Face Value

Summary

Revisionist History: "Face Value" – A Detailed Summary

Revisionist History, hosted by Malcolm Gladwell and produced by Pushkin Industries, delves into the overlooked and misunderstood aspects of our past. In the episode titled "Face Value," released on May 8, 2025, Gladwell explores the intricate world of facial recognition, examining both the phenomenon of face blindness and the extraordinary abilities of super recognizers.

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1. Introduction: The Missy Incident

The episode begins with producer Lucy Sullivan introducing a personal story about a misunderstanding that significantly altered her perspective on facial recognition.

Key Event:

• Missy Kurzweil, a writer returning from maternity leave, begins working at a popular local coffee shop.
• She befriends J.J. Goode, a fellow freelancer, establishing a seemingly strong connection based on shared interests and similar pet names.

The Misunderstanding:

• During their interactions, Missy notices that J.J. starts avoiding her despite their budding friendship.
• Missy Kurzweil shares at [06:38] (00:38):

  “Maybe the wife wasn't comfortable...” indicating her confusion over J.J.'s sudden change in behavior.

2. Unraveling the Mystery: Face Blindness (Prosopagnosia)

As the story unfolds, it becomes evident that J.J. suffers from prosopagnosia, commonly known as face blindness, which impairs his ability to recognize faces.

Key Insights:

• Lucy Sullivan draws a parallel between J.J.'s experience and Malcolm Gladwell's own struggles with facial recognition:

  “[09:35] Malcolm Gladwell: Yes. Yes, that's true...”

• Gladwell explains his challenges in recognizing people based solely on facial features, emphasizing reliance on other cues:

  “[10:01] Malcolm Gladwell: There's no chance that I will...”

Expert Commentary:

• Dr. Joe Degutis, a cognitive neuroscientist from Harvard Medical School, provides a deeper understanding of prosopagnosia:

  “[17:26] Dr. Joe Degutis: If you see somebody's face, it quickly triggers the retrieval of all this other information about them...”

3. The Spectrum of Facial Recognition Abilities

The episode delves into the broad spectrum of facial recognition, highlighting both ends—face blindness and super recognition.

Prosopagnosia:

• Approximately 3% of the population experiences some form of face blindness.
• It can result from genetic factors or traumatic brain injuries.
• Individuals with prosopagnosia rely on non-facial cues to recognize others, often leading to social misunderstandings.

Super Recognizers:

• On the opposite end are super recognizers, individuals with an exceptional ability to remember and recognize faces.

• Lucy Sullivan discovers she falls into this category after undergoing a series of tests:

  “[31:39] Dr. Joe Degutis: ...you are the complete package for super recognizer...”

• Malcolm Gladwell humorously likens her ability to that of “the LeBron James of facial recognition”:

  “[32:46] Malcolm Gladwell: You're like the LeBron James of facial recognition.”

4. A Case Study: Frank Vaughn and Bill Clinton

A pivotal segment features the extraordinary ability of former President Bill Clinton to remember faces, illustrated through the story of Frank Vaughn.

Frank's Early Encounter:

• In 1984, nine-year-old Frank meets then-Governor Bill Clinton during a school field trip.
• Frank jokingly tells Clinton, “[22:55] Frank Vaughn: I want to be you,” prompting laughter and making a memorable impression.

Reunion Thirteen Years Later:

• In March 1997, now a college student, Frank attends a rally in Arkadelphia devastated by tornadoes.
• Surprisingly, President Clinton remembers Frank and greets him personally:

  “[25:29] Frank Vaughn: He stopped, stuck his hand out, shook my hand, and he looked at me...”

Implications:

• This encounter underscores Clinton's super recognizer abilities, as affirmed by both personal anecdotes and comedic reflections from John Mulaney.

5. Personal Discoveries and Reflections

Lucy's journey into understanding facial recognition leads her to explore her own abilities.

Self-Assessment:

• Initially skeptical, Lucy takes a comprehensive battery of tests to determine her facial recognition capabilities.
• Upon receiving her results, Dr. Joe Degutis confirms her status as a super recognizer:

  “[31:53] Lucy Sullivan: ...you are the complete package for super recognizer...”

Impacts on Daily Life:

• Unlike J.J., who grapples with social anxieties due to his condition, Lucy benefits from her exceptional ability, finding joy and fascination in recognizing faces effortlessly.

6. Overcoming Challenges: J.J. Goode's Strategies

Despite his face blindness, J.J. has developed methods to navigate social interactions effectively.

Adaptive Techniques:

• J.J. treats every newcomer as a friend, engaging with them proactively to minimize misunderstandings:

  “[34:10] Unknown: 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 know you or not...”

Social Dynamics:

• This approach helps J.J. maintain friendships and fosters a supportive community within the coffee shop environment.

7. Conclusion: The Power and Complexity of Faces

The episode concludes by emphasizing the profound role faces play in our social interactions and self-perception.

Key Takeaways:

• Prosopagnosia highlights the challenges of recognizing others, often leading to unintended social consequences.
• Super recognizers like Lucy and Clinton demonstrate the remarkable capabilities of the human brain in facial recognition.
• The stories of Missy, J.J., Frank, and Lucy illustrate the delicate balance between face recognition abilities and social dynamics.

Final Reflections:

• Malcolm Gladwell encapsulates the essence of the episode:

  “[35:44] Malcolm Gladwell: ...you are Lucy, right?... This has been a lot of fun.”

• The episode invites listeners to ponder their own facial recognition abilities and the unspoken cognitive processes that shape our daily interactions.

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Notable Quotes

• Missy Kurzweil at [05:02]:

  “She's really, like, spinning her wheels.”

• Malcolm Gladwell at [07:04]:

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

• Dr. Joe Degutis at [16:17]:

  “If you see somebody's face, it quickly triggers the retrieval of all this other information about them...”

• Lucy Sullivan at [18:21]:

  “I'm thinking, oh, my mom or your best friend or your kid...”

• Frank Vaughn at [25:58]:

  “When I tell this story, I know it's hard to believe... if I'm lying, I'm dying.”

---

Additional Resources

For listeners interested in exploring facial recognition further or suspecting they may have prosopagnosia or super recognition abilities, the episode provides resources:

• Research Participation: Visit faceblind.org to get involved with Dr. Joe Degutis's research.
• Self-Assessment Tests: Access facial recognition tests linked in the show notes to gauge personal abilities.

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"Face Value" offers a compelling exploration of how we perceive each other through faces, the neurological underpinnings of recognition, and the social ramifications of these abilities. Through personal stories and expert insights, Malcolm Gladwell and Lucy Sullivan illuminate the nuanced spectrum of facial recognition, inviting listeners to reconsider the weight we place on a simple face in our interconnected lives.

Transcript

[Lucy Sullivan]

Foreign.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Before we get to this episode, I want to recommend another podcast for you. Fiasco Iran Contra is another Pushkin podcast by the co creator of Slow Burn, Leon Nayfak. 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 or On Contra is available wherever you get your podcasts. Don't miss it.

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[Lucy Sullivan]

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[Lucy Sullivan]

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[Unknown]

This podcast is supported by Talkspace.

When my husband came home from his military deployment, readjusting was hard for all of us. Thankfully, I found Talkspace.

Talkspace provides professional support from licensed therapists and psychiatric providers online. Military members, veterans and their dependents ages 13 and older can get fast access to providers, all from the privacy of their computers or smartphones.

I just answered a few questions online and Talkspace matched me with a therapist. We meet when it's convenient for me and I can message her anytime. It was so easy to set up and they accept Tricare. Therapy was going so well, my husband and I started seeing a couple's therapist through Talkspace too.

Talkspace works with most major insurers, including Tricare. Match with a licensed therapist [e-mail] military go to talkspace.com military to get started today. That's talkspace.com military.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

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

[Lucy Sullivan]

Lucy hi Malcolm.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

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

[Lucy Sullivan]

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

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Oh My goodness.

[Lucy Sullivan]

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

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Of me?

[Lucy Sullivan]

Of you.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Oh, my God.

[Lucy Sullivan]

Where are we going? So it all happened at this coffee shop that I go to all the time.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

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

[Lucy Sullivan]

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.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Oh, it's that good.

[Lucy Sullivan]

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.

[Missy Kurzweil]

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.

[Lucy Sullivan]

So Missy's 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 J.J. goode.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

So J.J. and Missy are sitting down together, and what happens?

[Lucy Sullivan]

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.

[Missy Kurzweil]

And JJ freaked out because he was like, you have a Remy? Because I have a Remy. And then, of course, then we were off to the races.

[Lucy Sullivan]

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

[Missy Kurzweil]

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

[Lucy Sullivan]

And I don't know if this is normal for you, but I'm not usually chatting it up with people at the.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Coffee shop, but these two. And there's nothing romantic going on here.

[Lucy Sullivan]

Nothing romantic?

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Yeah.

[Lucy Sullivan]

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

[Missy Kurzweil]

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?

[Lucy Sullivan]

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.

[Missy Kurzweil]

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.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

He ghosts her.

[Lucy Sullivan]

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 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.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

She's reeling. She's reeling.

[Missy Kurzweil]

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 seen. Said something that offended him.

[Malcolm 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.

[Lucy Sullivan]

So Missy is obviously super bummed about this.

[Missy Kurzweil]

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.

[Lucy Sullivan]

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.

[Missy Kurzweil]

In 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.

[Unknown]

I've missed you.

[Missy Kurzweil]

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.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Like nothing happened.

[Lucy Sullivan]

Like, absolutely nothing happened.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Yeah.

[Missy Kurzweil]

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 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.

[Lucy Sullivan]

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.

[Missy Kurzweil]

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?

[Lucy Sullivan]

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.

[Malcolm 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 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 on safer ground.

[Lucy Sullivan]

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

[Malcolm Gladwell]

No, 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 know Michael for years. And I see Michael, or I think it's Michael, and I see a slender 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. 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.

[Lucy Sullivan]

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.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

You always remember.

[Lucy Sullivan]

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.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

So completely foreign. Yeah.

[Lucy Sullivan]

And this is why, actually, Malcolm, to be honest, like, when I had first heard. Cause I think I heard from someone in passing before we started working. 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 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 this story.

[Malcolm 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.

[Lucy Sullivan]

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.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Yeah.

[Lucy Sullivan]

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.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

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

[Unknown]

This podcast is supported by Talkspace.

When my husband came home from his military deployment, readjusting was hard for all of us. Thankfully, I found Talkspace.

Talkspace provides professional support from licensed therapists and psychiatric providers online. Military members, veterans, and their dependents ages 13 and older can get fast access to providers, all from the privacy of their computers or smartphones.

I just answered a few questions online, and Talkspace matched me with a therapist. We meet when it's convenient for me, and I can message her anytime. It was so easy to set up and they accept Tricare. Therapy was going so well. My husband and I started seeing a couples therapist through Talkspace, too.

Talkspace works with most major insurers, including Tricare. Match with a licensed therapist [e-mail] military go to talkspace.com military to get started today. That's talkspace.com military.

[Lucy Sullivan]

JJ Goode, 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.

[Unknown]

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 sure, like, I didn't want it. If you walked in and someone had no idea who you were, you would feel bad about yourself.

[Lucy Sullivan]

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.

[Unknown]

When my wife and I are 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.

[Lucy Sullivan]

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.

[Unknown]

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.

[Lucy Sullivan]

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

[Unknown]

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.

[Lucy Sullivan]

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.

[Dr. Joe Degutis]

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.

[Lucy Sullivan]

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

[Dr. Joe Degutis]

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.

[Lucy Sullivan]

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.

[Dr. Joe Degutis]

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.

[Lucy Sullivan]

The clinical term for face blindness is prosopagnosia. An 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.

[Dr. Joe Degutis]

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

[Lucy Sullivan]

This special thing that Degutis 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.

[Dr. Joe Degutis]

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 faces more than any other, like, visual object is you process 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 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 system to process faces.

[Lucy Sullivan]

Frogs use 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 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. Degutis told me that the ability to recognize faces is a spectrum.

[Dr. Joe Degutis]

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?

[Lucy Sullivan]

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.

[Unknown]

This podcast is supported by Talkspace.

When my husband came home from his military deployment, readjusting was hard for all of us. Thankfully, I found Talkspace.

Talkspace provides professional support from licensed therapists and psychiatric providers online. Military members, veterans and their dependents ages 13 and older can get fast access to providers, all from the privacy of their computers or smartphones.

I just answered a few questions online and Talkspace matched me with a therapist. We meet when it's convenient for me and I can message her anytime. It was so easy to set up and they accept Tricare. Therapy was going so well, my husband and I started seeing a couples therapist through Talkspace too.

Talkspace works with most major insurers, including Tricare. Match with a licensed therapist [e-mail] military go to talkspace.com military to get started today. That's talkspace.com military one morning back in.

[Lucy Sullivan]

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

[Frank Vaughn]

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.

[Lucy Sullivan]

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

[Frank Vaughn]

They arranged us all in a semicircle in cross leg 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.

[Lucy Sullivan]

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.

[Frank Vaughn]

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.

[Lucy Sullivan]

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.

[Frank Vaughn]

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.

[Lucy Sullivan]

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.

[Frank Vaughn]

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.

[Lucy Sullivan]

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. 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.

[Dr. Joe Degutis]

It's obvious that you all have done.

[Lucy Sullivan]

A lot of work here in just.

[Frank Vaughn]

A couple of days.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Yes, sir.

[Lucy Sullivan]

Everybody has really pitched in. Frank Vaughan is no longer a little boy. He's a 6 foot 1 college student attending Ouachita 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.

[Frank Vaughn]

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.

[Lucy Sullivan]

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

[Frank Vaughn]

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.

[Lucy Sullivan]

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

[Frank Vaughn]

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?

[Lucy Sullivan]

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.

[Frank Vaughn]

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, 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.

[Lucy Sullivan]

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

[Frank Vaughn]

Some people are just like that. I guess it's little wonder that he was, you know, 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.

[Lucy Sullivan]

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.

[Unknown]

I want to tell you one more.

[Dr. Joe Degutis]

Story before I get out of here.

[Unknown]

About the night I met a guy named Bill Clinton.

[Lucy Sullivan]

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.

[Unknown]

She was swinging me like a snowplow. I was just mowing down fat Chicago Democrats. I pushed past all the reporters.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

I pushed past all the photographers.

[Unknown]

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. Cause he never forgets a bitch. Ever.

[Lucy Sullivan]

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 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. Is by showing people pictures of celebrities when they were kids. The before they were famous test.

[Dr. Joe Degutis]

Oh, it's a picture of, like, you know, Barack Obama when He was, like, 2 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.

[Lucy Sullivan]

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 notice that a passing character in a 2001 episode of Sex and the City is the guy who, spoiler alert. Gets murdered in the first season of the show White Lotus. Twenty 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 Degutis about my theory. And being the good scientist he is, he wasn't sold right away.

[Dr. Joe Degutis]

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

[Lucy Sullivan]

He needed cold, hard data, not random buzzfeed quizzes. So I hopped on Zoom with his research assistant, Kayla Kusel, and took a three hour battery of tests designed to definitively say whether or not I was a super recognizer. 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, like, different angles, and I would say that is extremely 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 get these right. Which is one of the six target faces.

[Frank Vaughn]

One.

[Lucy Sullivan]

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 George's is really crazy. That, like, 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. Degudis, and I hopped on a zoom call to go over my results.

[Dr. Joe Degutis]

I mean, you're kind of the complete package for super recognizer, so I'm 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.

[Lucy Sullivan]

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

[Dr. Joe Degutis]

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 try to learn 60 faces in a very short period of time, and you had to recognize them, like, out of 120 faces.

[Lucy Sullivan]

Oh, that one was so hard.

[Dr. Joe Degutis]

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.

[Lucy Sullivan]

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.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

You're like the LeBron James of facial recognition.

[Lucy Sullivan]

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

[Malcolm Gladwell]

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.

[Lucy Sullivan]

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

[Unknown]

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

[Lucy Sullivan]

So a couple 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.

[Unknown]

Oh, there she is. This 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.

[Lucy Sullivan]

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 myth incident. So his solution is to just treat every person that walks in as if they are his friend.

[Unknown]

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 know you or 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.

[Lucy Sullivan]

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 blindness thing. And I just think that's such a lovely way to live.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

That is really beautiful.

[Lucy Sullivan]

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.

[Unknown]

Like, our friendship almost ended over this, and 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.

[Lucy Sullivan]

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.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Lucy, that is. You are Lucy, right?

[Lucy Sullivan]

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

[Malcolm Gladwell]

This has been a lot of fun.

[Lucy Sullivan]

This has been great. Thanks, Malcolm. Revisionist History is produced by me, Lucy Sullivan with Ben Nadifaffri and Nina Byrd Lawrence. Our editor is Karen Shakurji. 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 Rossian, Sarah Bate, Erica Long, Heather Sellers, Lexi Malkin, Vivek Rao and Chris Cochran. 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 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.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Don't forget. Listen to Fiasco around Contrast for the story of a not so secret scandal that captivated the United States. Fiasco is available where you're listening right now.

[Unknown]

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