What would happen if the whole world went face blind?

Hello and welcome to newest addition to the Boing Boing podcast family! Flash Forward is a podcast produced and hosted by me, Rose Eveleth. Every week we really overthink what the future has in store for us. Every episode we tackle one possible (or, not so possible) future scenario everything from a sudden ice age, to the end of antibiotic effectiveness, to a world in which contact sports are banned due to head injury and try to work out how that future would really go down.

Today, about two percent of the population has prosopagnosia a condition that makes them unable to remember faces. But what if we all had it? On this weeks episode, we travel to a future where nobody can recognize one another by face.

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In the episode we discuss what causes face blindness and the tricks that people use to remember their friends. We also go through all the things that would be easier (spying, hiding) and harder (police lineups, cocktail parties) in a world where we were all faceblind.

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