# SYSK Gets Weird Playlist: Doppelgängers: Hey you, you're me!

An episode of [Stuff You Should Know](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/278981407), 18 Sep 2026, 48 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pscrb.fm/rss/p/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/a91018a4-ea4f-4130-bf55-ae270180c327/14e92a1e-2308-40fc-a389-b4c8014ce347/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=44710ecc-10bb-48d1-93c7-ae270180c33e

Seeing your near twin is probably pretty weird. But could there be a genetic commonality as well? You bet there could! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[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.

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