Pants on Fire

Lies pervade our lives - in business, personal relationships, cyber-space, courting, kids, politics and more… We talk to New Zealanders whose lives were upended by lies and experts about why we do it.

Written and produced by Duncan Smith

A dark blue background with thin vertical stripes. A primitive illustration of a human with a fire attached to their lower back. The text says 'Pants on Fire' in large red and yellow capital letters. Below the main title, 'A fibber's guide to lies' is written in a smaller white font.

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The Lies That Hurt

Episode 1
Nothing stings like the discovery that we have been lied to. Betrayal hurts and some of the most painful lies are those around infidelity. where betrayal is compounded by a powerful sense of rejection.
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Natural-Born Fibbers

Episode 2
We take a journey from the trainer-wheels fibs of toddlers through to our peak period of dishonesty - the teen years - with a child psychotherapist and a family counsellor.
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Sweet-Talking Ernest Dickens and the Spanish Prisoner

Episode 3
Sweetheart scams and the booming cyber-fraud industry are fueled by the human drive to trust people.
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The Truth About Lies in Fiction

Episode 4
In the arts there is much made of the notion of truth: writers search for the truth in a story; visual artists, no matter what form they work in, are all aiming to reveal or discover some form of the truth; scriptwriters want their work to resonate and to ring true; actors want to be true to their characters. How does all that sit within our concept of lying?
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The Tangled Web

Episode 5
Do our politicians lie to us? What are the lies that really matter in politics? Should we be worried, or do we just like to think all politicians lie?
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