This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.

If you're like me, you know this feeling.

Maybe you're at a party or you're walking down the street

and suddenly, out of a sea of passing faces,

one of them lights up looking right at you.

This person starts waving, says hello.

This person is glad to see you.

And you? You have no idea who you're looking at.

Recognizing faces is a crucial skill. But although your mind is amazing at identifying your boyfriend or your child in a crowd, there are important limits to this ability. Some of us, like me, are extremely bad at it. Some of us are terrific.

Today, we bring you a classic hidden brain episode about people on opposite ends of the

facial recognition

spectrum. We'll also explore how our ability to recognize faces has broad implications

in our lives. And then, in the second part of today's show, we're going to bring you another

look at facial recognition from the revisionist history podcast. If you're unfamiliar with the show,

revisionist history is best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell's podcast about things overlooked and

misunderstood. The show has covered everything from what Americans get wrong about guns

to how English muffins get their signature nooks and crannies.

It turns out that Malcolm, like me, struggles with recognizing faces. His producer, Lucy

Sullivan, on the other hand, is exceptionally good at it. And Lucy wanted to find out what's

going on, or isn't going on, in our brains when we see someone we know.

She also brings us stories about suspected super-recognizer, former President Bill Clinton,

and how face blindness almost ended a friendship.

...