A World of Secrets: 2 (The Firewall Trilogy, 2)

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Can I tell you a secret?” The next time someone asks you that question, you may not want to say yes. Being confided in is a double-edged sword, says social psychologist Michael Slepian, PhD, an associate professor of leadership and ethics at Columbia Business School who studies the psychology of secrets. Ancient writers describe a fantastic series of gardens constructed at the ancient city of Babylon in modern-day Iraq. It's not clear when these gardens were built, but some ancient writers were so impressed by the gardens that they called them a "wonder of the world." Around 250 B.C., Philo of Byzantium wrote that the Hanging Gardens had "plants cultivated at a height above ground level, and the roots of the trees are embedded in an upper terrace rather than in the earth." Ancient writers claim that Cleopatra VII and her lover, Mark Antony, were buried together in a tomb after their deaths in 30 B.C. The writer Plutarch (A.D. 45 to 120) wrote that the tomb was located near a temple of Isis, an ancient Egyptian goddess, and was a "lofty and beautiful" monument containing treasures made of gold, silver, emeralds, pearls, ebony and ivory.

The Holy Grail is a chalice that Jesus and his disciples supposedly drank from at the Last Supper. Interest in this cup only emerged during the Middle Ages, at which point various legends about its powers emerged. (Image credit: zemarinho via Getty Images)While no serious scholar believes that this story is literally true, some have speculated that the legend could have been inspired, in part, by real events that happened in Greek history. One possibility is that the Minoan civilization (as it's now called), which flourished on the island of Crete until about 1400 B.C., could have inspired the story of Atlantis. Although Crete is in the Mediterranean, and not the Atlantic, Minoan settlements suffered considerable damage during the eruption of Thera, a volcano in Greece. Here is strip 11 of the Copper Scroll, which describes a vast hoard of hidden gold and silver that likely is imaginary. (Image credit: Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg), CC By 4.0)

Though the monument contains no encrypted messages, its purpose and origin remain shrouded in mystery. They were commissioned by a man who has yet to be properly identified, who went by the pseudonym of R.C. Christian. Every single new technology that has been made available to archeologists, beginning with carbon-14 dating in the 1950s, has radically pushed the field,” Berlin says. “We can see deeper and smaller and finer, and so there are many more questions we can ask and answer.” In an extension of that work, he’s beginning to explore how to reduce shame around secrets. “We know the secrets people feel ashamed of hurt them the most. So how can we reduce the shame? Talking to another person might make all the difference,” he says. The burden of secrecy

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Discover more traditional places in Japan. First stop is a good view of the Gassho-zukuri farmhouses in Shirakawa-go and Gokayama, Japan. Get historic with these traditional guest houses. The earliest surviving gospels date to the second century, almost 100 years after the life of Jesus. Although new research will provide more insight, scholars think it's unlikely they will ever fully know what Jesus was really like. A digital rendering of the Ark of the Covenant. The bible has detailed descriptions of this holy object, but it was lost millennia ago and will likely never be recovered. (Image credit: jgroup via Getty Images)

However, if King Arthur did really exist, the reality was likely less magical. The earliest surviving accounts date to the ninth century and tell of a leader (perhaps not even a king) who fought several battles against the Saxons; even the accuracy of these accounts is debatable. Being situated in a business school has practical perks: For one, the school fully funds his lab, so he doesn’t have to seek outside grants. He advises one primary graduate student, but he also co-advises graduate students and mentors postdoctoral fellows across the division. The multidisciplinary business perspective also means that Slepian keeps one eye turned toward the practical applications of his research. The signal lasted for 72 seconds, the longest period of time it could possibly be measured by the array that Ehman was using. It was loud and appeared to have been transmitted from a place no human has gone before: in the constellation Sagittarius near a star called Tau Sagittarii, 120 light-years away.President John F. Kennedy riding in the presidential motorcade near Dealey Plaza in Dallas just before he was shot. (Image credit: Photo 12/Universal Images Group via Getty Images) Some secrets are harder to put out of our minds than others. Slepian and his colleagues James Kirby, PhD, at the University of Queensland, and Elise Kalokerinos, PhD, now at the University of Melbourne, explored the negative emotions that often surround secrecy. They surveyed a diverse sample of 1,000 people on Mechanical Turk about more than 6,000 of their secrets and found that people dwelled more on secrets that made them feel ashamed than on those that made them feel guilty ( Emotion, Vol. 20, No. 2, 2020). “Shame, but not guilt, is associated with ruminating on secrets,” Slepian says. The only clue to their potential whereabouts? The mysterious word CROATOAN carved on a palisdae, and another CRO carved on a tree. White assumed the residents had traveled to Croatoan Island, which is now called Hatteras Island. But a storm blew in and prevented White from reaching the island, and he never raised enough money for another search.

Thousands of lichen-covered stone jars from the Iron Age, some standing close to 10 feet tall and weighing several tons, dot the mountainous landscape of northern Laos. Carved largely from sandstone and found in groups ranging from just one to 400, legend holds that giants used them as wine glasses. Many archeologists, on the other hand, believe they served as funerary urns, though much remains unknown about their purpose, about how they were moved into place, and about the civilization that produced them. Recent research dates at least some of the stone jars to as early as 1240 B.C., which would make them far older than the human remains buried nearby. Complicating matters is that many of the jars stand in fields of unexploded munitions, the vestige of a massive U.S. bombing campaign during the Vietnam War, and therefore cannot be safely studied. 3. Guanabara Bay During his trial, Kidd wrote a letter claiming he pilfered around 100,000 British pounds and buried it somewhere, offering to trade the location for his life, according to Reuters. However, during the trial it was estimated that the takings from all his time aboard the Adventure Galley likely totaled closer to 400,000 pounds. To his dying breath, Kidd argued he was a legitimate privateer who had only ever plundered targets approved by the crown. But he was hung and his body covered with pitch and squeezed in an iron cage displayed over the Thames. Not everyone is inclined to confide in others. Slepian and postdoctoral researcher Sarah Ward, PhD, are studying how personality differences might make people more or less likely to share secrets. “Sharing secrets is often a way to build trust or closeness. Knowing which people tend to share can help to identify who is likely to build close relationships, and who might be missing opportunities to foster closeness and trust,” Ward says.Slepian’s next goals include using his research to design possible interventions to help people unburden themselves to improve their well-being.