
Fresh From the frank Stage
Standout talks from the most recent 2023 gathering, featuring bold voices, urgent truths and unforgettable moments.

Amahra Spence
Liberation Rehearsal Notes from a Time Traveler

Shanelle Matthews
Narrative Power Today for an Abolitionist Future

Nima Shirazi
Irresistible Forces, Immovable Objects
The Speaker
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The Speaker
Untitled
Story Loops
Behavioral ScienceCommunicationsCreativityEmotional IntelligenceFilmStorytelling
Transcript
Hi. So I’m here to share with you our work. And to do so, I want to start with an experiment. So I need the house lights up for this. And you should have each received a small brown envelope that says special do not open. This is the time to open that envelope. Inside, you are going to find a special gold coin. These are chocolate coins made from fair trade organic chocolate in Brazil. And we are going to flip these coins together. And we’re going to do it three times, but I want to show you first what I mean by a flip. That’s a flip. What you got there is your flip. And when you flip this coin three times, I want you to remember what you flipped in your head. Don’t share with the person next to you. And don’t say it out loud. Just remember in your head what you flipped. So everybody ready? We’re going to flip together in unison once, reset twice, and three times. Awesome, except for me. All right, I want you to think back to the first flip that you did. And today, Heads is the lucky winner. Everybody who flipped heads is going to get to keep their coin. Everybody who flipped tails is sadly going to have to return their coin first, first time you flipped. And the ushers are going to pick them up in a moment. So how many people flipped heads? So that is a remarkable result. I thought it would be 60% or 70%. That was 80% or 90%. So for anybody who knows statistics, how many people should have flipped heads? All right, so what happened? Fire in the fire. So this is the moment I wanted to share with you, that many of us can be dishonest, and that we bend reality to suit our needs, even for the sake of a chocolate gold coin. So I have been, oh, and I should say, I tempted you. I told you these were made from some incredible Brazilian, whatever. They’re delicious, but they’re made in the US. I lied. And everybody gets to keep and enjoy their coin. I lied again. So I have been working for the last three years obsessively on the topic of dishonesty, culminating in a film that came out last year called Dishonesty, The Truth About Lies. And this film is a collaboration with an extraordinary behavioral scientist by the name of Dan Ariely, who’s very well known for his work on irrationality. Irrationality led him to dishonesty. And the work, the film is based on his research, combined with the stories of people whose lives were unraveled by their lies. So an NBA referee who bet on games that he officiated, an MIT dean of admissions who lied on her resume, insider traders, for all of them lies started out small, and then spiraled out of control. Dan’s research suggests that most of us can behave dishonestly. Dan created an experiment that he has now conducted with over 40,000 people, 70% of the people cheat. He gives them an easy opportunity to cheat, but 70% cheat. And when he changed the variables of the experiment, sometimes people cheated more and sometimes less. So based on this research and the multitude of stories that we heard, we both believe that we are all fallible and the environment matters. And placed in toxic environments, we can all act very badly. So corporate implosions like Volkswagen or teacher scandals like Atlanta or major global economic meltdowns and even unnecessary wars, we like to think they happen because of bad apples. We don’t believe that’s true. So most of the film is focused on how we lie, and we can still feel good about ourselves. The end of the film is about how we can act better. And in a nice way, and it’s actually funny, Brian talked about it this morning, being reminded of our better selves can really help us act better. And what a beautiful example in Ireland. So we have created a number of things beyond the film to work as reminders to help us act better. From the bitcoins that you flipped a few moments ago, that we hope will remind you of our fallibility with money, to cure all that’s an incredible medicine that cures everything from diabetes, to erectile dysfunction, to infidelity, to generalized dishonesty, to a lie citation pad where you can give somebody a ticket for lying to you or give yourself a ticket if you need to. Those are some of the fun things that we’ve created. We’ve also created curricula for middle school and high school students, discussion guides, and all of them include experiments so that everyone can get a sense that we are fallible. I used to think of film as the final product. I now think of it, and especially with this project, as a catalyst in a longer series of events. So the last part of the project that I want to tell you about is the truth box. The truth box left New York for the very first time and is here in Gainesville for this conference. And it is a modern secular confessional booth in which we ask people to share the truth about a lie they’ve told on camera with the hopes that confessors will feel better about something by sharing it, viewers can learn something from others’ cautionary tales, and that everyone can think of how they might behave better under similar circumstances. So please, think about a lie that you’ve told, not something trivial and not something that will land you in jail, but something that you learned from and share it this week in the next few days in the truth box. And hopefully together we can create many moments that will serve as catalysts to help us improve our behavior, yours, ours, and everybody’s. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. That’s it.
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