Who Knows The Truth? Does A.I.?

TRACING THE PATH PODCAST

This episode traces the evolving nature of truth in the modern age, focusing on three key figures whose work profoundly impacted how people perceive reality and trust. The narrative begins with William Moulton Marston, the psychologist who invented the systolic blood pressure test—an early version of the lie detector—and whose groundbreaking, yet controversial, attempts to introduce scientific evidence into court led to the landmark Frye vs. United States legal standard for scientific evidence.

Next, the focus shifts to the cultural impact of Orson Welles, whose 1938 “War of the Worlds” radio broadcast demonstrated the terrifying power of mass media to create panic and confusion by blurring the lines between fiction and reality, fundamentally changing the public’s understanding of trustworthy sources.

Finally, the story introduces Alan Turing, the visionary mathematician and code breaker, who proposed the Turing Test as a way to determine if machines could “think,” a concept that foreshadows today’s challenge of distinguishing between human and artificial intelligence, leading to the contemporary crisis of trusting digitally generated information.

The Lie Detector Test

There was a time when truth was something you could touch.

A polygraph needle scratching lines across paper. 

A trusted voice coming through a radio speaker.

A mathematician explaining algebra on the chalkboard.

But somewhere along the way, truth slipped out of our hands. That was long after David Foster Wallace said, “The truth will set you free.” And after Mark Twain said, “Truth is the most valuable thing we have.”

But that was before truth disappeared.

Few have dedicated their life to truth more than Willie Marston. Willie was born in 1893 in Saugus, Massachusetts. He loved school and excelled at it so much after he graduated, he went to Harvard.

He attended Harvard for 10 years, getting a bachelor of arts degree, a bachelor of law degree, and a doctorate in psychology.

While that sounds like a workload, he also wrote a movie script and sold it to Alice Guy-Blache. the only female movie maker of the time.

Also at Harvard pursuing her degree in psychology was classmate Elizabeth Holloway who also became his wife during the college years. One of the subjects that brought them together was the correlation between a person’s emotions and their behavior.

It fascinated both of them.

One day, Elizabeth noted that her blood pressure went up when she got got excited. And while that may seem somewhat logical, it was a physical change because of an emotion. It would be equally fascinating if you gained a pound when you were surprised or if your eyesight improved when you were sad.

The realization created questions for William.

He wondered if you could only watch someone’s blood pressure, could you accurately determine when they were having an emotional response to an outside stimulus?

But in order to do experiments, William needed a tool to measure blood pressure. So he created the systolic blood pressure test.

It was a great asset to Marston’s research, but he thought there were probably other applications for it. In that regard, he wondered if it might be able to detect when someone was lying. And a couple of experiments later, he realized it might actually be true.

So he started offering his services to lawyers who were questioning criminal subjects. His invention, the lie detector test, was a hit in law enforcement circles. So he traveled the country offering his test. He ended up helping hundreds of lawyers before getting the call to come to DC to test a suspected murderer who had just been put in jail.

Frye vs The United States

It was 1920, and the headline of the Washington DC Evening Star read, “Dr. R.W. Brown, Well-Known Colored Doctor, Shot Through Temple.” Dr. Brown had been the president of the National Benefit Life Insurance Company.

On that day, Dr. Brown had received four people to his home. One was late in the evening. A 24 or 25 year-old with light brown skin weighing about 135 lb wearing a dark suit, according to Dr. Brown’s house guest that day.

The house guest said Dr. Brown and the man conversed a bit in another room when he heard four gun shots. When he got to the room, the only thing that remained was a .45 caliber pistol next to Dr. Brown’s body.

A $1,000 reward was offered, a fair amount in 1920 for the capture of the shooter, but it would not be for another year before a break came in the case.

On August 23rd, 1921, James A. Frye was arrested and then confessed to the crime. He had been picked up for forging a soldier’s name on a compensation check. Investigators started asking about other crimes and he confessed to the killing of Dr. Brown.

His case went to trial and James A. Frye, a World War I veteran, was found guilty of second deree murder and sentenced to life in prison. His attorneys, confident the confession was not real, appealed the case.

The reason they gave for the appeal was testimony that proved him innocent was not allowed at the first trial. That testimony was from the acclaimed psychologist William Molton Marston and his lie detector test.

William was called to DC right after the arrest and gave the test while James Frye was still in jail. Marston’s equipment proved Frye’s jailhouse confession was false.

But when the results were first entered into evidence, The judge didn’t fully understand this new technology. He felt a person’s guilt or innocence should be determined by a jury, not a machine.

But Marston considered it a win. When the lawyers argued with the judge about entering the test into evidence, they mentioned it proved him innocent, and the jury heard it. Thus, William thought his machine was the reason James was found guilty of second deree murder. and not First.

The appeal became known as Frye versus the United States and as one of the most significant court cases law students study. It introduced a brand new concept into American law.

In the case, the Appellate court did not overturn the lower court’s decision and confirmed not allowing Marson’s lie detector test. Instead, it said, and by saying so, it created the rule for all future court cases, that scientific evidence could not be used in a court case unless it attained general acceptance.

The court further stated that Marson’s test was in the twilight zone phase between when a discovery is in experimentation mode and when it is demonstrable. This case became the litmus test all future cases used for the the next 70 years.

In essence, the court was saying that the truth is not about whether the scientific device gives the facts. It’s about whether other people believe it does.

Wonder Woman

Marston’s pursuit of the truth wasn’t over, however.

During the time Frye was in prison, Marston continued his psychology and even published books.

But it was 1940 that would put him in the limelight again. Family Circle, an American magazine that targeted women consumers, interviewed Marston as a psychologist, to get his view on the effects of comic books on children, to which Marston noted the great educational potential in comics.

That caught the attention of comics publisher Max Gaines.

Gaines had just left Dell Comics and started All-American and was intrigued by Marston’s educational comment.

He hired Marston to be an education consultant for his All-Americans comics company and his other interest, National Periodical Publications. The merger of the two actually became DC Comics.

Marston loved Superman, Batman, and Green Lantern, but he and his wife had been part of the suffragist movement as well, and thought there needed to be a female superhero.

He proposed the idea to Max Gaines, who liked it, and suggested he work on it. So, he and his wife came up with a female superhero. Instead of Justice and the American Way, they thought she should be into the Truth. 

They even armed her with a magic lasso that would make anyone she lasso’d tell the truth, like a superhero lie detector.

And they called her Wonder Woman.

While her lasso was great for cartoons, sometimes the truth is not really real. Which brings us to the next hero of our story.

When Wonder Woman debuted in a 1941 comic book, radio was the dominant form of media.

Radio was like nothing else that had ever existed. It was the first modern mass medium. It was to the printing press what the telephone had been to the letter.

It was the first time the world experienced immediacy. Rather than read later about the meeting of Lindbergh and President Coolidge after his flight to Paris, people experienced it with their ears live.

Rather than learn about President Roosevelt’s thoughts on banking from a newspaper tomorrow, people listened to the president speak to them in their living room.

They were able to hear the most famous case in US history, the Scopes trial, live as it was happening.

Radio knew no geographic boundaries and drew people together as never before. Radio meant that for the first time in history, one person with a microphone could speak to thousands.

E.B. White, the essayist and eventually author of Charlotte’s Web, said in 1953 that “people here in my community speak of the radio in a large sense, with an over-meaning. When they say radio, they don’t mean a cabinet or an electrical phenomenon or a man recording in a studio. They are referring to the somewhat godlike presence which has come into their lives.”

Radio was indeed changing the culture. It was even changing the meaning of words.

The word broadcasting, for example, broadcasting had been coined in the 1700s as an agricultural term. It was the process of walking through a pasture, loosely tossing seeds onto the soil around you so you could have blanket coverage.

The general idea was you were randomly tossing the seeds, not knowing where they were going to land.

When the radio first came out, in an attempt to explain it, the word broadcast was used. It was meant to explain that a person would transmit their voice in all directions with no clear idea who was listening to the signal.

In 1922, only 556 radio stations dotted the national map and around 60,000 people had a radio at home to listen to them.

But then when the Sears Roebuck catalog offered its first line of radios, that number jumped to 400,000 households in one year.

And then everyone went into broadcasting newspapers, banks, department stores, creameries, police stations, and many others.

In the beginning, people’s awe at hearing sounds through the air, was so great they would listen to anything. In May of 1928, Herbert Hoover’s campaign, seeing the power of radio, declared that he planned to campaign mostly on radio. Personal appearances were then a thing of the past.

Not only that, but knowing their audience wasn’t the people present at events, politicians began shortening their speeches to under 10 minutes for the radio crowd.

And in 1929, when the depression hit, radio became the nation’s lifeline, the nation’s pastime, which brings us to that hero.

Orson Welles

Little Ors was born in 1915 in Wisconsin to which he would grow up never knowing a life without radio. His father had invented a headlamp for a bicycle and thus their family had money. As a child or was lucky enough to study music, art and theater. His childhood was somewhat free of a strict education which lent to his creative side.

One of his schools actually had its own radio station where Ors got a chance to perform his own adaptation of Sherlock Holmes, which began his fascination. After high school he traveled a bit through Europe, even convincing a theater owner in Dublin to cast him in a production.

He had chance to meet Thornton Wilder, Alexander Woolcroft, and Katherine Cornell. Katherine convinced Ors to join her and her behemoth traveling tour of Romeo Juliet in the states.

In 1934, Ors got his first job on the radio in New York City, where he also started acting in plays on Broadway.

And then pure luck hit him.

Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal” created an opportunity for him. Part of the “New Deal” was a Federal Theater Project.

Ors and his friend John Houseman got jobs within the federal theater project in a group called the Negro Theater Unit. It was fantastic for Ors because he had many ideas and the goal of the Federal Theater Project was all about employment so he could hire as many people as he needed.

One of their performances was an all black cast of MacBeth rearranged to take place in a mythical island setting.

In 1937, he put on a production of Caesar, but had adapted it to a modern environment.

And at the same time, he was becoming famous on radio as the voice of The Shadow.

But Ors and John Houseman wanted to do something bigger.

The one thing bigger than Broadway was was radio. They wanted to stage a giant dramatic show on radio.

War of the Worlds

They knew radio had that “Godlike” presence in people’s homes. They knew because it was one of the reasons people stayed home instead of buying theater tickets. Radio was a phenomenon and Ors wanted to use that culture to his advantage.

He and John thought it would be cool to tell a story using reporters. The performance would sound like a regular radio program, but reporters would interrupt to bring bulletin and news updates, each one being part of the story.

They thought the radio loving world would love it.

So on October 30th, 1938, at 8:00 p.m., the following message was broadcast to the world:

“The Colombia broadcast system and its affiliated stations present Orson Wells and the Mercury Theater on the air in War of the Worlds by HG Wells.”

Sunday evening was prime time in the golden age of radio. Millions of Americans had their radios turned on. The whole world would now know Ors as Orson Wells.

At 8:00 p.m. on Sunday, most people did not hear that introduction because they were turned turned into NBC, not CBS. On NBC, Edgar Bergen and his dummy Charlie McCarthy were doing comedy. But when their act was over, an unknown singer was brought on to the show. And so at 8:12, most of the listening audience changed the channel.

They changed the channel to CBS, their trusted source.

The first thing they heard wasn’t a voice. It was music. Smooth, steady, elegant music from a fictional Roman Roquel and His Orchestra playing live from the Meridian Ballroom in the Hotel Park Plaza.

For a moment, it sounded like every other night. Dinner music, radio static, the gentle comfort of routine. Then a faint interruption. A new voice cut in.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we interrupt our program of dance music to bring you a special bulletin from the Intercontinental Radio News. A meteor has fallen in Graves Mill, New Jersey.”

 At first, people leaned in. A meteor? How close? Then the music came back. Normal again. Safe.

Orson’s story had begun.

Yet for everyone who tuned in at 8:12, this wasn’t a radio drama. They had just heard a breaking news bulletin in their regular music program. And then after a few minutes, another interruption.

The reporter at the crash site described something strange. A cylinder, metallic unscrewing from within, then screaming, then silence.

And for millions of listeners, the world suddenly tilted.

The normal showbreak for station identification and commercials hadn’t happened.

And that pit in the stomach for millions of Americans began. Families gathered closer to the radio. People started calling their friends and family who knew they weren’t listening to tell them to turn on their radio.

Police stations started getting calls. The already panicked were in their cars heading to family. Church parking lots filling up for people looking for prayer. The nation wasn’t hearing a radio drama. It was experiencing an invasion.

Orson’s crew had no idea until the radio station lobby filled with police.

But for the team that put War of the Worlds together. They had poured their soul into every detail to make the experience sound as real as possible.

The next day, the New York Times headline read, “Radio listeners in panic taking war drama as fact.” The Boston Globe read, “Radio play terrifies nation.” And the Chicago Herald Examiner read, “Radio fake scares nation.

When the dust settled after that October night in 1938,  radios had convinced people the world was ending, the conversation about truth changed.

It was no longer enough to ask whether a story was true. We had to ask whether we could trust who told us the story.

Which brings us to our next hero, Alan Turing.

Alan Turing

Born in 1912 in London, England, Alan Touring grew up to be the most amazing mathematician the world has seen.

He graduated from King’s College and then got his doctorate from Princeton.

During World War II, Turing worked for the British government at is a code breaker. He led the group trying to decipher Germany’s ciphers and built a machine to help crack the German Enigma code.

Their code breaking allowed the Allies to win the war.

After the war, he worked at the National Physical Laboratory designing an automated computer engine, one of the first computers that actually stored information as opposed to many that just performed formed calculations.

The reason he was one of the code breakers during World War II was because the government knew he had an interest in computers and thought he could build one that he could program and then it could think on its own following that program.

So when he started building the computer for the code breaking team, the idea was to build a machine that could crack a code by trying something and deciding what to do next, based on the result of the first test.

And that’s what he did.

After the war in 1947, Turing gave a speech that would change the world forever. In his speech to the London Mathematical Society, Turing introduced his vision of machines that could learn from experiences.

He envisioned a machine that could alter its own instructions over time, a self-improving process. But he did assume that unlike the mechanized Martians who took over the planet in War of the Worlds, computers were far too removed from ever worrying that would ever happen.

Then three years later in Mind magazine, Turing published a paper titled Computing Machinery and Intelligence to which he began with the question, “Can machines think?”

And because that question felt slippery and philosophical. He proposed a practical experiment instead. The imitation game. If you couldn’t reliably tell that you were talking to a machine rather than a person, would it be sensible to treat the machine as thinking?

He didn’t claim the test was a definition of consciousness. He offered it as a test of indistinguishability, a way to operationalize a philosophical problem. More importantly, He imagined how that indistinguishability might come about.

He sketched the idea of a learning machine, not a clockwork automation that follows fixed instructions, but a device that could be taught, that could adapt, that could acquire habits and responses the way a child learns language.

Listen to how. this small the leaps sound. Now, teach a machine like you teach a child.

In Turing’s view, the machine will learn patterns of speech. and respond so well that over time it could imitate humans. In his paper, he imagined mistakes, humor, and even the temperament of a person, not to prove the machine had a soul, but to show how hard it would eventually be to tell the difference.

Artificial Intelligence

Alan Turing was the first to postulate artificial intelligence. 

Following his death in 1954, the new field grew quickly with researchers working on small projects like building a computer that can play chess.

It only took 35 years before that happened in a big way.

Carnegie Melon and IBM in 1989 built a super intelligent computer to play chess against the world champion Gary Kasparov. And sometimes it won.

In 2001, another company, an Israeli startup, asked the question, “Can artificial intelligence spot a liar?”

They built a pair of smart glasses that use a combination of sensors and algorithms to collect and analyze data like facial micro expressions to determine if someone was telling the truth far beyond the capabilities of Marston’s systolic blood pressure test.

Today, that test has proved positive, is the beginning of a new War of the Worlds.

Now, it is almost impossible to tell the difference between an actual video and one that was artificially generated. Alan Turing’s 1950 prediction has become real.

In 1938, the War of the Worlds broadcast on CBS, a trusted source. For those that didn’t hear the introduction and knew it was a radio drama, they thought their trusted source, CBS, was reporting the invasion.

And thus, fear was the only option.

But today, there is no 1938 CBS.

So, where is the truth? Where will it come from tomorrow? At one point, news anchor Walter Kronkite was considered the most trusted man in America. Who will tomorrow’s most trusted person be? And how will we know it’s the actual person?

If the stock market require truth,
if elections require truth, 
if education requires truth,

Who will be tomorrow’s Wonder Woman to tell us who is telling the truth?