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0:38

From New York Times opinion, I'm Lulu

0:40

Garcia Navarro, and this is

0:42

first person. Their

0:45

names are now infamous. George

0:48

Santos, Elizabeth Holmes, Sam

0:50

Bankman Freed, the epic

0:52

liars of our time. People

0:55

who built not just houses of untruths,

0:58

but whole villages. When

1:00

I look back at the fantastical stories,

1:03

they told, it's hard to understand

1:05

why anyone believed them. But

1:07

a lot of people did. What

1:10

should we make of that? Especially given

1:12

that on the other end of the spectrum, there

1:14

are whole categories of people,

1:17

like asylum seekers who aren't

1:19

given the benefit of the doubt, who

1:21

are viewed as suspect until proven

1:23

otherwise. Fadina

1:26

Nairi, figuring out why we trust certain

1:28

people more than others, has been an obsession

1:31

her whole life. Dina fled

1:33

Iran when she was a child and

1:35

came to the US as a refugee. Now

1:39

in a new book, who gets believed

1:41

when the truth isn't enough. She

1:43

explores what her own journey can tell us

1:45

about what it takes to be believed in

1:47

America. And what is lost when

1:49

you aren't. Today

1:52

on first person, Dinah Nairi, on

1:54

why we are so bad at telling

1:56

the truth from lives. Dina

2:05

it seems like your own journey as a

2:07

refugee really set you on this

2:10

path to understanding

2:12

who is believed and who isn't.

2:14

So, I want to start there. Can you

2:16

tell me why you had to flee Iran

2:19

as a child? Sure.

2:21

Well, I was born, I guess,

2:23

right in the middle of the revolution in nineteen

2:26

seventy nine when the Islamic Republic

2:28

came in. And my

2:30

mother was very religious. She

2:33

was very religious Muslim, very

2:35

observant. And then when I was

2:37

six, my mother converted to

2:39

Christianity. We had a trip to London

2:41

that we took to see my aunt get married.

2:43

And during that very whirlwind trip,

2:45

my mother decided to

2:48

convert to become a Christian. Mhmm.

2:50

She came yeah. And she came

2:53

back and she was very

2:55

very open with her Christianity. She

2:57

had a medical practice. She was an OB

2:59

GYN, and she told all

3:01

of her patients about her new faith.

3:04

And, you know, she had all these women who

3:06

were in different kinds of trouble that were like poor

3:08

women and abused women and, you know, women

3:10

with a lot of vulnerability and so she would constantly

3:13

prosletized to them. And so very quickly,

3:15

she got into trouble, got thrown in

3:17

jail, and and then we

3:19

had to escape the country. So when was

3:21

eight, we fled from Iran

3:23

and we went to the United Arab

3:25

Emirates

3:27

where we kind of blew

3:29

through a tourist visa, became undocumented

3:33

then applied to become refugees and were

3:35

taken to Italy,

3:38

where we were in a refugee camp

3:40

in a little town called Mentana.

3:43

In the book, you on how the

3:46

asylum process testsbelievability you

3:50

know, I've covered refugee resettlement, and

3:52

I know that it is an incredibly arduous

3:54

process. And this

3:56

process can be derailed at any

3:59

point if you are found to be

4:01

not credible. Mhmm. That's the actual

4:03

language that they use. Do

4:05

you remember your interview for resettlement

4:07

in the

4:08

US? Can you take me back to that day?

4:11

Yeah, you know, the memory is very,

4:14

very foggy because we had so many

4:16

different kinds of interviews during that time,

4:18

but I do remember the one, this

4:20

interview, myself, my

4:22

brother, and my mother were all in the room,

4:25

and my mother was being questioned

4:27

by a woman by an asylum officer and

4:31

had already been explained to me

4:33

that being a Christian convert

4:36

in Iran was enough to qualify

4:38

us for asylum. So the

4:40

only question was, where we really

4:43

Christians in Iran, did this one

4:45

woman believe that we had converted

4:47

truly in our hearts and My

4:50

mother, of course, had converted, and

4:52

she was truly a Christian, a

4:54

very faithful one. And she knew the

4:56

Bible backwards and forwards. She had

4:58

this Bible that she had underlined

5:00

and she used a different color

5:03

every year that she read through the entire

5:05

thing. And

5:07

so, you know, she she knew her stuff.

5:10

And then at one point, this

5:12

woman turned to me and asked a very

5:14

simple bible question. It was

5:16

one of the bible stories, like, Joan

5:18

hour, some such. And the

5:22

answer came easy to me, but only later,

5:24

did I realize that it

5:27

mattered what the children said because it

5:29

showed to her whether or not my mother had actually

5:33

educated her children in her new faith.

5:35

Which is a sign of whether or not you believe. How

5:38

old were you? I was nine

5:40

years old. Yeah.

5:43

But I think the real nervousness

5:46

over it, the real,

5:49

you know, worry came with the

5:51

waiting for a letter. That

5:53

told us whether or not we had been accepted. And

5:56

that time, I think, was excruciating,

5:59

and it was particularly excruciating for

6:01

my mom, I know, because know,

6:03

it was her performance that really mattered.

6:07

Do you remember getting the

6:09

letter when

6:10

you finally realized that you had passed

6:12

the believeability test?

6:17

In the refugee camp that we were, it

6:19

was kind of It was this makeshift camp

6:21

that was kind of in the husk of an old

6:23

hotel at the top of the hill and we

6:25

each had our own cubby where we got our mail.

6:28

And every time mail came, especially

6:30

after a round of asylum interviews, everybody

6:33

would gather around the cubbies, and we would

6:35

see who got their letter. And, you know, I remember

6:38

the first person in our group of friends

6:40

who got his was this Iranian soldier

6:43

in his twenties, and he had this incredible

6:46

scar from the war on his face. His

6:48

half his face was bleached white, and

6:51

he had become a good friend of mine.

6:53

I played soccer with him. And,

6:56

you know, he got his letter first, and I remember

6:58

him dropping to his knees and

7:01

weeping. And

7:03

at some point, we got our letter

7:05

and my mother opened it with trembling hands

7:07

and a part of us just believed

7:09

that this was absolutely a yes letter.

7:12

And when it was, My

7:14

mother, she was all tears and

7:16

laughter and joy and hugs all around.

7:19

People just throwing themselves into

7:21

each other's arms. It kind of

7:23

started off this obsession I have

7:25

with open doors, you know, with gatekeepers

7:28

and being let into places and people

7:30

saying Dina will take you. That

7:33

was the first one. That was the first kind of

7:36

powerful stranger who said, we're

7:38

good enough.

7:44

So you get asylum and you

7:47

were resettled in Oklahoma. Mhmm.

7:51

Let's talk about what happened when you

7:54

walked through that open door and got to America.

7:57

And I wanna start with

8:00

your mother. She had been, as you

8:02

mentioned, in OBGYN in Iran.

8:04

Mhmm. Someone who people looked up

8:06

to.

8:08

What did she wind up doing in the US?

8:12

Well, she first worked in a factory.

8:15

Yeah. She was doing a kind of roadwork

8:18

that very very

8:20

very low paid exhausting

8:23

long hours. And one thing

8:25

I should say is my family,

8:27

we're we're kind of all about academic credentials

8:29

and things like that. And my mother, you know,

8:31

she went to the VEST University, she went to Tehran

8:34

University, and she had a thriving

8:36

practice, and she was a doctor, a really

8:38

good one. And, you

8:41

know, when someone was sick, she would offer

8:43

a diagnosis, in Iran, people would have sat

8:45

up and people would have said, oh, you know, tell me

8:47

more doctor. And then we arrived in Oklahoma

8:50

where everybody was, I

8:53

guess, looking down on us.

8:55

You know, my mother was no longer looked

8:59

at them in this way with such respect and reverence.

9:02

And I judged my mother

9:04

very harshly for not being able to shed

9:06

her Iranian culture faster. I

9:08

was constantly on top of her, you know, mom,

9:10

why why did you do that? Americans don't

9:13

do this. Like, Americans don't say

9:15

these deferential things. Americans

9:18

don't insist on something three times

9:20

they take the first no as a no. You know,

9:22

all of these Iranian cultural politeness

9:24

things do not apply here, just drop

9:26

them. But of course, she had been raised

9:29

in that culture, and she behaved that she behaved

9:31

But I started, I guess, to really become

9:34

obsessed with the idea that there is a particular

9:36

way of behaving American but

9:38

also a particular way of behaving like

9:41

a respectable, successful American.

9:45

Can you tell me a story about a

9:48

moment when you saw the

9:50

change in her stature? Yeah.

9:54

I mean, there were like he moments, so one

9:56

of them was when I was a teenager, I once

9:58

went and visited her in her place of

10:00

work. And I kind of

10:02

got to watch from afar as she

10:05

did something with her hands. It was some kind of

10:07

vial filling or something, you know, kind

10:09

of in a in a factory like setting. And

10:12

I remember watching as this

10:15

man spoke to her in a way that I've

10:17

never seen or I never saw any run

10:20

my mother spoken to. And

10:23

she was deferential as she had to

10:25

be. And I remember feeling this

10:27

hot shame and anger on behalf

10:29

of my mother

10:31

because in this setting, she was

10:33

kind of just being waved

10:36

off and dismissed by this man.

10:39

And as you were looking

10:41

at your mother's experience in the US and watching

10:43

her lose credibility,

10:46

How did that impact what you sought for

10:48

yourself in America?

10:51

You know, it's funny you're asking me these things that

10:53

I'm most embarrassed about now, but I want it to

10:55

be a powerful woman. You know, I wanted

10:57

to be No shame in that. No.

11:00

I but, you know, I had this, you know, vision

11:02

of myself in a power suit

11:04

in New York City, you know,

11:07

at some big firm, you know, I would be a

11:09

lawyer. I had read, I think as a as

11:11

a kid, III read international corporate

11:14

lawyers are the most respected. I kept

11:16

telling anyone who would ask, I'm going to be an international

11:18

corporate lawyer. I didn't even know what that

11:20

meant. I just knew it was someone

11:23

who got a lot of respect

11:25

and a lot of money and I just

11:27

wanted to be the kind of women you see in movies.

11:30

That walk into a room,

11:32

and they say something and everyone takes it as

11:34

fact. And that's where I wanted to be.

11:36

I didn't I didn't see my mother as that. When

11:39

did you figure out that there were

11:41

places that could maybe confer that on you?

11:44

So at about this time, when

11:47

I was becoming aware, of

11:49

well, I was very aware from the very beginning

11:52

that our, you know, Middle Eastern

11:54

background made us something you know,

11:57

suspicious, I guess, because the war

11:59

with Iraq was going on. People often

12:01

confuse Iran and Iraq. You

12:03

know, I got a lot of name calling

12:05

in school about being from the

12:07

Middle East, a lot of really

12:09

very ugly racist names and

12:11

around this time. We

12:14

met a man who was a pastor in

12:16

Oklahoma City kind of far away from our community.

12:19

But the reason that we met him is

12:21

that my mom and stepfather you know, I think they

12:23

also kind of craved more people of

12:25

color. And this man was

12:27

a pastor in a

12:29

black church and he had

12:32

so much gravitas. I mean, I don't know how to

12:34

describe it. He had power in his

12:36

voice. He could sing the

12:38

way he preached was just booming

12:41

and elegant and beautiful and well researched.

12:44

And very very quickly, I realized

12:47

that he had gone to Harvard EVENITY School.

12:50

And I I guess latched

12:52

onto that Harvard. This place has

12:54

conferred upon him power and

12:56

gravitas, and so I have to go to this

12:58

place and get that. Because another thing

13:00

that I saw is that despite his race,

13:03

people respected him. People

13:05

looked up to him. They asked for his opinion

13:07

in the way that you know, I guess I hadn't

13:09

seen happened to Iranian adults

13:11

since I was in Iran.

13:13

And so I latched on to that. And

13:16

suddenly it was Harvard. This was the answer.

13:19

So Harvard

13:22

was your answer to ensuring credibility.

13:25

Absolutely. I thought once I have that stamp,

13:27

who's gonna question me? In

13:30

the book you talk about your time at

13:32

Harvard Yeah. And I wanna jump to that period.

13:35

You don't get it to Harvard for undergrad, but

13:37

you do go for masters at their

13:39

business school. Yes. I

13:42

think still with that little girl idea

13:44

maybe of the power suit. Oh.

13:47

It it kind of came true. Can

13:49

you tell me about your time at Harvard? Did

13:51

it match with your expectations once you reached

13:53

this place that held so much power in your imagination?

13:56

Sure. But I mean, there's one

13:58

step in between if you don't mind me. So

14:01

my first entry into this world,

14:03

I guess, was more Princeton. You know?

14:07

I was an immigrant kid. And

14:10

I think very quickly it became

14:12

clear that even though I was here, There

14:15

were different, I guess, classes

14:17

of people in this university. You

14:20

know, there were my classmates who were there

14:22

and, you know, they had

14:24

such ease. They lived there with such ease,

14:26

not just financial ease, but like they were

14:28

comfortable in that setting. There

14:31

was a summer job that I did after

14:33

my freshman and my sophomore year, where

14:35

I would go around with another student,

14:38

and we would fundraise for

14:40

an organization within the university from

14:43

the alumni of the university. And we

14:45

would sit and we would give them a little pitch and

14:47

they would donate money. And for

14:50

me, it was such an education because the

14:52

person I was paired with would

14:56

sink into another persona as soon

14:58

as we got into that office. They

15:00

would sit up and be poised. They would comment

15:02

on things around the office. They would

15:05

treat that person like their best friend,

15:07

they would kind of sink into another kind of language.

15:09

And I started to understand that

15:13

we were playing a part, I guess, in front

15:15

of these alums. And I started

15:17

to understand about the idea that, like,

15:19

we were performing our potential I

15:23

couldn't be there asking for money,

15:25

you know, with any kind of

15:27

need on display. We

15:29

had to be just all about how fantastic

15:31

we were and how much we had to offer and how much

15:34

this organization was doing for the university

15:36

and so on and so forth. And so that,

15:38

for me, kind of cemented that summer.

15:41

This notion that you have to go around and

15:43

perform, you know, your potential. And,

15:45

yeah, and I think that couple of years later

15:47

when I was in business school, we

15:50

learned, of course, a lot of very concrete things,

15:52

but I think at the end of

15:55

the day, the thing that I was learning every single

15:57

day is how to, you know,

15:59

how to speak in in a particular

16:01

kind of language that people don't

16:04

question, people trust, makes

16:06

them comfortable. Mhmm. You know?

16:09

So you hope that Harvard was going to

16:11

confer an earned

16:12

credibility, but what you found was

16:14

that it was teaching you that you can

16:17

what fake it till you make it?

16:19

I think the way that people presented themselves,

16:22

and this is not something that was overtly taught there,

16:24

but I think that looking around my classmates,

16:27

they were very, very good

16:29

at presenting themselves. They were very good at hiding

16:31

their flaws and hiding their need. And

16:34

to just presenting a part of themselves as beings.

16:36

And I think that ability to trigger

16:38

or kind of turn on other people's imagination

16:42

to your potential was their greatest

16:45

asset. And I think We learned how to

16:47

hone that. Once

16:49

you graduated from Harvard, did

16:51

you notice that it changed how people

16:53

treated

16:54

you? And how you walked in

16:56

the world to have that stamp of approval

16:58

next to your name? Well,

17:02

I I think the way I

17:04

behaved changed. You know, it's not as if

17:06

I walked around with Harvard Business

17:08

School, you know, on my on on

17:10

my chest, but I think I

17:12

did behave differently. Although I do notice

17:14

that people have been to Harvard always drop it

17:16

within five minutes talking to them. They

17:18

They do. They don't. They they

17:20

do. They do. And, you know, they do. I've been guilty

17:22

of that. So yeah.

17:24

III tried not to drop that name

17:27

too much, but I

17:29

think I did carry myself differently. And

17:32

I think that I was just around

17:34

this particular kind of people and III

17:36

learned to behave like them in

17:38

a way that was kind of calmer, more assured,

17:41

I learned all the little things that people,

17:43

you know, learn in those circles.

17:45

You know, how do you talk to a client? How

17:47

do present yourself as older? How

17:49

do present yourself as more of an expert in a situation

17:52

where you're maybe baffled. I don't

17:54

know. How do you order a table wine? How do you

17:56

all those little things? Tiny

17:58

everyday judgments of your

18:01

class and your background and,

18:03

you know, how much education and money

18:05

you have and all of these things And I think

18:09

after Harvard, it was the first

18:11

time I felt like I could really breathe

18:13

because I didn't have to worry about those

18:15

things because I pretty much understood

18:19

what those things were, but also what to

18:21

do if I fall afoul of one of the rules,

18:23

you know, you you laugh it off, you're

18:25

confident and breezy, and and

18:27

and I think that for

18:29

me was, you know, a

18:31

moment of relief.

18:35

But I remember a day when McKinsey,

18:38

which is a company I had worked for before I

18:40

went to business school, started calling and

18:42

kind of saying, well, it's time for you to come back

18:45

because I had a loan from them. I

18:49

I cried. You know, I got that voice mail, which

18:51

I think a lot people would be excited

18:53

about, but I thought, oh my god, I don't wanna go

18:55

back to the business world, I don't wanna

18:57

go back to corporate America, you

18:59

know, the image of this powerful woman

19:02

that I had imagined since childhood in

19:04

her black power suit that I didn't want it anymore

19:07

because everything I had learned

19:09

in Corporate America and

19:11

these corporate settings was about

19:13

putting on a mask that isn't me.

19:35

This is a o, Scott. I'm a critic at The

19:37

New York Times. These days, there are so

19:40

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20:39

You've spent your life as an

20:41

asylum seeker studying

20:44

from the inside how to access

20:47

credibility, almost like a detective in

20:49

your own life. Mhmm.

20:52

And

20:52

after you've gotten to the mountaintop,

20:55

you stop being interested in business, you don't

20:57

go back to your big fancy job at McKinsey -- Mhmm.

20:59

-- and you become a writer, and you

21:02

step into the role of an observer

21:04

watching other people go through this

21:06

asylum process. Can

21:09

you tell me about what

21:11

you saw about who

21:13

gets believed and who

21:15

doesn't when you started looking into

21:17

it from

21:19

the observer standpoint? Yeah.

21:22

So I I actually went back

21:24

to refugee camps for the first time after

21:27

decades and and, you know, talk to people

21:29

and and sat down with them at

21:31

tea and listened to their stories. And as I

21:33

started gathering more and more stories, I started

21:35

to understand that one of the biggest obstacles

21:38

was this getting believed? You know, that

21:40

that moment in asylum office,

21:42

which I had also lived through, but

21:44

had seemed so, I guess, easy

21:46

at the time. But all the

21:48

stories that was one was such a

21:50

big and unwieldy and strange

21:52

story, but I became obsessed with it. It was the

21:54

story of a man called KV. And

21:57

KV had left

22:00

her long kind two thousand eleven. And

22:02

he had been, you know, back in Sri

22:04

Lanka had been detained and tortured, and

22:07

he had all of these scars cross his

22:09

back. And, you know, at the time, it

22:11

was very well known by lots

22:13

of human rights organizations that

22:17

Sri Lanka had this particular

22:19

method of torture that they used very very

22:21

often, which was hot soldering irons to

22:23

the back and to the arms. And so there

22:25

were a lot of people who would come through

22:28

asylum offices in the west with these

22:30

exact same scars. Just

22:32

again and again, these same scars to

22:34

the back. And KB showed

22:36

up in the UK with these very

22:38

typical scars. Judgment in the

22:40

matter of K. P. Sri Lanka

22:43

versus secretary of state for the

22:45

home décor. Now,

22:48

the problem here is that

22:50

the asylum officers have gotten desensitized

22:53

and they started to believe that they

22:55

were being lied to, which of course

22:57

is completely illogical because

23:00

if something is happening on mass, it's if

23:02

it's happening a lot. Well, the same story, and

23:04

again, should actually confirm that it's true.

23:07

And not to mention the fact that the signs were

23:09

right there on the body. The basis

23:11

of his claim is that he is

23:14

of Tamil ethnicity

23:16

and that in Sri Lanka he had

23:18

given assistance to the Tamil Tigers,

23:21

then an insurgent political movement

23:23

there, as a result of which

23:25

he had been interned, and tortured

23:28

by government forces. But

23:31

around that time, I guess they began to make up

23:34

this other bucket of disbelief.

23:36

So they created a

23:39

category called self inflicted by

23:41

proxy. Wherein they said that

23:43

it's possible that you the asylum seeker

23:46

put those scars on your own body on

23:48

purpose purely for the purpose

23:50

of gaining UK asylum.

23:52

The tribunal found his account

23:54

to be generally unconvincing In

23:57

particular, it didn't accept that

23:59

the scars were the result of torture.

24:02

Now

24:02

the doctors' psychiatrists and

24:04

things said this is not something

24:07

that humans do. It's not human behavior.

24:10

Why would someone do this to themselves? And

24:12

especially when we know that it actually happens,

24:15

that people are tortured this way. Well,

24:17

they said, we don't have to really prove it, do we.

24:19

We just have to show it as a possibility. And

24:22

say that we don't find this person credible, and

24:24

that we think this other thing might

24:26

have

24:27

happened. Then they rejected KB

24:29

on that, and his case went all the way to

24:31

the supreme court. Today, we unanimously

24:34

allow KV's appeal and

24:36

direct the tribunal to reconsider

24:39

the appeal which he made to it.

24:42

What did you come to understand about the significance

24:45

of what happened to KV?

24:49

Well, I mean, for one thing, it

24:52

became very clear that, you know, we tend to

24:54

believe what we want to believe. If at some

24:56

point, the germ of an idea

24:58

comes into our head that we are being lied to,

25:01

we will find a way to show that we're

25:03

being lied to. It

25:05

also, I think, really shows, you

25:08

know, what how we

25:10

grapple with things like familiarity. I

25:12

think it was very very hard for

25:15

these asylum officers to just turn on their imagination

25:17

and try to put themselves in KB's place

25:20

being tortured And so when

25:22

they started to hear the story again and again, I mean,

25:24

it didn't it didn't really cement itself as

25:26

something plausible, tangible

25:29

and familiar that they could

25:30

accept. It just became wrote.

25:33

So that's the view from the gatekeepers. Yeah.

25:36

But you also write about how

25:39

often the most vulnerable aren't the

25:41

best tellers of their own story.

25:44

No. No. They're not. And think that that has

25:46

to do with both culture

25:49

and trauma. It has to do with shame.

25:52

The officer can just say, I just don't believe this

25:54

person is truthful. And they can

25:56

do that based on one contradiction in,

25:59

you know, stupid,

26:02

you know, inconsequential irrelevant contradiction.

26:04

But as long as it's there, they can use that to say

26:06

that you're a liar. You know, people

26:08

will come in and they

26:11

will suppress part to their story simply

26:13

because they're embarrassed. You know, if if you're a man

26:15

who was raped by another man, you're

26:17

not going to just maybe own

26:19

up to that so quickly. And

26:22

and then if you're traumatized, your memory,

26:25

the way you've stored that memory, is

26:28

not helpful because you lose a lot

26:30

of contextual information in in,

26:32

you know, memory making during

26:34

trauma. And you kind of keep

26:36

all that the sensory information.

26:39

And the sensory information isn't that helpful in

26:41

an asylum interview. They want context. And

26:43

so sometimes you just don't have the answers that

26:45

they want.

26:47

So you're saying that those who might

26:49

most need to be believed are often

26:52

the least likely to be believed because they are

26:54

victims or

26:54

vulnerable. Not just

26:56

because their victims are vulnerable, but because,

26:59

you know, they're the least

27:02

familiar to Western audiences. So

27:04

one of the asylum officers that I spoke to

27:07

said, you know, the people with the most

27:09

money the people with the most English,

27:11

most western education, they

27:13

just seem closer to our

27:15

kind of people, they seem more familiar to us.

27:17

So you know, if we're

27:19

relying on individual judgment on

27:22

the judgment of a judge or, you know, a

27:24

border guard or asylum officer, they're

27:26

going to choose the people who are more Western

27:28

steaming, more educated, less

27:30

traumatized. And the people

27:33

I just described are the ones that

27:35

need at least because what about a person

27:38

who is, you know,

27:40

has no education from a village in

27:42

Iran who's just been, you know, tortured

27:45

and they just come

27:47

with no papers because they ran

27:50

and a story that they can't

27:52

present in the best way

27:54

and with their need on display and their potential

27:57

completely hidden, what

27:59

hope does that person have? Against

28:01

our codes of believeability

28:03

and, you

28:06

know, trustworthiness. You

28:08

know, these officers

28:11

have to make choices all the time. I

28:13

mean, last year, the US Customs

28:16

and Border Protection reported a record number

28:18

of border encounters of more than two million.

28:21

Yeah. And the amount of asylum cases

28:23

has doubled. So there has

28:25

to be a

28:25

sorting. Right? And so skepticism can

28:27

be a guardrail, can't it? Well,

28:30

you know, I think the

28:32

asylum system is about whether or not your life

28:35

is in danger. So so I think,

28:37

sure, you know, there should be a sorting. But

28:39

I think that the way that you're training the

28:41

asylum officers and incentivizing them

28:44

does not allow us to do a humanitarian

28:47

job in that respect because What

28:49

they're doing now is just looking for any

28:51

discrepancy to dismiss when, you know,

28:53

real life stories are full of discrepancies.

28:56

A simple little discrepancy is does not

28:58

mean that that person is lying. I

29:01

guess, you know, this is why asylum is

29:03

such an interesting absolation

29:06

of how we believe in general. You know,

29:08

when we listen to strangers in all kinds

29:10

of different contexts. We

29:13

are kind of looking to protect ourselves, looking

29:15

to confirm our fears, looking for

29:17

any discrepancies thing that we can

29:20

dismiss, and the asylum

29:22

system is such an interesting representation

29:24

of that because they are overtly doing

29:26

that. The system is built in such way

29:28

that asylum officers that I have interviewed

29:31

have said Like, yeah, that's our job.

29:33

It's our job to dismiss. It's our job

29:35

to find a reason to dismiss. And

29:38

it it it's it's kind of become

29:40

very representative of how we make decisions

29:42

when we're looking at stories

29:44

from place of fear, not looking

29:46

to listen, not looking to understand.

29:49

And

29:51

I think it it it kind of plays to

29:53

the worst part of us. I

30:00

wanna step back for a moment

30:03

and bring up something that is in the news,

30:05

George Santos. You know, the freshman

30:08

Republican congressman in New York who lied

30:10

about sort of huge swaths

30:12

of his bio. And interestingly,

30:14

as part of those lies, he cloaked himself

30:17

in victimhood. Mhmm. He said his

30:19

mother was working in the south tower

30:21

of the World Trade Center on nine eleven,

30:24

he said his family fled the Holocaust. None

30:27

of it was true.

30:30

Why do you think we would believe someone like

30:32

him over someone,

30:34

let's say that I've met seeking asylum

30:36

on the

30:37

border, who was actually

30:39

a victim of tragedy and violence?

30:41

This story is

30:43

so infuriating because of the

30:45

kind of stories that he's appropriated. Yeah,

30:49

so I think that the reason that he

30:51

was believed is a couple of things. First of

30:53

all, I think to some extent, it's not

30:55

so much that we

30:57

believed him It's again a problem

30:59

in the system. Because if you remember,

31:02

he was an uncontested throwaway

31:04

candidate in twenty twenty. Right? He was

31:06

the republican candidate in, you

31:08

know, a district that was going to be won by a

31:10

Democrat. Right? So

31:12

people didn't think it was worth spending

31:15

the time to vet him and

31:17

to research you know, and

31:19

to do kind of opposition research. Why would

31:21

you do opposition research if you're definitely going

31:23

to win? So he got onto the ballot for

31:25

twenty twenty, and there right there was a stamp.

31:27

Who is a piece of credibility. And

31:29

next thing you know, he's on the ballot

31:31

in twenty twenty two and suddenly

31:34

he's someone who is a serious candidate and

31:36

it's too late, you know. So I think a lot

31:38

of what happens with these charlatans is

31:41

that they get past the

31:43

early vetters. You know, the the early

31:45

comforers of, you know, like credibility that

31:47

the people who say check this

31:49

person passes the test. And

31:52

the same thing happened with Elizabeth

31:54

Holmes. Right? I mean, for her, it was

31:57

just about those early investors. The

31:59

early investors were trusted

32:02

and savvy, and they should have done the

32:04

due diligence everyone thought. And so

32:07

their judgment was

32:09

just basically trusted. And after

32:10

that, people just didn't check this out.

32:13

So you've given two really

32:15

powerful examples George Santos

32:17

and Elizabeth Holmes who founded Theranos,

32:20

I'm actually also wondering

32:23

what you think about the

32:25

kind of personas that they

32:28

inhabited to get past these

32:30

gatekeepers. Elizabeth

32:32

Holmes and her black suits -- Mhmm.

32:34

-- and

32:36

you know, George Santos and

32:38

his preppy outfits.

32:41

All

32:41

these signifiers that you had learned about

32:43

in your education,

32:47

how should we understand

32:49

how we react to them?

32:52

You know what's interesting is I think I

32:55

make more sense of them using my

32:57

writing education They

33:00

put a particular image in

33:02

our heads, you know. And I think that that's

33:04

what good storytellers do. They

33:06

put images in your head. So Elizabeth

33:08

Holmes, you know, was putting the Steve

33:10

Jobs image in our heads with her

33:12

black outfits and George

33:15

Santos. I mean, he was putting kind

33:17

of the image of this, I guess,

33:19

mysterious kind of South American financier

33:22

and He was also

33:24

giving people giving the Republicans

33:27

exactly what they wanted. And

33:30

the things that we believe always start off

33:32

with, like, the things that we want to believe that is

33:34

the the germ of our belief is always

33:36

what do we want and need to believe.

33:39

And the Republicans, I think,

33:41

very much wanted someone who

33:43

kind of tick these identity boxes. Here's

33:45

someone who's an openly gay Latino

33:48

man. Who, you know,

33:50

thinks the way that they do, you know,

33:52

great. So they wanted

33:54

so much to believe in someone

33:56

like him. Exactly the way

33:58

that investors wanted to believe so

34:00

much in someone like Elizabeth

34:02

Holmes. And I think that really takes

34:04

you very, very far. So

34:08

this is about performance matters

34:11

more than truth in some way.

34:14

Well, I think almost every

34:16

story that we listen to, we

34:19

are not listening for the truth. We're

34:21

listening for a familiar performance. And

34:24

I think the reason is because we can,

34:27

you know, pinpoint to familiar performance,

34:29

whereas there's no way we can pinpoint the truth.

34:31

We don't have a radar for the truth. We weren't

34:34

there with those people when they lived their stories.

34:36

And you you know you know that

34:39

there's a lot of people who claim to be professionals

34:41

in, you know, spotting liars.

34:44

Most of that has been debunked. There isn't

34:46

really any kind of science in trying to

34:48

figure out what someone's lying because, you

34:50

know, truth and lies is and people's,

34:52

you know, performance of truth and lies

34:54

are determined so much by everything,

34:56

culture trauma shame, everything we talked about.

34:59

So the only thing we can look

35:01

for is the familiar

35:03

performance.

35:05

How do you understand situations differently now?

35:08

When you need to be believed having thought

35:10

so much about this.

35:12

I think I I've become

35:14

a cynic, you know, I

35:17

I'm different in front of doctors than

35:19

I used to be. I definitely

35:22

understand how to perform my pain in

35:24

front of doctor as a woman. I

35:26

understand what to say to lawyers. But on

35:29

a day to day basis, I think

35:31

one of the ways that this has affected me is that

35:33

I have to remind myself to believe other people,

35:36

you know, not to be so cynical and

35:38

not to judge them so quickly based on my

35:40

own shortcuts. Because, you know, just because

35:42

of read so much about this and

35:44

thought so much about this does not mean

35:46

that I don't have shortcuts. So

35:48

for example, recently I met

35:51

a man who had integrated

35:54

from Iran through a lot of hardship

35:57

a couple of years ago, and he was working for

35:59

a charity that I support. And

36:01

I was speaking with him because he needed he

36:03

wanted to kind of find a way that I could help

36:05

the charity. And he

36:08

started telling his story and he started

36:10

to talk about his job. And

36:12

the way that he was presenting himself was

36:14

so completely out of line with the

36:17

job that he had to perform. I mean, he was

36:20

really pushing hard all of his

36:22

credentials, all the things that he had done. When,

36:25

you know, he should have been more relaxed

36:27

into that position. I mean, he was just

36:29

kind of going on and on in this

36:32

kind of protesting too much way,

36:35

but his performance was not measuring up

36:37

to what I thought a Western fundraiser

36:40

should be. And so

36:42

suddenly all of my triggers got

36:44

going. you know, after

36:46

a while, I stopped

36:48

and I thought about that interaction. And I thought,

36:50

wow, gosh, after all of this,

36:52

I'm still completely governed. By

36:56

my fears and by my trauma is and

36:58

by my own biases. And

37:01

so for me, what that cemented is

37:03

the idea that when

37:06

we approach someone we already have in our

37:08

minds what we think that

37:10

they should give us and how they should behave.

37:14

I suppose this is why nobody believed, I guess,

37:16

my mom in Oklahoma when she tried to give diagnoses.

37:19

Right? Because they didn't expect this woman from

37:21

Iran to be giving diagnoses. They weren't looking

37:23

at her from the point of view of, you

37:25

know, a doctor or as a doctor.

37:28

They were looking at her as refugee woman.

37:30

And so that performance

37:32

that she was giving was

37:33

wrong. It's not what they wanted. It wasn't familiar,

37:36

and so they rejected it. Dina,

37:41

thank you so very much. Thank

37:44

you. Thank you for helping me.

37:53

First person is a production of New York

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38:08

episode was produced by Sophia Alvarez

38:11

Boyd with help from Derek r It

38:13

was edited by Stephanie Joyce and

38:15

Cory Pittkin, mixing by

38:17

Pat Macusker, original music

38:19

by Isaac Jones, Pat Macusker

38:22

and Carol Sabreault, fact checking

38:24

by Mary Marchlocker. The

38:27

rest of the first person team includes Annabel

38:29

Bacon, Olivia Net, Riannon Corby,

38:31

White Orm, and Jillian Weinberger.

38:34

Special thanks to Christina Semilewski, Shannon

38:37

Buster, Alison Benedict, any

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roast roster, and Katie Kingsbury.