ShadouTech

Last night I caught Lie To Me on local TV and that was its first episode that I saw (serendipitously the pilot, I later learned). It sold me on the first scene: A professor (Dr. Cal Lightman, portrayed by Tim Roth) lecturing on human gestures and facial expressions. Later they investigated the murder of a teacher involving a Mormon student who had strictly religious parents and a politician who was accused of being involved with a prostitute.

Lie To Me is an investigative drama series -- proximate to CSI, but more on psychology and sociology.


I was a Psychology graduate and I highly recommend it, if not for the perfect accuracy of kinesics* and such, then at least for the lesson that we should not only listen to what's being said by someone, but also consider the contents and structure of the statement and how it is being said; although it would be difficult to not learn a lot from the series.

Of course the series could make people better liars but, well, we could also get better at perceiving lies. It's a game, really, of who's better at which. And despite the difficulties of telling apart a lie from the truth, we should at least realize that trust really isn't the issue, but trustworthiness.

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*No I'm not referring to the application of kinesics in the series, but to kinesics itself, it being another flawed medium of perception.
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Links (additional and redundancy):
Official website on FOX
Lie To Me on IMDB, the Internet Movie Database
Lie To Me on Wikipedia
Current (August 2009) schedule of Lie To Me on CS9 (Philippines channel 9; +8GMT; Hong Kong, Taiwan Philippines)
"kinesics" on Wikipedia
Human Facial Expressions Aren't Universal article on NewScientist.com
Lie To Me Tim Roth interview on YouTube