Face Value

Malcolm and Lucie discover that they experience something very differently. If you suspect you might have a problem recognizing faces and you want to get involved in the research they’re doing at Dr. Joe DeGutis’s lab, go to: www.faceblind.org https://www.faceblind.org And if you’re curious about your own facial recognition abilities, these online tests are a good place to start: https://www.troublewithfaces.org/test-yourself-1 https://www.bbk.ac.uk/psychology/psychologyexperiments/experiments/facememorytest/startup.php See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:09Malcolm Gladwell?

  Before we get to this episode, I want to recommend another podcast for you. Fiasco: Aran Contra is another Pushkin podcast by the co-creator of Slow Burn, Leon Nafok. You'll learn how Ronald Reagan found himself in the middle of a scandal that looked like it just might take down his presidency. Fiasco: Aran Contra is available wherever you get your podcasts. Don't miss it.

• 0:34Speaker 01

  This is Jacob Goldstein. When you're a business owner interested in expanding to new markets, there's a lot to consider and countless questions to answer before making the call. The most important one being, are you ready? That's where ChatGPT comes in. Give it a goal, add your files, and ask Chat to help you map out different scenarios for the future of your business. So when growth is on the table, you've got an expansion plan ready to implement. Get started today at ChatGPT.com.

• 1:02Malcolm Gladwell?

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• 1:39Speaker 02

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• 1:49Malcolm Gladwell?

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• 2:17Speaker 03

  All curious at it, his first experience with high technology.

• 2:21Malcolm Gladwell?

  Create custom feeding schedules or dispense food on demand from anywhere. Visit P E T I V I T Y dot com slash cat feeder to learn more.

• 2:35Malcolm Gladwell?

  Hello, hello. Malcolm Gladwell here. Today I'm in the studio with my producer, Lucy Sullivan. Lucy?

• 2:41Speaker 04

  Hi, Malcolm.

• 2:43Malcolm Gladwell?

  I understand you have a story for me about a particular misunderstanding.

• 2:47Speaker 04

  That is true. We're here because I want to tell you about something I'm calling the Missy incident.

• 2:52Malcolm Gladwell?

  Oh, my goodness.

• 2:53Speaker 04

  It totally changed the way that I think about something foundational, and it also reminded me of you.

• 2:58Malcolm Gladwell?

  Of me?

• 2:59Speaker 04

  Of you.

• 2:59Malcolm Gladwell?

  Oh, my God.

• 3:00Speaker 04

  Um, okay. So it all happened at this coffee shop that I go to all the time.

• 3:07Malcolm Gladwell?

  Can you tell me what the name of the coffee shop is?

• 3:09Speaker 04

  Malcolm, I can tell you the name of the coffee shop off mic, but my fellow cafe goers did not want me to name it on this podcast because it's that good.

• 3:18Malcolm Gladwell?

  Oh, it's that good?

• 3:19Speaker 04

  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.

• 3:38Speaker 05

  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 who can't talk back to you. And so I was sort of just navigating that transition and wanting human interaction.

• 3:54Speaker 04

  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.

• 4:11Malcolm Gladwell?

  So JJ and Missy are sitting down together. What happens?

• 4:15Speaker 04

  Missy's on the phone with her kid's pediatrician, and JJ is sitting there eavesdropping. And, you know, the doctor asks for what's the patient's name, and Missy says, oh, his name's Remy.

• 4:24Speaker 05

  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.

• 4:31Speaker 04

  Turns out they both have cats named Sunny. They both are freelancers. He's a cookbook writer. She's also a writer.

• 4:39Speaker 05

  So for me, it was like on many levels was just really. Kind of a special bond instantly.

• 4:45Speaker 04

  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.

• 4:51Malcolm Gladwell?

  But these two, and there's nothing romantic going on here.

• 4:54Speaker 04

  Nothing romantic.

• 4:55Malcolm Gladwell?

  Yeah.

• 4:55Speaker 04

  Strictly friends who are just like, wow, we have so much in common.

• 5:00Speaker 05

  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.

• 5:15Speaker 04

  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 the same spot in the front. But one day she comes in and their usual table is taken. So she just heads to a different one in the back.

• 5:37Speaker 05

  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.

• 5:59Malcolm Gladwell?

  He ghosts her.

• 6:00Speaker 04

  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 Missy'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. Like, she's really, like, spinning her wheels.

• 6:25Malcolm Gladwell?

  She's reeling. She's reeling.

• 6:26Speaker 05

  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 said something that offended him.

• 6:52Malcolm Gladwell?

  My name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to Revisionist 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.

• 7:16Speaker 04

  So Missy is obviously super bummed about this.

• 7:19Speaker 05

  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.

• 7:34Speaker 04

  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 gonna 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.

• 7:51Speaker 05

  And he sees me and his face lights up and he's like, Missy, you haven't been here in like a week or two. I've missed you. Where have you been? 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 passed.

• 8:06Malcolm Gladwell?

  Like nothing happened?

• 8:07Speaker 04

  Like absolutely nothing happened.

• 8:09Malcolm Gladwell?

  Yeah.

• 8:09Speaker 05

  And I was so confused. I did not know what to make of that, but I was kind of just relieved that the, the freeze out was over. And so I just went with it and was like, oh, you know, good to see you again. And I just sort of picked up where we left off and I didn't say anything.

• 8:26Speaker 04

  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.

• 8:35Speaker 05

  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 him questions about how his kids are. Their conversation lasts just a few minutes and then she walks away to get a coffee. And he looks at me and he goes, I don't know who that is. And 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?

• 9:15Speaker 04

  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.

• 9:23Malcolm Gladwell?

  Yes, yes, that's true. This happens to me all the time. I won't remember if, I need to be exposed to a face, a person on multiple occasions before their face becomes meaningful, or even their, 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 on safer ground.

• 9:49Speaker 04

  Like, you're not just gonna remember someone that you've met once or twice in passing?

• 9:53Malcolm Gladwell?

  No, I have no, there's no chance that I will. I had, it's actually 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'd known Michael for years. And I see Michael, or I think it's Michael, and I see this London man in his 50s, about 5'9", with glasses and a baseball cap, across the street from the wine shop. And I think, oh, that's gotta be Michael. And I go, Michael! And the guy looks at 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.

• 10:35Malcolm Gladwell?

  It's very rare for me to risk it 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.

• 10:50Speaker 04

  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 know this person.

• 10:58Malcolm Gladwell?

  You always remember.

• 10:59Speaker 04

  I always remember, and I always remember people who are completely insignificant to me, like, not in any sort of, like, value judgment way, it's just like, oh, I met you once at my friend's friend's party four years ago, and now you are standing next to me in line at Target.

• 11:13Malcolm Gladwell?

  That's so completely foreign, yeah.

• 11:16Speaker 04

  And this is why, actually, Malcolm, to be honest, like, when I had first heard, because I think 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 time and people recognized 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 this story.

• 11:50Malcolm Gladwell?

  Yeah, no, no, I do. And it makes me feel bad because I, we're in a, I mean, I feel for JJ because it's you're in this constant state of worry about that you're going to be perceived as cold or aloof and you're not.

• 12:07Speaker 04

  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.

• 12:26Malcolm Gladwell?

  Yeah.

• 12:26Speaker 04

  Or just frankly, caring enough to remember them. Like, you worry that you might be perceived as cold or aloof if you don't say hi to 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 of this happens.

• 12:46Malcolm Gladwell?

  After the break, Lucy Sullivan takes us behind the face and into the brain.

• 13:00Speaker 01

  This is Jacob Goldstein. With ChatGPT, you can do more than get answers. You can get things done. When you're running a business and looking to expand, you need a clear view of the landscape before making any decisions. ChatGPT can help you prepare. Connect your Google Drive, point to relevant files and reports, and ask it to research competitors, industry forecasts, and market signals. It can turn the findings into a strategic deck in your team's template that you can review before presenting to your leadership team. Growing a business is ambitious, and ChatGPT can help you do it with confidence. Get started today at chatgpt.com.

• 13:38Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 13:53Speaker 07

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 14:04Speaker 06

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 14:09Speaker 08

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 14:15Speaker 06

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast, on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today.

• 14:37Speaker 04

  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.

• 14:54Speaker 09

  And we had this conversation where I was like, how is everything? Things are good with me. Like, I didn't mention any, there was no specifics because I wanted to make, like, I didn't want, if you walked in and someone had no idea who you were, you would feel

• 15:10Speaker 09

  bad about yourself.

• 15:11Speaker 04

  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.

• 15:19Speaker 09

  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.

• 15:34Speaker 04

  All of 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.

• 15:43Speaker 09

  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.

• 15:52Speaker 04

  It's worth noting that JJ himself is easy to spot. He was born with one arm.

• 15:57Speaker 09

  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 in to 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.

• 16:17Speaker 04

  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 Sacks, the science writer, had it too. And that's when it clicked for JJ.

• 16:31Speaker 10

  So, it is a little bit of this 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.

• 16:41Speaker 04

  This is Dr. Joe DeGutis. He's a cognitive neuroscientist, and he studies facial recognition. DeGutis teaches at Harvard Medical School and runs a lab out of the Boston VA Hospital.

• 16:52Speaker 10

  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.

• 17:10Speaker 04

  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 suggest that around 3% of the population has some form of face blindness. Sometimes, it's 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.

• 17:49Speaker 10

  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.

• 18:08Speaker 04

  The clinical term for face blindness is prosopagnosia. And agnosia is an inability to recognize something. Prosopagnosia uses the Greek word for face, prosopo, 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. 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.

• 18:44Speaker 10

  It's something that is also very special about humans.

• 18:48Speaker 04

  This special thing that Dagudis 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.

• 19:01Speaker 10

  So when I recognize a chair, I'm like, oh, OK, 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, OK, how do I interact with this thing? Usually, you can do it part by part. One of the things that we do with faces more than any other visual object is you process it as a gestalt, as a whole. Because we have to kind of recognize them, not just like, OK, that's a face, that's a face. We have to be like, OK, that's my friend. Oh, that's not, that's, oh, moi, 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 have this specialized system to process faces.

• 19:44Speaker 04

  Frogs use sound, birds use 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 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.

• 20:29Speaker 04

  Dagutus told me that the ability to recognize faces is a spectrum.

• 20:34Speaker 10

  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?

• 20:42Speaker 04

  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.

• 21:02Speaker 01

  This is Jacob Goldstein. With ChatGPT, you can do more than get answers, you can get things done. When you're running a business and looking to expand, you need a clear view of the landscape before making any decisions. ChatGPT can help you prepare. Connect your Google Drive, point to relevant files and reports, and ask it to research competitors, industry forecasts, and market signals. It can turn the findings into a strategic deck in your team's template that you can review before presenting to your leadership team. Growing a business is ambitious, and ChatGPT can help you do it with confidence. Get started today at chatgpt.com.

• 21:40Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 21:54Speaker 07

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 22:05Speaker 06

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 22:10Speaker 08

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 22:16Speaker 06

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat, it's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

• 22:39Speaker 04

  One morning, back in 1984, a little kid named Frank Vaughn was about to have a very exciting day of school.

• 22:47Speaker 11

  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.

• 22:54Speaker 04

  That's Governor Bill Clinton's office, to be exact.

• 22:57Speaker 11

  They arranged us all in a semicircle in cross-legged style, and we waited for the man to show up. And typical of politicians, he was around 15 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 inner office to go grab that Pepsi.

• 23:20Speaker 04

  Frank was a scrawny, nine-year-old boy with feathery blond 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.

• 23:32Speaker 11

  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, you know, just sort of gets himself arranged.

• 23:41Speaker 04

  Frank remembers 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.

• 23:54Speaker 11

  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 had just seen, the only answer I could come up with was, "I want to be you."

• 24:07Speaker 04

  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.

• 24:15Speaker 11

  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.

• 24:25Speaker 04

  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. That was that.

• 24:38Speaker 04

  Okay, so now we're going to fast forward 13 years later. March of 1997. 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. 25 people were killed, dozens were injured, 1,200 buildings were leveled. It was a huge disaster. Governor Mike Huckabee declares a state of emergency. FEMA is called in. And a few days after the storm settles and the rebuilding has started, President Clinton visits Arkadelphia.

• 25:10Speaker 12

  It's obvious that you all have done a lot of work here in just a couple of days. Yes, sir. Everybody has really pitched in.

• 25:17Speaker 04

  Frank Vaughn is no longer a little boy. He's a six-foot-one college student attending Wachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia. That feathery blond hair is now closely cropped in 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. Frank said that there were hundreds of people lining the streets of Arkadelphia doing the same.

• 25:42Speaker 11

  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.

• 25:58Speaker 04

  President Clinton, ever the people person, starts making his way into the crowd, shaking hands and taking pictures with kids.

• 26:05Speaker 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.

• 26:23Speaker 04

  And then Clinton gets to where Frank and his friends are standing.

• 26:27Speaker 11

  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?"

• 26:38Speaker 04

  Frank said that he almost passed out. There he was, in the middle of a disaster zone in his college town, shaking hands with the President of the United States, who has just recalled a small anecdote from meeting him 13 years earlier, when he was nine years old and several feet shorter.

• 26:57Speaker 11

  The first thought in my mind was, I need to go to church and pray, because this is demonic. It was just so shocking. And listen, when 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.

• 27:14Speaker 04

  I asked Frank how he thought Clinton could possibly have remembered him.

• 27:18Speaker 11

  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.

• 27:32Speaker 04

  People always talk about this mythical charisma Clinton possessed. He dazzled voters on the campaign trail. And believe it or not, there are tons of stories just like Frank's. The comedian John Mulaney has a whole bit in his 2015 comedy special about Clinton's ability to remember people.

• 27:49Speaker 03

  I want to tell you one more story before I get out of here, about the night I met a guy named Bill Clinton.

• 27:55Speaker 04

  Mulaney 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. Mulaney talks about his mom dragging him to a campaign event in the 90s to see if the presidential hopeful still remembered their walks. Here's what happens.

• 28:17Speaker 03

  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." Because he never forgets a bitch, ever.

• 28:43Speaker 04

  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 face, ever. Something that 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

• 29:23Speaker 04

  ability, but I'd venture to say that he is almost certainly a super-recognizer. Dr. 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" test.

• 29:41Speaker 10

  Oh, it's a picture of Barack Obama when he was two years old. And super-recognizers can see it. There's this kind of cool extrapolation thing that you can be like, I can see how that could be a younger version of Barack Obama.

• 29:56Speaker 04

  While I was reporting this 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 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 2001 episode of Sex in the City is the guy who, spoiler alert, gets murdered in the first season of the

• 30:41Speaker 04

  show White Lotus 20 years later. Face-blind people can't find their friends on the street, while 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 Dagudis about my theory. And being the good scientist he is, he wasn't sold right away.

• 31:02Speaker 10

  I mean, maybe you just convinced yourself that you're super and you're not really super.

• 31:08Speaker 04

  He needed cold, hard data, not random BuzzFeed quizzes. So I hopped on Zoom with his research assistant, Kayla Cusel, and took a three-hour battery of tests designed to definitively say whether or not I was a super-recognizer.

• 31:24Speaker 04

  All right, so the next one is called Face Name. You can go ahead and click on that link. The test started off super easy. I was breezing through. So they're showing me that same face from different angles. And I would say that is a stream easy. But things got weirder as the hours went on, and I started to get a little stressed. Now I'm getting nervous. I'm like, I need to want to get these right. Which is one of the six target faces. One? I had to do 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 hard. Yeah, the Georges is really crazy.

• 32:07Speaker 04

  That made me feel like I took drugs or something. I was like, whoa, 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, the verdict was in.

• 32:34Speaker 04

  Dagudis and I hopped on a Zoom call to go over my results.

• 32:37Speaker 10

  I mean, you're kind of the complete package for a super-recognizer. So I'm kind of, I feel like, I mean, maybe when you started taking the test, I was a little skeptical, but I think you're right on. I think this is really good.

• 32:52Speaker 04

  Okay, I have to admit, I was over the moon at being called the complete package. I said, please, go on.

• 33:00Speaker 10

  Actually, looking at your results, you were like, perfect on two of the 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 60 faces in a very short period of time and you had to recognize them, like, out of 120 faces.

• 33:23Speaker 04

  Oh, that one was so hard.

• 33:25Speaker 10

  Yeah. No, you did. I mean, that's the thing. We wanted to kind of push you to see what your limits are. You do have limits, but you were really, you were really quite good.

• 33:34Speaker 04

  Getting my suspicions confirmed was so gratifying. It was cool to know that I have this superpower. Less than 2% of people can say the same. I had to share all of this with Malcolm.

• 33:45Malcolm Gladwell?

  You're like the LeBron James of facial recognition.

• 33:49Speaker 04

  He did say I was the complete package, so I will also take LeBron James, if you want to call me that. I'm not gonna argue.

• 33:55Malcolm Gladwell?

  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 we're, we get obsessed with all the other possible cues that we can use to identify somebody. And because they're not as reliable as the face, we're always getting into trouble.

• 34:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly. This is what JJ Good, the guy from the coffee shop, told me that he tries to do, too.

• 34:24Speaker 13

  That's Caitlin with the beautiful chin. This is Daniel. He has bald head, that's how I remember him. Small, bald.

• 34:34Speaker 04

  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 of his friends and telling me how he tries to identify them here.

• 34:42Speaker 13

  Oh, there she is. It took me a while to recognize her, but she's got like very distinct glasses, which is useful, but she's been talking about changing her glasses. So I'm worried about that.

• 34:54Speaker 04

  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.

• 35:08Speaker 13

  Everybody who comes in the door, I stare them down because I'm like, I hope I have to see if I recognize you or no you are 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, that guy's friendly.

• 35:21Speaker 04

  And that morning I was there. JJ was surrounded by people. Like you'd think he was the mayor or the owner of this place. I was like, did you tell all these people to show up because he knew I was coming? And he was like, nope. So he really has made all these friends, even in spite of the face blindness thing. And I just think that's such a lovely way to live.

• 35:39Malcolm Gladwell?

  That is really beautiful.

• 35:42Speaker 04

  JJ and Missy are great friends now, despite the incident. You can find them working and chatting at the coffee shop most days. They get dinner every once in a while and their spouses and kids have become friends too. But their story could have ended very differently.

• 35:57Speaker 09

  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 like had a whole like crisis. Like, what did I do? I feel so bad. And that's why I'm so weird and extra friendly.

• 36:15Speaker 04

  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 back to what's in our heads.

• 36:42Malcolm Gladwell?

  Lucy? That is, you are Lucy, right?

• 36:46Speaker 04

  Yes, that's me. Yep. I changed my shirt, but it's still me.

• 36:50Malcolm Gladwell?

  This, uh, this has been a lot of fun.

• 36:52Speaker 04

  This has been great. Thanks, Malcolm.

• 36:58Speaker 04

  Provisionist History is produced by me, Lucy Sullivan, with Ben Natta-Haferi and Nina Bird Lawrence. Our editor is Karen Chikurji. Fact checking by Kate Furby. Original scoring by Luis Guerra. Scoring, mixing and mastering on this episode by Echo Mountain. Production support from Luke Lamond. Our executive producer is Jacob Smith. Special thanks to Daphne Chen, Sarah Nix and Greta Cohn, as well as the many people who shared their time and expertise with me for this episode. Brad Duchene, Bruno Rossi, Sarah Bates, Erica Long, Heather Sellers, Lexi Malkin, Vivek Rao and Chris Cochrane.

• 37:40Speaker 04

  If you suspect you might have a problem recognizing faces and you want to get involved with the research they're doing at Dr. Joe Degutis's lab, go to faceblind.org. And if you're curious about your own facial recognition abilities, visit our show notes and take the tests we have linked there. I'm Lucy Sullivan.

• 38:03Malcolm Gladwell?

  Don't forget, listen to Fiasco: Iran-Contra for the story of a not-so-secret scandal that captivated the United States. Fiasco is available where you're listening right now.

• 38:16Speaker 14

  She's been thinking about this sleepover all week, but I think about her food allergies all the time. Fortunately, her doctor prescribed Zolair, omalizumab. It's proven to significantly reduce allergic reactions if a food allergy accident happens.

• 38:29Speaker 15

  Zolair 150mg is a prescription medication used to treat food allergy in people one year of age and older to reduce allergic reactions due to accidental exposure to one or more foods. While taking Zolair, you should continue to avoid all foods to which you are allergic. Don't use if you are allergic to Zolair. Zolair may cause a severe, life-threatening allergic reaction called anaphylaxis. Tell your doctor if you ever had anaphylaxis. Get help right away if you have trouble breathing or if you have swelling of your throat or tongue. Zolair should not be used for the emergency treatment of allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis. Zolair is for maintenance use to reduce allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis, while avoiding food allergens. Serious side effects such as cancer, fever, muscle aches and rash, parasitic infection or heart and circulation problems have been reported. Please see zolair.com for full prescribing information. Ask an allergist about Zolair.

• 39:12Speaker 15

  This is an advertisement for Zolair paid for by Genentech and Novartis.

• 39:16Speaker 16

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• 39:57Malcolm Gladwell?

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