Our brains have a few sets of guardrails...theoretically. One set should prevent us from claiming wild nonsense about ourselves, in particular if we know we can’t back it up. Another set ought to prevent us from falling for that garbage if other people pull it. But what if certain people don’t have that first limitation? What if they have the ability to lie beyond all reason, all the time? And what if the rest of us are liable to fall for it in spite of ourselves?

On this week’s episode of The Cracked Podcast, Alex Schmidt is joined by Danielle Radford and Jenny Jaffe for a trip through ridiculous lies and cons that never should have worked...and somehow fooled everybody anyway. They’ll explore historical and modern-day examples of utter shenanigans happening everywhere from Brazil to Paris to the Dominion of Melchizedek (don’t ask). And they’ll mull why people love perpetrating -- and falling for -- the dumbest tricks imaginable.

Footnotes: http://www.cracked.com/podcast/12-ridiculously-obvious-lies-cons-that-fooled-world/