May 29, 2025 • 33 mins
An exploration of how this one thing – facial recognition – colors so many of our perceptions about ourselves and each other. For better or worse.
Revisionist History producer Lucie Sullivan, a board-certified super recognizer, explores what’s really going on in our brains when we see someone we know.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:16):
Pushkin, Hey, Last Archive listeners. Today on the show, we
have an episode from my colleague Lucy Sullivan. Lucy's been
around the Last Archive for years and she works on
Revisionist History with me now and she just made a
story about I'm not going to tell you what it's
about because that would spoil the opening mystery, which is great.
(00:36):
Suffice it to say it has to do with your
face and something that a lot of you have probably
experienced before. You can listen to more episodes of Revisionist
History wherever you get your podcasts. Enjoy this one.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Hello, Hello, Malcolm Glabell. Here today I'm in the studio
with my producer Lucy Sullivan.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
Lucy, Hi, Malcolm.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
I understand you have a story for me about a
particular misunderstanding.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
That is true. We're here because I want to tell
you about something I'm calling the Missy incident. Oh goodness,
it totally changed the way that I think about something foundational,
and it also reminded me of you.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Of me of you.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
Okay, So it all happened at this coffee shop that
I go to all the time.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Can you tell me what the name of the coffee
shop is.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Malcolm, I can tell you the name of the coffee
shop off Mike, but my fellow cafe goers did not
want me to name it on this podcast because it's
that good.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Oh it's that good.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
Yeah, it's so good. And it's the kind of place
that's always packed, So you have to be comfortable sitting
with a stranger if you want to get a seat.
And that's where this all starts. So the person at
the center of this, her name is Missy Kurzweil. She
was fresh off of maternity leave with her second kid
when the incident happened.
Speaker 4 (01:52):
I think one of the things that happens when you
have a baby and are on maternity leave is like
you lose a bit of your identity and yourself. You're
spending all your time with a newborn. You can't talk
back to you, and so I was sort of just
navigating that transition and wanting human interaction.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
So Missy is looking for a place to work outside
of her home office and she finds this coffee shop
on her third morning, kind of feeling out this place.
Is this where she wants to set up camp for
her HQ. She sits down at this table and in
walks this guy and He's like, hey, you mind if
I sit here? She says sure, this is JJ good.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
So JJ and Missy is sitting down together.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
What happens Missy something with their kid's pediatrician and JJ
is sitting there east dropping, and you know, the doctor
asked for what's the patient's name, and Missy says, oh,
his name's Remy.
Speaker 4 (02:39):
And JJ freaked out because he was like, you have
a Remy because I have a Remy. And then of
course like that, then we were off to the races.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
Turns out they both have cats named Sonny. They both
are freelancers. He's a cookbook writer, she's also a writer.
Speaker 4 (02:54):
So for me, it was like, on many levels, was
just really kind of a special bond instantly.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
And I don't know if this is normal for you,
but like I don't usually I'm not usually chatting it
up with people at the coffee shop.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
But these two and there's nothing romantic going.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
On here, nothing romantic, yeah, strictly friends who are just like, wow,
we have so much in common.
Speaker 4 (03:15):
I think, no matter where you're at in your life,
meeting someone like JJ feels unusual because he's just so
open and so seemingly genuinely interested in what you have
to say and what are all these details about your life?
Speaker 3 (03:30):
So Missy is excited. She goes home and she tells
her husband, Oh my gosh, I've met this great friend
and I found this great coffee shop to work, Like
things couldn't be better. And so for the next few days,
Missy and JJ sit together, work together crucially, always at
this same spot in the front. But one day she
comes in and their usual table is taken, so she
(03:50):
just heads to a different one in the back.
Speaker 4 (03:52):
And maybe an hour after I sat down, I see
JJ kind of walk to the back and he's looking
around seemingly for a table, and we make direct eye
contact and I start to say hey, JJ, but he
looks at me and sort of kind of registers it
and turns around and walks the other way.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
A ghosts her.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
He ghosts her like completely, Like she was like, we
made eye contact. I was like, maybe he didn't see me,
but no, he saw me. Our eyes locked. I went
to wave. He turned around. So now Missus's like, what
is going on here? Like she had just met his
wife a couple of days before, and she's like, maybe
the wife wasn't comfortable with like or maybe she's thinking
something's going on. Maybe I said something weird to him,
(04:38):
like she's really like spinning her.
Speaker 4 (04:41):
And I went back the next day, sat in the back,
and the same thing happened, where he walks by sort
of sees me seemingly like we make eye contact. And
this time I think I probably was a little bit
more reserved because of what had happened the day before,
And he turns around and walks the other way again,
and now I'm like, Okay, I think I might have
(05:02):
said something that offended him.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
My name is Malcolm Godwell, you're listening to Revision History,
my podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood. And since we're
talking about misunderstandings, whatever you think is going on in
this story right now, I promise you you've got it wrong.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
So Missy is obviously super bummed about this.
Speaker 4 (05:34):
You know, I mean, listen, I've been with my husband
for a long time, so I haven't been like on
the dating scene, but it definitely had an equivalent like
you put yourself out there and you like, are you know,
think that you're connecting with someone but they're not experiencing
that same thing.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
She considered trying to find a new place to work,
but like I said, the coffee shop is just too good.
And so after a few days, she decides, you know what,
I'm just gonna go back. I'm going to ignore the weirdness.
And this time their usual spot in the front is open.
So she sits down and then right on cue, JJ
walks in and.
Speaker 4 (06:07):
He sees me and his face lights up and he
he's like, Missy, you haven't.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
Been here in like a week or two.
Speaker 4 (06:12):
I've missed you.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
Where have you been?
Speaker 4 (06:14):
And then he sits down and he's chit chatting and
he's catching up and he's asking questions just like nothing,
no time.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Passed, like nothing happened, like absolutely nothing happened.
Speaker 4 (06:24):
Yeah, And I was so confused. I did not know
what to make of that. But I was kind of
just relieved that the freeze out was over, and so
I just went with it and was.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
Like, oh, you know, good to see you again.
Speaker 4 (06:38):
And I just sort of picked up where we left off,
and I didn't say anything.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
And it wasn't too long after that that she discovered
what was really going on and why it seemed like
this new friend was just totally ignoring her.
Speaker 4 (06:50):
I'm sitting at a table with JJ, and a woman
walks in super friendly, comes over to JJ and says, hey, JJ,
and I think, goes to give him a hug and
asks some questions about how his kids are. Their conversation
lasts just a few minutes, and then she walks away
to get a coffee and he he looks at me
and he goes, I don't know who that is. And
(07:12):
I was like, what, you seemed like you were friends
with her, and he was like, I have this face
blindness thing. It gives me a lot of anxiety because
I'm probably supposed to know her. And then I think
I paused, and I said something like, is that why
you broke up with me six months ago?
Speaker 3 (07:30):
And this is the part that made me think of you, Malcolm,
face blindness, because I've heard that you also might be
a little face blind yourself.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
Yes, yes, that's true. This happens to me all the time.
I won't remember if I need to expose to a
face a person on multiple occasions before their face becomes meaningful,
or even there, I don't know whether their face is
becoming meaningful or that I'm developing so many other ways
of recognizing them that I feel unsafer.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
Ground Hm HM, like, you're not just gonna remember someone
that you've met once or twice, no passing.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
No, there's no chance that I will. I had a
Saxon's funny because I was sitting in my favorite coffee
shop and I see there's a guy who runs the
wine shop across the street. His name is Michael. I
know Michael for years. And I see Michael, or I
think it's Michael, and I see slender man in fifties,
(08:29):
about five nine with glasses and a baseball cap across
the street from the wine shop, and I think, oh,
that's got to be Michael, and I go Michael, and
the guy looks me like really weird and comes over
and it was like my nightmare is like, oh my god,
No it's not. It's just another dude who's in town
who looks a lot like Michael. But that was my
system failed. It's very rare for me to risk it
(08:53):
like that. But I risked it because I thought if
Michael thinks I had the reverse JJ, if Michael thinks
I'm ignoring him, then that's really bad. Because I go
to the wine shop all the time, and I like Michael.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
See it's interesting because this like this never happens to me,
like I'm often on the other side of it, being like,
all right, I'm just gonna pretend like I don't always remember.
I always remember. I always remember people who are completely
insignificant to me, like not in any sort of like
value juderent ways, just like, Oh I met you once
at my friend's friends party four years ago, and now
(09:25):
you are standing next to me in line at.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
Target, so completely foreign.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
Yeah, and this is why I actually Malcolm, to be honest,
Like when I had first heard saying I heard from
someone in passing before we started working together, like, oh, Malcolm,
he's face blind. He has trouble recognizing people. And I
was like, okay, like yeah, he's face blind, like because
I was thinking, like, I've never forgotten I just don't
forget people's faces. So I was like, if I were
you and I was meeting a million people all the
(09:51):
time and people recognize me from book covers, that would
be kind of a disorienting experience, and it would be
kind of nice to have an excuse like, oh I
don't remember you because I'm like face blind or whatever.
But I just couldn't believe that that was true until
I heard the story yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
No, no, I do. And it makes me feel bad
because I were in a mean I feel for JJ
because it's you in this constant state of worry about
that you're going to be perceived as cold or aloof
and you're not.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
Yeah, and so like this perception problem is exactly what
fascinates me about face blindness, which I've now spent way
too many hours learning about after hearing this story of
Missy and JJ, because I've always thought that being able
to recognize someone was about, you know, having a good
or a bad memory whatever that means, yeah, or just
frankly caring enough to remember them, like you worry that
(10:45):
you might be perceived as cold or aloof if you
don't had a Michael or Missy thought her new friend
was ignoring her. I seem to remember way more faces
than I want to. I really wanted to understand what's
actually going on in our brains when all this happens.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
After the break, Lucy Sullivan takes us behind the face
and into the brain.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
JJ Good, Missy's friend from the coffee shop, doesn't know
exactly when he realized he had a problem with faces.
He just kept having these strange experiences like this one
time when he ran into a woman on the train
and he knew he was supposed to know who she was,
but he had no idea.
Speaker 5 (11:34):
And we had this conversation where I was like, how
is everything? Things are good with me? Like I didn't
mention any There's no specifics because I wanted to make
like I didn't want it. If you walked in and
someone had no idea who were, you would feel bad
about yourself.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
JJ said he also realized something was off when he'd
watch movies and TV shows. He'd sometimes completely miss a
big plot point.
Speaker 5 (11:59):
When my wife and I were watching a show, I'll
be like, who's that guy? And she's like, it's the
main character. He just has a hat on, like it's
literally Robert de Niro from the other scene, and I
was like, ooh, this is kind of strange.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
All this has led to many awkward situations, and it's
made JJ very aware of other people's feelings. What happened
with Missy still haunts him.
Speaker 5 (12:24):
I am afraid that I might have an interaction with
someone and I might not recognize them, and I might
not give them the attention that makes them feel good.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
It's worth noting that JJ himself is easy to spot.
He was born with one arm.
Speaker 5 (12:37):
Walking around with one arm, you are highly recognizable. It's like,
how many one armed people do you meet? Probably not
a lot. So everybody comes into the coffee shop and
if you see me, you probably will recognize me as
that guy from the coffee shop the next day. But
I don't recognize a lot of the people who come in.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
A while back, JJ told some friends about these weird
moments he'd always had, not recognizing people, and they asked
if he'd ever heard of face blindness. They said, Oliver Sachs,
the science writer, had it too, and that's when it
clicked for JJ.
Speaker 6 (13:12):
So it is a little bit of the stealth disorder.
I mean, people only kind of learn they have it,
often when they are subjected to a whole bunch of
new people they have to meet.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
This is doctor Joe Degudis. He's a cognitive neuroscientist and
he studies facial recognition. Deguda's teachers at Harvard Medical School
and runs a lab out of the Boston VA Hospital.
Speaker 6 (13:33):
We've studied how people become aware that they have this,
and often it's a little rocky. It's a little bit
like you know in school, they're like I just don't
pay attention, or I don't care as much about people,
or maybe I'm a little bit on the spectrum. They
have all these attributions they can give.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
The thing about people who are quote unquote face blind
is that they're not actually blind. They're not seeing blurs
where people's faces are. They can see eyes, nose, mouth, ears,
and they can read emotions and tell whether or not
someone's attractive the same way we all do. The best
estimates I could find suggests that around three percent of
the population has some form of face blindness. Sometimes it's
(14:12):
the result of a traumatic brain injury, but some people
are just born with it. Scientists think it could be
genetic or that the network in the brain that recognizes
faces just doesn't develop normally. But for most of us,
a face is the trigger that calls up all the
information we know about a person.
Speaker 6 (14:30):
If you see somebody's face, it quickly triggers the retrieval
of all this other information about them, like you know
who they are, how you know them, all these other
details about the person. So it has this kind of
privileged role in terms of getting all this other information out.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
The clinical term for face blindness is prosopagnosia. An Agnosia
is an inability to recognize something. Prosopagnosia uses the Greek
word for face prose obo, which also happens to be
the Greek word for person. So much of who we
are is wrapped up in this one part of our bodies.
(15:08):
I want you to stop for a second. Think about
your mom, or your best friend or your kid. You're
not picturing their elbows, are you? I mean, maybe you are.
Crazier things have happened. My point is, for most of us,
it's almost impossible to decouple who someone is from their face.
Speaker 6 (15:25):
It's something that is also very special about humans.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
This special thing that Do Goodas is talking about here
has to do with our brains. We have a specific
network that's just for recognizing faces, and it functions unlike
any other kind of cognition.
Speaker 6 (15:41):
So when I recognize a chair, I'm like, oh, okay,
it has something to sit on, has some legs, and boom,
it's a chair. You're recognizing things at this functional level,
which is like, okay, how do I interact with this thing?
You know, usually you can do it part by part.
One of the things that we do with face is
more than any other like visual object is you process
(16:01):
it as a gestalt as a whole because we have
to kind of recognize them and not just like okay,
that's a face. That's a face. We have to be like, okay,
that's my friend. Oh that's not that's so moy, that's
the person at work who I need to avoid. And
so it's like, I think that the individuation demands of
faces maybe are why we kind of had this specialized
(16:22):
system to process faces.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
Frogs you sound, birds you smell, and we humans love
this one cluster of features sitting on top of our necks.
We are social animals, and researchers think that's part of
why humans developed this special recognition network in our brains,
because it served us. Faces have evolved to look really
different from person to person, more so than any other
(16:46):
body part. Scientists at UC Berkeley think that this had
an evolutionary purpose. It helped us socialize. Not only was
it beneficial to be recognizable, but also then to be
able to recognize others. Humans had to get really good
at differentiating friend from foe, and we did get really
good at it, well most of us anyways. Degodas told
(17:11):
me that the ability to recognize faces is a spectrum.
Speaker 6 (17:15):
These are all these kind of internal things that we
don't talk about, and we just assume that everybody's kind
of like us, right.
Speaker 3 (17:22):
And after the break, we're going to the other end
of that spectrum to see what it's like for the
people who never forget a face, the super recognizers. One
(17:45):
morning back in nineteen eighty four, a little kid named
Frank Vaughn was about to have a very exciting day
of school.
Speaker 7 (17:53):
I was nine years old and my fourth grade class
was invited on a school field trip to the Governor's
office in Little Rock.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
That's Governor Bill Clinton's office to be exact.
Speaker 7 (18:03):
They arranged just all in a semicircle in cross leg
style and we waited for the man to show up,
and typical of politicians, he was around fifteen minutes late.
He walks out, he sits down, and he immediately turns
and he snaps his fingers and points at one of
his female staffers and said, you go get my pepsi,
and she took off on a dead run for his
(18:23):
inner office to go grab that pepsi.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
Frank was a scrawny nine year old boy with feathery
blonde hair that grew out in all directions. Nerdy kid,
always cracking jokes for attention. Frank said that he and
his classmates were so excited about meeting the governor.
Speaker 7 (18:38):
There was this almost throne like velvet chair sitting in
the middle of the room, and he sits down in it,
and he crosses his legs and he just sort of
gets himself arranged.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
Frank kremember's feeling in awe of this man sitting on
a throne barking out pepsi orders, he said. The governor
greeted them all and started asking them questions, and then
Clinton zeroed in on Frank.
Speaker 7 (19:00):
I don't know if I just have one of those
faces or what, but for some reason, he settled on me,
and he pointed at me, and he said, you, what
do you want to be when you grow up? And
after witnessing everything I scene, the only answer I could
come up with was I want to beat you.
Speaker 3 (19:13):
Frank said that his teacher looked horrified at this response.
He thought he was about to get in trouble like
he usually did for cracking jokes.
Speaker 7 (19:21):
And then the governor started laughing, and of course when
he starts laughing, his staff joins in and we all
joined in and it sort of released all the tension
in the room.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
Clinton moved on from Frank, asked some other kids questions.
He lectured them about the importance of eating their vegetables
and doing their homework, and then he sent the class
on their way.
Speaker 6 (19:40):
That was that.
Speaker 3 (19:44):
Okay, So now we're going to fast forward thirteen years later.
March of nineteen ninety seven. Clinton is just a few
months into his second term as president, and back in
his home state of Arkansas. A series of tornadoes have
just destroyed the town of Arkadelphia. Twenty five people were killed,
dozens were injured, twelve hundred buildings were leveled. It was
(20:04):
a huge disaster. Governor Mike Huckabee declares the state of
Emergency FEMA is called in. In a few days after
the storm settles and the rebuilding has started, President Clinton
visits Arkadelphia.
Speaker 6 (20:17):
It's obviously you all have done a lot of work.
Speaker 4 (20:18):
Here in just a couple of days.
Speaker 6 (20:20):
Everybody has really.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
Frank Vaughn is no longer a little boy. He's a
six foot one college student attending Wachetah Baptist University in Arkadelphia.
That feathery blonde hair is now closely cropped and the
style typical of his fellow members of the Reserve Officer
Training Corps. Frank and his friends heard that the President
was in town, so they went to try and see him.
(20:44):
Frank said that there were hundreds of people lining the
streets of Arcadelphia doing the same.
Speaker 7 (20:49):
And honestly, when I saw the entourage coming up the
street with the Secret Service agents and the governor was
with him, I thought, well, he's going to walk down
the middle of the street because there's no way they're
going to let him have, you know, physical contact with people.
He's the president, and I was wrong.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
President Clinton, ever, the people person, starts making his way
into the crowd, shaking hands and taking pictures with kids.
Speaker 7 (21:11):
There was a limited about a three block area that
we were allowed to stand on from street to street
to street. But he literally went up one block shaking hands,
turned went back down the next block shaking hands, turned
and went back up the third block. I mean, he
spent a good four hours just walking these blocks and
shaking hands with people.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
And then Clinton gets to where Frank and his friends
are standing.
Speaker 7 (21:34):
He stopped, stuck his hand out, shook my hand, and
he looked at me and he leaned in and he said,
do you still want to be me?
Speaker 3 (21:44):
Frank said that he almost passed out there. He was
in the middle of a disaster zone in his college,
shown shaking hands with the President of the United States,
who has just recalled a small anecdote from meeting him
thirteen years earlier, when he was nine years old and
several feet shorter.
Speaker 7 (22:02):
The first thought in my mind was I need to
go to church and pray because this is like demonic.
It was just so shocking, And listen, can I tell
this story? I know it's hard to believe. I understand
that it seems almost impossible. But if, as we say
back home, if I'm lying, I'm dying.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
I asked Frank Howe thought Clinton could possibly have remembered him.
Speaker 7 (22:24):
Some people are just like that. I guess it's little
wonder that he was born in Hope, Arkansas, to a
very poor family and ended up being the most powerful
man in the world. You don't get there without talent.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
People always talk about this mythical charisma Clinton possessed. He
dazzled voters on the Campaigan trail, and believe it or not,
there are tons of stories just like Frank's. The Comedian
John mullaney has a whole bit in his twenty fifteen
comedy special about Clinton's ability to remember people.
Speaker 8 (22:55):
I want to tell you one more story before I
get out of here, about the night I met a
guy named Bill Clinton.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
Mullaney tells the story of this disagreement between his parents,
who went to college with Clinton at Georgetown University, over
whether or not Clinton would remember his mom Ellen. Apparently
he would sometimes walk her home from the library in college.
M'laney talks about his mom dragging him to a campaign
event in the nineties to see if the presidential hopeful
still remember their walks. Here's what happens.
Speaker 8 (23:23):
She was swinging me like a snowplow. I was just
mowing down fat Chicago Democrats. I pushed past all the reporters.
I pushed past all the photographers, we pushed past all
the Secret Service. We land at Bill Clinton's feet. Bill
Clinton turns, looks at my mom and says, hey, Ellen,
(23:44):
because he never forgets a bitch ever.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
Remember, facial recognition abilities are on a spectrum. Researchers are
pretty sure it's a normal distribution, with prosopagnosics on the
low end. Most of you listening are probably somewhere in
the normal range. But there are also these people on
the very high end, the super recognizers, those who never
forget a fake.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
Ever.
Speaker 3 (24:12):
Something of the super recognizers are uniquely good at is
being able to identify people even after a lot of
time has passed or they've made changes to their appearance.
This is something that Bill Clinton is very good at.
Now we can't know for sure, and Bill Clinton has
never said anything about this super recognizing ability, but I'd
venture to say that he is almost certainly a super recognizer.
(24:35):
Doctor Joe Degutis, the neuroscientist, told me that one of
the ways they test facial recognition abilities is by showing
people pictures of celebrities when they were kids, the before
they were famous.
Speaker 8 (24:46):
Tests.
Speaker 6 (24:47):
Oh, it's a picture of like, you know, Barack Obama
when he was like two years old, and super recognizers
can like see it. There's this kind of cool extrapolation
thing that you can be like, I can see you
know how that could be a younger version of Barack Obama.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
While I was reporting the story, I came across a
bunch of tests online, like the before they were famous
one you can take them to gauge how good or
bad you are at recognizing faces, and I kept getting
really good scores on them. Suddenly everything started to make sense.
Remember earlier, when I was telling Malcolm that I never
forget people, that I sometimes feel creepy after recognizing someone
(25:24):
in line at Target. I started to suspect that maybe
I was one of these super recognizers. While JJ misses
the plot of some movies and TV shows, I get
distracted by extras, like, for instance, when I noticed that
a passing character in a two thousand and one episode
of Sex in the City is the guy who spoiler alert,
(25:46):
gets murdered in the first season of the show White
Lotus twenty years later. Faceblind people can't find their friends
on the street will I sometimes walk past someone that
I recognize as my high school friend's cousin who I've
only seen pictures of. In one of our early calls,
I told Degotas about my theory in being the good
scientist he is. He wasn't sold right away.
Speaker 6 (26:08):
I mean, maybe you just like convinced yourself that you're
super and you're not really super.
Speaker 3 (26:14):
He needed cold, hard data, not random BuzzFeed quizzes. So
I hopped on Zoom with his research assistant Kaylea Kusel
And took a three hour battery of tests designed to
definitively say whether or not I was a super recognizer.
Speaker 6 (26:30):
All right, so the next one it's called peace Name.
You can go ahead and click on that link.
Speaker 3 (26:34):
The test started off super easy. I was breezing through.
So they're showing me that same face from like different angles,
and I would say that is extreme easy. But things
out weirder as the hours went on, and I started
to get a little stressed. No, I'm getting nervous. I'm like,
goodn't you want to get these right? Which is one
of the six target faces one. I had to do
(26:57):
things like remember jobs and names of people whose faces
would flash across the screen really quickly, And at one
point I was matching spiky blobs with other spiky blobs.
That one was so are.
Speaker 6 (27:11):
Yeah, the Georgia's is really crazy.
Speaker 3 (27:13):
I like made me feel like I took drugs or something.
I was like, well, what's happening here? Kayla and I
wrapped up and she said they'd get back to me
in a few days with my results. I was eager
to hear them and unsure of what they would be
by the end. I didn't think I did very well,
and I was kind of embarrassed about the whole charade.
What if I was just average? A few days later,
(27:37):
the verdict.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
Was in.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
Degodas and I hopped on a zoom call to go
over my results.
Speaker 6 (27:43):
I mean, you're kind of the complete package for a
super recognizer, So I wow, I kind of I feel
like I mean maybe when I when you started taking
the test, I was a little skeptical, but I think
I think you're You're right on. I think this is.
Speaker 3 (27:58):
Okay. I have to admit I was over the moon
at being called the complete package. I said, please go on.
Speaker 6 (28:06):
Actually looking at your results, you were like per effect
on two of the UH on two of the diagnostic tests,
like you didn't get a single item wrong. You also
did really well in this very impossible task where we
had you, you know, try to learn sixty faces in
a very short period of time and you had to
recognize them like out of one hundred and twenty faces.
Speaker 3 (28:29):
Oh that one was so hard.
Speaker 6 (28:31):
Yeah, no, you did. I mean that's the thing. We
wanted to kind of push you to see what your
limits are, and you do have limits, but you were
really you were really quite good.
Speaker 3 (28:40):
Getting my suspicions confirmed was so gratifying. It was cool
to know that I have this superpower. Less than two
percent of people can say the same. I had to
share all this with Malcolm.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
You're like the Lebron James of facial recognition.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
He did say it was a complete package. So I
will also take Lebron James if you want to call
me that, I'm not gonna argue.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
My experience of you is dramatically different than your experience
of me. I am forced to find alternate means of recognition.
What those of us who have impairment in this area
do is where we get obsessed with all the other
possible cues that we can use to identify somebody, and
(29:22):
because they're not as reliable as the face, where all
was getting into trouble.
Speaker 3 (29:25):
Yeah, exactly. This is what JJ Good, the guy from
the coffee shop told me that he tries to do too.
Speaker 5 (29:30):
That's Caleb and the beautiful chin. This is Daniel and
he is bald have as I remember him, small bald.
Speaker 3 (29:40):
So a couple of months ago I spent the morning
with him at the coffee shop and he was going
around introducing me to all his friends and telling me
how he tries to identify them.
Speaker 5 (29:48):
Here other she is, this took me a while to
recognize her, but she's got like redistinct glasses, which is useful.
But she's been talking about changing her glasses, so I'm
worried about that.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
So he told me that he tries really hard to
find these cues, but you know, it's it's still hard
for him, and he never wants a repeat of the
Missy incident. So his solution is to just treat every
person that walks in as if they are his friend.
Speaker 5 (30:14):
Everybody who comes in the door, I stare them down
because I'm like, I hope I have to see if
I recognize you and know you're not. So I'm staring
at them and they look at me and they're like hi,
and I'm like hi, just in case I know them,
and they're like, well, guy's friendly.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
And that morning I was there, JJ was surrounded by
people like you think he was the mayor or the
owner of this place. I was like, did you tell
all these people to show up because you knew I
was coming, and he was like nope. So he really
has made all these friends, even in spite of the
face fine this thing, and I just think that's such
a lovely way to live.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
That is really beautiful.
Speaker 3 (30:48):
JJ and Missy are great friends now despite the incident.
You can find them working and chatting at the coffee
shop most days. They got dinner every once in a while,
and their spouses and kids have become friends too. But
their story could have ended very differently.
Speaker 5 (31:03):
Like our friendship almost ended over this, and it's this
is my nightmare. So this person felt so bad because
I was not giving her the right attention, that she
had a whole crisis, Like what did I do? I
feel so bad and that's why I'm so weird and
extra friendly.
Speaker 3 (31:21):
We've all had these experiences where we don't recognize someone
right away, or someone doesn't recognize us. It can be
embarrassing and awkward. But the split second assumptions that we
make about why, that they're aloof or that we said
something that offended them, or that maybe we just aren't
memorable might be wrong. Faces matter, but it all comes
(31:45):
back to what's in our heads.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
Lucy, that is you are Lucy right.
Speaker 3 (31:52):
Yes, I change my shirt, but it's still me.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
This has been a lot of fun.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
This has been great. Thanks Malcolm. Provisionist History is produced
by Me Lucy Sullivan, with ben Nettaaffrey and Nina Bird Laurens.
Our editor is Karen Chakerjie. Fact checking by Kate Ferbey,
Original scoring by Luis Scara, Scoring, mixing and mastering on
(32:18):
this episode by Echo Mountain. Production support from Luke Lamond.
Our executive producer is Jacob Smith. Special thanks to Daphne Chen,
Sarah Nix and Gretacone, as well as the many people
who share their time and expertise with me for this
episode Brad Dushane, Bruno Rossian, Sarah Bate, Erica Long Pather, Sellers,
(32:43):
Lexi Malkin, vivek Rao and Chris Cochrane. If you suspect
he might have a problem recognizing faces and you want
to get involved with the research they're doing at doctor
Joe Dugutis's lab, go to faceblind dot org and if
you're curious about your own facial recognition abilities, visit our
show notes and take the tests we have linked there.
(33:03):
I'm Lucy Sullivan
Pushkin, Hey, Last Archive listeners. Today on the show, we
have an episode from my colleague Lucy Sullivan. Lucy's been
around the Last Archive for years and she works on
Revisionist History with me now and she just made a
story about I'm not going to tell you what it's
about because that would spoil the opening mystery, which is great.
(00:36):
Suffice it to say it has to do with your
face and something that a lot of you have probably
experienced before. You can listen to more episodes of Revisionist
History wherever you get your podcasts. Enjoy this one.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Hello, Hello, Malcolm Glabell. Here today I'm in the studio
with my producer Lucy Sullivan.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
Lucy, Hi, Malcolm.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
I understand you have a story for me about a
particular misunderstanding.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
That is true. We're here because I want to tell
you about something I'm calling the Missy incident. Oh goodness,
it totally changed the way that I think about something foundational,
and it also reminded me of you.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Of me of you.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
Okay, So it all happened at this coffee shop that
I go to all the time.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Can you tell me what the name of the coffee
shop is.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Malcolm, I can tell you the name of the coffee
shop off Mike, but my fellow cafe goers did not
want me to name it on this podcast because it's
that good.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Oh it's that good.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
Yeah, it's so good. And it's the kind of place
that's always packed, So you have to be comfortable sitting
with a stranger if you want to get a seat.
And that's where this all starts. So the person at
the center of this, her name is Missy Kurzweil. She
was fresh off of maternity leave with her second kid
when the incident happened.
Speaker 4 (01:52):
I think one of the things that happens when you
have a baby and are on maternity leave is like
you lose a bit of your identity and yourself. You're
spending all your time with a newborn. You can't talk
back to you, and so I was sort of just
navigating that transition and wanting human interaction.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
So Missy is looking for a place to work outside
of her home office and she finds this coffee shop
on her third morning, kind of feeling out this place.
Is this where she wants to set up camp for
her HQ. She sits down at this table and in
walks this guy and He's like, hey, you mind if
I sit here? She says sure, this is JJ good.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
So JJ and Missy is sitting down together.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
What happens Missy something with their kid's pediatrician and JJ
is sitting there east dropping, and you know, the doctor
asked for what's the patient's name, and Missy says, oh,
his name's Remy.
Speaker 4 (02:39):
And JJ freaked out because he was like, you have
a Remy because I have a Remy. And then of
course like that, then we were off to the races.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
Turns out they both have cats named Sonny. They both
are freelancers. He's a cookbook writer, she's also a writer.
Speaker 4 (02:54):
So for me, it was like, on many levels, was
just really kind of a special bond instantly.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
And I don't know if this is normal for you,
but like I don't usually I'm not usually chatting it
up with people at the coffee shop.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
But these two and there's nothing romantic going.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
On here, nothing romantic, yeah, strictly friends who are just like, wow,
we have so much in common.
Speaker 4 (03:15):
I think, no matter where you're at in your life,
meeting someone like JJ feels unusual because he's just so
open and so seemingly genuinely interested in what you have
to say and what are all these details about your life?
Speaker 3 (03:30):
So Missy is excited. She goes home and she tells
her husband, Oh my gosh, I've met this great friend
and I found this great coffee shop to work, Like
things couldn't be better. And so for the next few days,
Missy and JJ sit together, work together crucially, always at
this same spot in the front. But one day she
comes in and their usual table is taken, so she
(03:50):
just heads to a different one in the back.
Speaker 4 (03:52):
And maybe an hour after I sat down, I see
JJ kind of walk to the back and he's looking
around seemingly for a table, and we make direct eye
contact and I start to say hey, JJ, but he
looks at me and sort of kind of registers it
and turns around and walks the other way.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
A ghosts her.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
He ghosts her like completely, Like she was like, we
made eye contact. I was like, maybe he didn't see me,
but no, he saw me. Our eyes locked. I went
to wave. He turned around. So now Missus's like, what
is going on here? Like she had just met his
wife a couple of days before, and she's like, maybe
the wife wasn't comfortable with like or maybe she's thinking
something's going on. Maybe I said something weird to him,
(04:38):
like she's really like spinning her.
Speaker 4 (04:41):
And I went back the next day, sat in the back,
and the same thing happened, where he walks by sort
of sees me seemingly like we make eye contact. And
this time I think I probably was a little bit
more reserved because of what had happened the day before,
And he turns around and walks the other way again,
and now I'm like, Okay, I think I might have
(05:02):
said something that offended him.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
My name is Malcolm Godwell, you're listening to Revision History,
my podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood. And since we're
talking about misunderstandings, whatever you think is going on in
this story right now, I promise you you've got it wrong.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
So Missy is obviously super bummed about this.
Speaker 4 (05:34):
You know, I mean, listen, I've been with my husband
for a long time, so I haven't been like on
the dating scene, but it definitely had an equivalent like
you put yourself out there and you like, are you know,
think that you're connecting with someone but they're not experiencing
that same thing.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
She considered trying to find a new place to work,
but like I said, the coffee shop is just too good.
And so after a few days, she decides, you know what,
I'm just gonna go back. I'm going to ignore the weirdness.
And this time their usual spot in the front is open.
So she sits down and then right on cue, JJ
walks in and.
Speaker 4 (06:07):
He sees me and his face lights up and he
he's like, Missy, you haven't.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
Been here in like a week or two.
Speaker 4 (06:12):
I've missed you.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
Where have you been?
Speaker 4 (06:14):
And then he sits down and he's chit chatting and
he's catching up and he's asking questions just like nothing,
no time.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Passed, like nothing happened, like absolutely nothing happened.
Speaker 4 (06:24):
Yeah, And I was so confused. I did not know
what to make of that. But I was kind of
just relieved that the freeze out was over, and so
I just went with it and was.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
Like, oh, you know, good to see you again.
Speaker 4 (06:38):
And I just sort of picked up where we left off,
and I didn't say anything.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
And it wasn't too long after that that she discovered
what was really going on and why it seemed like
this new friend was just totally ignoring her.
Speaker 4 (06:50):
I'm sitting at a table with JJ, and a woman
walks in super friendly, comes over to JJ and says, hey, JJ,
and I think, goes to give him a hug and
asks some questions about how his kids are. Their conversation
lasts just a few minutes, and then she walks away
to get a coffee and he he looks at me
and he goes, I don't know who that is. And
(07:12):
I was like, what, you seemed like you were friends
with her, and he was like, I have this face
blindness thing. It gives me a lot of anxiety because
I'm probably supposed to know her. And then I think
I paused, and I said something like, is that why
you broke up with me six months ago?
Speaker 3 (07:30):
And this is the part that made me think of you, Malcolm,
face blindness, because I've heard that you also might be
a little face blind yourself.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
Yes, yes, that's true. This happens to me all the time.
I won't remember if I need to expose to a
face a person on multiple occasions before their face becomes meaningful,
or even there, I don't know whether their face is
becoming meaningful or that I'm developing so many other ways
of recognizing them that I feel unsafer.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
Ground Hm HM, like, you're not just gonna remember someone
that you've met once or twice, no passing.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
No, there's no chance that I will. I had a
Saxon's funny because I was sitting in my favorite coffee
shop and I see there's a guy who runs the
wine shop across the street. His name is Michael. I
know Michael for years. And I see Michael, or I
think it's Michael, and I see slender man in fifties,
(08:29):
about five nine with glasses and a baseball cap across
the street from the wine shop, and I think, oh,
that's got to be Michael, and I go Michael, and
the guy looks me like really weird and comes over
and it was like my nightmare is like, oh my god,
No it's not. It's just another dude who's in town
who looks a lot like Michael. But that was my
system failed. It's very rare for me to risk it
(08:53):
like that. But I risked it because I thought if
Michael thinks I had the reverse JJ, if Michael thinks
I'm ignoring him, then that's really bad. Because I go
to the wine shop all the time, and I like Michael.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
See it's interesting because this like this never happens to me,
like I'm often on the other side of it, being like,
all right, I'm just gonna pretend like I don't always remember.
I always remember. I always remember people who are completely
insignificant to me, like not in any sort of like
value juderent ways, just like, Oh I met you once
at my friend's friends party four years ago, and now
(09:25):
you are standing next to me in line at.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
Target, so completely foreign.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
Yeah, and this is why I actually Malcolm, to be honest,
Like when I had first heard saying I heard from
someone in passing before we started working together, like, oh, Malcolm,
he's face blind. He has trouble recognizing people. And I
was like, okay, like yeah, he's face blind, like because
I was thinking, like, I've never forgotten I just don't
forget people's faces. So I was like, if I were
you and I was meeting a million people all the
(09:51):
time and people recognize me from book covers, that would
be kind of a disorienting experience, and it would be
kind of nice to have an excuse like, oh I
don't remember you because I'm like face blind or whatever.
But I just couldn't believe that that was true until
I heard the story yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
No, no, I do. And it makes me feel bad
because I were in a mean I feel for JJ
because it's you in this constant state of worry about
that you're going to be perceived as cold or aloof
and you're not.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
Yeah, and so like this perception problem is exactly what
fascinates me about face blindness, which I've now spent way
too many hours learning about after hearing this story of
Missy and JJ, because I've always thought that being able
to recognize someone was about, you know, having a good
or a bad memory whatever that means, yeah, or just
frankly caring enough to remember them, like you worry that
(10:45):
you might be perceived as cold or aloof if you
don't had a Michael or Missy thought her new friend
was ignoring her. I seem to remember way more faces
than I want to. I really wanted to understand what's
actually going on in our brains when all this happens.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
After the break, Lucy Sullivan takes us behind the face
and into the brain.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
JJ Good, Missy's friend from the coffee shop, doesn't know
exactly when he realized he had a problem with faces.
He just kept having these strange experiences like this one
time when he ran into a woman on the train
and he knew he was supposed to know who she was,
but he had no idea.
Speaker 5 (11:34):
And we had this conversation where I was like, how
is everything? Things are good with me? Like I didn't
mention any There's no specifics because I wanted to make
like I didn't want it. If you walked in and
someone had no idea who were, you would feel bad
about yourself.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
JJ said he also realized something was off when he'd
watch movies and TV shows. He'd sometimes completely miss a
big plot point.
Speaker 5 (11:59):
When my wife and I were watching a show, I'll
be like, who's that guy? And she's like, it's the
main character. He just has a hat on, like it's
literally Robert de Niro from the other scene, and I
was like, ooh, this is kind of strange.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
All this has led to many awkward situations, and it's
made JJ very aware of other people's feelings. What happened
with Missy still haunts him.
Speaker 5 (12:24):
I am afraid that I might have an interaction with
someone and I might not recognize them, and I might
not give them the attention that makes them feel good.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
It's worth noting that JJ himself is easy to spot.
He was born with one arm.
Speaker 5 (12:37):
Walking around with one arm, you are highly recognizable. It's like,
how many one armed people do you meet? Probably not
a lot. So everybody comes into the coffee shop and
if you see me, you probably will recognize me as
that guy from the coffee shop the next day. But
I don't recognize a lot of the people who come in.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
A while back, JJ told some friends about these weird
moments he'd always had, not recognizing people, and they asked
if he'd ever heard of face blindness. They said, Oliver Sachs,
the science writer, had it too, and that's when it
clicked for JJ.
Speaker 6 (13:12):
So it is a little bit of the stealth disorder.
I mean, people only kind of learn they have it,
often when they are subjected to a whole bunch of
new people they have to meet.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
This is doctor Joe Degudis. He's a cognitive neuroscientist and
he studies facial recognition. Deguda's teachers at Harvard Medical School
and runs a lab out of the Boston VA Hospital.
Speaker 6 (13:33):
We've studied how people become aware that they have this,
and often it's a little rocky. It's a little bit
like you know in school, they're like I just don't
pay attention, or I don't care as much about people,
or maybe I'm a little bit on the spectrum. They
have all these attributions they can give.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
The thing about people who are quote unquote face blind
is that they're not actually blind. They're not seeing blurs
where people's faces are. They can see eyes, nose, mouth, ears,
and they can read emotions and tell whether or not
someone's attractive the same way we all do. The best
estimates I could find suggests that around three percent of
the population has some form of face blindness. Sometimes it's
(14:12):
the result of a traumatic brain injury, but some people
are just born with it. Scientists think it could be
genetic or that the network in the brain that recognizes
faces just doesn't develop normally. But for most of us,
a face is the trigger that calls up all the
information we know about a person.
Speaker 6 (14:30):
If you see somebody's face, it quickly triggers the retrieval
of all this other information about them, like you know
who they are, how you know them, all these other
details about the person. So it has this kind of
privileged role in terms of getting all this other information out.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
The clinical term for face blindness is prosopagnosia. An Agnosia
is an inability to recognize something. Prosopagnosia uses the Greek
word for face prose obo, which also happens to be
the Greek word for person. So much of who we
are is wrapped up in this one part of our bodies.
(15:08):
I want you to stop for a second. Think about
your mom, or your best friend or your kid. You're
not picturing their elbows, are you? I mean, maybe you are.
Crazier things have happened. My point is, for most of us,
it's almost impossible to decouple who someone is from their face.
Speaker 6 (15:25):
It's something that is also very special about humans.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
This special thing that Do Goodas is talking about here
has to do with our brains. We have a specific
network that's just for recognizing faces, and it functions unlike
any other kind of cognition.
Speaker 6 (15:41):
So when I recognize a chair, I'm like, oh, okay,
it has something to sit on, has some legs, and boom,
it's a chair. You're recognizing things at this functional level,
which is like, okay, how do I interact with this thing?
You know, usually you can do it part by part.
One of the things that we do with face is
more than any other like visual object is you process
(16:01):
it as a gestalt as a whole because we have
to kind of recognize them and not just like okay,
that's a face. That's a face. We have to be like, okay,
that's my friend. Oh that's not that's so moy, that's
the person at work who I need to avoid. And
so it's like, I think that the individuation demands of
faces maybe are why we kind of had this specialized
(16:22):
system to process faces.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
Frogs you sound, birds you smell, and we humans love
this one cluster of features sitting on top of our necks.
We are social animals, and researchers think that's part of
why humans developed this special recognition network in our brains,
because it served us. Faces have evolved to look really
different from person to person, more so than any other
(16:46):
body part. Scientists at UC Berkeley think that this had
an evolutionary purpose. It helped us socialize. Not only was
it beneficial to be recognizable, but also then to be
able to recognize others. Humans had to get really good
at differentiating friend from foe, and we did get really
good at it, well most of us anyways. Degodas told
(17:11):
me that the ability to recognize faces is a spectrum.
Speaker 6 (17:15):
These are all these kind of internal things that we
don't talk about, and we just assume that everybody's kind
of like us, right.
Speaker 3 (17:22):
And after the break, we're going to the other end
of that spectrum to see what it's like for the
people who never forget a face, the super recognizers. One
(17:45):
morning back in nineteen eighty four, a little kid named
Frank Vaughn was about to have a very exciting day
of school.
Speaker 7 (17:53):
I was nine years old and my fourth grade class
was invited on a school field trip to the Governor's
office in Little Rock.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
That's Governor Bill Clinton's office to be exact.
Speaker 7 (18:03):
They arranged just all in a semicircle in cross leg
style and we waited for the man to show up,
and typical of politicians, he was around fifteen minutes late.
He walks out, he sits down, and he immediately turns
and he snaps his fingers and points at one of
his female staffers and said, you go get my pepsi,
and she took off on a dead run for his
(18:23):
inner office to go grab that pepsi.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
Frank was a scrawny nine year old boy with feathery
blonde hair that grew out in all directions. Nerdy kid,
always cracking jokes for attention. Frank said that he and
his classmates were so excited about meeting the governor.
Speaker 7 (18:38):
There was this almost throne like velvet chair sitting in
the middle of the room, and he sits down in it,
and he crosses his legs and he just sort of
gets himself arranged.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
Frank kremember's feeling in awe of this man sitting on
a throne barking out pepsi orders, he said. The governor
greeted them all and started asking them questions, and then
Clinton zeroed in on Frank.
Speaker 7 (19:00):
I don't know if I just have one of those
faces or what, but for some reason, he settled on me,
and he pointed at me, and he said, you, what
do you want to be when you grow up? And
after witnessing everything I scene, the only answer I could
come up with was I want to beat you.
Speaker 3 (19:13):
Frank said that his teacher looked horrified at this response.
He thought he was about to get in trouble like
he usually did for cracking jokes.
Speaker 7 (19:21):
And then the governor started laughing, and of course when
he starts laughing, his staff joins in and we all
joined in and it sort of released all the tension
in the room.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
Clinton moved on from Frank, asked some other kids questions.
He lectured them about the importance of eating their vegetables
and doing their homework, and then he sent the class
on their way.
Speaker 6 (19:40):
That was that.
Speaker 3 (19:44):
Okay, So now we're going to fast forward thirteen years later.
March of nineteen ninety seven. Clinton is just a few
months into his second term as president, and back in
his home state of Arkansas. A series of tornadoes have
just destroyed the town of Arkadelphia. Twenty five people were killed,
dozens were injured, twelve hundred buildings were leveled. It was
(20:04):
a huge disaster. Governor Mike Huckabee declares the state of
Emergency FEMA is called in. In a few days after
the storm settles and the rebuilding has started, President Clinton
visits Arkadelphia.
Speaker 6 (20:17):
It's obviously you all have done a lot of work.
Speaker 4 (20:18):
Here in just a couple of days.
Speaker 6 (20:20):
Everybody has really.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
Frank Vaughn is no longer a little boy. He's a
six foot one college student attending Wachetah Baptist University in Arkadelphia.
That feathery blonde hair is now closely cropped and the
style typical of his fellow members of the Reserve Officer
Training Corps. Frank and his friends heard that the President
was in town, so they went to try and see him.
(20:44):
Frank said that there were hundreds of people lining the
streets of Arcadelphia doing the same.
Speaker 7 (20:49):
And honestly, when I saw the entourage coming up the
street with the Secret Service agents and the governor was
with him, I thought, well, he's going to walk down
the middle of the street because there's no way they're
going to let him have, you know, physical contact with people.
He's the president, and I was wrong.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
President Clinton, ever, the people person, starts making his way
into the crowd, shaking hands and taking pictures with kids.
Speaker 7 (21:11):
There was a limited about a three block area that
we were allowed to stand on from street to street
to street. But he literally went up one block shaking hands,
turned went back down the next block shaking hands, turned
and went back up the third block. I mean, he
spent a good four hours just walking these blocks and
shaking hands with people.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
And then Clinton gets to where Frank and his friends
are standing.
Speaker 7 (21:34):
He stopped, stuck his hand out, shook my hand, and
he looked at me and he leaned in and he said,
do you still want to be me?
Speaker 3 (21:44):
Frank said that he almost passed out there. He was
in the middle of a disaster zone in his college,
shown shaking hands with the President of the United States,
who has just recalled a small anecdote from meeting him
thirteen years earlier, when he was nine years old and
several feet shorter.
Speaker 7 (22:02):
The first thought in my mind was I need to
go to church and pray because this is like demonic.
It was just so shocking, And listen, can I tell
this story? I know it's hard to believe. I understand
that it seems almost impossible. But if, as we say
back home, if I'm lying, I'm dying.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
I asked Frank Howe thought Clinton could possibly have remembered him.
Speaker 7 (22:24):
Some people are just like that. I guess it's little
wonder that he was born in Hope, Arkansas, to a
very poor family and ended up being the most powerful
man in the world. You don't get there without talent.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
People always talk about this mythical charisma Clinton possessed. He
dazzled voters on the Campaigan trail, and believe it or not,
there are tons of stories just like Frank's. The Comedian
John mullaney has a whole bit in his twenty fifteen
comedy special about Clinton's ability to remember people.
Speaker 8 (22:55):
I want to tell you one more story before I
get out of here, about the night I met a
guy named Bill Clinton.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
Mullaney tells the story of this disagreement between his parents,
who went to college with Clinton at Georgetown University, over
whether or not Clinton would remember his mom Ellen. Apparently
he would sometimes walk her home from the library in college.
M'laney talks about his mom dragging him to a campaign
event in the nineties to see if the presidential hopeful
still remember their walks. Here's what happens.
Speaker 8 (23:23):
She was swinging me like a snowplow. I was just
mowing down fat Chicago Democrats. I pushed past all the reporters.
I pushed past all the photographers, we pushed past all
the Secret Service. We land at Bill Clinton's feet. Bill
Clinton turns, looks at my mom and says, hey, Ellen,
(23:44):
because he never forgets a bitch ever.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
Remember, facial recognition abilities are on a spectrum. Researchers are
pretty sure it's a normal distribution, with prosopagnosics on the
low end. Most of you listening are probably somewhere in
the normal range. But there are also these people on
the very high end, the super recognizers, those who never
forget a fake.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
Ever.
Speaker 3 (24:12):
Something of the super recognizers are uniquely good at is
being able to identify people even after a lot of
time has passed or they've made changes to their appearance.
This is something that Bill Clinton is very good at.
Now we can't know for sure, and Bill Clinton has
never said anything about this super recognizing ability, but I'd
venture to say that he is almost certainly a super recognizer.
(24:35):
Doctor Joe Degutis, the neuroscientist, told me that one of
the ways they test facial recognition abilities is by showing
people pictures of celebrities when they were kids, the before
they were famous.
Speaker 8 (24:46):
Tests.
Speaker 6 (24:47):
Oh, it's a picture of like, you know, Barack Obama
when he was like two years old, and super recognizers
can like see it. There's this kind of cool extrapolation
thing that you can be like, I can see you
know how that could be a younger version of Barack Obama.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
While I was reporting the story, I came across a
bunch of tests online, like the before they were famous
one you can take them to gauge how good or
bad you are at recognizing faces, and I kept getting
really good scores on them. Suddenly everything started to make sense.
Remember earlier, when I was telling Malcolm that I never
forget people, that I sometimes feel creepy after recognizing someone
(25:24):
in line at Target. I started to suspect that maybe
I was one of these super recognizers. While JJ misses
the plot of some movies and TV shows, I get
distracted by extras, like, for instance, when I noticed that
a passing character in a two thousand and one episode
of Sex in the City is the guy who spoiler alert,
(25:46):
gets murdered in the first season of the show White
Lotus twenty years later. Faceblind people can't find their friends
on the street will I sometimes walk past someone that
I recognize as my high school friend's cousin who I've
only seen pictures of. In one of our early calls,
I told Degotas about my theory in being the good
scientist he is. He wasn't sold right away.
Speaker 6 (26:08):
I mean, maybe you just like convinced yourself that you're
super and you're not really super.
Speaker 3 (26:14):
He needed cold, hard data, not random BuzzFeed quizzes. So
I hopped on Zoom with his research assistant Kaylea Kusel
And took a three hour battery of tests designed to
definitively say whether or not I was a super recognizer.
Speaker 6 (26:30):
All right, so the next one it's called peace Name.
You can go ahead and click on that link.
Speaker 3 (26:34):
The test started off super easy. I was breezing through.
So they're showing me that same face from like different angles,
and I would say that is extreme easy. But things
out weirder as the hours went on, and I started
to get a little stressed. No, I'm getting nervous. I'm like,
goodn't you want to get these right? Which is one
of the six target faces one. I had to do
(26:57):
things like remember jobs and names of people whose faces
would flash across the screen really quickly, And at one
point I was matching spiky blobs with other spiky blobs.
That one was so are.
Speaker 6 (27:11):
Yeah, the Georgia's is really crazy.
Speaker 3 (27:13):
I like made me feel like I took drugs or something.
I was like, well, what's happening here? Kayla and I
wrapped up and she said they'd get back to me
in a few days with my results. I was eager
to hear them and unsure of what they would be
by the end. I didn't think I did very well,
and I was kind of embarrassed about the whole charade.
What if I was just average? A few days later,
(27:37):
the verdict.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
Was in.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
Degodas and I hopped on a zoom call to go
over my results.
Speaker 6 (27:43):
I mean, you're kind of the complete package for a
super recognizer, So I wow, I kind of I feel
like I mean maybe when I when you started taking
the test, I was a little skeptical, but I think
I think you're You're right on. I think this is.
Speaker 3 (27:58):
Okay. I have to admit I was over the moon
at being called the complete package. I said, please go on.
Speaker 6 (28:06):
Actually looking at your results, you were like per effect
on two of the UH on two of the diagnostic tests,
like you didn't get a single item wrong. You also
did really well in this very impossible task where we
had you, you know, try to learn sixty faces in
a very short period of time and you had to
recognize them like out of one hundred and twenty faces.
Speaker 3 (28:29):
Oh that one was so hard.
Speaker 6 (28:31):
Yeah, no, you did. I mean that's the thing. We
wanted to kind of push you to see what your
limits are, and you do have limits, but you were
really you were really quite good.
Speaker 3 (28:40):
Getting my suspicions confirmed was so gratifying. It was cool
to know that I have this superpower. Less than two
percent of people can say the same. I had to
share all this with Malcolm.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
You're like the Lebron James of facial recognition.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
He did say it was a complete package. So I
will also take Lebron James if you want to call
me that, I'm not gonna argue.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
My experience of you is dramatically different than your experience
of me. I am forced to find alternate means of recognition.
What those of us who have impairment in this area
do is where we get obsessed with all the other
possible cues that we can use to identify somebody, and
(29:22):
because they're not as reliable as the face, where all
was getting into trouble.
Speaker 3 (29:25):
Yeah, exactly. This is what JJ Good, the guy from
the coffee shop told me that he tries to do too.
Speaker 5 (29:30):
That's Caleb and the beautiful chin. This is Daniel and
he is bald have as I remember him, small bald.
Speaker 3 (29:40):
So a couple of months ago I spent the morning
with him at the coffee shop and he was going
around introducing me to all his friends and telling me
how he tries to identify them.
Speaker 5 (29:48):
Here other she is, this took me a while to
recognize her, but she's got like redistinct glasses, which is useful.
But she's been talking about changing her glasses, so I'm
worried about that.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
So he told me that he tries really hard to
find these cues, but you know, it's it's still hard
for him, and he never wants a repeat of the
Missy incident. So his solution is to just treat every
person that walks in as if they are his friend.
Speaker 5 (30:14):
Everybody who comes in the door, I stare them down
because I'm like, I hope I have to see if
I recognize you and know you're not. So I'm staring
at them and they look at me and they're like hi,
and I'm like hi, just in case I know them,
and they're like, well, guy's friendly.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
And that morning I was there, JJ was surrounded by
people like you think he was the mayor or the
owner of this place. I was like, did you tell
all these people to show up because you knew I
was coming, and he was like nope. So he really
has made all these friends, even in spite of the
face fine this thing, and I just think that's such
a lovely way to live.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
That is really beautiful.
Speaker 3 (30:48):
JJ and Missy are great friends now despite the incident.
You can find them working and chatting at the coffee
shop most days. They got dinner every once in a while,
and their spouses and kids have become friends too. But
their story could have ended very differently.
Speaker 5 (31:03):
Like our friendship almost ended over this, and it's this
is my nightmare. So this person felt so bad because
I was not giving her the right attention, that she
had a whole crisis, Like what did I do? I
feel so bad and that's why I'm so weird and
extra friendly.
Speaker 3 (31:21):
We've all had these experiences where we don't recognize someone
right away, or someone doesn't recognize us. It can be
embarrassing and awkward. But the split second assumptions that we
make about why, that they're aloof or that we said
something that offended them, or that maybe we just aren't
memorable might be wrong. Faces matter, but it all comes
(31:45):
back to what's in our heads.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
Lucy, that is you are Lucy right.
Speaker 3 (31:52):
Yes, I change my shirt, but it's still me.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
This has been a lot of fun.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
This has been great. Thanks Malcolm. Provisionist History is produced
by Me Lucy Sullivan, with ben Nettaaffrey and Nina Bird Laurens.
Our editor is Karen Chakerjie. Fact checking by Kate Ferbey,
Original scoring by Luis Scara, Scoring, mixing and mastering on
(32:18):
this episode by Echo Mountain. Production support from Luke Lamond.
Our executive producer is Jacob Smith. Special thanks to Daphne Chen,
Sarah Nix and Gretacone, as well as the many people
who share their time and expertise with me for this
episode Brad Dushane, Bruno Rossian, Sarah Bate, Erica Long Pather, Sellers,
(32:43):
Lexi Malkin, vivek Rao and Chris Cochrane. If you suspect
he might have a problem recognizing faces and you want
to get involved with the research they're doing at doctor
Joe Dugutis's lab, go to faceblind dot org and if
you're curious about your own facial recognition abilities, visit our
show notes and take the tests we have linked there.
(33:03):
I'm Lucy Sullivan
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