Face Off
Welcome to season two of Flash Forward! We kicked off this season with a pretty unlikely future: the entire world goes face blind.\xa0\n\xa0\n\xa0In the episode we discuss what causes face blindness \u2014 also known as prosopagnosia \u2014 and the tricks that people use to remember their friends. We also go through all the things that would be easier (spying, hiding) and harder (police lineups, cocktail parties) in a world where we were all faceblind.\xa0\n\xa0\n\xa0Today, about two percent of the population has some form of face blindness, or prosopagnosia. Some people with prosopagnosia have a hard time with acquaintances, while others struggle to recognize their own family members, and sometimes even themselves. If after this you\u2019re thinking \u201chm, I wonder if I\u2019m face blind,\u201d you can take an unofficial online test here.\xa0\n\xa0\n\xa0To figure out what this world might be like, I called up Dr. Jason Barton, a neurologist at the University of British Columbia who treats and studies people with face blindness. He told me that face blindness can happen for a lot of reasons: some people are born with it, and others acquire the trouble after a stroke, infection, tumor, or other kind of brain injury. You\u2019ll have to listen to the episode to learn how it happens to all of us at once.\n\xa0\n\xa0I also talked to two people who are face blind, since they have the best sense for what this might be like for the rest of us. Lisa Huang, a science fiction writer, and Jaydeep Bardhan, a mechanical engineering professor at Northeastern University, told me all sorts of really interesting things about how they do, or don\u2019t remember people. Movies and TV shows? Tough for people with face blindness, especially when all the actors look the same.\xa0\n\xa0\n\xa0We also talked about things like hair and makeup, how people might try to visually distinguish themselves when they can\u2019t rely on their face to do it for them. And Barton suggested a whole other way to recognize people that has nothing to do with faces.\xa0\n\xa0\n\xa0There\u2019s a great Ted Chiang short story called \u201cLiking What You See: A Documentary\u201d about facial recognition. The story focuses not on face-blindness, but instead, the piece talks about a world in which people can elect to have their perception of beauty turned off. So nobody has an advantage for being prettier than anybody else. But according to Dr. Jason Barton, some people with prosopagnosia also struggle to tell things like age, sex, mood and even beauty of another face in front of them.\xa0\n\xa0\n\xa0And in case you didn\u2019t think this episode was dark enough, here\u2019s another take on face blindness: a short film in which someone locks eyes with the perpetrator of a horrible crime, but can\u2019t remember his face because he\u2019s face blind.\xa0\n\xa0\n\xa0What do you think? How might we get around face blindness? Would we just give up? Would we all wear go-pros and google glasses around? Would name tags come back into style?\n\xa0\n\xa0Flash Forward is produced by me, Rose Eveleth, and is part of the Boing Boing podcast family. The (awesome) art for this episode is by Matt Lubchansky. The intro music is by Asura and the Outtro music is by Broke for Free. The music for your drive time radio host was The Zombie Dandies. The voice of your drive time radio host was Mike Pesca, who is also the host of the not-fictional daily Slate podcast The Gist. The voice of our trusty scientist was Bethany Brookshire, you can follow her on Twitter at @scicurious. And the voice of our lovely public radio reporter was Tamara Krinsky, you can find her at @tamarakrinsky.\xa0\n\xa0\n\xa0If you want to suggest a future we should take on, send us a note on Twitter, Facebook or by email at info@flashforwardpod.com. We love hearing your ideas! This week's episode was suggested by Charlie Loyd.\xa0\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices