Today marks an odd historical anniversary. On February 2, 1935, an inventor named Leonarde Keeler strapped an accused man to a polygraph machine and asked him a series of questions. For the next few minutes, the machine declared what was true and what was false. The polygraph promised something humans have wanted since the Garden: a shortcut past the messiness of conscience, speech, and character. But the same culture that craves technological certainty has also spent the last few decades training itself to sneer at any stable account of truth. Marcus has more.

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