What’s behind secrets and lies

The hunt for Edward Snowden, the American who leaked details about national security surveillance programs plays out as a story about secrets and lies.

Secrets and lies can be empowering, but they can also erode trust in any relationship—at home, at work, and certainly with the powers that be.

Dr. Dan Gottlieb asks his guests Charles V. Ford and David Livingstone Smith what’s behind the secrets and lies we tell? When are they helpful, and when are they hurtful?

Charles Ford is a professor of psychiatry at UAB School of Medicine. He’s written Lies, Lies, Lies: The Psychology of Deceit (1996). His book is going to be published in Russian next month–its fourth foreign language translation.

David Livingstone Smith is a professor of philosophy at the University of New England. He’s the author of Why We Lie: The Evolutionary Roots of Deception and the Unconscious Mind and most recently: Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others (winner of the 2012 Anisfield-Wolf award for non-fiction).