And now for something completely different... RadioLab

Post date: 11-Sep-2010 23:52:14

RadioLab is a podcast that I've just been exposed to, and I have to say - it's terrific. I can't begin to describe all the intriguing stuff they explore, but here's just a very quick taste from a recent episode, Strangers in the Mirror.

Oliver Sacks is a fascinating figure to me - I've followed his considerable achievements as a neurologist and read some of his excellent books (including an autobiography I recommend, Uncle Tungsten.) So I was shocked to discover that he himself suffers from an interesting neurological problem: face blindness, more properly named prosopagnosia.

The RadioLab episode includes a public interview with Sacks where he reveals, with his usual self-deprecating humour, that not only has his condition led to his apologising to mirrors, but:

“Recently I was in a cafe in Chelsea Market with tables outside, and while I was waiting for my food I [did] what people with beards often do - I started to... preen myself - and then I realise that my reflection was... not doing the same thing. Inside was a man with a beard [...] who wondered why I was making faces [at him].”

(He also described his condition in an audio interview with The New Yorker.)

Opposite Sacks in the interview is a fellow sufferer Chuck Close, a portrait artist who describes his work as an essential part of his mechanism for coping with his disability. Between them they explore their experience of the disorder, and how they use humour and their considerable intellects to work around it.

Edit:

CBC's Quirks and Quarks ran a segment recently called 'The Man Who Mistook Every Face' about prosopagnosia - the show notes are here, and the segment audio is available here.