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SYSK Gets Weird Playlist: Doppelgängers: Hey you, you're me! · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: I think I even say in the episode that I
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: remember learning about doppelgangers from those time-life books about the
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: paranormal back when I was a kid. Well, fast forward
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: to when I'm a grown-up, a.k.a. now, I was really
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: glad to learn that they're an actual thing. There are
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: people walking around who have a twin that they're in
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: no way related to, and the stories behind them tend
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: to be very interesting. I'm out. This is the last
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: one for me, so let me say thanks for listening
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: to our playlist.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck,
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: and Jerry's here, too. And this is Stuff You Should Know,
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: the day after Labor Day edition, which Chuck loves.
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, Emily showed me that article that informed
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: part of this episode the other day. Yeah. And we'll
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: get to it, but I started looking at this photographer's
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: doppelganger photo series.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: And boy, some of those are crazy similar.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what about the two bears with their shirts off?
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: Those guys struck me as extremely close.
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: The two women with the bangs and the black tank
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: tops looked like identical twins to me. I could not
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: tell them apart.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like we shouldn't tease anybody anymore. There's
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: a guy, and like you said, we'll get to him
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: in a little bit, or he'll figure in in a
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: little bit, I should say. But he's a Montreal, I
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: guess a Quebecois photographer, Francois Brunel. And for 20 years,
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: he's been assembling... pictures of doppelgangers, people who already knew
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: they had a doppelganger and wrote in doppelgangers he's looked
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: for and found on the street. And he brings them
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: together into his studio and photographs them together. But he
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: does some like really cool stuff with it. It's not
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: just like, here, you stand here and you stand next
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: to him. The way that he poses them and dresses
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: them and everything, like it creates like a sense of
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: intimacy between them. It makes you think you're looking at
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: identical twin photos.
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, you know, some of them people favor
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: one another. And then when you have them styled to
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: look alike and posed alike, that informs what you're seeing.
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: But a handful of them, it was they look so
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: much like identical twins that it's just it's weird to
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: think that you could walk down the street one day
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: and meet someone who looks exactly like you.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And I mean, like that is got to be
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: pretty eerie. Luckily, one of the great things about social
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: media is that people can post their random encounters. You
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: got a phone with a camera on it. You got
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: access to social media through that phone. You can just
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: snap a picture of you and your doppelganger, post it
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: to the internet, and let everyone go crazy. And that
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: does happen, it seems like, from time to time. But
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: this dude's whole jam, it's called I'm Not a Lookalike
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: with an exclamation point. It sounds like a Disney movie
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: from the 60s or something. But that's Francois Brunel's 20-year series.
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and not just... hey, Chuck, you look like every
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: tubby guy with a beard and glasses. It's like, that's lazy.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: I think when you're in the public eye, people tend
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: to do things like that to say, okay, you look
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: like all of these people. We're talking like real lookalikes.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: Which I, you know, I think I've gotten a couple
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: here and there over the years that I was like, okay,
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: I could see that for sure. But doppelgangers are different.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So doppelganger, if you haven't just surmised already, it's
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: a German word at its origin. And it's not one
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: of those really clever German words. It really just means
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: double goer or a different interpretation is double walker. And
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: it's not some super old, like medieval word. It was
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: actually coined at the end of the 18th century by
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: an author named Jean-Paul. which is an unlikely German name
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: if you ask me. But he wrote a book called Siebenkass. Yeah, Siebenkass.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: I nailed it. And that book was about a man
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: who had a doppelganger, right?
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I think John Paul's hiding something with that name.
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: I do too.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: He's actually a double.
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: I think there's a Dusseldorf at the end or something
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: that he left off.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so he wrote about it in that novel, but
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: as Livia is keen to point out, Livia helped us
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: with this one, he sort of mixes up the words.
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: When he was actually talking about a lookalike human, he
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: used the word with a T, doppeltganger, but did use
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: the word doppelganger in there as a meal with two
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: courses being served together. So I don't know, things just
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: got a little confused or people thought it was just
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: fine to drop the T. But doppelganger became the eventual
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: word that we use for, you know, a non-related lookalike.
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: And that's I don't know if we pointed that out.
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: The obvious thing here is that you're not not related
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: to these people at all.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And the other thing about a doppelganger is, again,
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: like you said, it's not like you bear a passing
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: resemblance or you favor one another. Like you're as close
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: to the person's double body double as you can get.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: And the closer you are, the more of a doppelganger
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: you are, basically. Right. But Jean-Paul, I can't say his
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: name any other way, he coined those terms. So it's
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: funny that he kind of got it wrong. Everybody else
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: is like, no, we're going to drop the T, like
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: you said. But the fact that he coined the term
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: doppelganger doesn't mean he invented the concept. It's actually a
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: much older concept. It just didn't have the same name
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: that we use now. Apparently, there was a longstanding superstition
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: in England, in Germany, dating back, I think, to the
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: medieval age, maybe before Chuck, where if you saw your
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: doppelganger three times, it meant you were about to die.
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: And that's still a, I think people still kind of
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: believe that one.
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And that's, I mean, there are all kinds of
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: old pieces of folklore in just about every country you
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: can explore that has some sort of, and it's usually not,
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: if you find your doppelganger, then, you know, good luck
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: will come your way. It always seems like it's some
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: kind of spooky negative thing will happen, whether you see
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: them three times, or whether, I mean, there was one,
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: I think, in the Norse mythology, where a spirit appears.
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: This one's just a little weird. It appears just like you,
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: but it beats you to wherever you're going. So if
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: you're traveling on a journey, your doppelganger would beat you there,
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: and people think that you would have arrived earlier. I
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: don't know if that's the solves tardiness for the North mythology,
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: but that one's not super evil, but it's usually, especially
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: when you get into literature, uh, some sort of, you know,
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: evil force or evil twin that's come along to wreck
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: things for you. Yeah.
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: And that Norse one that arrives, I just want to
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: put a button on that. Cause I did a little research. It, um,
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: it's called the Varduger. And the reason I know how
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: to pronounce it is because I looked up what the
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: O with the slash is pronounced like. And it's the
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: same thing as an O with the umlaut.
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: I didn't know that before, did you?
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: Well, you might be a little more of a metal
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: fan than me.
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: It's cool looking, just like the umlaut.
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: Super cool. I think it's cooler than the umlaut. It's
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: got like a slash through it, you know, like, take
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: that O. Whereas the umlaut's like, I'm adorning this O.
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: It's a little different.
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: All right. Edgar Allan Poe wrote a story called William Wilson. Uh,
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: sort of like I mentioned before about, you know, evil
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: things happening and narrator meets a boy at school. Uh,
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: and this one had the same name, I'm presuming William Wilson.
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: Otherwise it'd be a weird title. And this boy though
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: only speaks in a whisper. So, uh, it seems like
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: all through literature, it's always some sort of a creepy
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: shadowy figure.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's also Dostoevsky put kind of a spin on
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: it where he introduced a doppelganger to the main character
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: in a novel called, or a novella, I think, called
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: The Double. And I love this. In it, the doppelganger
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: is like a more likable version of the main character
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: and ends up breaking the main character mentally. I like that.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: I could totally see that. You know, like if this
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: imposter comes along or this other version of you comes
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: along and people are like, I like you a lot more.
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: It reminds me, have you seen that Paul Rudd show,
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: Living With Yourself? No. I don't know how it escaped,
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: but they did a season of it in 2019, didn't
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: follow up on it, but he plays himself and his
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: doppelganger to great comedic effect. But it's also... Like really
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: fascinating and interesting. It's a really great show. It's on Netflix.
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: Well, that's the other thing. And we'll talk about some
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: more in history. But, of course, with TV, oftentimes it's
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: flipped to a more fun thing. And it's played for laughs.
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: I don't think Three's Company had a doppelganger episode, but
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: it wouldn't surprise me. Because it can be played for
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: sort of mixed identity hijinks as well. Totally.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: Totally. Like one where Mr. Furley was into Jack, but
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: it was really his doppelganger.
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I mean, it'd probably be like his twin
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: brother who came to visit in that case, but.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: This still counts. An unknown twin still in the canon
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: counts as a doppelganger.
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: Do you think?
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: Well, yeah, I think so.
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: All right. Well, you just negated what I said, that
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: they're not related, but. Well, okay.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: That's true. Once you find out, here's the thing. This
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: actually proves your point, Chuck. Once the characters find out, oh,
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: it's a twin, mystery solved, no longer a doppelganger, it
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: becomes a twin. But up to that point when they're
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: crossing paths with one another and never in the same
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: room at the same time.
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: That's a central mystery.
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: It seems doppelganger. Yes, exactly.
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: But Furley doesn't have a brother. Or does he?
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: Why is he acting so weird?
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: There have been some true historical figures over the years
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: that bought into this stuff. Abraham Lincoln. He and his wife,
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: they had all kinds of kind of interesting beliefs.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: It was the age of spiritualism.
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. So you have to take that into consideration,
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: I think. But Lincoln supposedly saw his image three times,
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: I think, in the mirror in 1860, which.
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: What was his wife's name? Mary Todd?
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: Mary Todd.
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: Mary Todd said, you know, you're going to serve two
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: terms as president. That's what that means. But you're going
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: to die before the end of the second term.
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: And he said... Well, good night, dear.
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: But see, I take issue with some of these listed
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: historically because they're more ghostly specters than real human doppelgangers.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: So John Donne's story is strictly by location. I would
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: not call it a doppelganger one where he saw his
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: wife a few times while he was in Paris and
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: she was back in England and she was actually ill
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: and their child had died. By location doesn't count. But
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: Percy Bysshe Shelley, he saw his doppelganger and died a
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: few weeks later in a sailing accident. I would say
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: that one counts in the lore. And then Catherine the
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: Great's was pretty good too, right?
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think Percy Bysshe Shelley's doppelganger had a
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: t-shirt on that said, I'd rather be sailing.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: Which made it even weirder.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: No, his t-shirt said no plates because that was his
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: third choice.
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: Who was the other one?
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: Catherine the Great?
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this was a real one too, actually. Supposedly there
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: was a servant, right, who discovered a double like that
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: somehow got in there, faked their way in there, and
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: was sitting on the throne. So this was a case
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: where someone was, I don't think, trying to like, you know,
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: realistically take over as queen, but at least got in
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: there and was like, I'm going to sit on the
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: throne and I got past the guards because I look
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: like you.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I also saw it interpreted as like phantasmagoric too.
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: Oh, like it didn't happen?
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: No, that it was like a phantom or like a
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: supernatural doppelganger rather than like a double or something like that.
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: 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 Goethe, one of the reasons I like this
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: anecdote is because I love saying Goethe's name. Mm-hmm. He
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: was riding one time from Alsace to, I want to
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: say Dusseldorf, but I think that's wrong. But it works, right?
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: I mean, sure. It's the name of that author.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: And he passed himself on the road. And his doppelganger
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: was wearing some gray outfit or whatever. And then like
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: eight years later, he was on his way from Dusseldorf
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: to Alsace going the other way. And he realized he
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: was wearing that same outfit that his doppelganger had been
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: wearing eight years before. And he was like, this is
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: pretty awesome.
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: And that was a Time Life Books thing?
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I remember it very well. Yeah.
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: That sounds about right.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: I didn't know how to say Goethe's name at the time, though.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: So I was like, this really weird thing happened to Goethe.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: Maybe we should take a little break now that we've
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: sort of given some past examples of what may or
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: may not be doppelgangers. And we'll talk about real doppelgangers,
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: real live humans walking around that look like you right
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: after this. All right, so we mentioned the photographer, Francois Brunel,
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: who's been doing this project. It's called I'm Not a Lookalike,
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: where he takes pictures of these people.
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry, Chuck. There's an exclamation point at the end
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: of that. Yeah.
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: I'm not a lookalike. I encourage people to go check
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: this out when they're in a safe space and you're
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: not driving or whatever to look at some of these
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: photos because it's amazing. I mean, some of them, like
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: I said, look to my eye like identical twins. The
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: other two sort of gentlemen probably in their 60s with
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: the little mustache. Did you see those guys?
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: The shirtless ones? No. No.
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: The picture I saw they had on like little, uh,
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: sort of like a newsboy caps.
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: I don't know if I saw those guys.
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: They look, I mean, they look like identical twins and, um,
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: so cool. Those are the ones that this is the
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: article that Emily sent me where it talked about that project.
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: And then it got into a really interesting study because
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: if you think, well, you know, what is a doppelganger?
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: I've always, since I was a kid, I've always sort of, um,
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: realize that there are only so many facial combinations you
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: can have and with the amount of we talked about
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: this over the years in the show too like over
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: the years and through history uh especially seems to happen
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: if you're looking through like yearbooks from like the 40s
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: and 50s and 60s you'll like see people that look
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: like people you know or like yourself there are just
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: only so many ways you can rearrange a face until
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: you're bound at some point to get someone who maybe
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: favors somebody a little bit or even more or to
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: the point where they look just alike and And so
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: you might think, well, what does that have to say
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: about what's going on inside? Is there anything to DNA?
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: And they looked into that, right?
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess Brunel's work caught the attention of a
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: researcher named Manel Esteller from Spain, from the Carreras Leukemia
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: Research Institute, who said, I want to try to figure
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: this out. And these people are like a perfect population sample.
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: So he took, I think, 32 pairs of doppelgangers. ran
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: them through three different facial recognition programs. And half of them,
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: I guess 16 of the pairs, as far as the
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: AI was concerned in the programs, they were identical twins.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: That's what the AI took them for in 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
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: were as genetically unrelated as two random strangers would be
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: on the street. But they shared some very similar genes
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: in some key places, especially like facial construction.
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And they were also, and again, this doesn't like
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: lessen the study any to me, but they were generally
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: from the same country or the same ethnic background. Although
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: I did see it gender varied because there was one
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: where it was a man and a woman who looked
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: a lot alike in those photos that they put together,
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: which is pretty interesting. But they looked into how they
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: matched up, I think, with their microbiome epigenetically, which is
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: basically how your behaviors in your environment is going to
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: affect your genes. And then just your straight up genome.
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: And what they found out was they did share a
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: lot of what are called SNPs, single nucleotide polymorphisms, which
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: are the variations in our DNA that create most of
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: the genetic variation that people have with one another. So
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: they shared a lot of them. And I wish we
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: would have gotten like the raw numbers because all it
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: says is like, you know, they shared many SNPs, whereas
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: I'd like to see sort of the actual data, which
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: I couldn't get to. But what they did find was
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: that epigenetically and with their microbiomes, they were basically random.
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: So it was only genetically that they shared something.
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: Well, yeah. And they said, well, actually, I think this
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: is probably what accounts for a lot of the differences
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: in identical twins. Like people look at identical twins and
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: they're like, oh, you're identical. But if you really start
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: to look at them closely, you're like, actually, there's a
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: lot more differences than you'd think between them. And even
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: though they share the same genes, I think 99% of
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: the same DNA, what makes identical twins slightly different is
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: in their epigenome. And this study basically found the same
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: thing with doppelgangers. They can share a lot of similar
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: genes that give them the same facial traits or builds
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: or I think even habits they found. A lot of
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: them Like if one smoked, the other was likely to smoke.
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: You know, they carried their weight about the same way.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: But they found that, like you said, the differences were
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: found in their epigenome. And I don't know if, I
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: know they tested it, but I didn't see that their
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: microbiome might have provided some differences too. It's basically nature
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: versus nurture, or more to the point, it's like nature
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: and nurture working together to make us slightly different, even
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: when we're basically bound to look the same genetically.
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the microbiome was the same as the
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: epigenetic finding, which was, I think the quote was, it
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: generally wasn't any closer than two randos.
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: Gotcha.
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: That's what they said in the paper, randos.
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: They did. They did. I'm trying to find real quick the...
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: The data? The number of SMPs. I can't find it
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: that quick. There's a lot of numbers and weird, like,
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: capital C, lowercase p, capital G. I'm like, I don't
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: know what that is. But I will tell you this.
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: I looked up those older guys in the news caps.
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: They are spitting image. Yeah. And not only are they
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: spitting image of one another, they're spitting image of the
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: Lennox air conditioning man. They look exactly like him. that guy.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: Down to the hat.
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: Well, I guess if that guy ever, you know, leaves
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: the earth and they've got two backups.
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: I mean, what's it called when you get three doppelgangers together?
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: I don't know. A droppelganger?
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: I guess so.
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: What I'd be curious to see is if, and maybe
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: I'll look more just for my own funsies into... the
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: photographer's project, because what I'm curious about is if these,
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: like how these people get along and if they like
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: formed friendships, if they liked each other, if they had
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: similar interests, you know, that's, that's pretty fascinating to me.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: I think so too. And again, like that's, that's the
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: kind of stuff that can take a, a real turn,
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: I guess, depending on how you were raised or even like,
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: you know, were you raised in your power lines? Great.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: That means you're into baseball cards, that kind of thing
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: that we just haven't put our finger on yet. But
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: it does seem like, you know, it's becoming clearer and clearer.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: It's not just genetics. It's not just epigenetics. It's all
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: of that stuff put together. And it seems like so
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: wildly unattainable, that information that because it's so complicated and
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: there's so many variables and so many factors. But if
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: you step back and think about it, there's a finite
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: number of variables and factors. As many as it seems
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: to us, it's a finite number. It's not infinite, which
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: means someday we could conceivably get a grasp on exactly
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: what makes a person them, which I find really exciting.
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: You know what would be funny is if they really
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: got along and they were like, oh my God, we
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: have so many similarities. We look just alike. this is
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: such a weird thing. And they were having lunch and
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: one of them was like, boy, what a shame that
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: Hillary lost the right. And the other one might unveils
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: a Make America Great Again t-shirt or something.
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: Drops their fork.
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: They just get up and part ways silently. Yeah.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: That would be the best case scenario, I think.
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So this study, this next one kind of irritates
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: me a little bit. It was from 2015 and I
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: think was well-intentioned, but there was an Australian biologist who
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: named Tegan Lucas, who got off to a great start,
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: looked at 4,000 faces from the U.S. Anthropometric Survey database,
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: which is something the U.S. Army puts together.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: Tegan Lucas is listening to this now. She's like, oh,
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: you got off to a great start on that U.S.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: Anthropometric Survey, Chuck.
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: Well, I think Tegan Lucas overachieved because what they did
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: was looked across eight facial features and calculated like the
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: chances that you'll look just like someone else is one
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: in a trillion. I see these pictures of these doppelgangers.
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: I'm like, there's just no way because I'm looking at
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: the evidence. And it turns out that Tegan really got
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: into like measuring the millimeter of a nostril and stuff
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: like that. And the comparison, it was just too identical.
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: Like I think with identical twins, you wouldn't get that close.
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: No, but I think that's what she was going for
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: is like, you know, would it be possible for two
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: identical people to be walking around? And one of the
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: applications of our research is if we're creating facial recognition systems,
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: which we've done an episode on before, it was pretty
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: eerie if I remember correctly. But if we're creating these things,
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: if we're building computers to recognize people's faces, are there
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: going to be any kind of like false positives out
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: there because there's two people out there who are that similar?
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: And the chances are, really low unless we just keep
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: going population-wise. And even with the number of people out today,
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: I frankly don't think it's that low of a chance
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: that there are two people who are identical across eight
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: measures of your face. And she wouldn't reveal what the
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: eight measures were because apparently her work was that groundbreaking
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: that she's like, I can't let anybody know what to
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: hide or disguise.
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: But the point is it's eight different dimensions. And like
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: you said, I think like nostril width, ear length, that
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: kind of stuff, down to the millimeter. And she found
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: that it's like a one in a trillion chance that
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: there are two people walking around like that. The thing
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: is there's eight billion people on the planet.
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: So that means there's no doppelgangers.
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: Well, it's not close to a trillion, but it's not
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: as far off from a trillion as like if there
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: were two people on the planet. So if you have
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: two people on the planet and a one in a
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: trillion chance that they're going to look alike, the chance
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: that they're going to look like is basically nothing. But
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: as you get closer to a trillion, there is a
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: really good chance that there are going to be two
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: people walking around that are identical. And we're at eight million.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: So we're at, I think, a one in 125 chance
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: that today on Earth there are two people who look
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: exactly alike across those eight measures. The point is for
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: you and me to just be looking at stuff.
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: Uh-huh.
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: We don't need those eight measures to be exactly right.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: If they're close enough, that's when people look like doppelgangers
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: to you and me. But we're not artificial intelligence. We're
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: sentient beings. Right.
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah, we're artificial. And I think we're intelligent. But
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: we're not those two things together.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: Are we artificial? Sure.
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: I just want to try and freak people out.
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: A little bit. Oh, okay.
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: The Josh bot and the Chuck bot are hard at
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: work here.
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: Does not compute.
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: Well, I think what we're arriving at is a point
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: that we failed to make earlier, which is there is
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: no agreed upon definition of what constitutes a doppelganger. Like
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: how alike do you have to look to someone to
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: say you're a doppelganger?
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: You know, like I look like the guy, I look
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: like the bass player for Jason Isbell in the 400 unit.
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: But is he my doppelganger? Probably not.
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: Okay, so one of the reasons why I think people
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: would kind of look at you and then the bass
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: player for.
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: … Jason Isbell in the 400 unit.
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: Sure. And put you guys together and said, oh, they
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: really look alike is because … we use like shortcuts
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: when we're looking at, at people's faces or even just
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: people in general. So let's say you're both wearing the
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: same hat and the same, you both have a similar beard,
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: I'm guessing. Yeah.
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: I want to name him cause I don't want to
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: just keep calling that cause I love that group. Uh,
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: his name is Jimbo Hart. And when you look at
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: a picture of Jimbo Hart.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: He, you know, it's a great name too.
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: Like look him up. He's got the beard. He's, you know,
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: when I'm reading, I got on my black room glasses.
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: I like to wear my hats these days. My, uh,
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: you know, various sort of cowboy hats and fedoras.
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, the guy looks like me.
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: Okay. So if you put you guys together, you're both
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: wearing the same glasses, you got a beard, you got
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: hats on and all that stuff. People would be like
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: spitting image, but take the glasses off, shave the beard,
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: take the hat off and then put you guys together.
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: How close would you really be? And probably not that close.
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: I can tell you, I can see him without a
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: beard and he's not nearly as close.
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: OK, right. So there you go. Like we make these
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: shortcuts with our face or with our minds to just
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: kind of as like kind of a shorthand for like, oh,
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: that's Chuck. I don't have to analyze them anymore because
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: that uses up a lot of brain power and energy.
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: And I'm kind of low on carbs today. So I
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: just know that that's Chuck where it really turned out
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: to be Jimbo Hart. The basis for.
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: The 400 unit.
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: Uh, right. And you know, you've seen this and here's
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: a good example of how this can play tricks on people. Uh,
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: and this is just one example. A lot of people
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: have done that kind of fun thing where you switch
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: out a, a face on someone and put it on
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: someone else. And it's like, it should be obvious, but
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: it's like, it just looks like a weird uncanny version
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: of that person.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: Uh, the one that Livia picked out was from MIT
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: when they put George Bush's face on Dick Cheney's head.
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: And Bill Clinton's face on Al Gore's head, that dates
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: the creation of that particular meme or whatever it was.
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: The Dick Cheney one looks like you got to look
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: a bunch of times before you realize that's George Bush's face.
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: The Al Gore one, I mean, it's so clearly Clinton.
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: It's just kind of funny looking. But the Bush-Cheney swap
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: actually kind of worked in that, I guess, goes to
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: sort of prove that you look at things like hair.
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: And stuff like that as, you know, that big Clinton
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: mop or that big Al Gore mop that he had
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: or Cheney's bald head. And that's a big clue.
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And also like the I think one of the
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: foundations of this swap is that it can't be like
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: an egregious change. Right. Like if you remember back to,
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: I think it was Conan that used to put Steve
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: Buscemi eyes on different celebrities and see what they look like.
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: That's an egregious change. It's not going to work. That
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: was great. Dick Cheney and George Bush's eyes look similar
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: enough that if you put George Bush's eyes on Dick
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: Cheney's face, you're not really going to notice because it's
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: not that egregious of a change. And there was a study,
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: I think, from 1977. swinging, groovy study. And it basically
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: tried to figure out how people register faces in what order.
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: And they found that first we look at the eyes,
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: then we look at the mouth, and then we look
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: at the nose. And those are the things we kind
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: of take in. But there's other research, and I think
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: this is also kind of like supported by the same study.
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: Like when you look at someone's face, you don't go,
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: all right, let me see the eyes. You got that.
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: Let me see the mouth. Right. And then the nose.
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: That makes you a serial killer.
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: Right. Right. Oh, I want to kill that person. Right. No,
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: like we just look at the whole thing, look at
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: the whole package, which is why it's so easy for
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: us to overlook differences between even identical twins or doppelgangers
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: and make people look closer together than they are because
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: our brains are lazy and fat.
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: That's right. And it also depends on as far as
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: whether you might look like someone about, you know, it
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: just sort of makes sense if you look, and it's
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: hard to say that someone's average looking, but what we
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: mean by that is, and Livia points out is, you know,
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: you're not six foot nine and have flaming red hair
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: and freckles. Like, Those things will make you very much
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: stand out. Whereas if you live in a population of,
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: you know, middle Georgia and you, you know, you're a
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: little tubby, you've got a beard, you got dark hair,
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: and you dress a certain way, then you might look
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: like a lot of people.
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: Sure. And that actually raises a recent internet sensation. A
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: guy named Neil Douglas was, I think, flying to Ireland
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: on a Ryanair flight. Yeah. And 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 doppelganger.
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: It was so great.
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: I mean, isn't that even more bizarre? Like it wasn't
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: in like the back of the plane. Like this guy
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: was in his seat, too, which makes it even more eerie.
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: And so they snapped a selfie and, like, posted it.
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: And everyone just went bonkers because these guys had no
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: idea who the other one was. They weren't related. But
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: they looked a lot like each other. But there was
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: this BBC article that covered it where they basically said, OK,
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: but let's really stop and think about this. That's amazing.
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: And the fact that he was in the other guy's
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: seat is even more amazing. But how unlikely is it
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: that these two, you know— were on the same plane.
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: And they figured out that based on a number of
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: different factors, like the hair, the face, the beard, the nose,
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: I think the brown eyes, that there's something like maybe
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: 80,000 people walking around out there that look just like them, essentially.
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, 74,000. That's a lot of people.
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: It is a lot of people that look essentially like
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: those two enough that the internet would go crazy if
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: you put two of them together and said, these two
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: are strangers and they just met. And posted a picture
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: of it.
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: It was a pretty fun picture because they're so delighted, clearly,
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: with seeing each other. And then another guy, there's a
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: triple picture somewhere, too, of another guy that was like, hey,
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: I'm one of those 74,000. And they put all three
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: of them close to each other and they look pretty similar.
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: The one sort of difference here is in height is
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: one of the dudes was 5'7, the other was 6'3,
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: because there's other pictures of them. out drinking together in Ireland.
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: I guess they kind of hung out and stuff, which
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: is great.
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: Well, I read they kept running into each other and
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: finally were like, okay, let's go get a pint together.
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: Like they were at the same hotel and like they
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: kept running into one another. So they went with it.
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: See, if you believe in like weird fate or intervention,
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: you might wonder if like, maybe I should give some
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: thought to what this means. Like, am I supposed to
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: 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 2: I never even saw that. You mentioned that movie a lot.
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: What happened in that movie?
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: I don't want to spoil it for anybody.
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: Was there a doppelganger? No. Oh, okay.
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: But they kept running into one another, and it just
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: kind of was like.
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: Oh, it's just the chance of true love over and over.
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: It was a good movie, okay?
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: Didn't they go to some ice cream shop in New York?
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: Famous ice cream shop?
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: I don't remember that. I think you're talking about Midnight Cowboy. Okay.
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. Let's go get some ice cream.
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: That was a great Jon Voight, Chuck. There was another
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: one that came along recently, too, that I think is
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: even better than the other one. There's a dude named
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: Sean McArdle who is hanging around a pool in Vegas.
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: And his double, Chuck, just look it up, Sean McArdle doppelganger.
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: His double happened to be floating along in the same
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: pool wearing the exact same glasses. Apparently, they were the
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: only two people at the pool wearing glasses. Not sunglasses,
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: but glasses glasses. Okay. The same glasses, same hat. They
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: actually do have like the same build and same height
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: and everything. They are the spitting image of one another.
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: And they were just randomly in the same pool in
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: Las Vegas at the same time.
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: That's so funny.
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: I think my first thought would be like, what kind
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: of crimes can we commit? Yeah.
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: Well, yeah. We'll get to that in a different episode.
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: Let's rob a bank.
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm. That's my first thought.
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: That's terrible. We're just kidding. Are we due for another break?
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: Or should we wait?
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: I think so. Yeah, let's take a break. All right.
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: We'll take a break and come back and sort this
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: all out.
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: So one of the reasons I think, Chuck, that we
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: have like a propensity to notice doppelgangers and also just
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: be just crazed by them is that we are really,
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: really good at picking out faces. So good, in fact,
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: that we have a region of our brain that it's
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: starting to become clear is intended exclusively for seeing faces, right?
• 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 sensory input over time.
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: You put a lot of sound in one part of
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: the brain, it's going to be like, all right, fine,
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: I'll handle sound from now on. This, it seems you're
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: born with. this ability to recognize faces. The region's called
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: the fusiform gyrus. And they've done some really interesting studies
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: about it. And I think we should actually do an
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: entire episode on the fusiform gyrus and face blindness.
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: Hubba hubba.
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: I know. Can you tell I'm hot?
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: I'm all about it. Because this one experiment is something
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: I would actually like to do. It's pretty freaky. They
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: got people in a room. They gave them a mild
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: electric current. straight to the fusiform gyrus. Isn't that right?
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: And they said, you know, we're going to do this
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: and just look at me and tell me what you see.
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: And basically they shapeshifted in front of their very face
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: when they gave them this electrical stimulation. So it changed
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: their perception of what they look like. It didn't change
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: their height or weight or their clothing or their skin
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: color or anything like that. But it sounds like it literally,
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: in their own perception at least, transformed what their face
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: looked like, which has got to be really weird.
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Oh, man, I can't imagine seeing that, especially while
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: you're undergoing open brain surgery and you're conscious. And then
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: they start messing with parts of it, right?
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: There was a follow-up study, too, that I find just
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: even more fascinating. They recruited some participants who were blind
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: from birth, so they've never seen a human face ever
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: with their eyes. And they gave them— they put them in
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: an MRI, and they gave them models of, like, 3D
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: models of faces and had them rub the faces, and
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: the fusiform gyrus lit up. I love that. So, like,
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: it is strictly for faces. They also— they were like, okay, well,
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: maybe it's just, you know, it's for other things, too.
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: They gave them 3D models of cubes and other stuff
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: that weren't faces. Nothing happened in the fusiform gyrus. So
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: we have a place in the brain that's strictly for
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: recognizing faces. And I think that's probably why we can
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: pick out doppelgangers so easily, because our brains are kind
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: of attuned to look for faces everywhere. Yeah.
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: And, you know, if you're thinking this might be, like
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: I mentioned, committing a crime sort of in passing, but
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: if you think this could be a big problem as
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: far as the advent and more widespread use of facial recognition, AI,
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: especially with CCTV and trying to catch bad people doing
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: bad things. And we've talked about this in the past on,
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: I think, a couple of different episodes. But that stuff
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: works okay, but it doesn't work great with dark skin.
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: It doesn't work great for people of color, black people,
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: Asian people. It gets confused a lot. And this is already,
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: you know, people have been wrongly imprisoned because facial recognition
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: AI has made a mistake.
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah. There's one guy as recently as 2019 from New
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: Jersey named Najir Parks, and he had to end up
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: spending five grand to defend himself, spent, I think, 20
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: days in jail possibly because he was accused or I
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: guess an AI facial recognition system accused him of shoplifting
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: and then trying to hit a police officer with his car.
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: And it turns out he'd been 30 miles away, but
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: he had been misidentified by this. And I think in
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: our episode, we talked about this at length, that facial
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: recognition systems are really good at recognizing white men's faces.
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 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 face is 40 times likelier to come up with
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: a false positive than a light-skinned man. Right. And apparently
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: it's 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
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: sure it'll be fine. And it just hasn't been fine.
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean, that's one of the problems with it
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: all is it's just working from a database. So it's
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: not like it can take a face and find someone
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: just somewhere on planet Earth. Like you got to be
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: on a database somehow.
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: Right. But I'm saying the AI is trained on photos
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: and it comes to understand a face is a face
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: based on the photos that it's trained on. And I
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: guess they didn't select enough photos of people of color,
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: photos of women. I don't know why, but it seems
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: like they got really good at white men because they
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: were given more photos of white men. That's how I
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: take it. Yeah.
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: No, that's how I took it too.
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: So Chuck, if let's say that you are a doppelganger
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: of somebody, somebody famous like Madonna or Johnny Depp or- Rizzo.
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: Let's say Rizzo, too, just to get the kids involved. No, Lizzo.
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: I was like, oh, God.
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: I was thinking back to Ratso Rizzo, I think. So
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: if you're a doppelganger of Lizzo's, what would you do
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: with that talent?
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: Well, you could go hang out on Hollywood Boulevard near
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: Man's Chinese Theater and make some money walking around charging
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: $ 5 a picture. You could get employed full time with
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: an agency to, you know, get sent out. If someone
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: wants Bill Gates at their party and you are a lookalike,
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: then you can go to their party and make a
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: couple hundred bucks probably.
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: Probably. You could also work on movies, apparently. There's lots
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: of jobs for you. Yeah.
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: I mean, this one is, it's less face, like, When
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: you're body doubling someone or photo doubling or standing in,
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: kind of in that order, or did I get that wrong?
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: Stand in is least important that you actually look like someone,
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: but you should be the same size as somebody because
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: they're lighting you for camera and stuff like that. Like
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: you can't, you know, The Rock can't have a body
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: double or a stand in that looks like me. You know?
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: I don't know if you wore one of those like
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: ripped t-shirts.
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, right. I can get away with it. But, you know,
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: if you do look like a celebrity and you want
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: to get work as a photo double, then that certainly
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: doesn't hurt if you look like them in the face.
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: But body size and skin tone and stuff like that
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: is more important as for doubling.
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: But the places where it really kind of comes in handy,
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: if you really look like the person in the face
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: and the build and the hair and the mustache and
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: all that, is to 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 who's saying like, yeah, I look like you,
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: I'll go do the boring stuff, but also risk my
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: life because somebody might assassinate you at some point.
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I get the sense in some of these
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: that it's a little less like, I look like you,
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: I'd like to do this, Then Kim Jong-un says, hey,
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: you guys, come with me.
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: You're going to double me now. This is your new job.
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: Because he, of course, has been listed as having body
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: doubles to the point where there's been speculation fueled about
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: whether or not he was sick in the hospital or
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: actually dead. Saddam Hussein had a bunch of decoys. They
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: made a movie called The Devil's Double about a man
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: that was his son's double. Uday. And they made a, uh,
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: I meant to see it actually. It looked kind of good,
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: but I haven't seen it. That was out in 2011.
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: It was called the devil's double and Latif Yahia, um,
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: basically spoke out a lot afterward that like I was
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: Uday Hussein's double and he was a very bad guy.
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: So it was not probably the best job.
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: Um, apparently Stalin had at least four, um, doubles. And then,
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: This one is amazing to me. There is a British
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: general named Bernard Montgomery, and he hired a double by
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: the name of M.E. Clifton James. Great name. He was
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: Australian and he posed as Bernard Montgomery and went around,
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: I would guess, Europe talking about allied plans in the
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: hopes that like his his plans would be or that
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: the talks would be overheard by German spies. And the plans,
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: of course, were fake. And they were meant to serve
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: as a decoy or distraction for the Nazis. And they
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: think that possibly had an influence on the storming of Normandy.
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: That's pretty cool. There's a movie in there somewhere, or
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: at least a scene.
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: Surely. Easily. They could have thrown it in as bonus
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: material on the Operation Mincemeat movie, you know? Yeah.
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: Did you see that?
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Was it good? I liked our episode better, but yes,
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: it was good. It was a fine movie, sure.
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I need to check that out.
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: I saw one recently. This one has nothing to do
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: with anything, but it was a five-part series in Swedish
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: about the assassination of their prime minister in 1986, Olaf Palme.
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: And it is really fascinating because they think that one
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: of the main witnesses was actually the assassin. And they
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: kind of recreate how it would have happened and they
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: dive into his life. It's really, really good. It's worth watching.
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: I think that's on Netflix too. By the way, I
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: don't work for Netflix. Right. 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 Chuck did.
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: And if you want to know more about Doppelgangers, you
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: can start searching on the internet. And there's a lot
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: of cool posts from social media of people meeting their
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: Doppelgangers that will just knock your socks off. And since
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: I said that, of course, it's time for listener mail.
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: This is in response to the Kissin' Cousins episode from
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: a friend from the Ashkenazi Jewish community.
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: I've got 0.2% Ashkenazi in me. Oh, yeah? I also
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: have some Neanderthal, too.
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: All right. Hey, guys, just listen to the episode Kissin' Cousins.
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: I am from an insular Ashkenazi Jewish community. I'm sure
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: you understand us being insular makes sense. the gene pool
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: that much smaller. We also tend to marry younger than
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: the rest of the Western world. Thus, in pretty much
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: every high school in our community, we do genetic testing
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: for recessive genes for defects or serious illnesses common in
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: Ashkenazi Jews. We don't get the results to the test,
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: only an ID number. A big part of our culture
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: is being set up by matchmakers. Before meeting for the
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: first time, both families will call the screening center with
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: their ID number and be told if it's safe for
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: them to go ahead.
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: With the matchmaking. It's amazing. It is.
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: I met my current partner on my own, and we
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: decided we were ready to settle down. It was a
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: little scarier to call and see if we were compatible
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: because we'd already decided we wanted to be together. Can
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: you imagine that?
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no. I'll bet that was pretty nerve-wracking.
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: The call was more to see if we need to
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: speak to a geneticist before having children than to see
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: if we should get together for the first time at all.
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: But thankfully, we were good to go. Separately, I had
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: a close friend whose husband passed away a few years ago.
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: She had the option of marrying her brother-in-law. Remember, we
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: talked about that in the episode, which she had no
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: interest in doing. She did take a pair of his shoes, though,
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: and spit on them rather than him. So that part
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: of the Old Testament is kind of still kept in
• 46:36
  Speaker 2: some places. And of course, I'm not speaking for all
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: Ashkenazi Jews, only what I see in my community. Just
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: thought you might be interested to know how a group
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: is trying to keep tradition while staying safe and up
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: to date with science in the 21st century. and this
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: is a lovely sign-off here, wishing you the strength to
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: continue for a long time coming.
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: Nice.
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: And that's from Elkie.
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: Thanks a lot, Elkie. That was a great email. I
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: appreciate that big time. And if you want to be
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: like Elkie and send us a super fascinating email, you
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: can do that too. All you have to do is
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: write to stuffpodcast at iheartradio.com, press send, and see what happens. Right, Chuck?
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: That's right. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.