Before I call anyone a liar, I read how they look when they have nothing to hide. That is the whole game. On the Figuring Out podcast with Raj Shamani, I asked him to tell me two stories — one real, one made up — about restaurants he'd visited. His real story, about a tiny Michelin-starred place in a European village, came with shoulders that shrugged inward, plenty of face-touching and self-soothing. His fabricated one, set in New York, was different in a telling way: his hand movements almost stopped.

Reading deception starts with the baseline

You cannot spot a lie from a single gesture. First you have to decode a person's baseline — how they blink, gesture, smile and pitch their voice when they're relaxed and have no reason to fib. I ask easy, low-stakes questions: favourite sport, favourite holiday. Watch how someone tells a genuine memory and you've learned their normal.

Then comes the harder question. When the brain has to fabricate something that never happened, it carries a heavy cognitive load, and movement often shuts down. Raj had narrated his honest 'chilli paneer' childhood memory with rich, flowing hand movements. The invented Mediterranean story arrived almost still. That mismatch is the clue — not proof of a lie, but a sign that someone isn't being a hundred per cent open. Naturally honest people, by the way, make terrible liars. The strain shows.

Cues that travel — and one that doesn't

Some signals are universal. Eye contact, self-touching when uncomfortable, and the so-called preening gestures we use to attract a partner. Foot direction is one of my favourites: when two people are genuinely engaged, their feet point at each other, often inside an intimate space of less than a foot. When someone's feet angle away while they nod, they're listening passively, not actively.

Facial expressions are remarkably consistent across cultures — Paul Ekman's decades of work, including with isolated tribes in Papua New Guinea, found the same expressions everywhere. The one expression that hadn't reached those communities was contempt, that one-sided lip-raise. It needs a sense of social hierarchy and status to exist. You'll spot it on Salman Khan: his signature smile lifts on one side, a flash of 'I'm superior here.' He also enters a room like he owns it.

How to actually carry yourself with power

I don't believe in 'fake it till you make it' — fakery cracks under nerves. Work from the inside out. That said, a few things genuinely help when you walk into a room:

  • Let your chest and shoulders sit naturally open, not puffed up.
  • Lift the chin slightly — not high enough to look aggressive.
  • Keep a steady gaze rather than shifty, darting eyes.
  • Keep your hands out of your pockets; it reads as arrogance or unease.

And please remember: context decides everything. A finger near the lips can mean 'let her finish' or 'be quiet' or simply that someone with restless hands is thinking. One gesture, several meanings. The old Allan Pease school of 'this means that, full stop' is exactly the nonsense that pulled me into this field.

The room you walk into

At a party, don't latch onto the most powerful cluster and hover at its edge, and don't drift to the weakest. Find a mixed group — read the feet. If everyone's feet point inward, it's closed; an open stance means there's room for you. Compliment people on their taste and choices, never their looks. A genuine 'red really suits your skin tone' opens a person up; 'nice necklace' aimed at the wrong place shuts them down instantly. And standing near the food or the drinks, for whatever subconscious reason, makes you more approachable.

I closed by reading a few world leaders. Putin dominated Obama through how he took up space; Trump pulled others toward him in handshakes; Modi and Putin simply looked like friends. With Kim Jong-un, one hand sat completely frozen — not fight or flight, but freeze, a sign of nerves. None of it is certainty. Body language reveals patterns, not verdicts. Learn your own first.