Steve Wilkos, whose eponymous low brow daytime television talk show was canceled earlier this year, has started a weekly video podcast called “Steve Wilkos: Take a Seat” that is available on YouTube.
In the first episode, posted on 1 September 2026, Wilkos, who five years ago publicly stated that he would never take a lie detector test, takes a lie detector test administered by his friend, the fraud-tainted Dan Ribacoff, who for many years performed polygraph examinations for the NBCUniversal-produced Steve Wilkos Show. Also five years ago, Ribacoff was silently kicked off the show after racist text messages he sent became public.
The comity on display between Wilkos and Ribacoff suggests that Wilkos did not make the decision to terminate Ribacoff’s appearances on the show.
A transcript of the polygraph portion of the podcast follows:
Wilkos: Now, Dan, we worked together for many, many years, and you were a huge part of the show, and you were in charge of bringing the truth to our guests that came on our show. And you’re going to give me a lie detector test today.
Ribacoff: That’s right. [laughter]
Wilkos: I don’t know how I feel about that. Um, but before we do the test, I’m going to ask you a few questions if you don’t mind.
Ribacoff: Of course.
Wilkos: So, how accurate are lie detector test?
Ribacoff: So, there’s different types of tests in the polygraph field. So, they range anywhere from 80% to 99.4% depending on the test that we run.
Here, Ribacoff is lying. No polygraphic lie test has been shown through peer-reviewed research to reliably work at better-than-chance levels of accuracy under field conditions. Lie detector “tests” are about as accurate as the operator’s best guess.
Notably, two Steve Wilkos Show guests (Jesse Wayne Perkins and Kandie Meinhart) passed the show’s polygraph while denying having killed a child. Both later confessed and are now serving jail sentences.
Dan Ribacoff falsely accused a different Steve Wilkos Show guest, Anca Pennington, of lying when she denied having burned her infant daughter with cigarettes. Ribacoff’s false accusation, and Steve Wilkos’s on-stage humiliation of Pennington, led to her attempted suicide.
Marks on the daughter’s body were later shown to have been caused by a ringworm infection. NBCUniversal never aired Pennington’s segment.
Wilkos: What should people do to prepare for a lie detector test?
Ribacoff: So, if you’re going to take a polygraph test, you want to number one get a good night’s sleep. Then you want to avoid any drugs, marijuana, uh, alcohol, and uh, you don’t want to Google how to beat a polygraph because that’s really going to screw you up in the test because anything that you try to do either to help the examiner because you figure, oh, he needs a little help. Trust me, we don’t need help. Or to try to beat the test is very noticeable. So countermeasures are very easy to see and none of them work.
Here, Ribacoff lies again. Researching how to beat a polygraph test does not “screw you up in the test.” The opposite is true. False positives are common in polygraphy, and “test” takers can mitigate the risk of wrongly failing by using simple and effective countermeasures such as those outlined in The Lie Behind the Lie Detector.
Moreover, Ribacoff’s claim that “countermeasures are very easy to see and none of them work” is false. Peer-reviewed research and a classified federal research study have shown that not only are polygraph countermeasures effective, but that polygraphers are unable to detect them.
Ribacoff and other polygraphers don’t want the public to go online and research the polygraph because if everyone did that, it would put them out of business.
Wilkos: How often did you encounter that when you were doing our show? People trying to beat the test.
Ribacoff: Pretty often.
Wilkos: I think the percentage of people that Googled “how to beat a lie detector test” before they came on the show has got to be over 90%.
Ribacoff: Oh, probably. Yeah, absolutely.
Wilkos: So, what factors could possibly affect test results?
Ribacoff: So, obviously, uh, lack of sleep because that makes you almost like you’re drunk. You become slower and your body slows down. uh alcohol, drugs, medical conditions, psychiatric conditions, uh medicines that you take. Um so that’s why we always do before a polygraph test, I would do a medical intake.
Wilkos: Are you ready to give me the test?
Ribacoff: I’m ready, my friend. All right. Here we go. All right. So, if you’re ready…
Wilkos: I’m ready.
Ribacoff: Regarding the questions about the show, do you intend to answer those truthfully?
Wilkos: Yes.
Ribacoff: Is the show real? Yes. Are the guests real?
Wilkos: Yes.
Ribacoff: Are the guests actors?
Wilkos: No.
Ribacoff: Did you see the lie detector results before you read them out on stage?
Wilkos: No.
Ribacoff: Did you ever change the lie detector results to affect the outcome of the show?
Wilkos: No.
Ribacoff: Have you ever smoked pot?
Wilkos: No.
Ribacoff: Okay, Steve. Let me get you unhooked.
Any “control” and irrelevant questions that may have been part of the question series were not shown in the podcast.
Unsurprisingly, Wilkos aced the “test.” It was foreordained, because had the test gone otherwise, it would not have made the cut for the podcast.
Note also that while the purpose of the episode was purportedly to address the Steve Wilkos Show‘s cancellation, the reasons for the cancellation were not discussed.
The polygraph portion of the episode begins at about 42:35: