confession
of a crime. That's just sort of his stance. Here's
why he do you remember the psychopath? I said that
(27:06):
got a graham and a half of barbiturous. This guy
was um, totally in control. He was completely self possessed,
as I think they put it um throughout this interview,
and actually was asking more than once like hey, can
I have another injection? I have a feeling he was
a serious drug user. Yeah, or at the very least
he was after that, sound like he had experience. So
(27:27):
he he and he that he didn't give up anything.
And what what McDonald thinks, and what I think a
lot of psychiatrists believe, is that if you are a
very self possessed person with the strong mind and I
guess the strong will you might put it, you're not
going to give up anything all the way until unconsciousness.
They can knock you out and you're not going to
(27:48):
say it. He even faked amnesia as part of the
whole ruse. Right, have you seen um side effects? Not yet?
That's good. You don't even say anything else, no, no,
no spoilers, Yeah all right, uh yeah, well you're exactly right, though,
he uh, he faked all this stuff, and if you're
neurotic on the other hand, or the kind of person
(28:10):
who is prone to confess, like a guilty conscience type anyway, right,
exactly like you. You You you feel relief by by by
telling people things, and you're more likely So it depends
on who's asking what they're asking, who the who the
person under the drugs is uh, A lot of different
factors on whether or not it's legitimate at all. So Chuck,
(28:32):
like we said, this is a CIA white paper from
that we're working off of. It's a white paper, yeah, um,
and it was recently declassified. Pretty cool paper if you
ask me. Um, although there it is really kind of
all over the place. Um the structure. Sure, I've become
an admirer of it. I know you're not, but I
(28:54):
like the guys in the CIA. He's not a professional writer.
He did a fine job. So he uh he he
points out that, Okay, I'm in the CIA. How do
we use this for the CIA? And he says that
it has been used before for example, um, to find
out if a foreign subject knows a language that you
(29:16):
say they're not, like, maybe they're actually a foreigner, a
double agent or something like that. You get like, I
don't know speaking English, and then all of a sudden
you get them under the thanks for the drugs exactly
so they can sniff out someone who says they don't
speak your tongue. Um. And he says that the one
of the problems is you're gonna have a hostile interrogation
(29:40):
and rapport like the the some of the guys in
this field of psychiatry've done studies on this show. It's
really important. But he kind of comes to the conclusion
that if you use a doctor, you have automatically somebody
that's universally trusted to some extent. And if you use
a doctor to conduct these inner views, you're probably gonna
(30:01):
have a little more poor And if it's a doctor
who knows what they're doing with interrogations, then yeah, this
could be kind of useful. The problem is is in
the West, as he puts it, the use of truth
serums is not it's not it's frowned on. It seems
unfair the Iron Curtain though, right, They wasn't Russia big
(30:22):
into it. No, he found the CIA writer found that
there was two mentions of Russia uh and truth serums,
and in one of them they said Russia doesn't use
these I don't buy that that's what he says. He's
the CIA author, so you'd think he would know, you know,
was that from the Comrade files didn't down there right?
(30:42):
Or was it like real information he was doing it.
I guess he was doing a survey of publicly available stuff.
So I'm sure that Russians wouldn't be like, yeah, we
use this stuff all the time. Chief Um, he did
say that, Okay, if we're not going to use it,
our guys should be aware of what the of possibly
(31:03):
having to experience this. And there's only one way to
train somebody, and that's to do it to them. So
I'm wondering, as a result of this paper, how many
CIA agents have been you know, dosed up with barbiturous
and given the third degree, because that's what this recommendation was.
Just like, if you're an agent, you should be tested
(31:25):
on this, and not only will you know it, give
the agent the the firsthand experience, and you should videotape
it so they can see they didn't actually talk about this,
so they can't be manipulated into saying, oh, you said
a bunch of stuff. Still no, right, But also it
gives the agency, the awareness of like how much this
person is going to give up under under interrogation when
(31:48):
they're drugged, And maybe they shouldn't be sent to Latvia,
maybe they should just be sent to Brazil instead. That's
a good point. So like testing the dudes to see
how they would react in the field in case they're
in some back room somewhere, right and um femoral yeah
he uh. He also suggests re member, we said LSD
doesn't work as a truth serum. He suggested that agents
(32:11):
possibly be given LSD, so if they're about to be
dosed with truth serum, they can take some LST and
just start going crazy, is how he puts it. In essence,
all of this stuff they say will be bizarre and unreliable. Wow. Yeah,
pretty cool stuff. Huh you got anything else? I think
that's about it, man. Yeah, I'm curious to see how
(32:31):
this Holmes trial what happens with that, because there's so
little like I think it was. Uh, well you said
you got the idea from seeing that. Yeah. I was
gonna say it was coincidence, but I guess not. There's
very few cases to even draw upon these days, so
well done. Well done to YouTube can't wait to see
what happens Holmes, So Truth Serum. We'll keep an eye
(32:54):
out for the James Holmes thing. Uh. If you want
to learn more about Truth Serum, you can try the
search bar how stuff works dot com. But you may
also want to read this CIA white paper, Truth, Drugs
and Interrogation by George Bimmerell. Uh. And it's from September
published by the CIA. Uh. And now it's time for listeners. Yes, Josh,
(33:21):
I'm gonna call this one. Uh. I can't remember what
this is. That's what you gonna call it. Wait, wait,
let me stop your for a second. Before we get
to listener mail. Um, we need to give a shout out.
Remember how we said, remember our horror fiction contest, could
I forget? And we said that any of the people
who entered as thanks, if they went on to publish anything,
let us know, and we would tell everybody. Well. One
of our horror writers, Melissa Maninny, has a sort of
(33:44):
a short story called The Hangar that's included in an
anthology of women horror writers called Mistresses of the macam.
It's available on Amazon dot com and on Dark Moon
Books dot com. So go check that out. Um, yeah, excellent, Melissa, congratulations. Okay,
now it's time for listening email. Sorry, that's right, Um,
(34:05):
we are going. I was able to title it in
that brief break this is uh Aaron's grandpa is we
I'm gonna call it hey guys. Today at work, I
was re listening to older podcasts when I heard how
tickling works and I was delightfully surprised to hear you
call out for stories about Disney, in particular fascinating ones
about the dark side. Um. This isn't one of those emails, however,
(34:27):
but my grandpa Ron Brown worked as an actor for
Disney in the late sixties to the late seventies, making
movies and TV shows with animals, and also behind the
scenes doing animal taming to a point and training. He
was well known for being able to train bears, but
most love for his strange assortment of critters he would
bring home from work to entertain my mom and her
siblings during her childhood. She had a pet squirrel, skunk,
(34:50):
and multiple pigs that would make their home in her bed. Uh.
He was the lead in two movies which I I
am almost positive you have not heard of. Charlie the
Lonesome cougar and left he the dingling links and I
haven't heard of either one of those Disney was pumping
about though. You know, even though he never made it
(35:10):
big in Hollywood in his older years, he would always
tell interesting stories hanging out with John Wayne or how
he was One time in an elevator with Walt Disney himself,
he chickened out telling him how much he loved all
the time spent working for him. When he moved to
a Sequim, Washington, he helped move retired show bears up
to the Olympic Game Farm, where he would continue to
(35:32):
train them an impressed tourist while making bears do fun tricks.
And anyways, I love my grandpa very much and I
mostly just wanted to share these memories of him that
have been passed down to my favorite podcasters. So that
is from Aaron, and she a cinephoto two of Grandpa
Ron with John Wayne. So he wasn't making that up. Wow,
(35:54):
it's pretty cool. So Aaron, we love stories about cool
grandpa's and thanks sure, thanks, and thanks to your grandpa
for being a cool grandpa. Um, if you want to
tell us about your cool grandpa or any cool relative
that hasn't a pretty interesting story, whether it relates to
the podcast or not, we want to hear. You can
tweet to us at s y s K podcast. You
(36:16):
can join us on Facebook, dot com slash stuff you
Should Know, and our home on the web is our website,
appropriately titled stuff you Should Know dot com. For more
on this and thousands of other topics, is it how
stuff Works dot com
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