JAD ABUMRAD: Hey, I'm Jad Abumrad.

ROBERT KRULWICH: I'm Robert Krulwich.

JAD: This is Radiolab.

ROBERT: And this hour we are discussing—well, we're discussing the little changes that people can make to solve huge problems.

JAD: Problems that seem unsolvable.

ROBERT: For the story, I would like to tell you, Jad, this will involve two rather celebrated people who, you know, I sometimes how I sometimes go on stages and talk to people who have just written books or that sort of thing.

JAD: Yeah, at the 92nd Street Y.

ROBERT: Yeah, this is not that. This is the World Science Festival.

JAD: Right.

ROBERT: And we take people from these things and put them on our radio program.

JAD: Yes we do. But we don't do it enough.

ROBERT: Well, we're gonna do it now.

JAD: Let's do it.

ROBERT: So in—in just a moment.

ROBERT: So we go now to the Danny and Sylvia Kaye Auditorium at the campus of Hunter College in Manhattan.

JAD: Wait a second, just set it up for us a little bit, like, what are we about to do?

ROBERT: Well, so the idea of this World Science Festival evening, there are people who wander around the world who have a problem, which is called face blindness.

ROBERT: Weirdly, both these men are face blind. So when they look at a face for 10, 20, 60 minutes, the other guy's face just doesn't get in or stick into their heads.

ROBERT: I chose two people ...

ROBERT: ... one of them ...

ROBERT: ... is Oliver Sacks, our regular ... 

ROBERT: Oliver.

ROBERT: He's a neuroscientist and he's like ...

JAD: Oliver is face blind?

ROBERT: Oh, boy, is he Face blind. I mean, he ... 

JAD: He can't recognize faces?

ROBERT: Well, you'll see.

ROBERT: ... the other guy who we're going to call Chuck.

ROBERT: The other guy is one of the greatest portrait artists in the world.

ROBERT: He has, as many of you know, for decades now, created art big paintings, some little but hugely huge paintings, mostly of faces. Here he is, Chuck Close.

[cheers]

ROBERT: I thought it would be interesting to bring these two people together, face blind Oliver, face blind Chuck and discuss what many people think of as a very rare situation.

CHUCK CLOSE: Who are you guys again?

ROBERT: [laughs] We don't know who you are either. All right, so the both of you, how long ago did you discover, if indeed that's the right word, that you were unusual in this regard?

OLIVER SACKS: I think probably when I was ...

ROBERT: I can't hear. Okay. So tell you what, I'll just stick this thing in front of you and say something.

OLIVER SACKS: Say something ...

ROBERT: That’s better. All right. So you missed the first part of the program. But Oliver was saying. So you—you were in a class with other kids. If you—if—if you had a friend who was like, you know, a pal, would you take a bit—a beat to know who it was?

OLIVER SACKS: Yeah. So—say, Jonathan Miller became a good friend. He's tall and gangly.

He has red hair. And his—his movements are—are fluid and evocative and wonderful. And for this ...

ROBERT: If Jonathan Miller was brought in paralyzed and totally straight, would you know it was Jonathan Miller? Do you have to see the hair and the movements?

OLIVER SACKS: No, I'm when I—when I have got to know someone well, then I—then I will recognize the face. But it takes a long while. And with ...

CHUCK CLOSE: And even then it has to be reinforced. Right? You have to keep seeing them.

ROBERT: So if you've spent four minutes with the person and then you walk away and come back two minutes later, do you know who the person is? Does 20 minutes with the person, time make a difference?

OLIVER SACKS: I tend to lose it within minutes.

ROBERT: Within minutes. You, same problem?

CHUCK CLOSE: Same problem. I—I can spend an evening talking to someone, looking at them across the table and I would see them the next day. I'd have no idea I'd ever seen them, nor do I remember their name.

ROBERT: But when they open their mouth would you say, "Oh, that's the one," or not even?

CHUCK CLOSE: No, and a lot of it’s context, if they walk into my studio, I figured they walked into my studio because they're supposed to be there. Then I—then I interview them for a while to find out who they are.

ROBERT: Are you just trying to subtly find like, so who is this? Is that the ... 

CHUCK CLOSE: Who the hell is this person? Why are they in my studio?

ROBERT: Now in your case, if that person were to suddenly flatten out and work and—and be still on a page.

CHUCK CLOSE: Well, everything in my work is determined by my learning disabilities. So face blind, I'm sure I was driven to paint portraits by being face blind. That is, I—I know now that if I can flatten an image out and scan it the way I work, I can commit it to memory and I have almost photographic memory for things that are flat.

ROBERT: And still.

CHUCK CLOSE: Still. Yeah, but ...

ROBERT: So—so, three—being in space and moving around makes the face invisible. Fixing it makes the face memorable.

CHUCK CLOSE: You move your head a half an inch. To me, it's a whole new face I've never seen before.

ROBERT: Wow!

CHUCK CLOSE: Oh.

ROBERT: Have you ever not recognized yourself?

OLIVER SACKS: Yeah, I'm—I’m always—well, several times I have started apologizing to large, clumsy, bearded people and realize that it's a mirror.

ROBERT: It's a mirror?

OLIVER SACKS: It's a mirror. But it's even gone a stage further than that. Fairly recently I was in a—a cafe in Chelsea Market with tables outside, and while I was waiting for my food, I do what people with beards often do, I started to begin to preen myself and then I realized that my reflection was not doing the same thing ...

[laughter]

OLIVER SACKS: And that inside there was a man with a beard. Possibly you.

ROBERT: [laughs]

OLIVER SACKS: You know, who wondered why—why I was sort of, you know, making faces at him. So—so I may take other people to be myself as well as failing to recognize myself.

ROBERT: I just, I was wondering how you resolve—once you realize that you were preening your beard in front of a bearded man, did you—could you—did you like, look down?

OLIVER SACKS: Yeah, yeah. I did look abashed. I often look abashed.

ROBERT: Well, let me just ask about is this just a face problem? What about emotional—en you, if you can't see a face, can you ever read Sadness? Happiness?

CHUCK CLOSE: Yeah. I don't think I have any trouble reading how someone is feeling. I think I'm actually pretty good at that. You know, the way—the way I work is to make this kind of brobdingnagian world in which I make the face into a landscape and I journey across that landscape like Gulliver's Lilliputians crawling over the face of a—of a giant, not knowing that they were on the face of a giant, but knowing everything about that face. And then what I do is I put all that information together, the kind of nose and nostril, what corners of the mouth or whatever. And I can commit it—I can commit it to memory. So I know that this—that it's no accident that I was driven to make portraits of people who matter to me.

ROBERT: Can—but if—if the person whose face you can't read lips are trembling, or if they have a downcast look in the eye, or if they're being brave, can you assign emotion to a facet of a face?

CHUCK CLOSE: Yeah.

ROBERT: And you too?

OLIVER SACKS: Well, I—I ...

ROBERT: Look, talk to the mic.

OLIVER SACKS: Okay, well, I—I can't paint or whatever, but I think I'm sensitive to emotion as, you know, and—and—and little, little things, including little grimaces which indicate that someone is—is lying.

ROBERT: Now here's a difference, I sense, just to complete this sort of look at what you can and can't do. Oliver, can I—when I ask you about things you've written 22 years ago, a lot of times if you talk to an author about something they wrote 22 years ago, they give you a sad look of, you know, well, that was a long time ago, but you seem to remember much of what you have learned. You seem to remember very little of what you have learned. Well, let me—let me—let me move gently about that. Like, when you were in high school, it was time to take the test.

CHUCK CLOSE: Right.

ROBERT: You once described to me a—an all-night bathtub.

CHUCK CLOSE: No, I used a kind of sensory deprivation tank in order to memorize things. And it's very hard for me. I still—I don't know how to add or subtract without using the spots on dominos. A visual system. I still don't know the multiplication tables. I didn't take algebra, geometry, physics or chemistry. At the junior college in my home town that had not taken every taxpayer's son or daughter I could never have gone to college.

ROBERT: Wow. So you're a wreck, really.

CHUCK CLOSE: Yes.

ROBERT: ... but that's the coping part of this for both of you, has been kind of interesting. Because both of you were very, very smart. So you just put your intelligence where you have to.

CHUCK CLOSE: One of the great quotes I've ever heard is from the great painter Robert Rauschenberg, who was about the most learned disabled, dyslexic person I've ever known. And he said, "When you're this way, you have to find other venues for your intelligence."

ROBERT: Right.

CHUCK CLOSE: You have to prove to your teachers that even though you're not gonna be able to spit back the names—the names or dates, that you—that you care about the material. And we have to prove to the people who we see that we care about them, even though we're not going to recognize their faces and maybe remember their names. So you have to be charming. You have to be a bull[bleep], you have to be fast on your feet and figure out how you're going to explain your way out of the fact that you don't know who they are or remember them.

ROBERT: Do you find people calling you like a snob or I mean, like, "What do you mean you don't know me?" I'm the host of this dinner party, kind of thing.

OLIVER SACKS: Yes, usually my—my assistant Kate will say to people beforehand before they come in, "Don't ask if—if he remembers you, because he'll say no." And to me she says, "Don't just say no, say, 'I'm awful with faces. I wouldn't recognize my own mother.'" But I—but I'm not good at bull[bleep]. Yeah, I–I—I tend to withdraw.

ROBERT: You withdraw.

OLIVER SACKS: Yeah.

ROBER: So you—you solve it by going into a corner and not talking to anybody.

OLIVER SACKS: Well, it doesn't solve it, and it often makes it worse. But ...

CHUCK CLOSE: My approach is to be more outgoing, more friendly, whatever, and to try and charm my way through things. And I also lecture and talk all the time about face blindness and my other problems so that people are aware I have them and then they'll cut me some slack.

ROBERT: But—but you—you go out like every chance you can, right? And you stay in every chance you can, right?

OLIVER SACKS: Well, more or less, you know, I don't stay in, but I—there are other things besides human beings. And when—when for example, I first visited Australia, I came back with—with hundreds of photos and people look through them and say, "Yes, but didn't you meet any human beings?" Because all my photos were of scenery and plants, where I'm very at home.

ROBERT: And I noticed that when you get in the elevator in your apartment, you don't have any idea who the neighbors are. But you do look down, right?

OLIVER SACKS: Oh, I know their dogs.

ROBERT: Yeah.

[laughter]

ROBERT: So if they were to switch dogs, you'd just be ...

OLIVER SACKS: Well, I—I—I wouldn't notice.

ROBERT: Yeah. No.

CHUCK CLOSE: But if you see them without a dog, you don't know who they are, right?

OLIVER SACKS: No, no.

ROBERT: No idea. So—so this charm offensive that you go on, what does that, like, how if you have no idea who you're talking to, what are they—what are the charm moves?

CHUCK CLOSE: Well, not always is it charming. I didn't recognize a woman I lived with for a year—two years later. And there's no amount of charm that is going to get you through a—a—a mistake like that.

ROBERT: So like, do you just—do you make fun of yourself?

CHUCK CLOSE: Oh, yeah. Self-deprecating humor will—will cover a great deal. And if you laugh at yourself, you're giving permission to other—for other people to see it as less than the most tragic condition. It is funny, you know, it's funny. I wish I didn't have it, but it's funny.

ROBERT: What about ...

OLIVER SACKS: I know lots of neurological conditions are—are comic, they can be both awful and comic. And it's important to ...

CHUCK CLOSE: Well, there's a gallows humor in rehabilitation hospitals for that—for that very reason, you know?

ROBERT: Do you think of what you do as an expression of the situation you find yourself in? CHUCK CLOSE: Sure. In every way. I mean, I have trouble in a global sense with the whole. But if you break it down into small enough bite size units, incremental units, then I make this big, overwhelming problem into thousands of little more solvable problems. I've just found a way to, you know, take my deficits and—and use them rather than banging my head against the wall.

ROBERT: Well, let—let me show you, Lyle. This is Chuck 15, and then Chuck 16. So in Chuck 15, it's going to be a person, you know, named ...

JAD: Wait. Now what's happening? What is this right here?

ROBERT: So, Jad, what you should do is you should imagine a—a—it's a detailed slide. And what you see is lots of boxes with almost, like, mirror-like shiny nuggets in each box.

JAD: Is this when you're looking at a Chuck Close painting really close. Is that what you're describing?

ROBERT: Yes, it's a detail. So it's the lower lip and chin of somebody, somebody who he calls Lyle.

ROBERT: When people stand right in front of Lyle's mouth, there's a little bit of confusion. You can't quite read it right away.

CHUCK CLOSE: Well, the closer you get to something normally, the more information you get. But the closer you get to one of mine, the less information you have. You have information ...

ROBERT: But when you step back, these very abstract, flat little cells suddenly turn into a very interesting face.

JAD: Well, here's what I do understand, though. If he's blind to the face, how do you even build it up? Like, don't you have to be able to see the thing that you're building to?

ROBERT: If he can fix it, which the photograph does.

JAD: Oh, he takes a picture first?

ROBERT: He takes a picture first.

JAD: And then what?

ROBERT: Then he graphs it. So he makes it into lots of little boxes. It looks like a giant checkerboard. And then he goes into each checkerboard and he then repaints it, and magically, when you step away, there is the thing that you can’t see.

JAD: That’s pretty interesting, so he's able to—he's able to see the details within those boxes well enough to be able to construct them and then trust that what will emerge is a face. 

ROBERT: Yep. And the magical part is not only do you suddenly get the reveal of the face, but with the reveal comes a sense of the person. Okay, so let's go back to the situation.

ROBERT: Oh, yeah. Well, by the way, is there any cure for this that we know that if you have this—if this facial blindness, does anyone get cured of it?

OLIVER SACKS: Not so far as I know.

ROBERT: Okay.

OLIVER SACKS: But, you know, I think it is important to say and, you know, I portrayed myself as sort of withdrawn or helpless. But I—I think I also have a vivid love of humanity, as Chuck has. But for me, the portraits take the form of narratives. Of stories.

CHUCK CLOSE: Your words paint the most specific portraits of people's lives. And I always have identified your characters as—as vivid a portrait as anything anybody could do in any other art form, and when I ...

[applause]

CHUCK CLOSE: You know, we—you celebrate your connectedness with humanity in a really important way. I mean, it's a way that we can identify with, even if it's a problem we don't have. Empathy is the basis of, I think that mortar the whole society together and telling stories in a riveting way that allows us to empathize and care about these people at my—my grandfather had Tourette's syndrome and reading about a character with Tourette's syndrome in one of your books I cried through the whole thing.

ROBERT: Hmm. How widespread is this condition? The two of you have it.

OLIVER SACKS: The best estimate is that it's fairly severe. I mean, there may well a sy—symmetrical curve. Chuck and I are in the worst two or three percent, but probably not the worst one percent. There are people who are far, far worse.

ROBERT: So you're going to give me a guess? You think it's like, like 10 percent of the world? Or one percent?

OLIVER SACKS: The fairly severely affected people are two to three percent, which is what, six to eight million people in this country.

ROBERT: Let's—let's do a test to see whether this audience—let's just see how—how good or bad you guys are. We're going to do a little fun test of your face. And the way it works is that ten celebrities ... 

JAD: What is this?

ROBERT: So here's what's happening. We decided to give the whole audience a face test.

ROBERT: Ten celebrity faces will be flashed on the screen for 15 seconds each.

ROBERT: We took ten very famous celebrities. They included the President of the United States of America, fabulous movie stars from the past and the present.

JAD: You just put their face up and say, do you recognize it?

ROBERT: We put their faces up. But we erased their hair.

JAD: Oh. Oh, just the face.

ROBERT: Only the face.

JAD: That's interesting.

ROBERT: So imagine like Johnny Depp, but no hair.

JAD: Take away his hair. The question is, would they ...

ROBERT: Would you recognize this person?

JAD: I would think—I would think people would rec—I mean ...

ROBERT: Well, so would I. But when I read out the names, here I am reading out the name. ROBERT: Number six is Johnny Depp. Johnny Depp.

CHUCK CLOSE: That's what he's like without hair?

ROBERT: That's what he's like without hair.

JAD: People sound surprised.

ROBERT: I’m going to ask for a show of hands right now.

ROBERT: And so then I said well like ... 

ROBERT: Please raise your hand if you got any person right, anyone at all.

ROBERT: You know, almost everybody. Oh, me, me, me.

ROBERT: Lower your hand if you only got one or two right.

ROBERT: Okay, so now some hands go down. Lower your hand if you only got three right.

ROBERT: So now. Yeah, we're beginning ...

JAD: Phrasing this in an odd way. Only got three right.

ROBERT: Lower your hand. If you only got four right.

CHUCK CLOSE: Only is such a funny word.

ROBERT: Yeah, it's just a ...

JAD: Yeah. Thank you, Chuck.

ROBERT: Yeah, wait, wait, wait, keep going.

ROBERT: Please now lower your hand if you only got nine right. The remaining hands ...

JAD: Wait, how many hands are up at this point?

ROBERT: That's six.

JAD: Out of like a thousand?

ROBERT: Yeah.

ROBERT: How many? The remaining hands—I got ten. Could you stand if you got ten. I just like to see who you are. Oh, right, right. Yeah. But the number of people. What?

CROWD MEMBER: They're all women.

ROBERT: Yeah. Oh. They're all women. That's interesting. All right, sit down. Sit down. Super people. How many people got none. Right. Could you please rise? Absolutely none. I mean, let's see out there.

CHUCK CLOSE: Are they all men?

ROBERT: I wanted to know if anyone was just totally blind.

JAD: And?

ROBERT: About 10 people were totally blind. Got none right at all.

ROBERT: My wife got none right. Oh, my God!

ROBERT: Yeah. My wife, she was raised. So this is the thing. So, so. So the question then becomes so. So, wow, a lot of people really do have this problem.

OLIVER SACKS: So there are a lot of people who may be leading lives of embarrassment and partial disability and secrecy and shame.

CHUCK CLOSE: Yeah, II evolved all sorts of coping mechanisms with dyslexia, many of which are now taught, you know, to people who have other problems. But I—but there are unfortunately no real answers to—to coping with ...

ROBERT: Well, you have some charm it out, hide ...

CHUCK CLOSE: I mean, you're not—you're not going to lessen the deficit by having a good attitude or trying harder or whatever. It is what it is.

ROBERT: Thanks to Oliver Sacks, things to Chuck Close and thanks to the people who produce the World Science Festival every year. Jad's there sometimes. I'm there sometimes. That would be Brian Greene, who's also on the show a lot, and his wife, Tracy Day.

JAD: Before we go to break, just wanna remind you radiolab.org has a lot of information about Chuck, Oliver and anything you hear in this hour, radiolab.org.

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