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Doppelgängers: Hey you, you're me! · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's Josh and Chuck is here in spirit too,
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Speaker 1: and we just wanted to drop a casual reminder that
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Speaker 1: we are going to have a swinging Pacific Northwest Swing
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Speaker 1: this coming February, and tickets are now on sale. February
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Speaker 1: one will be at the More Theater in Seattle, February
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Speaker 1: two will be at Revolution Hall in Portland, and on
0:22
Speaker 1: February three, for s F Sketch Fest, will be at
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Speaker 1: the Sydney Goldstein Theater. Go check out all of our
0:28
Speaker 1: social media's for more information and links to tickets, and
0:32
Speaker 1: we'll see you in February. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know,
0:37
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to
0:45
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too,
0:49
Speaker 1: and this is Stuff you Should Know. The day after
0:52
Speaker 1: Labor Day edition, which Chuck loves. Uh. Yeah, you know,
0:58
Speaker 1: Emily show me that article all that informed part of
1:02
Speaker 1: this episode the other day. Yeah, and we'll get to it.
1:07
Speaker 1: But I started looking at this photographer's doppelganger photo series. Yeah,
1:13
Speaker 1: and boy, some of those are crazy similar. Yeah. What
1:18
Speaker 1: about the two bears with their shirts off? Yeah, those
1:23
Speaker 1: guys struck me as extremely close, the two women with
1:27
Speaker 1: the bangs and the black tank tops looked like identical twins.
1:31
Speaker 1: To me. I could not tell them apart. Yeah, I
1:34
Speaker 1: feel like we shouldn't tease anybody anymore. There's a guy
1:36
Speaker 1: and like you said, we'll get to him, um in
1:38
Speaker 1: a little bit, but or he'll figure in in a
1:41
Speaker 1: little bit, I should say. But he's a Montreal I guess.
1:44
Speaker 1: The quebec Qua photographer Francois Brunel, And for twenty years
1:49
Speaker 1: he's been assembling pictures of doppel gangers, people who already
1:54
Speaker 1: knew they had a doppelganger and wrote in Doppelgangers. He's
1:57
Speaker 1: looked for and found on the street and he brings
1:59
Speaker 1: them together are into a studio and photographs them together.
2:02
Speaker 1: But he does some like really cool stuff with it.
2:04
Speaker 1: It's not just like here you stand here and you
2:05
Speaker 1: stand next to him. The way that he poses them
2:08
Speaker 1: and dresses him and everything like it creates like a
2:11
Speaker 1: sense of intimacy between them. It makes you think you're
2:13
Speaker 1: looking at identical twin photos. Yeah, I mean, you know
2:16
Speaker 1: some of them people favor one another, and then when
2:20
Speaker 1: you have them styled to look alike and postal like that,
2:22
Speaker 1: informs what you're seeing. But a handful of them, it
2:26
Speaker 1: was they look so much like identical twins that it's
2:29
Speaker 1: just it's weird to think that you could walk down
2:31
Speaker 1: the street one day and someone who looks exactly like you. Yeah,
2:36
Speaker 1: and I mean like that is got to be pretty eerie.
2:38
Speaker 1: And luckily one of the great things about social media
2:41
Speaker 1: is that people can post their random encounters. You've got
2:44
Speaker 1: a phone with camera on it, You've got access to
2:47
Speaker 1: social media through that phone. You can just snap a
2:49
Speaker 1: picture of you and your doppelganger, post it to the
2:51
Speaker 1: internet and let everyone go crazy. And that does happen,
2:55
Speaker 1: it seems like from time to time. But this dude's
2:57
Speaker 1: whole jam it's called them. I'm not a look alike
3:00
Speaker 1: the exclamation point. It sounds like a Disney movie from
3:03
Speaker 1: the sixties or something. Um, but that's that's a Francois
3:06
Speaker 1: Brunel's twenty Years series. Yeah, and not just hey, Chuck,
3:11
Speaker 1: you look like every tubby guy with a beard and glasses.
3:14
Speaker 1: It's like, that's that's lazy. I think when you're in
3:18
Speaker 1: the public eye, people tend to do things like that
3:20
Speaker 1: to say, Okay, you look like all of these people Um,
3:24
Speaker 1: we're talking like real lookalikes. Um, which I you know,
3:29
Speaker 1: I think I've gotten a couple here and there over
3:31
Speaker 1: the years that that I was like, Okay, I could
3:33
Speaker 1: see that for sure, But um, doppel gangers are different. Yeah.
3:38
Speaker 1: So doppelganger, if you haven't just surmised already, it's a
3:42
Speaker 1: German word at its origin, and um, it's not one
3:46
Speaker 1: of those really clever German words. It really just means
3:49
Speaker 1: double goer, or a different interpretation is double walker. And
3:53
Speaker 1: it's not some super old like like medieval word. It
3:57
Speaker 1: was actually coined at the end of the eighteenth entry
4:00
Speaker 1: by um an author named Jean Paul, which is an
4:04
Speaker 1: unlikely German name if you ask me. But he wrote
4:06
Speaker 1: a book called The sieben Cuss. Yeah, sieben Cuss, I
4:12
Speaker 1: nailed it, um. And that book was about a man
4:15
Speaker 1: who had a doppel ganger. Right, yeah, I think John
4:18
Speaker 1: Paul's hiding something with that name. I do think he's
4:22
Speaker 1: actually a double I think there's a dousel Doworf at
4:25
Speaker 1: the end or something that he left off, right. Uh. Yeah,
4:29
Speaker 1: so he wrote about it in that novel. But um,
4:32
Speaker 1: as Olivia is keen to point out, Livia helped us
4:35
Speaker 1: with this one. The uh, he sort of mixes up
4:38
Speaker 1: the words when he was actually talking about a look
4:41
Speaker 1: alike human. He used the word with a T doupled ganga,
4:46
Speaker 1: but did use the word doppelganger in there as a
4:49
Speaker 1: as a meal with two courses being served together. So
4:53
Speaker 1: I don't know if things just got a little confused
4:55
Speaker 1: or people thought it was just fine to drop the T,
4:58
Speaker 1: but double ganger became the eventual word that we use for,
5:03
Speaker 1: you know, a non related look alike, and that's I
5:05
Speaker 1: don't know if we pointed that out. The obvious thing
5:07
Speaker 1: here is that you're not not related to these people
5:09
Speaker 1: at all. Yeah. And the other thing about a um
5:12
Speaker 1: doppel gangers again, like you said, it's not like, oh,
5:14
Speaker 1: you bear a passing resemblance or you favor one another,
5:17
Speaker 1: like you're as close to the person's double body double
5:21
Speaker 1: as you can get in. The closer you are, the
5:23
Speaker 1: more of a doppel ganger you are, basically. But um,
5:27
Speaker 1: but John Paul I can't say his name any other way. Um,
5:31
Speaker 1: he coined those terms, so it's funny that he kind
5:34
Speaker 1: of got it wrong. Everybody else is like, no, we're
5:36
Speaker 1: gonna drop the T, like you said. But the fact
5:38
Speaker 1: that he coined the term doppel ganger doesn't mean he
5:40
Speaker 1: invented the concept. It's actually a much older concept that
5:44
Speaker 1: just didn't have the same name that we use now. Um.
5:47
Speaker 1: Apparently there's a longstanding um superstition in England in Germany
5:54
Speaker 1: dating back I think to the medieval age, maybe before Chuck,
5:57
Speaker 1: where if you saw your doppel ganger three times it
6:00
Speaker 1: meant you were about to die. And that's still I
6:03
Speaker 1: think people still kind of believe that one. Yeah, And
6:05
Speaker 1: that's I mean, there are all kinds of old pieces
6:08
Speaker 1: of folklore and just about every country you can explore
6:11
Speaker 1: that has some sort of and it's usually not if
6:14
Speaker 1: you find your doppelganger then you know good luck will
6:17
Speaker 1: come your way. It always seems like it's some kind
6:20
Speaker 1: of uh, spooky negative thing will happen, whether you see
6:23
Speaker 1: them three times or whether. I mean, there was one
6:27
Speaker 1: I think in the North mythology where a spirit appears.
6:32
Speaker 1: This one's just a little weird. It appears just like you,
6:36
Speaker 1: but it it beat to you to wherever you're going.
6:39
Speaker 1: So if you're traveling on a journey, your doppelganger would
6:43
Speaker 1: beat you there, and people think that you would have
6:45
Speaker 1: arrived earlier. I don't know if that's the solves tardiness
6:51
Speaker 1: for the North mythology, but that one's not super evil,
6:55
Speaker 1: but it's usually, especially when you get into literature, Uh,
6:59
Speaker 1: some sort of know evil force or evil twin that's
7:02
Speaker 1: coming along to wreck things for you. Yeah, and that
7:05
Speaker 1: Norse one that arrives, I just want to put a
7:07
Speaker 1: button on that because I did a little research it.
7:10
Speaker 1: Um it's called the bard Dooger. And the reason I
7:13
Speaker 1: know how to pronounce this because I looked up with
7:15
Speaker 1: the oh with the slash is pronounced like and it's
7:18
Speaker 1: the same thing as oh with the oom wount. I
7:21
Speaker 1: didn't know that before, did you. Yeah, well you might
7:25
Speaker 1: be a little more of a metal fan of me.
7:27
Speaker 1: It's cool looking, just like the Umlaut. Super cool. I
7:30
Speaker 1: think it's cooler than the Umlaut. It's got like a
7:33
Speaker 1: slash through it, you know, like take that oh, whereas
7:36
Speaker 1: the Umlauts, Like, I'm adorning this. Oh it's a little
7:39
Speaker 1: different all right. Uh. Edgar Allan Poe wrote a story
7:42
Speaker 1: called William Wilson. Uh. It's sort of like I mentioned
7:46
Speaker 1: before about you know, evil things happening. A narrator meets
7:49
Speaker 1: a boy at school. Uh, and this one had the
7:52
Speaker 1: same name. I'm presuming William Wilson, otherwise it be a
7:56
Speaker 1: weird title. And this boy, though, only speaks in a whisper.
8:00
Speaker 1: So it seems like all through literature it's always some
8:03
Speaker 1: sort of a creepy, shadowy figure. Yeah. There's also Dustoyevsky
8:08
Speaker 1: um put kind of a spin on it where he
8:10
Speaker 1: introduced a doppel ganger to the main character in a
8:14
Speaker 1: novel called or novella I think called The Double, and
8:17
Speaker 1: I love this. In it, the doppel ganger is like
8:20
Speaker 1: a more likable version of the main character and ends
8:24
Speaker 1: up breaking the main character character mentally, which I could
8:28
Speaker 1: totally see that. You know, like if this this impostor
8:31
Speaker 1: comes along or this other version of you comes along
8:33
Speaker 1: and people are like a lot more. Yeah, it reminds me.
8:37
Speaker 1: Have you seen that Paul Rudd show Living with Yourself?
8:42
Speaker 1: I don't know how it escaped, but they did a
8:44
Speaker 1: season of it in two thousand nineteen. Didn't follow up
8:46
Speaker 1: on it, but he plays himself and his doppel ganger
8:49
Speaker 1: too great comedic effect, but it's also like really fascinating
8:53
Speaker 1: and interesting. It's a really great show. It's on Netflix. Well,
8:56
Speaker 1: that's the other thing, and we'll talk about some more
8:58
Speaker 1: in history. But of course with t V, oftentimes it's
9:02
Speaker 1: flipped to a more fun thing and it's played for laughs,
9:06
Speaker 1: whether you know. I don't think Three's Company had a
9:09
Speaker 1: doppelganger episode, but it wouldn't surprise me because it can
9:12
Speaker 1: be played for a sort of mixed identity hijinks as well,
9:16
Speaker 1: totally like a one where Mr Furley was into Jack
9:20
Speaker 1: but it was really his doppelganger. Yeah, and I mean
9:23
Speaker 1: it would probably be like its twin brother who came
9:24
Speaker 1: to visit in that case. But this still counts an
9:27
Speaker 1: unknown twin still in the cannon counts as a doppel ganger,
9:31
Speaker 1: do you think, well, yeah, I think so. Al Right,
9:35
Speaker 1: well he just negated what I said that they're not related.
9:37
Speaker 1: But well, okay, that's true. Once you find out. Here's
9:41
Speaker 1: the thing that this actually proves your point, Chuck. Once
9:44
Speaker 1: the characters find out, oh it's a twin, mystery solved,
9:48
Speaker 1: no longer a doppelganger. It becomes a twin. But up
9:51
Speaker 1: to that point, when they're like crossing paths with one
9:53
Speaker 1: another and never in the same room at the same time,
9:56
Speaker 1: doppel ganger, Yes, exactly. But for really doesn't have a
10:00
Speaker 1: brother or does why is he acting so weird? Uh?
10:05
Speaker 1: There have been some true historical figures over the years
10:08
Speaker 1: that bought into this stuff. Um Abraham Lincoln. Uh, he
10:13
Speaker 1: and his wife, they had all kinds of kind of
10:16
Speaker 1: interesting beliefs. It was the age of spiritualism, Yeah, for sure,
10:22
Speaker 1: So you have to take that consideration, I think. But um,
10:26
Speaker 1: Lincoln supposedly saw his image three times I think in
10:32
Speaker 1: the mirror in eighteen sixty which, uh, what was his
10:37
Speaker 1: wife's name, Mary Todd? Mary Todd. Mary Todd said, uh,
10:41
Speaker 1: you know you're gonna serve two terms as president and
10:43
Speaker 1: that's what that means, but you're gonna die before the
10:45
Speaker 1: end of the second term. And he said, well good
10:48
Speaker 1: night here. But see, I take issue with some with
10:51
Speaker 1: some of these listed historically because they're more ghostly specters
10:57
Speaker 1: than real human doppelganger. So John Dunn's um story is
11:03
Speaker 1: strictly by location. I would not call it a doppelganger
11:06
Speaker 1: one where he saw his wife a few times while
11:08
Speaker 1: he was in Paris and she was back in England
11:10
Speaker 1: and she was actually ill and their child had died.
11:12
Speaker 1: By location doesn't count. But Percy by Shelley, he saw
11:16
Speaker 1: his doppelganger and died a few weeks later in a
11:19
Speaker 1: sailing accident. That I would say that one counts in
11:21
Speaker 1: the lore. And then Catherine the Greates was pretty good too, right, Yeah,
11:25
Speaker 1: And I think Percy By Shelley's doppelganger had a T
11:27
Speaker 1: shirt on and said I'd rather be sailing made it
11:31
Speaker 1: even weirder. No, he had his T shirt said no
11:34
Speaker 1: plates because that was his third third choice. Who was
11:36
Speaker 1: the other one? Catherine the Great? Yeah, this was a
11:40
Speaker 1: real one to actually um Supposedly there was a servant
11:44
Speaker 1: right who discovered a double like that somehow got in there,
11:49
Speaker 1: fake their way in there and was sitting on the throne.
11:51
Speaker 1: So this was a case where someone was I don't
11:54
Speaker 1: think trying to, like, you know, realistically take over as queen,
11:58
Speaker 1: but at least got in there and it's like I'm
12:00
Speaker 1: gonna sit on the throne and I got past the
12:02
Speaker 1: guards because I look like you. Yeah. I also saw
12:05
Speaker 1: it interpreted as like phantasma gork too, like it didn't happen,
12:10
Speaker 1: know that it was like a phantom or adopt like
12:12
Speaker 1: a supernatural adopted doppelganger, rather than like a double or
12:15
Speaker 1: something like that. Again, not a real doppelganger to me.
12:18
Speaker 1: And then my favorite one of all time. I've known
12:21
Speaker 1: this one since I was a kid, back when I
12:23
Speaker 1: was into the Time Life mysteries books, because I think
12:25
Speaker 1: that's where I first read it. But the German poet
12:28
Speaker 1: and philosopher good To. One of the reasons I like
12:31
Speaker 1: this anecdote is because I love saying Gertz's name. He
12:36
Speaker 1: um was writing one time from Alsace to I want
12:40
Speaker 1: to say Dusseldorf, but I think that's wrong, but it works, right,
12:44
Speaker 1: I mean, sure, it's the name of that author, and
12:47
Speaker 1: he passed himself on the road and the other his
12:50
Speaker 1: doppelganger was wearing some gray outfit or whatever. And then
12:53
Speaker 1: like eight years later he was on his way from
12:55
Speaker 1: Dusseldorf to Alsace going the other way, and he realized
12:59
Speaker 1: he was wearing that same outfit that his doppelganger have
13:02
Speaker 1: been wearing eight years before, and he was like, this
13:04
Speaker 1: is pretty awesome. And that was a Time Life books thing. Yeah,
13:08
Speaker 1: I remember it very well. Yeah, that sounds about right.
13:11
Speaker 1: I didn't know how to say good It's his name
13:13
Speaker 1: at the time, though, so I was like, this really
13:15
Speaker 1: weird thing happened to goth all right, maybe we should
13:20
Speaker 1: take a little break now that we've sort of given
13:23
Speaker 1: some past examples of what may or may not be doppelgangers,
13:26
Speaker 1: and we'll talk about real doppelgangers, real life humans walking
13:30
Speaker 1: around that looked like you right after this. All right,
13:51
Speaker 1: so we mentioned, uh, the photographer um France Wis Brunell,
13:56
Speaker 1: who's been doing this project. It's called I'm Not a
13:58
Speaker 1: look Alike. Where they where he takes pictures of these people.
14:02
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, there's an exclamation point at the end of that. Yeah,
14:05
Speaker 1: I'm not a look alike. I encourage people to go
14:09
Speaker 1: check this out when they're in a safe space and
14:11
Speaker 1: you're like not driving or whatever, to look at some
14:12
Speaker 1: of these photos because it's it's amazing. I mean some
14:16
Speaker 1: of them, like I said, look to my eye, like
14:19
Speaker 1: identical twins or the other two sort of um gentlemen
14:22
Speaker 1: probably in their sixties with a little mustache. Did you
14:26
Speaker 1: see those guys, the shirtless ones. No, the picture I saw,
14:30
Speaker 1: they had on like little uh, sort of like newsboy caps.
14:35
Speaker 1: I don't know if I saw those guys. They look
14:38
Speaker 1: I mean, they look like identical twins and um those
14:41
Speaker 1: are the ones that This is the article that Emily
14:44
Speaker 1: sent me where it talked about that project, and then
14:47
Speaker 1: it got into a really interesting study because if you think, well,
14:52
Speaker 1: you know, what is a doppelganger? I've always since I
14:54
Speaker 1: was a kid, I've always sort of um realize that
14:58
Speaker 1: there are only so many facial combinations you can have.
15:01
Speaker 1: And with the amount of we talked about this over
15:03
Speaker 1: the years in the show too, like over the years
15:05
Speaker 1: and through history especially, seems to happen. If you're looking
15:09
Speaker 1: through like yearbooks from like the forties and fifties and sixties,
15:13
Speaker 1: you'll like see people that look like people you know,
15:15
Speaker 1: are like yourself. They're just only so many ways you
15:18
Speaker 1: can rearrange a face until you're bound at some point
15:21
Speaker 1: to get someone who maybe favor somebody a little bit
15:24
Speaker 1: or even more, or to the point where they look
15:26
Speaker 1: just alike. Uh. And so you might think, well, what
15:29
Speaker 1: does that have to say about what's going on inside?
15:32
Speaker 1: Is there any anything to d n A And they
15:35
Speaker 1: looked into that, right, Yeah, I guess Brunel's work caught
15:38
Speaker 1: the attention of UM A researcher named Manel Estellor from
15:43
Speaker 1: Spain from the Careers Leukemia Research Institute who said, I
15:47
Speaker 1: want to try to figure this out, and these people
15:49
Speaker 1: are like a perfect population sample. So he took I
15:52
Speaker 1: think thirty two pairs of doppelgangers, ran them through three
15:55
Speaker 1: different facial recognition programs, and half of them I guess
16:00
Speaker 1: sixteen of the pairs. As far as the a I
16:03
Speaker 1: was concerned in the programs, they were identical twins. That's
16:07
Speaker 1: what the AI took them for and all three programs, right.
16:10
Speaker 1: So they took those people and they analyzed their genomes
16:13
Speaker 1: and they found actually, these people have a lot of
16:16
Speaker 1: similar genes and even though they're not related. That was
16:20
Speaker 1: another part of the study. They went through and made
16:22
Speaker 1: sure that these people weren't like there was some unknown
16:25
Speaker 1: relation that they had to one another. They didn't. They
16:28
Speaker 1: were as genetically unrelated as two random strangers would be
16:33
Speaker 1: on the street. But they shared some some very similar
16:36
Speaker 1: genes and some key places, especially like facial construction. Yeah,
16:40
Speaker 1: and they were also uh. And again this doesn't like
16:43
Speaker 1: less than the study any to me, but they were
16:46
Speaker 1: generally from the same country or the same ethnic background. Um.
16:51
Speaker 1: Although I did see UH gender varied because there was
16:54
Speaker 1: one where it was a man and a woman who
16:56
Speaker 1: looked a lot alike uh in those photos that they
16:59
Speaker 1: put together there, which is pretty interesting. But they looked
17:02
Speaker 1: into how they matched up, uh, I think with their
17:06
Speaker 1: microbiome epigenetically, which is basically how your behaviors in your
17:12
Speaker 1: environment is going to affect your genes, and then just
17:15
Speaker 1: your straight up genome. And what they found out was
17:18
Speaker 1: they did share a lot of what are called SNPs
17:22
Speaker 1: single nucleotide polymorphisms, which are the variations in our DNA
17:27
Speaker 1: that create most of the genetic genetic variation that people
17:32
Speaker 1: have with one another. So they shared, uh a lot
17:36
Speaker 1: of them. And I wish we would have gotten like
17:38
Speaker 1: the raw numbers, because all it says is like, you know,
17:42
Speaker 1: they shared many s and p s, whereas I'd like
17:44
Speaker 1: to see sort of the actual data, which I couldn't
17:46
Speaker 1: get to. Um. But what they did find was that
17:49
Speaker 1: epigenetically and with their microbiomes, they were basically random, so
17:54
Speaker 1: it was only genetically that they shared something. Well yeah,
17:58
Speaker 1: and they said, well, actually, I think this is probably
18:00
Speaker 1: what accounts for a lot of the differences in identical twins.
18:03
Speaker 1: Like people look at identical twins and they're like, oh,
18:05
Speaker 1: you're identical, But if you really start to look at
18:08
Speaker 1: them closely. You're like, actually, there's a lot more differences
18:10
Speaker 1: than you'd think between them. And even though they share
18:14
Speaker 1: the same genes, I think of the same d n A.
18:18
Speaker 1: What makes identical twins slightly different is in their epigenome.
18:23
Speaker 1: And this this study basically found the same thing with applegangers.
18:26
Speaker 1: They can share a lot of similar genes that that
18:29
Speaker 1: give them the same facial traits or builds or um.
18:32
Speaker 1: I think even habits. They found a lot of them,
18:35
Speaker 1: Like if one smoke, the other was likely to smoke.
18:37
Speaker 1: You know, they carried their weight about the same way. Um.
18:41
Speaker 1: But they found that that, Like you said that the
18:43
Speaker 1: differences were found in their epigenome, and I don't know
18:45
Speaker 1: if I know they tested it, but I didn't see
18:48
Speaker 1: that their microbio might have provided some differences to It's
18:51
Speaker 1: basically nature versus nurture, or more to the point, it's
18:54
Speaker 1: like nature and nurture working together to make us slightly different,
18:57
Speaker 1: even when we're basically bad owned to look the same genetically. Yeah,
19:02
Speaker 1: I think the microbiome was the same as the epigenetic finding,
19:06
Speaker 1: which was I think the quote was that generally wasn't
19:10
Speaker 1: any closer than two randos. That's what they said in
19:13
Speaker 1: the paper. Randos they did, they did. I'm trying to
19:18
Speaker 1: find real quick the data the number of s MPs um.
19:24
Speaker 1: I can't find it that quick. There's a lot of
19:25
Speaker 1: numbers and weird like like capital C, lower case P,
19:30
Speaker 1: capital G. I'm like, I don't know what that is,
19:32
Speaker 1: but I will tell you this. I looked up those
19:35
Speaker 1: those older guys in the news caps. They are spitting image.
19:40
Speaker 1: And not only are they spinning image of one another,
19:42
Speaker 1: they're spinning image of the Lennox air conditioning man look
19:49
Speaker 1: exactly like that guy down to the hat. Well. I
19:52
Speaker 1: guess if that guy ever, you know, leaves the earth
19:55
Speaker 1: and they got two backups, I mean, what's it called
19:58
Speaker 1: when you get three doppel gangers together? A tropic ganger?
20:02
Speaker 1: I guess. So what I'd be curious to see is
20:05
Speaker 1: if and maybe I'll look more just for my own
20:08
Speaker 1: funzies into uh, the photographer's project, because what I'm curious
20:13
Speaker 1: about is if these like, how these people get along,
20:16
Speaker 1: and if they like formed friendships, if they liked each other,
20:20
Speaker 1: if they had similar interests. You know, that's that's pretty
20:23
Speaker 1: fascinating to me. I think so too, and again like
20:26
Speaker 1: that's that's the kind of stuff They can take a
20:29
Speaker 1: really a real turn. I guess depending on how you
20:31
Speaker 1: were raised or even like you know, or you're raising
20:34
Speaker 1: your power lines. Great, that means you're into baseball cards.
20:37
Speaker 1: That kind of thing, um that we just haven't put
20:39
Speaker 1: our finger on yet, but it does seem like, you know,
20:42
Speaker 1: it's becoming clear and clear. It's not just genetics, it's
20:45
Speaker 1: not just epigenetics. It's it's all that stuff put together.
20:49
Speaker 1: And it seems like so wildly unattainable that information, um,
20:54
Speaker 1: because it's so complicated. There's so many variables and so
20:58
Speaker 1: many factors. But if you step back and think about it,
21:00
Speaker 1: there's a finite number of variables and factors, as many
21:04
Speaker 1: as it seems to us, it's a finite number. It's
21:06
Speaker 1: not infinite, which means someday we could conceivably get a
21:10
Speaker 1: grasp on exactly what makes a person them, which I
21:15
Speaker 1: find really exciting. You know, it would be funny as
21:18
Speaker 1: if they really got along and they were like, oh
21:21
Speaker 1: my god, we have so many similarities. We look just alike.
21:24
Speaker 1: This is such a weird thing. And they were having
21:26
Speaker 1: lunch and one of them was like boy, what a
21:29
Speaker 1: shame that Hilary lost their right and the other one
21:31
Speaker 1: by unveils and make America Great again t shirt or
21:34
Speaker 1: some chops there. Fork. They just get up in part
21:37
Speaker 1: ways silently. Yeah, that would be the best case scenario,
21:41
Speaker 1: I think. Yeah. Uh so this study, um, this next
21:45
Speaker 1: one kind of irritates me a little bit. It was
21:47
Speaker 1: from and I think was well intentioned. But there was
21:51
Speaker 1: an Australian biologists name Tegan Lucas who looked at got
21:55
Speaker 1: off to a great start, looked at four thousand faces
21:59
Speaker 1: from the u US and throw uh Anthropometric Survey database,
22:04
Speaker 1: which is something the U. S Army puts together. And
22:07
Speaker 1: Ta Tigan Lucas is listening now, She's like, oh, he
22:09
Speaker 1: got off to a great start on the US Anthropometric Survey. Chuck. Well,
22:13
Speaker 1: I think Teagan Lucas overachieved because what they did was
22:17
Speaker 1: looked across eight facial features and calculated the like, the
22:23
Speaker 1: chances that you look just like someone else's one in
22:25
Speaker 1: a trillion. I see these pictures of these doppelgangers. I'm like,
22:28
Speaker 1: there's just no way because I'm looking at the evidence
22:31
Speaker 1: and it turns out that Teagan really got into like
22:35
Speaker 1: measuring the millimeter of a nostril and stuff like that,
22:39
Speaker 1: and the comparison it was just too identical. Like I
22:42
Speaker 1: think with identical twins you wouldn't get that close. No,
22:46
Speaker 1: But I think that's what she was going for, is like,
22:48
Speaker 1: you know, would it be possible for two identical people
22:53
Speaker 1: to be walking around? And one of the applications of
22:55
Speaker 1: her research is if we're creating facial recognition systems, which
22:59
Speaker 1: we done an episode on before. It was pretty eerie
23:03
Speaker 1: if I remember correctly, But if we're creating these things,
23:06
Speaker 1: if we're building cute computers to recognize people's faces, are
23:10
Speaker 1: there going to be any kind of like false positives
23:12
Speaker 1: out there? Because there's two people out there who are
23:15
Speaker 1: that similar, and the chances are really low unless we
23:21
Speaker 1: just keep going population wise, and even with the number
23:23
Speaker 1: of people out today, I frankly don't think it's that
23:26
Speaker 1: low of a chance that there are two people who
23:29
Speaker 1: are identical across eight measures of your face. And she
23:33
Speaker 1: wouldn't she wouldn't reveal what the eight measures were because
23:35
Speaker 1: apparently her work was that like groundbreaking that they She's like,
23:39
Speaker 1: I can't let anybody know what to what to hide
23:42
Speaker 1: or disguise. But those. The point is it's eight different dimensions,
23:48
Speaker 1: and like you said, I think like nostril with ear length,
23:51
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff down to the millimeter, and she
23:54
Speaker 1: found that it's like a one in a trillion chance
23:57
Speaker 1: that there are two people walking around like that. The
24:00
Speaker 1: thing is, there's eight billion people on the planet, and
24:03
Speaker 1: that's means there's no doppelgangers. It's not well, it's not
24:06
Speaker 1: close to a trillion, but it's not as far off
24:10
Speaker 1: from a trillion. Is like if there were two people
24:12
Speaker 1: on the planet. So if you have two people on
24:14
Speaker 1: the planet and a one into trillion chance that they're
24:16
Speaker 1: gonna look alike, the chance that they're going to look
24:19
Speaker 1: like is basically nothing. But as you get closer to
24:21
Speaker 1: a trillion, there's a really good chance that there are
24:24
Speaker 1: going to be two people walking around that are identical.
24:27
Speaker 1: And we're at eight millions, so we're at I think
24:29
Speaker 1: a one in a hundred and twenty five chance that
24:32
Speaker 1: today on Earth there are two people who look exactly
24:35
Speaker 1: alike across those eight measures. The point is for you
24:39
Speaker 1: and me to just be looking at stuff. We don't
24:42
Speaker 1: need those eight measures to be exactly right. If they're
24:45
Speaker 1: close enough, that's when people look like doppelgangers to you
24:48
Speaker 1: and me, but we're not artificial intelligence. We're sentient beings. Well, yeah,
24:53
Speaker 1: we're artificial, and I think we're intelligent, but we're not
24:58
Speaker 1: those two things together. Are we artificial? Sure? I just
25:02
Speaker 1: want to druin freak people out a little bit. Okay.
25:05
Speaker 1: The Josh bott in the Chuck butter Hard at work
25:06
Speaker 1: here does not compute. Well, I think we What we're
25:10
Speaker 1: arriving at is a point that we've failed to make earlier,
25:13
Speaker 1: which is there is no agreed upon definition of what
25:17
Speaker 1: constitutes adoppel ganger. Like how I like, do you have
25:20
Speaker 1: to look to someone to say you're a doppel ganger? Right?
25:24
Speaker 1: You know, like I look like the guy I look
25:27
Speaker 1: like the bass player for Jason Isabel in the four Unit,
25:31
Speaker 1: But is he my doppel ganger? Probably not? Okay. So
25:36
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why I think people would kind
25:38
Speaker 1: of look at you and then the bass player for
25:42
Speaker 1: Jason Isabel and the four Unit sure, um, and put
25:46
Speaker 1: you guys together and said, oh, they really look alike
25:48
Speaker 1: is because we use like shortcuts when we're looking at
25:52
Speaker 1: at people's faces or even just people in general. So
25:56
Speaker 1: let's say you're both wearing the same hat and the
25:58
Speaker 1: same you both have a similar beard, I'm guessing. Yeah,
26:01
Speaker 1: I don't want to name him because I don't want
26:03
Speaker 1: to just keep calling that because I love that group.
26:06
Speaker 1: His name is Jimbo Heart. And when you look at
26:08
Speaker 1: a picture of Jimbo Heart, he knows a great name
26:11
Speaker 1: to like, look him up. He's got the beard. He's
26:14
Speaker 1: you know, when I'm reading, I got on my black
26:15
Speaker 1: room glasses. I like to wear my hats these days,
26:18
Speaker 1: my you know, various sort of cowboy hats and Fedora's sure. Yeah,
26:24
Speaker 1: I mean the guy looks like me. Okay, so if
26:27
Speaker 1: you put you guys together, you both want the same glasses,
26:29
Speaker 1: You've got a beard, got hats on, and all that stuff.
26:31
Speaker 1: People would be like spitting image. Take the glasses off,
26:35
Speaker 1: shave the beard, take the hat off, and then put
26:38
Speaker 1: you guys together. How close would you really be? And
26:40
Speaker 1: probably not that close. I can tell you I can
26:43
Speaker 1: see him without a beard, and he's not nearly as close. Okay, Right,
26:47
Speaker 1: so there you go, Like we make these shortcuts with
26:50
Speaker 1: our face with our minds um to just kind of
26:53
Speaker 1: as like kind of a shorthand for like, oh that's Chuck,
26:56
Speaker 1: I don't have to analyze them anymore because that uses
26:58
Speaker 1: up a lot of brain power and energy, and I'm
27:00
Speaker 1: kind of low on carbs today, so I just know
27:03
Speaker 1: that that's Chuck where it really turned out to be
27:05
Speaker 1: Jimbo Heart the basis for the unit that's right, Uh, right,
27:12
Speaker 1: And you know you've seen this and here's a good
27:14
Speaker 1: example of how this can play tricks on people. Uh,
27:18
Speaker 1: And this is just one example. A lot of people
27:20
Speaker 1: have done that kind of fun thing where you switch
27:22
Speaker 1: out a face on someone and put it on someone else,
27:27
Speaker 1: and it's like it should be obvious, but it's like
27:30
Speaker 1: it just looks like a weird, uncanny version of that person. Uh.
27:34
Speaker 1: The one that Livia picked out was from M I
27:36
Speaker 1: T when they put George Bush's face on Dick Cheney's
27:40
Speaker 1: head and Bill Clinton's face on al. Gore said that
27:46
Speaker 1: dates the creation of that particular meme or whatever it was. Uh,
27:51
Speaker 1: the Dick Cheney one looks like you gotta look a
27:54
Speaker 1: bunch of times before you realize that's George Bush's face.
27:58
Speaker 1: Um the al or when I mean it's so clearly
28:01
Speaker 1: that's it's just kind of funny looking. But the Bush
28:05
Speaker 1: Cheney swap actually kind of worked in that I guess
28:08
Speaker 1: goes to sort of prove that you look at things
28:10
Speaker 1: like hair and uh, stuff like that as you know
28:14
Speaker 1: that big Clinton mop for that big Al Gore mop
28:17
Speaker 1: that he had, or Cheny's bald head and that's a
28:19
Speaker 1: big clue. Yeah. And also like the I think one
28:23
Speaker 1: of the foundations of the swap is that it can't
28:26
Speaker 1: be like an egregious change. Like if you remember back
28:30
Speaker 1: to I think it was Conan that used to put
28:32
Speaker 1: Steve Bushemy eyes on different celebrities and see what they
28:35
Speaker 1: look like. That's an agreed just change, it's not going
28:38
Speaker 1: to work. But it was Dick Cheney and George Bush's
28:42
Speaker 1: eyes look similar enough that if you put George Bush's
28:44
Speaker 1: eyes on Dick Cheney's face, You're not really going to
28:48
Speaker 1: notice because it's not that agreed just have a changed.
28:50
Speaker 1: And there was a study i think from seven Swinging
28:55
Speaker 1: Groovy study and it basically tried to figure out how
28:58
Speaker 1: people register face is in what order and they found
29:01
Speaker 1: that first we look at the eyes, then we look
29:03
Speaker 1: at the mouth, and then we look at the nose,
29:06
Speaker 1: and those are the things we kind of take in.
29:08
Speaker 1: But there's other research and I think This is also
29:11
Speaker 1: kind of like supported by the same study, Like when
29:15
Speaker 1: you look at someone's face, you don't go all right,
29:16
Speaker 1: let me see the eyes, got that, let me see
29:19
Speaker 1: the mouth, look at that and then the right right, Oh,
29:25
Speaker 1: I want to kill that person. No, like we just
29:28
Speaker 1: look at the whole thing, look at the whole package.
29:30
Speaker 1: Which is why it's so easy for us to overlook
29:32
Speaker 1: differences between even identical twins or doppelgangers and make people
29:37
Speaker 1: look closer together than they are, because our brains are
29:40
Speaker 1: lazy and fat. That's right. And it also depends on
29:43
Speaker 1: as far as whether you might look like someone about
29:46
Speaker 1: you know, it just sort of makes sense if you
29:48
Speaker 1: look and it's hard to say that someone's average looking.
29:50
Speaker 1: But what we mean by that is, and Livia points out,
29:53
Speaker 1: as you know, you're not six ft nine and have
29:56
Speaker 1: flaming red hair and freckles, like those things will make
29:59
Speaker 1: you very much stand out. Whereas if you live in
30:01
Speaker 1: a population of you know, Middle Georgia and you you know,
30:06
Speaker 1: you're a little tubby, you've got a beard, you've got
30:08
Speaker 1: dark hair, uh, and you dress a certain way, then
30:12
Speaker 1: you might look like a lot of people. Sure, And um,
30:16
Speaker 1: that actually raises a recent um internet sensation, a guy
30:21
Speaker 1: named Neil Douglas UM was I think flying to Ireland
30:24
Speaker 1: on a Ryanair flight and uh went to get in
30:27
Speaker 1: his seat and saw that there was somebody sitting in
30:30
Speaker 1: his seat, and the person looked up and it was
30:32
Speaker 1: his doppel gang. I mean, isn't that even more bizarre?
30:36
Speaker 1: Like it wasn't in like the back of the plane,
30:37
Speaker 1: like this guy was in his seat, which makes it
30:40
Speaker 1: even more eerie. And so they snapped a selfie and
30:43
Speaker 1: like posted it and every everyone just went bonkers because
30:46
Speaker 1: these guys had no idea who the other one was
30:48
Speaker 1: and weren't related, but they looked a lot like each other.
30:52
Speaker 1: But there's this BBC article that covered it where they
30:54
Speaker 1: basically said, okay, but let's really stop and think about this.
30:56
Speaker 1: That's amazing and the fact that he was in his
30:59
Speaker 1: in the other guy's seat is even more amazing. But
31:01
Speaker 1: how how unlikely is it that these two, you know,
31:05
Speaker 1: we're on the same plane. And they figured out that
31:07
Speaker 1: based on a number of different factors like the hair,
31:11
Speaker 1: the face, the beard, the nose, um I think the
31:14
Speaker 1: brown eyes. That there's something like maybe eighty thousand people
31:18
Speaker 1: walking around out there that looked just like them essentially. Ye,
31:23
Speaker 1: that's a lot of people. It is a lot of
31:25
Speaker 1: people that look essentially like those two enough that that
31:29
Speaker 1: the internet would go crazy if you put two of
31:31
Speaker 1: them together and said these two are strangers and they
31:33
Speaker 1: just met, uh and and posted a picture of it.
31:36
Speaker 1: It was a pretty fun picture because they're so delighted
31:39
Speaker 1: clearly with seeing each other. And then another guy. There's
31:43
Speaker 1: a triple picture somewhere too of another guy that was like, hey,
31:46
Speaker 1: I'm one of those seventy four thousand, and they put
31:49
Speaker 1: all three of them close to each other and they
31:51
Speaker 1: looked pretty similar. Um. The one sort of difference here
31:56
Speaker 1: is and height is one of the dudes was five
32:00
Speaker 1: evan the other was six three. Because there's other pictures
32:03
Speaker 1: of them out drinking together in Island, I guess they
32:06
Speaker 1: kind of hung out and stuff, which is great. Well,
32:08
Speaker 1: I read they kept running into each other and finally, okay,
32:11
Speaker 1: let's go get a pint together, Like they were at
32:13
Speaker 1: the same hotel and like they kept running into one another,
32:16
Speaker 1: so they went with it. See, if you believe in
32:18
Speaker 1: like weird fate or intervention, you might wonder if like
32:22
Speaker 1: maybe I should give some thought to what This means, like,
32:25
Speaker 1: am I supposed to do something special with this person? Right?
32:29
Speaker 1: If the movie Serendipity with John Cusack really spoke to you,
32:34
Speaker 1: I don't. I never even saw that. You mentioned that
32:36
Speaker 1: movie a lot. What happened in the movie great. I
32:38
Speaker 1: don't want to spoil it from anybody. Was there a doubelganger? No, okay,
32:42
Speaker 1: but it was. It was they kept running into one
32:45
Speaker 1: another and like it just kind of was, Oh, it's
32:47
Speaker 1: just the chance of true love, over and over. It
32:50
Speaker 1: was a good movie. Okay. Then they go to some
32:53
Speaker 1: ice cream shop in New York, famous ice cream shop.
32:55
Speaker 1: I don't remember that. I think you're talking about Midnight Cowboy. Yeah,
33:00
Speaker 1: that's right. Um, let's go get some ice creams. That
33:04
Speaker 1: was a great John voch Um there was. There was
33:08
Speaker 1: another one that came along recently too, that I think
33:11
Speaker 1: is even better than than the other one. There's a
33:13
Speaker 1: dude named Sean mccartel who was hanging around a pool
33:17
Speaker 1: in Vegas and his double, Chuck. Just look it up,
33:21
Speaker 1: Sean mccartel doppelganger. His double happened to be floating along
33:25
Speaker 1: in the same pool wearing the exact same glasses. Apparently
33:28
Speaker 1: they were the only two people at the pool wearing glasses,
33:30
Speaker 1: not sunglasses, but glasses. Glasses, the same glasses, same hat.
33:35
Speaker 1: They actually do have like the same build and same
33:37
Speaker 1: height and everything. They are the spinning one another and
33:41
Speaker 1: they were just randomly in the same pool in Las
33:44
Speaker 1: Vegas at the same time. So funny. Yeah, I think
33:47
Speaker 1: my first thought would be, like, what kind of crimes
33:50
Speaker 1: can we commit? Well, yeah, the bank mm hmm, that's
33:57
Speaker 1: my first thought. That's terrible. We're just kidding. Um, are
34:00
Speaker 1: we do for another break? Yeah? Or should we wait? Think? So, yeah,
34:03
Speaker 1: let's take a break. All right, We'll take a break
34:04
Speaker 1: and come back and sort this all out. So one
34:26
Speaker 1: of the reasons they think, chuck that um, we have
34:30
Speaker 1: like a propensity to notice doppelgangers and also just be
34:33
Speaker 1: just crazed by them is that we are really really
34:37
Speaker 1: good at picking out faces, so good in fact, that
34:41
Speaker 1: we have a region of our brain that it's starting
34:44
Speaker 1: to become clear is is intended exclusively for seeing faces.
34:51
Speaker 1: And that actually bucks the current trend of understanding with
34:54
Speaker 1: neuroscience where different parts of the brain get recruited to
34:57
Speaker 1: kind of specialize in different things from since re input
35:00
Speaker 1: over time you put a lot of sound in one
35:04
Speaker 1: part of the brain, it's gonna be like, all right, fine,
35:05
Speaker 1: I'll handle sound from now on. Um. This it seems
35:09
Speaker 1: you're born with this ability to recognize faces. Uh. The
35:13
Speaker 1: regions called the fusiform gyrus, and they've done some really
35:16
Speaker 1: interesting studies about it. And I think we should actually
35:18
Speaker 1: do an entire episode on the fusiform gyrus and face
35:22
Speaker 1: face blindness, Hubba, and can you tell them hot? I'm
35:29
Speaker 1: all about it because this one experiment is something I
35:31
Speaker 1: would actually like to do. Um. It's pretty freaky. They
35:34
Speaker 1: got people in a room, they gave them a mild
35:38
Speaker 1: electric current straight to the fusiform gyrus. Isn't that right?
35:44
Speaker 1: And they said, you know, we're gonna do this and
35:48
Speaker 1: just look at me and tell me what you see.
35:50
Speaker 1: And basically they shape shifted in front of their very
35:54
Speaker 1: face when they gave them this electrical stimulation, so it
35:59
Speaker 1: changed their person reception of what they look like. It
36:02
Speaker 1: didn't change their height or weight, or their clothing or
36:06
Speaker 1: their skin color or anything like that, but it sounds
36:09
Speaker 1: like it literally in their own perception at least transformed
36:13
Speaker 1: what their face looked liked, which has got to be
36:15
Speaker 1: really weird. Yeah, oh man, I can't imagine seeing that,
36:20
Speaker 1: especially you're seeing while you're undergoing open brain surgery and
36:23
Speaker 1: you're conscious. And then they started messing with parts of it. Right.
36:27
Speaker 1: There was a follow up study too that I find
36:30
Speaker 1: just even more fascinating. They recruited some participants who were
36:33
Speaker 1: blind from birth, so they've never seen human face ever
36:38
Speaker 1: with their eyes, and they gave them, um, they put
36:41
Speaker 1: them in an m r I and they gave them
36:44
Speaker 1: models of like three D models of faces and had
36:47
Speaker 1: them rubbed the faces, and the fusiform gyrus lit up,
36:50
Speaker 1: so like it is strictly for faces. They also they
36:54
Speaker 1: were like, okay, well maybe it's just you know, it's
36:56
Speaker 1: it's it's for other things too. They gave them three
36:58
Speaker 1: D models of cubes and other stuffs that that weren't faces.
37:03
Speaker 1: Nothing happened in the fusiform gyros. So we have a
37:05
Speaker 1: place in the brain that's strictly for recognizing faces. And
37:08
Speaker 1: I think that's probably why we can pick out doppelgangers
37:12
Speaker 1: so easily, because our our brains are kind of a
37:15
Speaker 1: tune to look for faces everywhere. Yeah, and you know,
37:18
Speaker 1: if you're thinking this might be like I mentioned, committing
37:21
Speaker 1: a crime sort of been passing. But if you think
37:23
Speaker 1: this could be a big problem as far as the
37:26
Speaker 1: advent uh and more widespread use of facial recognition AI,
37:31
Speaker 1: especially with CCTV and trying to catch bad people doing
37:35
Speaker 1: bad things. Uh. And we've talked about this in the
37:37
Speaker 1: past on I think a couple of different episodes. But
37:40
Speaker 1: that stuff works okay, but it doesn't work great with
37:45
Speaker 1: dark skin, it doesn't work great for people of color, um,
37:49
Speaker 1: black people, Asian people. It gets confused a lot. And
37:52
Speaker 1: this is already Uh, you know, people have been wrongly
37:56
Speaker 1: imprisoned because facial recognition AI has a mistake. Yeah, there's
38:02
Speaker 1: a one guy is recently's two thousand nineteen from New Jersey,
38:05
Speaker 1: UM named Nigier Parks, and he had to end up
38:09
Speaker 1: spending five grand to defend himself, spent I think, uh,
38:13
Speaker 1: twenty days in jail, possibly because he was accused or
38:18
Speaker 1: I guess AI facial recognition system accused him of shoplifting
38:22
Speaker 1: and then trying to hit a police officer with his
38:24
Speaker 1: car and um, it turns out he'd been thirty miles away,
38:28
Speaker 1: but he had been misidentified by this And I think
38:31
Speaker 1: in our episode we talked about this at length, that
38:33
Speaker 1: facial recognition systems are really good at recognizing white men's faces,
38:39
Speaker 1: but other people, it just starts to go down and
38:41
Speaker 1: down until you get to the point where a black
38:43
Speaker 1: woman's faces forty times likelier to come up with a
38:48
Speaker 1: false positive than a light skinned man. And apparently it's
38:53
Speaker 1: just the data that they're trained on. They just said,
38:55
Speaker 1: let's just give them photos of white men and I'm
38:58
Speaker 1: sure it'll be fine, and it just hasn't been fine. Well,
39:00
Speaker 1: I mean, that's one of the problems with it all.
39:02
Speaker 1: This is just it's just working from a database. So
39:04
Speaker 1: it's not like it can take a face and find
39:07
Speaker 1: someone just somewhere on planet Earth, like you gotta be
39:10
Speaker 1: on a database somehow, right. But I'm saying the AI
39:14
Speaker 1: is trained on photos, and it comes to understand a
39:18
Speaker 1: face is a face based on the photos that it's
39:20
Speaker 1: trained on. And I guess they didn't select enough, um,
39:24
Speaker 1: people of photos of people of color, photos of women.
39:27
Speaker 1: I don't know why, but it seems like they got
39:30
Speaker 1: really good at white men because they were given more
39:32
Speaker 1: photos of white men. That's that's how I take it. Yeah, No,
39:35
Speaker 1: that's how I took it to So Chuck. If let's
39:38
Speaker 1: say that you are a doppelganger of somebody, somebody famous
39:41
Speaker 1: like Madonna or Johnny Depp or Rizzo. Let's say Rizzo
39:46
Speaker 1: to just to get the kids involved. Um no, Lizzo.
39:52
Speaker 1: I was like, uh good, I was thinking back to
39:56
Speaker 1: Ratso Rizzo. I think, Um, so, if you're a doppel
40:01
Speaker 1: ganger of Lizzas, what would you do with that talent? Well, uh,
40:05
Speaker 1: you could go hang out on Hollywood Boulevard and your
40:07
Speaker 1: man's Chinese theater makes some money walking around charging five
40:11
Speaker 1: dollars a picture. You could get employed full time with
40:14
Speaker 1: an agency, um to you know, get sent out. If
40:18
Speaker 1: someone wants uh Bill Gates at their party and you
40:22
Speaker 1: are a look alike, then you can go to their
40:24
Speaker 1: party and make a couple of hundred bucks probably probably. Um.
40:30
Speaker 1: You could also work on movies. Apparently there's lots of
40:33
Speaker 1: jobs for you. Yeah, I mean this one is Um
40:38
Speaker 1: it's less face like when your body doubling someone or
40:42
Speaker 1: photo doubling or standing in kind of in that order,
40:46
Speaker 1: or did I get that wrong? Stand in is least
40:48
Speaker 1: important that you actually look like someone. But you should
40:51
Speaker 1: be the same size as somebody because they're they're lighting
40:55
Speaker 1: you for camera and stuff like that, like you can't
40:58
Speaker 1: you know, um, the rock can't have a body double
41:02
Speaker 1: or or a standing that looks like me. You know.
41:07
Speaker 1: I don't know if you were one of those like
41:08
Speaker 1: ripped T shirts all right and get away with it. Uh.
41:13
Speaker 1: But you know, if you do look like a celebrity
41:17
Speaker 1: and you want to get work as a photo double,
41:19
Speaker 1: then that certainly doesn't hurt if you look like them
41:21
Speaker 1: in the face, but it's more body size and skin
41:24
Speaker 1: tone and stuff like that is more important. But the
41:28
Speaker 1: places where it really kind of comes in handy if
41:31
Speaker 1: you really look like the person in the face and
41:33
Speaker 1: the build and the hair and the mustache and all
41:36
Speaker 1: that is to um serve as like a decoy, a
41:39
Speaker 1: political decoy, because throughout history, the more hated you are,
41:44
Speaker 1: either within your country or internationally or both, the more
41:48
Speaker 1: you need more than probably one political decoys, which is
41:52
Speaker 1: essentially somebody is saying like, yeah, I look like you,
41:54
Speaker 1: all go do the boring stuff, but also risk my
41:57
Speaker 1: life because somebody might assassinate you at some point. Yeah,
42:00
Speaker 1: And I get the sense in some of these that
42:02
Speaker 1: it's a little less like I look like you would
42:04
Speaker 1: like to do this then Kim Jong Un says, hey,
42:07
Speaker 1: you guys, come with me. You're gonna double me. Now,
42:11
Speaker 1: this is your new job, because he is of course,
42:14
Speaker 1: has been listed as having body doubles, UM to the
42:17
Speaker 1: point where there's been speculation fueled about whether or not
42:20
Speaker 1: he was sick in the hospital or actually dead. Um.
42:24
Speaker 1: Sodom Hussein had a bunch of decoys. They made a
42:27
Speaker 1: movie called The Devil's Double about a man that was
42:32
Speaker 1: his son's double. Um day, and they made a I
42:38
Speaker 1: meant to see it actually look kind of good, but
42:41
Speaker 1: that was out inn It was called the Double's Double,
42:44
Speaker 1: and Latif yahia Um basically spoke out a lot afterwards
42:48
Speaker 1: that like, I was Udi Hussein's double, and he was
42:51
Speaker 1: a very bad guy, so it was not probably the
42:54
Speaker 1: best job. Um. Apparently Stalin had at least four doubles.
43:01
Speaker 1: And then this one is amazing to me. There was
43:04
Speaker 1: a British general named Bernard Montgomery and he hired a
43:08
Speaker 1: double by the name of Emmy Clifton James great name.
43:13
Speaker 1: He was Australian, and he posed as Bernard Montgomery and
43:17
Speaker 1: went around I would guess Europe um talking about Allied
43:21
Speaker 1: plans in the hopes that like his his plans would
43:24
Speaker 1: be or that the talks would be overheard by German spies.
43:28
Speaker 1: And the plans, of course were fake Um and they
43:30
Speaker 1: were meant to serve as a decoy er distraction for
43:34
Speaker 1: the Nazis, and they think that possibly had an influence
43:37
Speaker 1: on the storming of Normandy. That's pretty cool. There's there's
43:40
Speaker 1: a movie in there somewhere, or at least a scene.
43:43
Speaker 1: It's surely easily they could have thrown it in his
43:46
Speaker 1: bonus material in the Operation Mincemeat movie. You know, did
43:49
Speaker 1: you see that? Yeah? Was it good? I liked our
43:54
Speaker 1: episode better, but yes, it was. It was. It was
43:57
Speaker 1: a fine It was a fine movie. And I need
44:00
Speaker 1: to check that out. I saw one recently. I just
44:03
Speaker 1: want It has nothing to do with anything but Um.
44:04
Speaker 1: It's a five part series in Swedish about the assassination
44:09
Speaker 1: of Um, their prime minister in Olaf Palma, and it
44:14
Speaker 1: is really fascinating because they think that one of the
44:19
Speaker 1: main witnesses was actually the assassin and they kind of
44:23
Speaker 1: recreate how it would have happened and they dive into
44:25
Speaker 1: his life. It's really really good. It's worth watching. I
44:27
Speaker 1: think that's on Netflix too. By the way, I don't
44:30
Speaker 1: work for Netflix. Um, do you got anything else? I
44:34
Speaker 1: got nothing else that's doppelgangers, then, everybody, I hope you
44:39
Speaker 1: enjoyed this one. I sure did. I know chucked it.
44:42
Speaker 1: And if you want to know more about doppelgangers, you
44:44
Speaker 1: can start searching on the internet and there's a lot
44:46
Speaker 1: of cool posts from social media people meeting their doppelgangers
44:50
Speaker 1: that will just knock your socks off. And since I
44:52
Speaker 1: said that, of course it's time for listener mail. Uh.
44:57
Speaker 1: This is in response to the Kissing Cousins episod zode
45:01
Speaker 1: from a friend from the Ashkenazi Jewish community. I've got
45:05
Speaker 1: point two percent Ashkenazi and me. Oh yeah, I also
45:10
Speaker 1: have some and Neanderthal too. All right, hey, guys, just
45:14
Speaker 1: listen to the episode Kissing Cousins. I am from an
45:17
Speaker 1: insular Ashkenazi Jewish community. I'm sure you understand this. Being
45:21
Speaker 1: insular makes the gene pool that much smaller. We also
45:24
Speaker 1: tend to marry younger than the rest of the Western world. Thus,
45:26
Speaker 1: and pretty much every high school in our community we
45:29
Speaker 1: do genetic testing for recessive genes for defects or serious
45:32
Speaker 1: illnesses common in Ashkenazi Jews. We don't get the results
45:37
Speaker 1: to the tests, only an I D number. A big
45:39
Speaker 1: part of our culture is being set up by matchmakers
45:43
Speaker 1: before meeting for the first time. Both families will call
45:45
Speaker 1: the screening center with our I D number and be
45:48
Speaker 1: told of it's safe for them to go ahead with
45:50
Speaker 1: the matchmaking. It's amazing it is. I met my current
45:53
Speaker 1: partner on my own and we decided we were ready
45:55
Speaker 1: to settle down. It was a little scarier to call
45:58
Speaker 1: and see if we were compatible, but because we had
46:00
Speaker 1: already decided we wanted to be together. Can you imagine that? Yeah? No,
46:04
Speaker 1: I mean, I bet that was pretty nerve racking. Uh.
46:07
Speaker 1: The call was more to see if we need to
46:08
Speaker 1: speak to a geneticist before having children than to see
46:11
Speaker 1: if we should get together for the first time at all.
46:13
Speaker 1: But thankfully we were good to go. Uh. Separately, I
46:16
Speaker 1: had a close friend whose husband passed away a few
46:18
Speaker 1: years ago. She had the option of marrying her brother
46:20
Speaker 1: in law, remember we talked about that in the episode,
46:24
Speaker 1: which she had no interest in doing. She did to
46:27
Speaker 1: take a pair of his shoes though, and spit on
46:29
Speaker 1: them rather than him, so that part of the old
46:34
Speaker 1: test is kind of still kept in some places. Uh.
46:37
Speaker 1: And of course I'm not speaking for all Oshka Nazi,
46:39
Speaker 1: choose only what I see in my community. I just
46:41
Speaker 1: thought you might be interested to know how a group
46:44
Speaker 1: is trying to keep tradition while staying safe enough to
46:47
Speaker 1: date with science in the twenty one century. Uh. And
46:50
Speaker 1: this is a lovely sign off here, wishing you the
46:52
Speaker 1: strength to continue for a long time coming nice. And
46:57
Speaker 1: that's from Elkie. Thanks a lot, Elkie. That was a
47:00
Speaker 1: great email. I appreciate that big time. And if you
47:02
Speaker 1: want to be like Elki and send us a super
47:04
Speaker 1: fascinating email, you can do that too. All you have
47:07
Speaker 1: to do is right to Stuff podcast at iHeart radio
47:12
Speaker 1: dot com, Press send and see what happens, Right, Chuck,
47:17
Speaker 1: that's right. Stuff You should know is a production of
47:22
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit
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47:29
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