This episode is released exclusively on Pushkin+. Episodes are released on the main feed each Friday.
In 1998, an art gallery gets a mysterious phone call. The caller claims they have been fooled by a master forger and that many of their prized paintings are fakes. Or are they?
This is the story of the life and lies of the notorious Eric Hebborn. What did he do, and what does that teach us about how we can root out deepfakes without undermining our trust in reality?
Further reading
Eric Hebborn Confessions of a Master Forger
Eric Hebborn: Master Forger (BBC Profile)
Hannah Murphy “The rising threat to democracy of AI-powered disinformation” The Financial Times 11 January 2024
Radiolab Breaking News
Modirrousta-Galian, A., & Higham, P. A. (2023). Gamified inoculation interventions do not improvediscrimination between true and fake news: Reanalyzing existing research with receiver operatingcharacteristic analysis. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 152(9),2411–2437.
Chesney, Robert and Citron, Danielle Keats, Deep Fakes: A Looming Challenge for Privacy, Democracy,and National Security (July 14, 2018). 107 California Law Review 1753 (2019), U of Texas Law, Public Law Research Paper No. 692, U of Maryland Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2018-21,
Robert Graham PERSPECTIVES-A MASTER FORGER AND HIS PACT WITH THE DEVIL.The Financial Times 4 May 1996
Geraldine Norman “An Old Master or Two to pay the bills” The Independent 29 January 1995
Christopher Paul and Miriam Matthews “The Russian ‘Firehose of Falsehood’ Propaganda Model” RAND Expert Insights 11 July 2016