Episode 87: Transcript
Episode: 87: The Psychology of Loki!
Transcription by Keffy
Charlie Jane: [00:00:00] Welcome to Our Opinions Are Correct, a podcast about the meaning of science fiction and futurism and science and just whatever tickles our fancy. I'm Charlie Jane Anders. I'm the author of the brand-new young adult space fantasy Victories Greater Than Death.
Annalee: [00:00:16] And I'm Annalee Newitz. I'm the author of a new book about archaeology called Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age.
Charlie Jane: [00:00:26] So today we're going to be talking about one of our favorite new trickster narratives, Loki, which is the new Marvel show that we've been really enjoying and kind of like how it relates to some of our favorite tricksters in general. And in the second half of the episode, we're going to be joined by Maria Konnikova, the author of The Biggest Bluff and The Confidence Game about real life con artists and tricksters. Let's get started.
[00:00:50] Intro music plays: Drums with a bass drop and more science fictional bells and percussion.
Charlie Jane: [00:01:17] First, before we get started, a couple of caveats. First of all, there's going to be some spoilers for the first couple episodes of Loki. Also, we're not going to really get that deep into like the history of tricksters or tricksters in folklore and mythology, though we will allude to those things.
Annalee: [00:01:30] I'm really interested in the fact that Loki is from this sort of ancient history of trickster myths, but he's also a really modern character. And he has a confusing backstory in the modern world. And when I say the modern world, I mean, the Marvel world.
Charlie Jane: [00:01:47] Right.
Annalee: [00:01:47] So he's a major figure in the first three Thor movies. And he's in the first Avengers movie so where is he up to in this TV show? Like what tell me all the timelines and all the things.
Charlie Jane: [00:01:59] Oh my gosh. It does get kind of timey-wimey in a very kind of Steven Moffat kind of way. Basically, the new Loki show and I'm wondering how people who aren't steeped in Marvel even understand this, in the new Loki show, it takes advantage of the fact that in Avengers: Endgame, they traveled back in time to the first Avengers movie, which was just called Avengers, no game. Avengers like we don't have any game.
Annalee: [00:02:25] Although that movie actually had some game.
Charlie Jane: [00:02:27] It had a little bit of game.
Annalee: [00:02:28] So, you know, let's give it some credit.
Charlie Jane: [00:02:30] Anyway, they travel back to the first Avengers movie to steal the Tesseract, which is no longer a possibility in the present because Thanos has destroyed all the Infinity Stones. God, this is way too much information.
Annalee: [00:02:40] No, no, I like it, though. And the way you know what the Tesseract is, is that it's a Rubik's Cube.
Charlie Jane: [00:02:45] It's a basically a blue cube. So, they go back in time to steal the Tesseract. And somehow this allows Loki in the past, in the middle of the Avengers movie, to steal back the Tesseract from you know the people from the future and time travel away so that he can escape. And you know, in the present, thanks to the events of Avengers: Infinity War, Loki is actually dead. So this is like a way to have Loki in a story through time travel. And now he's kind of in this weird branching timeline and then he meets these people whose job it is to kind of control the timeline, and they imprison him, but then they need his help to capture another version of him who is out like making even more trouble in the timeline. And so it's like Loki versus Loki with time travel and alternate universes and multiverses except there's no multiverses for now. I mean, there will be multiverses.
Annalee: [00:03:40] So it's a way of having your Loki and eating it, too.
Charlie Jane: [00:03:42] Pretty much. It’s a loophole in the fact that Loki is dead.
Annalee: [00:03:48] Also, this group, the Time Variance Authority, because they can travel through time. It's perfectly plausible, like with time travel comes all plot scenarios.
Charlie Jane: [00:03:57] Yeah. And you know, I kind of wish that they were more like the Time Bureau in Legends of Tomorrow, but that's a whole other topic. I wish that Ava Sharpe was just like randomly showing up.
Annalee: [00:04:06] Can I can I just have a footnote here? So, you know how, Marvel always has to have everything that DC has? So is the Time Variance Authority, basically like the Marvel version of whatever it is in Legends of Tomorrow? Like…
Charlie Jane: [00:04:21] I mean, functionally, yes, I think. And you know, it's a common idea, the people who police the timeline.
Annalee: [00:04:27] Sure.
Charlie Jane: [00:04:27] And both Marvel and DC have had like multiverses. And basically what Loki is doing, I think, is it's kind of providing a way to set up Marvel having its own multiverse, similar to what you saw in Into the Spiderverse, similar to what you saw in like Crisis on Infinite Earths and in the CW’s version of the DC Universe. And also the upcoming Flash movie has multiverse stuff going on. So basically, they're going to set up Marvel having alternate universes, which we know because—
Annalee: [00:04:56] X-Men. Didn't X-Men have multiverses? In the movies, I mean, in the comic book, it’s whatever.
Charlie Jane: [00:05:03] I mean, oh gosh, this… In the X-Men movies, they do travel back in time and create a new timeline.
Annalee: [00:05:09] Yeah.
Charlie Jane: [00:05:08] In like Days of Future Past. So that's true, actually.
Annalee: [00:05:12] If it's a new timeline, though, it could just be a single timeline.
Charlie Jane: [00:05:16] It could.
Annalee: [00:05:16] It’s not a multiverse. And I just want to add, as a time travel nerd, because you know, I've written a whole novel that's like really timey-wimey. In Loki, the Time Variance Authority enforces a single timeline. So it's not a multiverse yet, which is very interesting and actually makes for a lot of the fun technology in the show, because they have these little devices that track variances on the timeline, and it just looks like a line with little branches coming off of it. But it's actually, it's a nice visual, like, it's one of those things where you're like, oh, this is something that TV does really well, is like help you visualize something completely bonkers. And so, anyway, back to what we were saying before I had my footnote.
Charlie Jane: [00:05:55] Basically, we know that Marvel is moving towards a multiverse because the next Doctor Strange movie is called Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness.
Annalee: [00:06:03] Right.
Charlie Jane: [00:06:04] So, you know that they're gonna go from a single timeline to a multiverse. They're kind of using Loki as almost a blunt instrument to do it.
Annalee: [00:06:11] Do you think this is a good use of Loki? How are you feeling about this?
Charlie Jane: [00:06:16] I mean, it feels a little incongruous that Loki, whose whole thing is about like Norse mythology and cosmic magic and stuff is suddenly being kind of shoehorned into this story about alternate timelines and time travel. But what it does is it puts Loki in a situation where he's kind of out of his depth. He's not in control of anything, at least not in the first couple episodes. He's kind of struggling. And that allows you to kind of see him in a different way. And also the fact that they plucked him out of his past in like the first Avengers movie means that he's at an earlier stage in his redemption arc. And I think part of the point of a character like Loki is that he's going to always be in the process of getting redemption, but he's never going to achieve redemption, because then what would we want him for anymore? Like, what's the point of him anymore?
Annalee: [00:07:01] Right. And that's part of the trickster figure, kind of in general, is that the trickster is always kind of on the brink of becoming a good person or a good god, but then kind of slips back into their tricky ways.
Charlie Jane: [00:07:15] Yeah. And I think without generalizing too much, old school, traditional tricksters, they're kind of inscrutable. They're kind of hard to understand. They're kind of mysterious, and you don't always understand their motivations. Sometimes they do good things for bad reasons. Sometimes they do things to help people but it seems like they're being mean. And you know, Loki in Norse mythology is a very ambiguous figure who is sometimes on the side of the Aesir. And sometimes on the side of the Jotun, or whatever. He's kind of a hot mess. Sometimes he's turning into a horse and seducing other horses and then having horse babies. This is true. And you know.
Annalee: [00:07:52] They're not gonna do that in this show, though.
Charlie Jane: [00:07:55] I doubt that he's gonna turn into a horse and seduce another horse. Although, if they did it with like dialogue and stuff like, hee-ee-eey. Hee-ee-eey, I’m Loki.
Annalee: [00:08:01] I want to see furry Loki, that would be awesome.
Charlie Jane: [00:08:05] Oh my God.
Annalee: [00:08:05] So okay, Loki has become a really popular character in the Marvel movies. So why is that happening?
Charlie Jane: [00:08:13] I think part of it is Tom Hiddleston has this amazing charisma and he's just super fun to watch and he's just got a lot of vim and excitement zipped to him. He puts a lot into the character and the character could have been this kind of scowling one dimensional kind of antagonist, but there's a vulnerability to Loki and he has amazing chemistry with Chris Hemsworth. Kind of, you want them to be buds. You want them to—
Annalee: [00:08:38] That’s the guy who plays Thor.
Charlie Jane: [00:08:43] The guy who plays Thor, right.
Annalee: [00:08:42] For those of you who don't remember, yeah.
Charlie Jane: [00:08:44] Chris Hemsworth who plays Thor, Loki’s kind of stepbrother. You want them to be like friends you want them to like hug. You just want like a whole movie of Thor and Loki hugging over and over again. And I think that, I was thinking about this. The big turning point for Loki in the movies was the kind of underrated and often forgotten film, Thor: The Dark World. Which you know, I can't tell you anything that happens in that movie. Christopher Eccleston from Doctor Who is wearing like a weird elf mask and is like making guttural noises, and—
Annalee: [00:09:15] There’s some kind of interdimensional tornado or something.
Charlie Jane: [00:09:18] Yeah. It's you know, honestly, Thor: The Dark World is one of those movies that just did not really register with me at all, except that Thor and Loki have a lot of really good scenes in that movie together. Two things about that. One is they actually went back and did a ton of reshoots after they'd already filmed it to add more Loki into the movie and built in a lot more Loki interactions in the film, so that Loki is a real presence in that film. But for the first time, he's not the antagonist. He's just there. He's just hanging out. He sometimes helps Thor. He sometimes kind of gets in Thor's way, but he's not really driving the plot in any way and so you get to just see Loki being Loki having conversations with Thor. And that I feel like is the moment worth for Loki kind of starts to kind of feel more like he's kind of ambiguous. He's more of an antihero. He's more just around. He's not going to be like the guy who shows up to cause an alien invasion or whatever.
Annalee: [00:10:17] Yeah, he's not the bad guy. And he's not a sidekick. Yeah, he's just a friend to Thor in a sense, or like—
Charlie Jane: [00:10:23] A frenemy.
Annalee: [00:10:24] A frenemey of Thor, yeah. A spikey friend.
Charlie Jane: [00:10:28] He's established just Thor's frenemy. And that leads to Thor: Ragnarok. Where again, he's kind of a little bit of an antagonist in Thor: Ragnarok, but not really. And I feel like that's kind of his evolution in a way. Like he always has these moments where he's being selfish and evil and destructive. When the chips are down, he will do something to help Thor. He'll kind of save Thor's bacon if it gets really bad.
Annalee: [00:10:49] Yeah. And I think that, again, is part of this modern-day trickster idea, which is that it's someone who is really selfish, really narcissistic and powerful, but that they ultimately have a heart of gold. And that they'll sometimes use nefarious means or manipulation to get what they want. But in the end, you can kind of depend on them like not to really fuck things up. You know, it's, that's not really great. But when you're in a pinch, and you need to save the universe, it's good to have that guy on your side.
Charlie Jane: [00:11:22] Yeah, and, you know, obviously, the traditional idea of the trickster is that they cause chaos for a reason that may not be apparent, but there's something behind it. They are challenging the social norms. They're challenging our values, our rules of society, in order to kind of help those rules and those norms to continue to exist. Because if there's no safety valve, we'll all kind of go, woo-woo, or whatever.
Annalee: [00:11:46] So basically, Herbert Marcuse’s, idea of repressive desublimation from the 1960s.
Charlie Jane: [00:11:52] Basically, yeah.
Annalee: [00:11:52] Just to lay a little like critical theory on you. Because Marcuse argued—he was this awesome critical theorist, or awesome to me, anyway, who talked about how, in order for social norms to continue, in order for repression to continue, you have to have these socially sanctioned moments of what he called desublimation, which to us just means partying basically. You can't have an authoritarian government without also having like giant parties.
Charlie Jane: [00:12:20] So basically, Marcuse invented The Purge.
Annalee: [00:12:23] Actually, I bet that he would have really liked those movies. I mean, he would have hated what they were about because of course, he thought repressive desublimation was, was terrible, right? He was like, this is a thing that's bribing us into staying within a system that really sucks because like, well, we get these, you know, holidays. And so then we think, oh, well, everything's fine and we don't overthrow capitalism or patriarchy or anything like that. So, but Loki’s kind of doing that in a way,
Charlie Jane: [00:12:48] In a way, but like you said, he's a narcissist, he's out for himself. That's the thing, when you take like a character from folklore or mythology, and turn him into basically a supervillain who eventually becomes a super antihero or whatever, you're gonna turn them into more of a character with more legible motivations to the audience. And also, you're going to kind of flatten them down a little bit, so that they're no longer having this privileged position outside of right and wrong or good and evil.
[00:13:18] But I think that there's a thing where like, if you cause enough chaos, like say that your principle, your ideal, is that you want to create chaos. If you do too good a job of that, and you just create nothing but chaos it's not going to be satisfying after a while, because you need order for chaos to have any meaning. It's like all these other things where you need light for darkness or whatever. So, I think that if you're a God of chaos, or if you're like a figure of chaos, you're going to at some point, kind of revert to conservatism in a way.
Annalee: [00:13:47] Yeah, I mean, like you said, you need conservatism for that chaos to feel good. Chaos is actually, if you think about it, chaos really sucks. Nobody wants to be in a state of total chaos. You want to like at least have some guardrails. I think that's a really interesting point that there's something kind of conservative in a weird way about these trickster characters. And it reminds me of something, that Loki has family values.
Charlie Jane: [00:14:11] Mm-hmm.
Annalee: [00:14:11] And that's part of what grounds him as a character and he's not just swirling off into a magenta cloud. He like cares about his family, cares about his parents, he cares about his brother. And this is similar to other modern tricksters like the character of Lupin in the new French series on Netflix, played by Omar Sy, who's like another person who's incredibly fun to watch.
Charlie Jane: [00:14:35] Oh my God, so charismatic. So fun.
Annalee: [00:14:38] It's like such a great show just to watch him. But he also is an agent of chaos who cares about his family. And that's the thing that keeps him on a path that isn't just random.
Charlie Jane: [00:14:51] Yeah, I mean, if you want to think of a character who is portrayed as just pure chaos and caring about nothing, you know, there's the Joker, specifically, the Joker in The Dark Knight.
Annalee: [00:15:00] Yes.
Charlie Jane: [00:15:00] Where Heath Ledger plays the Joker as basically just like, all I want to do is just fuck everything up.
Annalee: [00:15:07] Burn it down.
Charlie Jane: [00:15:07] Burn it all down and I don't… There's nothing that I feel anchored to. There's nothing I care about, there’s nothing true. Like even if I tell you a story about like how I became this way, I'm not really telling you the real story. I'm just making stuff up. And I feel like that's what Loki isn't. Even though at times they've kind of borrowed from the iconography of the Joker for Loki, like they put him in a glass prison in Thor: The Dark World that looked a lot like where the Joker was imprisoned in The Dark Knight. It was kind of a similar scenario. But he's not like the Joker, he actually does care about stuff. The other thing about Loki in the Marvel Universe is that he doesn't really want chaos as an end in itself. He wants to rule. He wants to rule Asgard. He wants to rule Earth. He wants to be in charge.
Annalee: [00:15:47] Chaos does not make for a good leadership style.
Charlie Jane: [00:15:52] I mean, we’ve kind of found that out the hard way, haven't we?
Annalee: [00:15:54] Yeah, in a lot of different places, I think we’ve found that out the hard way. But you know, that's his motivation in the TV show, Loki, too. Right away, he’s like, oh how can I take over the Time Variance Authority? Which, when that came up in the show, I was like, what, why would you want to do that? It sounds like… everything we see of the Time Variance Authority, which is like this is itself a footnote, I think, is that it's a giant bureaucracy. It's in this space that's so heavily urbanized, then it's kind of amazing, but also kind of ugly. Like there's no nature. There's nothing. And it's all in this like late 1960s style. All the technology is 1960s, fetishisticly recreated like, all of the rotary telephones and knobs and stuff.
Charlie Jane: [00:16:46] Side note, the plot of the Loki TV show would be very different if the people from the Time Variance Authority had body cams, and drones and basically any early 21st century technology.
Annalee: [00:16:57] That's really interesting, yeah. And it's funny, because Loki keeps saying to Mobius, his handler, you're from the future, right? You guys are from the future, you seem really futuristic. And it's sort of funny, because every time we see the Time Variance Authority, it doesn't look futuristic. It looks like the future as imagined in 1960. You know? So they're not. Maybe they're not from the future, maybe they’re from 1960.
Charlie Jane: [00:17:24] It’s retro future. It's very retro future, yeah.
Annalee: [00:17:27] Yeah, it is true. God, imagine if they had drones, or they were like hacking and stuff. Like they wouldn't even need to leave the office, they could just like hang out.
Charlie Jane: [00:17:37] They're sending people into situations where they could have just sent a robot or a machine or something. And it's like, oh, our people keep getting killed but we don't send drones in first. And we also oh, we don't know what happened to this person after they left our site, because we don't have any way of recording what they're doing when they're not right in front of us.
Annalee: [00:17:54] Yeah, we don't track them. They don't have mobile devices of any kind. Like even on Doctor Who, like in the new series, the Doctor kind of invents a mobile device that his companion can use to like call home from anywhere at any time.
[00:18:08] Speaking of which, to return to Loki. Let's talk a little bit about what this show gives us in terms of Loki’s character that feels new, or that feels like we're kind of delving into a new side of his character. What is this show actually say about Loki?
Charlie Jane: [00:18:23] I feel like this show is really leaning into the vulnerability of Loki and like the insecurity of Loki. And at one point somebody described, I guess Mobius, describes him as a frightened child. And I think we're supposed to think that that's not entirely incorrect. And he has this breakdown at the end of episode one, which I think is supposed to kind of recapitulate his arc in the movies where he's like, he's been thundering about a cruel, elaborate trick conjured by the weak to inspire fear. He's talking about other people doing this. But then, at the end of the episode, he kind of admits that that's what he's doing. That he is the weak, and he is using a cruel, elaborate trick to inspire fear, and that his apparent sadism and evil behavior is just his way of trying to make people fear him because he's so weak and scared. And I think that they really lean into that. And they actually, weirdly, make it seem as though, in a way, Loki is better at being manipulated than at manipulating others, because he's so incredibly narcissistic and insecure that you can just push—His buttons are right there, you can just push his buttons.
Annalee: [00:19:28] Yeah, and Mobius does. Mobius uses really cheesy reverse psychology on him to just be like, oh, well, you're just too scared, basically, to do this, so… And then Loki’s like, “No, I’m not!” I'm paraphrasing.
Charlie Jane: [00:19:43] No, it’s true.
Annalee: [00:19:43] The scene is actually written in a funnier way than that. But there's a moment in the show, in the second episode that I wanted to ask you about, which is when Loki is talking about how his great power is that he knows that no one is ever truly good or truly evil. And I wonder, do you think the show really believes that? Because I feel like Mobius thinks that Loki is basically evil, and that he doesn't agree with that analysis.
Charlie Jane: [00:20:09] Obviously, we're supposed to think Loki is super cynical and that part of how he controls other people and how he gets his way is by playing on the kind of flaws in other people's character. And so like, if say Thor was truly a good person, Loki wouldn't be able to manipulate him the way he does. Some of the other heroes he's encountered… Obviously, the Marvel universe as a whole doesn't believe that there are no good people, because that would be really depressing. And we wouldn't want to watch 30 movies about people who are basically just garbage. That would be a very different Marvel Universe.
[00:20:45] I think Loki believes that, to some extent, although Does he ever really believe anything he says? Questionable. But I think he believes it on some level. But I think that the show is kind of trying to show that that's not really true and that people matter. And I keep thinking about that thing towards the end of the second episode, where they show up in this refugee camp where people are huddling in this like trying to survive this hurricane that we know is going to kill them all. And the TVA people are just like, “Fuck you, you're dead anyway.” And it's a moment of showing the lack of compassion as a way of showing how important compassion is and how kind of heartless it is to kind of just consigned people to their fate, even if it's “the timeline” or whatever.
Annalee: [00:21:27] Right. Yeah, that worshipping a single timeline is itself a form of conservatism.
Charlie Jane: [00:21:32] It is.
Annalee: [00:21:34] It is very much because the multiverse offers possibilities. And the monoverse is… The plot in every monoverse story, common plot is what we see in Loki, which is we have to trim the variants, we have to stop any alteration of how time is quote unquote “supposed to happen.” And that's why I like Legends of Tomorrow because they're not afraid to let the timeline go and do other stuff and let it just stay altered.
Charlie Jane: [00:22:02] Yeah, I feel like there's actually been a whole strand in some recent, especially on television, in recent time travel stories where it's just like, ah, screw it. Like in Twelve Monkeys, too. There’s a certain point. They go from like, we have to preserve the timeline or we can't change the past or, we would like to but we can't or whatever, to just being like yeah, whatever.
Annalee: [00:22:21] Yeah—
Charlie Jane: [00:22:22] We're just going to screw with the timeline.
Annalee: [00:22:23] Like, in my novel, Future of Another Timeline. That was what my characters do, is they're like, well, there's a single timeline and it's our job to change it and the end.
[00:22:33] Okay, before we wrap up I want to make sure that we talk about the alternate Loki.
Charlie Jane: [00:22:36] Yeah.
Annalee: [00:22:39] So we, spoilers, we already said, but at the end of episode two, we meet the other Loki that our Loki is supposed to be helping them capture and it's a lady Loki. So what do you make of that, what's going on there?
Charlie Jane: [00:22:50] Obviously, we both probably see more of her in later episodes, I thought it was really cool that they really lean into the idea that Loki is genderfluid and that Loki can be a man or a woman and that there's nothing intrinsically dudely about being the god of mischief or whatever. But also like it's very clear right away that the other Loki, the lady Loki is better at manipulation and actually is manipulating our Loki. Like, that he has been playing her game the entire time and that he keeps blustering about like you're all playing my game. But actually no, he's playing her game. He was meant to figure out the thing that led the Time Variance Authority to this superstore and he's totally just playing into her hands. And she's much more ruthless and much more malicious, in a way, than he is and doesn't seem to care about anything. He keeps trying to appeal to her and play on her and manipulate her and it just bounces off her. She doesn't even… She’s just like, no, no. I'm good. But meanwhile he is just a little yappy dog trying to get a handle on her. So, I feel like I really liked that dynamic and I hope that we get a lot more of that.
Annalee: [00:24:00] Yeah, I really want to see the female version of Loki. I want to see more of it. And I want to know what the heck she's doing. She's got this plan and hopefully the writers’ room also had a plan for us in this show.
Charlie Jane: [00:24:12] I sure hope so.
Annalee: [00:24:12] All right, so we're gonna take a quick break and when we come back, I'm going to talk to Maria Konnikova about real life tricksters known as con artists.
[00:24:22] Segment change music plays. Drums with a bass line including bass drops.
Annalee: [00:24:27] Today, I want to recommend to you The Forbidden Apple Podcast hosted by two friends Pelayo Alvarez and Melissa Weisz.
Charlie Jane: [00:24:34] Melissa Weisz grew up in an Orthodox Jewish Hasidic home in a very religious environment.
Annalee: [00:24:40] Pelayo Alvarez grew up Catholic back in Spain, also in a very religious environment.
Charlie Jane: [00:24:45] Together, they give voice to LGBT voices and explore what spirituality means to them.
Annalee: [00:24:51] So, Check out The Forbidden Apple Podcast on all streaming platforms.
[00:25:00] I'm here with Maria. She's written a lot about con artists. She is a writer for The New Yorker who writes a lot about psychology. She has a background in psychology research, and she's a professional poker player in her spare time. And she's going to talk to me a little bit about whether or not real life con artists work at all like tricksters on the screen. [00:25:23] Is there really such a thing as a con artist with a heart of gold? Is that like a real thing? Or is that just only in Lupin?
Maria: [00:25:29] No, that does not exist. Because if you're a con artist, then by definition, you do not have a heart of gold, because you're taking advantage of people for your own aims. And I just don't see how that can be a good thing.
Annalee: [00:25:40] Okay. Myth busted.
[00:25:44] One of the things that you've talked about is that people sometimes want to forgive con artists, because they believe that they actually have a heart of gold, or they kind of romanticize the figure of the con artist. I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about that. And why we love these figures, even though they're kind of tricking us all the time.
Maria: [00:26:04] I think there's something about con artists that puts them in the same class of criminal like mobsters, where we tend to idolize them as a society. We tend to glamorize their stories and their lifestyle, even though they're hurting people. And in the case of mobsters, obviously, there's violent crime and so, it's even less forgivable. But in the case of con artists, it comes with also this side effect that we often blame the victims. And we say, oh, well, if you fell for it, you deserve it. And actually, you're the stupid one here. You're gullible. If you just think about even the common phrases that are associated with victims of con artists, like “You can't fool an honest man.” I mean, that's total bullshit. That's not true whatsoever. In fact, you know, as I've written, honest people are often the easiest to fool because you believe that other people are honest as well. And that's wonderful. It's a great thing, to trust other people and to be hopeful about the state of humanity. But con artists will take advantage of that.
[00:27:13] And I think especially in the case of con artists, it can be easy to glamorize them, because it's not violent crime. And they often do things that seem really smart and funny, because they're able to take advantage of people and get them to do things that they wouldn't otherwise do. And we look from the sidelines, and we say, wow, how clever that is. And of course, it doesn't hurt that con artists are typically incredibly charismatic, because they have to be to get people to trust them, to get people to believe them, to get people to believe in their stories and in the worlds that they create. Because at the end of the day, that's what a con artist does. He creates a reality. I say he here, of course, a con artist can be female. Historically speaking, we know of more male con artists. But as I like to joke, but only half-jokingly, it's because women are better and they don't get caught nearly as often.
Annalee: [00:28:11] Yes, that should be the number one on the list of things that con artists need to do is don't get caught, don't become a famous con artist.
Maria: [00:28:17] That's exactly right. That's exactly right. One other thing that I will add kind of with the glamorization of con artists and the blaming of the victims, is that sometimes when you have a con that's like art fraud, or something like the Fyre Festival, people are like, well, you know, if you're spending however much money on a painting or on a music festival, you deserve it. Who are you to go to a festival like that, and they really blame the victims. And that really pisses me off because you don't know anything about these people, right? And the fact that they're going to a music festival shouldn't make you judge them. Maybe they've put their life savings into this. People dismiss Bernie Madoff’s victims, because they said, oh, well, you know, you were just greedy and rich. There were a lot of people who were neither greedy nor rich. They just heard through the grapevine that he was very good and gave him literally all of the money they had in the world and were completely destroyed by this.
[00:29:17] So I just feel like we need to have more respect and sympathy for the victims. And it's hard to stop glamorizing the con artists, even I was tempted to do it oftentimes. And so, when I was researching The Confidence Game, I actually had to stop interviewing the con artists about halfway through the process, because I realized that I was being swayed by their charisma and oftentimes would find myself nodding along and saying, yeah, I guess maybe she did have it coming. Yeah, I guess maybe that wasn't so bad. Maybe you did deserve that. And I was so horrified to hear those thoughts even remotely flitting through my head, that I had to just cut it off and say, you know, what? Be it what it may, I'm not going to be conducting these interviews anymore because they're powerful, and they're charismatic. And even if, you know, if you go into it with your eyes open knowing you're talking to a con artist, that charisma can still get to you.
Annalee: [00:30:15] Yeah, well, like you said, they're sexy and smart. And I keep thinking of the French TV series, Lupin, which is totally that, right? We totally love him. We sympathize with him so much. And yet he is stealing tons of money and completely ripping a bunch of people off. And we don't know, like you said, we don't know who those people are, we don't know. We know a little about them. And we kind of feel like, they're rich, it’s okay. They can spare the money that he's taking.
Maria: [00:30:42] I mean, I take everything that I just said back in terms of Lupin, he just is wonderful. So we're just gonna go with it.
Annalee: [00:30:50] And that’s the thing about the fictional trickster figure, it's a lot easier when it's fiction to be like, it's fine. No one's really being hurt here. I mean, we talked a little about sort of romanticizing con artists, but is there a kind of a pleasure that we get out of being tricked or conned as kind of the mark or as the audience for it?
Maria: [00:31:12] I think the answer to that is both yes and no. Yes, when we do it willingly. So, I think that the con has a lot of the elements of magic shows, and of being taken in by this reality that someone else is creating for you. And there's so much pleasure from magic and from those types of deceptions that are benign, because you're going in to be deceived. And I think that con artists take advantage of that take advantage of our desire to believe. Our deep need to believe and our willingness to be taken in when it kind of goes along with what we think should be happening in the world. But I don't think anyone wants to be conned. I think people want to be fooled when they know they're being fooled. And I think it hurts a lot when it happens and you actually thought that this was aboveboard, that this was an honest transaction. And so it's taking that process of magic, and of all of the elements that make humans in general love magic, and love those types of experiences. It's taking that and perverting it and flipping it on its head in a bargain that we never asked for, and that we are not going to enjoy.
Annalee: [00:32:33] Yeah, so it's really the difference between consensually being fooled like by a story or magic show versus non-consensually by a wedding planner, or someone who's gonna steal all of your money and send you to nowhere instead of on your honeymoon.
Maria: [00:32:51] That's exactly right. And what I say time and time, again, is that there's a line with shades of gray between who is and is not a con artist. But to me, the kind of the defining characteristic is intention. Are you intending to deceive people for your own malicious ends? And if the answer is yes, then you're a con artist. If the answer is no, you yourself are a true believer, then you're not. Because you can imagine two people selling the same product, the same bogus health product, for instance, and one of them knows it's a bogus health product and just wants to make money, that's a con artist. One of them truly believes in it, takes it themselves and thinks this is the thing that's going to make everyone's lives better, and help us to live longer. That person's an idiot, not a con artist.
Annalee: [00:33:39] Maybe they just really want to believe. They've been conned by someone else.
[00:33:45] One of the insights that I really like in your work that you talk about in a lot of different contexts is that we need to change psychological strategies or tactics as situations change. I feel like this is something that you talk about a lot in the context of poker. And I think it's also something that we see in trickster characters, because they thrive on chaos. They really kind of come alive in situations that are changing all the time. And I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the need to be changing tactics and how we do that. What are the psychological tools to do that and kind of help us through really chaotic times where we might be conned by anyone?
Maria: [00:34:28] Yeah, it's a great question and it's a really difficult one to answer well, because it's not just the fictional tricksters who thrive on chaos, as you point out, it's the real life con artists. They thrive on moments of transition, on chaotic points in time where there's change happening, because those are the times when we as human beings are the most disoriented and the most in need of something that seems stable, something that seems sure, something that has a clear and nice causal line because there's just so much changing chaos around us. That's why you have con artists who thrive during any transition in terms of kind of global events and war time. I mean, we've had so many cons during the pandemic, because everyone's frame of reference has been shifted.
[00:35:20] And, personal transitions. That's why con artists try to find people who are vulnerable, who are going through divorces, who've lost a job, who have moved, people who are in personal moments of chaos. And so, the best defense we have, as you've suggested, is to be able to change our frame of thinking from moment to moment. But how do we do that? I think the number one strategy that I have is to let yourself change your mind. That seems like a really simple thing to say but it's actually something that people will oftentimes not do and not let themselves do because they think that it makes them inconsistent, it makes them seem like their past self was wrong, or stupid, or misinformed, or something. And I like to approach it as like, Bayesian updating, right. The world is constantly changing and so you need to constantly evaluate your thought process, your decision process, how you think about things, how you view things, based on the data available at that point in time, and then make the best decision. And that best decision will necessarily change because the inputs are changing, because the world is changing.
[00:36:35] So, if you think of the world of poker, it's exactly like life in the sense that it's a game of incomplete information. And it's a game of probabilities, where every decision you make is probabilistic, because you don't know everything, and you don't know what's going to happen. And so, your goal is to make the best decision you can with the information you have at that point in time. As the information changes, you have to reevaluate and realize that something that you did just five minutes ago may no longer be the right strategy now that you have new information. You have to update it, and you might end up doing something radically different. And that's okay, that's fine. That just means you're a smart decision maker, that doesn't mean that you're flip flopping. That doesn't mean that you're inconsistent. That doesn't mean your past decision was wrong. And because we often take it personally and see it in that light of, well past me can't possibly be wrong. And we have these sunk cost fallacies where, you know, if I've already invested this much, then I have to keep doing it even if the decision is no longer right. And you can't change what you've already done. All you can change is what you're doing and what you're going to do.
[00:37:46] We are really bad at doing that because we feel like it reflects badly on us. And so I would just challenge everyone to let yourself. Give yourself permission to change your mind, to change tack, to change how you think about things, to constantly reevaluate based on what the world is telling you.
Annalee: [00:38:09] Yeah, it's it's sort of making sense of chaos in a sense.
Maria: [00:38:10] Exactly, exactly.
Annalee: [00:38:13] Being a bit of a trickster with reality.
Maria: [00:38:17] Exactly. And also being okay, saying, I don't know. I'm doing my best. I don't understand. Those are also phrases that we are often very loath to say. And that's often what tricksters and con artists take advantage of. Because we don't want to seem uncertain, we don't want to seem like we don't know what we're doing. We don't want to seem scared. And so we end up falling for them, because we don't want to show our vulnerability.
Annalee: [00:38:40] I was wondering if you have any kinds of tricks that are sort of gentle and non-toxic, but still a bit of a con artist trick to get people to do things sometimes. Do you ever find yourself, not in it in a way where you're getting someone to do something that's going to harm them, but you just want to tweak them a little bit to get them to, I don't know, eat dinner with you at the place you want to go to or see the movie you want to see. Do you ever find yourself doing that?
Maria: [00:39:10] I try not to. But I'm sure that we all use those tricks of persuasion, all the time. And especially, you know, as someone who's a journalist, I clearly do it all the time in my profession, because I choose how I tell a story. I choose how I present it, in what order, what I emphasize what I leave out, what information I'm choosing to present in what light, those are all choices. And so even if I'm trying to tell an objective story from an objective journalistic perspective, it's going to be through my lens, and those choices are going to affect how people experience it. And so, in that sense, yeah, journalists are conning people and I think that you use those types of things in day to day life as well when you present information in a certain way.
[00:39:57] And sure, sometimes if I really want to go to a specific restaurant, I might present the options in a certain way that makes that restaurant seem more appealing. That make the other ones seem less appealing. Have I been known to do that? Yeah, absolutely.
Annalee: [00:40:12] I might have done that once or twice, myself.
Maria: [00:40:15] And I will say one of the things that con artists do very well that if you want to try to get someone to go to the restaurant you want to go to might be a good trick is they plant the seed in your mind so that you think the idea is coming from you. And you think that it's your own initiative and not theirs. So, this is, in their case, this is called Machiavellianism when you're able to manipulate people to do what you want them to do, but they think it's their idea. So sometimes just planting seeds early in the day, about oh, it’s so hot, sushi is really the perfect food, isn't it? And then just waiting for the evening for your friend to suggest sushi for dinner.
Annalee: [00:40:54] Remember how we were talking about something this morning that was really good? What was that? Oh, it was sushi, right.
[00:41:03] Cool. Well, thank you so much for chatting with me about this and disabusing me of the notion that there are con artists with a heart of gold.
Maria: [00:41:11] Any time. And I'm sorry to disabuse you of that notion but, alas.
Annalee: [00:41:17] Thanks so much to Maria Konnikova for joining us and you can find her book The Biggest Bluff out now in paperback.
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Charlie Jane: [00:41:37] Thank you so much for listening to Our Opinions Are Correct. If you somehow stumbled on us and don't know how, we're in all the places that podcasts can be found. And if you like us, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Please subscribe. Please tell your friends. Please just paint a giant billboard over your house somehow. I don't know, sky write? Do some sky writing.
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[00:42:15] This podcast was recorded at the amazing Women's Audio Mission and we're so grateful to our heroic and brilliant producer Veronica Simonetti. And thanks also to Chris Palmer for the amazing music. We'll be back in two weeks with another episode.
Together: [00:42:29] Bye!
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