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