Speaker 1: Pushkin, Hey, Last Archive listeners. Today on the show, we
Speaker 1: have an episode from my colleague Lucy Sullivan. Lucy's been
Speaker 1: around the Last Archive for years and she works on
Speaker 1: Revisionist History with me now and she just made a
Speaker 1: story about I'm not going to tell you what it's
Speaker 1: about because that would spoil the opening mystery, which is great.
Speaker 1: Suffice it to say it has to do with your
Speaker 1: face and something that a lot of you have probably
Speaker 1: experienced before. You can listen to more episodes of Revisionist
Speaker 1: History wherever you get your podcasts. Enjoy this one.
Speaker 2: Hello, Hello, Malcolm Glabell. Here today I'm in the studio
Speaker 2: with my producer Lucy Sullivan.
Speaker 3: Lucy, Hi, Malcolm.
Speaker 2: I understand you have a story for me about a
Speaker 2: particular misunderstanding.
Speaker 3: That is true. We're here because I want to tell
Speaker 3: you about something I'm calling the Missy incident. Oh goodness,
Speaker 3: it totally changed the way that I think about something foundational,
Speaker 3: and it also reminded me of you.
Speaker 2: Of me of you.
Speaker 3: Okay, So it all happened at this coffee shop that
Speaker 3: I go to all the time.
Speaker 2: Can you tell me what the name of the coffee
Speaker 2: shop is.
Speaker 3: Malcolm, I can tell you the name of the coffee
Speaker 3: shop off Mike, but my fellow cafe goers did not
Speaker 3: want me to name it on this podcast because it's
Speaker 3: that good.
Speaker 2: Oh it's that good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's so good. And it's the kind of place
Speaker 3: that's always packed, So you have to be comfortable sitting
Speaker 3: with a stranger if you want to get a seat.
Speaker 3: And that's where this all starts. So the person at
Speaker 3: the center of this, her name is Missy Kurzweil. She
Speaker 3: was fresh off of maternity leave with her second kid
Speaker 3: when the incident happened.
Speaker 4: I think one of the things that happens when you
Speaker 4: have a baby and are on maternity leave is like
Speaker 4: you lose a bit of your identity and yourself. You're
Speaker 4: spending all your time with a newborn. You can't talk
Speaker 4: back to you, and so I was sort of just
Speaker 4: navigating that transition and wanting human interaction.
Speaker 3: So Missy is looking for a place to work outside
Speaker 3: of her home office and she finds this coffee shop
Speaker 3: on her third morning, kind of feeling out this place.
Speaker 3: Is this where she wants to set up camp for
Speaker 3: her HQ. She sits down at this table and in
Speaker 3: walks this guy and He's like, hey, you mind if
Speaker 3: I sit here? She says sure, this is JJ good.
Speaker 2: So JJ and Missy is sitting down together.
Speaker 3: What happens Missy something with their kid's pediatrician and JJ
Speaker 3: is sitting there east dropping, and you know, the doctor
Speaker 3: asked for what's the patient's name, and Missy says, oh,
Speaker 3: his name's Remy.
Speaker 4: And JJ freaked out because he was like, you have
Speaker 4: a Remy because I have a Remy. And then of
Speaker 4: course like that, then we were off to the races.
Speaker 3: Turns out they both have cats named Sonny. They both
Speaker 3: are freelancers. He's a cookbook writer, she's also a writer.
Speaker 4: So for me, it was like, on many levels, was
Speaker 4: just really kind of a special bond instantly.
Speaker 3: And I don't know if this is normal for you,
Speaker 3: but like I don't usually I'm not usually chatting it
Speaker 3: up with people at the coffee shop.
Speaker 2: But these two and there's nothing romantic going.
Speaker 3: On here, nothing romantic, yeah, strictly friends who are just like, wow,
Speaker 3: we have so much in common.
Speaker 4: I think, no matter where you're at in your life,
Speaker 4: meeting someone like JJ feels unusual because he's just so
Speaker 4: open and so seemingly genuinely interested in what you have
Speaker 4: to say and what are all these details about your life?
Speaker 3: So Missy is excited. She goes home and she tells
Speaker 3: her husband, Oh my gosh, I've met this great friend
Speaker 3: and I found this great coffee shop to work, Like
Speaker 3: things couldn't be better. And so for the next few days,
Speaker 3: Missy and JJ sit together, work together crucially, always at
Speaker 3: this same spot in the front. But one day she
Speaker 3: comes in and their usual table is taken, so she
Speaker 3: just heads to a different one in the back.
Speaker 4: And maybe an hour after I sat down, I see
Speaker 4: JJ kind of walk to the back and he's looking
Speaker 4: around seemingly for a table, and we make direct eye
Speaker 4: contact and I start to say hey, JJ, but he
Speaker 4: looks at me and sort of kind of registers it
Speaker 4: and turns around and walks the other way.
Speaker 2: A ghosts her.
Speaker 3: He ghosts her like completely, Like she was like, we
Speaker 3: made eye contact. I was like, maybe he didn't see me,
Speaker 3: but no, he saw me. Our eyes locked. I went
Speaker 3: to wave. He turned around. So now Missus's like, what
Speaker 3: is going on here? Like she had just met his
Speaker 3: wife a couple of days before, and she's like, maybe
Speaker 3: the wife wasn't comfortable with like or maybe she's thinking
Speaker 3: something's going on. Maybe I said something weird to him,
Speaker 3: like she's really like spinning her.
Speaker 4: And I went back the next day, sat in the back,
Speaker 4: and the same thing happened, where he walks by sort
Speaker 4: of sees me seemingly like we make eye contact. And
Speaker 4: this time I think I probably was a little bit
Speaker 4: more reserved because of what had happened the day before,
Speaker 4: And he turns around and walks the other way again,
Speaker 4: and now I'm like, Okay, I think I might have
Speaker 4: said something that offended him.
Speaker 2: My name is Malcolm Godwell, you're listening to Revision History,
Speaker 2: my podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood. And since we're
Speaker 2: talking about misunderstandings, whatever you think is going on in
Speaker 2: this story right now, I promise you you've got it wrong.
Speaker 3: So Missy is obviously super bummed about this.
Speaker 4: You know, I mean, listen, I've been with my husband
Speaker 4: for a long time, so I haven't been like on
Speaker 4: the dating scene, but it definitely had an equivalent like
Speaker 4: you put yourself out there and you like, are you know,
Speaker 4: think that you're connecting with someone but they're not experiencing
Speaker 4: that same thing.
Speaker 3: She considered trying to find a new place to work,
Speaker 3: but like I said, the coffee shop is just too good.
Speaker 3: And so after a few days, she decides, you know what,
Speaker 3: I'm just gonna go back. I'm going to ignore the weirdness.
Speaker 3: And this time their usual spot in the front is open.
Speaker 3: So she sits down and then right on cue, JJ
Speaker 3: walks in and.
Speaker 4: He sees me and his face lights up and he
Speaker 4: he's like, Missy, you haven't.
Speaker 3: Been here in like a week or two.
Speaker 4: I've missed you.
Speaker 3: Where have you been?
Speaker 4: And then he sits down and he's chit chatting and
Speaker 4: he's catching up and he's asking questions just like nothing,
Speaker 4: no time.
Speaker 3: Passed, like nothing happened, like absolutely nothing happened.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I was so confused. I did not know
Speaker 4: what to make of that. But I was kind of
Speaker 4: just relieved that the freeze out was over, and so
Speaker 4: I just went with it and was.
Speaker 3: Like, oh, you know, good to see you again.
Speaker 4: And I just sort of picked up where we left off,
Speaker 4: and I didn't say anything.
Speaker 3: And it wasn't too long after that that she discovered
Speaker 3: what was really going on and why it seemed like
Speaker 3: this new friend was just totally ignoring her.
Speaker 4: I'm sitting at a table with JJ, and a woman
Speaker 4: walks in super friendly, comes over to JJ and says, hey, JJ,
Speaker 4: and I think, goes to give him a hug and
Speaker 4: asks some questions about how his kids are. Their conversation
Speaker 4: lasts just a few minutes, and then she walks away
Speaker 4: to get a coffee and he he looks at me
Speaker 4: and he goes, I don't know who that is. And
Speaker 4: I was like, what, you seemed like you were friends
Speaker 4: with her, and he was like, I have this face
Speaker 4: blindness thing. It gives me a lot of anxiety because
Speaker 4: I'm probably supposed to know her. And then I think
Speaker 4: I paused, and I said something like, is that why
Speaker 4: you broke up with me six months ago?
Speaker 3: And this is the part that made me think of you, Malcolm,
Speaker 3: face blindness, because I've heard that you also might be
Speaker 3: a little face blind yourself.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, that's true. This happens to me all the time.
Speaker 2: I won't remember if I need to expose to a
Speaker 2: face a person on multiple occasions before their face becomes meaningful,
Speaker 2: or even there, I don't know whether their face is
Speaker 2: becoming meaningful or that I'm developing so many other ways
Speaker 2: of recognizing them that I feel unsafer.
Speaker 3: Ground Hm HM, like, you're not just gonna remember someone
Speaker 3: that you've met once or twice, no passing.
Speaker 2: No, there's no chance that I will. I had a
Speaker 2: Saxon's funny because I was sitting in my favorite coffee
Speaker 2: shop and I see there's a guy who runs the
Speaker 2: wine shop across the street. His name is Michael. I
Speaker 2: know Michael for years. And I see Michael, or I
Speaker 2: think it's Michael, and I see slender man in fifties,
Speaker 2: about five nine with glasses and a baseball cap across
Speaker 2: the street from the wine shop, and I think, oh,
Speaker 2: that's got to be Michael, and I go Michael, and
Speaker 2: the guy looks me like really weird and comes over
Speaker 2: and it was like my nightmare is like, oh my god,
Speaker 2: No it's not. It's just another dude who's in town
Speaker 2: who looks a lot like Michael. But that was my
Speaker 2: system failed. It's very rare for me to risk it
Speaker 2: like that. But I risked it because I thought if
Speaker 2: Michael thinks I had the reverse JJ, if Michael thinks
Speaker 2: I'm ignoring him, then that's really bad. Because I go
Speaker 2: to the wine shop all the time, and I like Michael.
Speaker 3: See it's interesting because this like this never happens to me,
Speaker 3: like I'm often on the other side of it, being like,
Speaker 3: all right, I'm just gonna pretend like I don't always remember.
Speaker 3: I always remember. I always remember people who are completely
Speaker 3: insignificant to me, like not in any sort of like
Speaker 3: value juderent ways, just like, Oh I met you once
Speaker 3: at my friend's friends party four years ago, and now
Speaker 3: you are standing next to me in line at.
Speaker 2: Target, so completely foreign.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this is why I actually Malcolm, to be honest,
Speaker 3: Like when I had first heard saying I heard from
Speaker 3: someone in passing before we started working together, like, oh, Malcolm,
Speaker 3: he's face blind. He has trouble recognizing people. And I
Speaker 3: was like, okay, like yeah, he's face blind, like because
Speaker 3: I was thinking, like, I've never forgotten I just don't
Speaker 3: forget people's faces. So I was like, if I were
Speaker 3: you and I was meeting a million people all the
Speaker 3: time and people recognize me from book covers, that would
Speaker 3: be kind of a disorienting experience, and it would be
Speaker 3: kind of nice to have an excuse like, oh I
Speaker 3: don't remember you because I'm like face blind or whatever.
Speaker 3: But I just couldn't believe that that was true until
Speaker 3: I heard the story yeah.
Speaker 2: No, no, I do. And it makes me feel bad
Speaker 2: because I were in a mean I feel for JJ
Speaker 2: because it's you in this constant state of worry about
Speaker 2: that you're going to be perceived as cold or aloof
Speaker 2: and you're not.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so like this perception problem is exactly what
Speaker 3: fascinates me about face blindness, which I've now spent way
Speaker 3: too many hours learning about after hearing this story of
Speaker 3: Missy and JJ, because I've always thought that being able
Speaker 3: to recognize someone was about, you know, having a good
Speaker 3: or a bad memory whatever that means, yeah, or just
Speaker 3: frankly caring enough to remember them, like you worry that
Speaker 3: you might be perceived as cold or aloof if you
Speaker 3: don't had a Michael or Missy thought her new friend
Speaker 3: was ignoring her. I seem to remember way more faces
Speaker 3: than I want to. I really wanted to understand what's
Speaker 3: actually going on in our brains when all this happens.
Speaker 2: After the break, Lucy Sullivan takes us behind the face
Speaker 2: and into the brain.
Speaker 3: JJ Good, Missy's friend from the coffee shop, doesn't know
Speaker 3: exactly when he realized he had a problem with faces.
Speaker 3: He just kept having these strange experiences like this one
Speaker 3: time when he ran into a woman on the train
Speaker 3: and he knew he was supposed to know who she was,
Speaker 3: but he had no idea.
Speaker 5: And we had this conversation where I was like, how
Speaker 5: is everything? Things are good with me? Like I didn't
Speaker 5: mention any There's no specifics because I wanted to make
Speaker 5: like I didn't want it. If you walked in and
Speaker 5: someone had no idea who were, you would feel bad
Speaker 5: about yourself.
Speaker 3: JJ said he also realized something was off when he'd
Speaker 3: watch movies and TV shows. He'd sometimes completely miss a
Speaker 3: big plot point.
Speaker 5: When my wife and I were watching a show, I'll
Speaker 5: be like, who's that guy? And she's like, it's the
Speaker 5: main character. He just has a hat on, like it's
Speaker 5: literally Robert de Niro from the other scene, and I
Speaker 5: was like, ooh, this is kind of strange.
Speaker 3: All this has led to many awkward situations, and it's
Speaker 3: made JJ very aware of other people's feelings. What happened
Speaker 3: with Missy still haunts him.
Speaker 5: I am afraid that I might have an interaction with
Speaker 5: someone and I might not recognize them, and I might
Speaker 5: not give them the attention that makes them feel good.
Speaker 3: It's worth noting that JJ himself is easy to spot.
Speaker 3: He was born with one arm.
Speaker 5: Walking around with one arm, you are highly recognizable. It's like,
Speaker 5: how many one armed people do you meet? Probably not
Speaker 5: a lot. So everybody comes into the coffee shop and
Speaker 5: if you see me, you probably will recognize me as
Speaker 5: that guy from the coffee shop the next day. But
Speaker 5: I don't recognize a lot of the people who come in.
Speaker 3: A while back, JJ told some friends about these weird
Speaker 3: moments he'd always had, not recognizing people, and they asked
Speaker 3: if he'd ever heard of face blindness. They said, Oliver Sachs,
Speaker 3: the science writer, had it too, and that's when it
Speaker 3: clicked for JJ.
Speaker 6: So it is a little bit of the stealth disorder.
Speaker 6: I mean, people only kind of learn they have it,
Speaker 6: often when they are subjected to a whole bunch of
Speaker 6: new people they have to meet.
Speaker 3: This is doctor Joe Degudis. He's a cognitive neuroscientist and
Speaker 3: he studies facial recognition. Deguda's teachers at Harvard Medical School
Speaker 3: and runs a lab out of the Boston VA Hospital.
Speaker 6: We've studied how people become aware that they have this,
Speaker 6: and often it's a little rocky. It's a little bit
Speaker 6: like you know in school, they're like I just don't
Speaker 6: pay attention, or I don't care as much about people,
Speaker 6: or maybe I'm a little bit on the spectrum. They
Speaker 6: have all these attributions they can give.
Speaker 3: The thing about people who are quote unquote face blind
Speaker 3: is that they're not actually blind. They're not seeing blurs
Speaker 3: where people's faces are. They can see eyes, nose, mouth, ears,
Speaker 3: and they can read emotions and tell whether or not
Speaker 3: someone's attractive the same way we all do. The best
Speaker 3: estimates I could find suggests that around three percent of
Speaker 3: the population has some form of face blindness. Sometimes it's
Speaker 3: the result of a traumatic brain injury, but some people
Speaker 3: are just born with it. Scientists think it could be
Speaker 3: genetic or that the network in the brain that recognizes
Speaker 3: faces just doesn't develop normally. But for most of us,
Speaker 3: a face is the trigger that calls up all the
Speaker 3: information we know about a person.
Speaker 6: If you see somebody's face, it quickly triggers the retrieval
Speaker 6: of all this other information about them, like you know
Speaker 6: who they are, how you know them, all these other
Speaker 6: details about the person. So it has this kind of
Speaker 6: privileged role in terms of getting all this other information out.
Speaker 3: The clinical term for face blindness is prosopagnosia. An Agnosia
Speaker 3: is an inability to recognize something. Prosopagnosia uses the Greek
Speaker 3: word for face prose obo, which also happens to be
Speaker 3: the Greek word for person. So much of who we
Speaker 3: are is wrapped up in this one part of our bodies.
Speaker 3: I want you to stop for a second. Think about
Speaker 3: your mom, or your best friend or your kid. You're
Speaker 3: not picturing their elbows, are you? I mean, maybe you are.
Speaker 3: Crazier things have happened. My point is, for most of us,
Speaker 3: it's almost impossible to decouple who someone is from their face.
Speaker 6: It's something that is also very special about humans.
Speaker 3: This special thing that Do Goodas is talking about here
Speaker 3: has to do with our brains. We have a specific
Speaker 3: network that's just for recognizing faces, and it functions unlike
Speaker 3: any other kind of cognition.
Speaker 6: So when I recognize a chair, I'm like, oh, okay,
Speaker 6: it has something to sit on, has some legs, and boom,
Speaker 6: it's a chair. You're recognizing things at this functional level,
Speaker 6: which is like, okay, how do I interact with this thing?
Speaker 6: You know, usually you can do it part by part.
Speaker 6: One of the things that we do with face is
Speaker 6: more than any other like visual object is you process
Speaker 6: it as a gestalt as a whole because we have
Speaker 6: to kind of recognize them and not just like okay,
Speaker 6: that's a face. That's a face. We have to be like, okay,
Speaker 6: that's my friend. Oh that's not that's so moy, that's
Speaker 6: the person at work who I need to avoid. And
Speaker 6: so it's like, I think that the individuation demands of
Speaker 6: faces maybe are why we kind of had this specialized
Speaker 6: system to process faces.
Speaker 3: Frogs you sound, birds you smell, and we humans love
Speaker 3: this one cluster of features sitting on top of our necks.
Speaker 3: We are social animals, and researchers think that's part of
Speaker 3: why humans developed this special recognition network in our brains,
Speaker 3: because it served us. Faces have evolved to look really
Speaker 3: different from person to person, more so than any other
Speaker 3: body part. Scientists at UC Berkeley think that this had
Speaker 3: an evolutionary purpose. It helped us socialize. Not only was
Speaker 3: it beneficial to be recognizable, but also then to be
Speaker 3: able to recognize others. Humans had to get really good
Speaker 3: at differentiating friend from foe, and we did get really
Speaker 3: good at it, well most of us anyways. Degodas told
Speaker 3: me that the ability to recognize faces is a spectrum.
Speaker 6: These are all these kind of internal things that we
Speaker 6: don't talk about, and we just assume that everybody's kind
Speaker 6: of like us, right.
Speaker 3: And after the break, we're going to the other end
Speaker 3: of that spectrum to see what it's like for the
Speaker 3: people who never forget a face, the super recognizers. One
Speaker 3: morning back in nineteen eighty four, a little kid named
Speaker 3: Frank Vaughn was about to have a very exciting day
Speaker 3: of school.
Speaker 7: I was nine years old and my fourth grade class
Speaker 7: was invited on a school field trip to the Governor's
Speaker 7: office in Little Rock.
Speaker 3: That's Governor Bill Clinton's office to be exact.
Speaker 7: They arranged just all in a semicircle in cross leg
Speaker 7: style and we waited for the man to show up,
Speaker 7: and typical of politicians, he was around fifteen minutes late.
Speaker 7: He walks out, he sits down, and he immediately turns
Speaker 7: and he snaps his fingers and points at one of
Speaker 7: his female staffers and said, you go get my pepsi,
Speaker 7: and she took off on a dead run for his
Speaker 7: inner office to go grab that pepsi.
Speaker 3: Frank was a scrawny nine year old boy with feathery
Speaker 3: blonde hair that grew out in all directions. Nerdy kid,
Speaker 3: always cracking jokes for attention. Frank said that he and
Speaker 3: his classmates were so excited about meeting the governor.
Speaker 7: There was this almost throne like velvet chair sitting in
Speaker 7: the middle of the room, and he sits down in it,
Speaker 7: and he crosses his legs and he just sort of
Speaker 7: gets himself arranged.
Speaker 3: Frank kremember's feeling in awe of this man sitting on
Speaker 3: a throne barking out pepsi orders, he said. The governor
Speaker 3: greeted them all and started asking them questions, and then
Speaker 3: Clinton zeroed in on Frank.
Speaker 7: I don't know if I just have one of those
Speaker 7: faces or what, but for some reason, he settled on me,
Speaker 7: and he pointed at me, and he said, you, what
Speaker 7: do you want to be when you grow up? And
Speaker 7: after witnessing everything I scene, the only answer I could
Speaker 7: come up with was I want to beat you.
Speaker 3: Frank said that his teacher looked horrified at this response.
Speaker 3: He thought he was about to get in trouble like
Speaker 3: he usually did for cracking jokes.
Speaker 7: And then the governor started laughing, and of course when
Speaker 7: he starts laughing, his staff joins in and we all
Speaker 7: joined in and it sort of released all the tension
Speaker 7: in the room.
Speaker 3: Clinton moved on from Frank, asked some other kids questions.
Speaker 3: He lectured them about the importance of eating their vegetables
Speaker 3: and doing their homework, and then he sent the class
Speaker 3: on their way.
Speaker 6: That was that.
Speaker 3: Okay, So now we're going to fast forward thirteen years later.
Speaker 3: March of nineteen ninety seven. Clinton is just a few
Speaker 3: months into his second term as president, and back in
Speaker 3: his home state of Arkansas. A series of tornadoes have
Speaker 3: just destroyed the town of Arkadelphia. Twenty five people were killed,
Speaker 3: dozens were injured, twelve hundred buildings were leveled. It was
Speaker 3: a huge disaster. Governor Mike Huckabee declares the state of
Speaker 3: Emergency FEMA is called in. In a few days after
Speaker 3: the storm settles and the rebuilding has started, President Clinton
Speaker 3: visits Arkadelphia.
Speaker 6: It's obviously you all have done a lot of work.
Speaker 4: Here in just a couple of days.
Speaker 6: Everybody has really.
Speaker 3: Frank Vaughn is no longer a little boy. He's a
Speaker 3: six foot one college student attending Wachetah Baptist University in Arkadelphia.
Speaker 3: That feathery blonde hair is now closely cropped and the
Speaker 3: style typical of his fellow members of the Reserve Officer
Speaker 3: Training Corps. Frank and his friends heard that the President
Speaker 3: was in town, so they went to try and see him.
Speaker 3: Frank said that there were hundreds of people lining the
Speaker 3: streets of Arcadelphia doing the same.
Speaker 7: And honestly, when I saw the entourage coming up the
Speaker 7: street with the Secret Service agents and the governor was
Speaker 7: with him, I thought, well, he's going to walk down
Speaker 7: the middle of the street because there's no way they're
Speaker 7: going to let him have, you know, physical contact with people.
Speaker 7: He's the president, and I was wrong.
Speaker 3: President Clinton, ever, the people person, starts making his way
Speaker 3: into the crowd, shaking hands and taking pictures with kids.
Speaker 7: There was a limited about a three block area that
Speaker 7: we were allowed to stand on from street to street
Speaker 7: to street. But he literally went up one block shaking hands,
Speaker 7: turned went back down the next block shaking hands, turned
Speaker 7: and went back up the third block. I mean, he
Speaker 7: spent a good four hours just walking these blocks and
Speaker 7: shaking hands with people.
Speaker 3: And then Clinton gets to where Frank and his friends
Speaker 3: are standing.
Speaker 7: He stopped, stuck his hand out, shook my hand, and
Speaker 7: he looked at me and he leaned in and he said,
Speaker 7: do you still want to be me?
Speaker 3: Frank said that he almost passed out there. He was
Speaker 3: in the middle of a disaster zone in his college,
Speaker 3: shown shaking hands with the President of the United States,
Speaker 3: who has just recalled a small anecdote from meeting him
Speaker 3: thirteen years earlier, when he was nine years old and
Speaker 3: several feet shorter.
Speaker 7: The first thought in my mind was I need to
Speaker 7: go to church and pray because this is like demonic.
Speaker 7: It was just so shocking, And listen, can I tell
Speaker 7: this story? I know it's hard to believe. I understand
Speaker 7: that it seems almost impossible. But if, as we say
Speaker 7: back home, if I'm lying, I'm dying.
Speaker 3: I asked Frank Howe thought Clinton could possibly have remembered him.
Speaker 7: Some people are just like that. I guess it's little
Speaker 7: wonder that he was born in Hope, Arkansas, to a
Speaker 7: very poor family and ended up being the most powerful
Speaker 7: man in the world. You don't get there without talent.
Speaker 3: People always talk about this mythical charisma Clinton possessed. He
Speaker 3: dazzled voters on the Campaigan trail, and believe it or not,
Speaker 3: there are tons of stories just like Frank's. The Comedian
Speaker 3: John mullaney has a whole bit in his twenty fifteen
Speaker 3: comedy special about Clinton's ability to remember people.
Speaker 8: I want to tell you one more story before I
Speaker 8: get out of here, about the night I met a
Speaker 8: guy named Bill Clinton.
Speaker 3: Mullaney tells the story of this disagreement between his parents,
Speaker 3: who went to college with Clinton at Georgetown University, over
Speaker 3: whether or not Clinton would remember his mom Ellen. Apparently
Speaker 3: he would sometimes walk her home from the library in college.
Speaker 3: M'laney talks about his mom dragging him to a campaign
Speaker 3: event in the nineties to see if the presidential hopeful
Speaker 3: still remember their walks. Here's what happens.
Speaker 8: She was swinging me like a snowplow. I was just
Speaker 8: mowing down fat Chicago Democrats. I pushed past all the reporters.
Speaker 8: I pushed past all the photographers, we pushed past all
Speaker 8: the Secret Service. We land at Bill Clinton's feet. Bill
Speaker 8: Clinton turns, looks at my mom and says, hey, Ellen,
Speaker 8: because he never forgets a bitch ever.
Speaker 3: Remember, facial recognition abilities are on a spectrum. Researchers are
Speaker 3: pretty sure it's a normal distribution, with prosopagnosics on the
Speaker 3: low end. Most of you listening are probably somewhere in
Speaker 3: the normal range. But there are also these people on
Speaker 3: the very high end, the super recognizers, those who never
Speaker 3: forget a fake.
Speaker 2: Ever.
Speaker 3: Something of the super recognizers are uniquely good at is
Speaker 3: being able to identify people even after a lot of
Speaker 3: time has passed or they've made changes to their appearance.
Speaker 3: This is something that Bill Clinton is very good at.
Speaker 3: Now we can't know for sure, and Bill Clinton has
Speaker 3: never said anything about this super recognizing ability, but I'd
Speaker 3: venture to say that he is almost certainly a super recognizer.
Speaker 3: Doctor Joe Degutis, the neuroscientist, told me that one of
Speaker 3: the ways they test facial recognition abilities is by showing
Speaker 3: people pictures of celebrities when they were kids, the before
Speaker 3: they were famous.
Speaker 8: Tests.
Speaker 6: Oh, it's a picture of like, you know, Barack Obama
Speaker 6: when he was like two years old, and super recognizers
Speaker 6: can like see it. There's this kind of cool extrapolation
Speaker 6: thing that you can be like, I can see you
Speaker 6: know how that could be a younger version of Barack Obama.
Speaker 3: While I was reporting the story, I came across a
Speaker 3: bunch of tests online, like the before they were famous
Speaker 3: one you can take them to gauge how good or
Speaker 3: bad you are at recognizing faces, and I kept getting
Speaker 3: really good scores on them. Suddenly everything started to make sense.
Speaker 3: Remember earlier, when I was telling Malcolm that I never
Speaker 3: forget people, that I sometimes feel creepy after recognizing someone
Speaker 3: in line at Target. I started to suspect that maybe
Speaker 3: I was one of these super recognizers. While JJ misses
Speaker 3: the plot of some movies and TV shows, I get
Speaker 3: distracted by extras, like, for instance, when I noticed that
Speaker 3: a passing character in a two thousand and one episode
Speaker 3: of Sex in the City is the guy who spoiler alert,
Speaker 3: gets murdered in the first season of the show White
Speaker 3: Lotus twenty years later. Faceblind people can't find their friends
Speaker 3: on the street will I sometimes walk past someone that
Speaker 3: I recognize as my high school friend's cousin who I've
Speaker 3: only seen pictures of. In one of our early calls,
Speaker 3: I told Degotas about my theory in being the good
Speaker 3: scientist he is. He wasn't sold right away.
Speaker 6: I mean, maybe you just like convinced yourself that you're
Speaker 6: super and you're not really super.
Speaker 3: He needed cold, hard data, not random BuzzFeed quizzes. So
Speaker 3: I hopped on Zoom with his research assistant Kaylea Kusel
Speaker 3: And took a three hour battery of tests designed to
Speaker 3: definitively say whether or not I was a super recognizer.
Speaker 6: All right, so the next one it's called peace Name.
Speaker 6: You can go ahead and click on that link.
Speaker 3: The test started off super easy. I was breezing through.
Speaker 3: So they're showing me that same face from like different angles,
Speaker 3: and I would say that is extreme easy. But things
Speaker 3: out weirder as the hours went on, and I started
Speaker 3: to get a little stressed. No, I'm getting nervous. I'm like,
Speaker 3: goodn't you want to get these right? Which is one
Speaker 3: of the six target faces one. I had to do
Speaker 3: things like remember jobs and names of people whose faces
Speaker 3: would flash across the screen really quickly, And at one
Speaker 3: point I was matching spiky blobs with other spiky blobs.
Speaker 3: That one was so are.
Speaker 6: Yeah, the Georgia's is really crazy.
Speaker 3: I like made me feel like I took drugs or something.
Speaker 3: I was like, well, what's happening here? Kayla and I
Speaker 3: wrapped up and she said they'd get back to me
Speaker 3: in a few days with my results. I was eager
Speaker 3: to hear them and unsure of what they would be
Speaker 3: by the end. I didn't think I did very well,
Speaker 3: and I was kind of embarrassed about the whole charade.
Speaker 3: What if I was just average? A few days later,
Speaker 3: the verdict.
Speaker 2: Was in.
Speaker 3: Degodas and I hopped on a zoom call to go
Speaker 3: over my results.
Speaker 6: I mean, you're kind of the complete package for a
Speaker 6: super recognizer, So I wow, I kind of I feel
Speaker 6: like I mean maybe when I when you started taking
Speaker 6: the test, I was a little skeptical, but I think
Speaker 6: I think you're You're right on. I think this is.
Speaker 3: Okay. I have to admit I was over the moon
Speaker 3: at being called the complete package. I said, please go on.
Speaker 6: Actually looking at your results, you were like per effect
Speaker 6: on two of the UH on two of the diagnostic tests,
Speaker 6: like you didn't get a single item wrong. You also
Speaker 6: did really well in this very impossible task where we
Speaker 6: had you, you know, try to learn sixty faces in
Speaker 6: a very short period of time and you had to
Speaker 6: recognize them like out of one hundred and twenty faces.
Speaker 3: Oh that one was so hard.
Speaker 6: Yeah, no, you did. I mean that's the thing. We
Speaker 6: wanted to kind of push you to see what your
Speaker 6: limits are, and you do have limits, but you were
Speaker 6: really you were really quite good.
Speaker 3: Getting my suspicions confirmed was so gratifying. It was cool
Speaker 3: to know that I have this superpower. Less than two
Speaker 3: percent of people can say the same. I had to
Speaker 3: share all this with Malcolm.
Speaker 2: You're like the Lebron James of facial recognition.
Speaker 3: He did say it was a complete package. So I
Speaker 3: will also take Lebron James if you want to call
Speaker 3: me that, I'm not gonna argue.
Speaker 2: My experience of you is dramatically different than your experience
Speaker 2: of me. I am forced to find alternate means of recognition.
Speaker 2: What those of us who have impairment in this area
Speaker 2: do is where we get obsessed with all the other
Speaker 2: possible cues that we can use to identify somebody, and
Speaker 2: because they're not as reliable as the face, where all
Speaker 2: was getting into trouble.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. This is what JJ Good, the guy from
Speaker 3: the coffee shop told me that he tries to do too.
Speaker 5: That's Caleb and the beautiful chin. This is Daniel and
Speaker 5: he is bald have as I remember him, small bald.
Speaker 3: So a couple of months ago I spent the morning
Speaker 3: with him at the coffee shop and he was going
Speaker 3: around introducing me to all his friends and telling me
Speaker 3: how he tries to identify them.
Speaker 5: Here other she is, this took me a while to
Speaker 5: recognize her, but she's got like redistinct glasses, which is useful.
Speaker 5: But she's been talking about changing her glasses, so I'm
Speaker 5: worried about that.
Speaker 3: So he told me that he tries really hard to
Speaker 3: find these cues, but you know, it's it's still hard
Speaker 3: for him, and he never wants a repeat of the
Speaker 3: Missy incident. So his solution is to just treat every
Speaker 3: person that walks in as if they are his friend.
Speaker 5: Everybody who comes in the door, I stare them down
Speaker 5: because I'm like, I hope I have to see if
Speaker 5: I recognize you and know you're not. So I'm staring
Speaker 5: at them and they look at me and they're like hi,
Speaker 5: and I'm like hi, just in case I know them,
Speaker 5: and they're like, well, guy's friendly.
Speaker 3: And that morning I was there, JJ was surrounded by
Speaker 3: people like you think he was the mayor or the
Speaker 3: owner of this place. I was like, did you tell
Speaker 3: all these people to show up because you knew I
Speaker 3: was coming, and he was like nope. So he really
Speaker 3: has made all these friends, even in spite of the
Speaker 3: face fine this thing, and I just think that's such
Speaker 3: a lovely way to live.
Speaker 2: That is really beautiful.
Speaker 3: JJ and Missy are great friends now despite the incident.
Speaker 3: You can find them working and chatting at the coffee
Speaker 3: shop most days. They got dinner every once in a while,
Speaker 3: and their spouses and kids have become friends too. But
Speaker 3: their story could have ended very differently.
Speaker 5: Like our friendship almost ended over this, and it's this
Speaker 5: is my nightmare. So this person felt so bad because
Speaker 5: I was not giving her the right attention, that she
Speaker 5: had a whole crisis, Like what did I do? I
Speaker 5: feel so bad and that's why I'm so weird and
Speaker 5: extra friendly.
Speaker 3: We've all had these experiences where we don't recognize someone
Speaker 3: right away, or someone doesn't recognize us. It can be
Speaker 3: embarrassing and awkward. But the split second assumptions that we
Speaker 3: make about why, that they're aloof or that we said
Speaker 3: something that offended them, or that maybe we just aren't
Speaker 3: memorable might be wrong. Faces matter, but it all comes
Speaker 3: back to what's in our heads.
Speaker 2: Lucy, that is you are Lucy right.
Speaker 3: Yes, I change my shirt, but it's still me.
Speaker 2: This has been a lot of fun.
Speaker 3: This has been great. Thanks Malcolm. Provisionist History is produced
Speaker 3: by Me Lucy Sullivan, with ben Nettaaffrey and Nina Bird Laurens.
Speaker 3: Our editor is Karen Chakerjie. Fact checking by Kate Ferbey,
Speaker 3: Original scoring by Luis Scara, Scoring, mixing and mastering on
Speaker 3: this episode by Echo Mountain. Production support from Luke Lamond.
Speaker 3: Our executive producer is Jacob Smith. Special thanks to Daphne Chen,
Speaker 3: Sarah Nix and Gretacone, as well as the many people
Speaker 3: who share their time and expertise with me for this
Speaker 3: episode Brad Dushane, Bruno Rossian, Sarah Bate, Erica Long Pather, Sellers,
Speaker 3: Lexi Malkin, vivek Rao and Chris Cochrane. If you suspect
Speaker 3: he might have a problem recognizing faces and you want
Speaker 3: to get involved with the research they're doing at doctor
Speaker 3: Joe Dugutis's lab, go to faceblind dot org and if
Speaker 3: you're curious about your own facial recognition abilities, visit our
Speaker 3: show notes and take the tests we have linked there.
Speaker 3: I'm Lucy Sullivan