ALIX: Let’s begin at the beginning…
It was around June 2014,
PETER: Harmony, Jeff, Max...
ALIX: and 20 young adults had gathered for a training.
See they were gonna spend
the next two months together
working to organize Walmart employees
KENDRA: And we were all asked to stand up
and share why they decided to participate,
what brought them to that moment.
BRIAN: You know, kind of the typical,
“Hi my name is, and I’m from wherever.”
ALIX: This is Kendra and Brian
and during that first meeting
both of them instantly picked out people
they just KNEW they’d end up befriending.
For Brian it was this striking woman
who spoke fluent Portuguese
BRIAN: And I remember thinking like wow
I need to learn from her.
ALIX: And for Kendra,
it was this girl from California
who, like herself,
came from a working class family of immigrants.
KENDRA: I thought wow, I’d love to talk to her more
ALIX: But Kendra and Brian?
Even though they’d actually gone to the same college...
the friend chemistry that night wasn't exactly staggering
KENDRA: Like oh yeah
You know, we're gonna be doing this together. Yup.
BRIAN: I didn't feel any like
immediate connection, really.
ALIX: It's a pretty normal experience
you walk into a room
and there are people that you like
and people who leave you cold.
Except with this group, it wasn't exactly normal
because they were being tracked
by a sociologist named Peter Berman
who was looking to answer a very specific question.
PETER: Can we identify in the neural response that
we have to other people
who we're going to like many, many months later.
ALIX: Basically if you peer into someone's brain
immediately after they've met a group of people,
can you tell anything about who they later befriend?
Maybe can you see something
that they themselves can't yet see?
So the first thing that Peter does
is he sits everybody down
and gives them a massive questionnaire.
PETER: To what extent do you like:
Kevin, Harmony, Greta.
To what extent does that other person like you?
ALIX: And then... came the machine.
More than 30,000 pounds of metal and magnets
elegantly molded into an aerodynamic-ish tube
capable of seeing that great bundle
of blood and electricity inside our skull:
an FMRI.
PETER: We would show them pictures of themselves
and everybody in the group 10 times
in a random order.
ALIX: There they lay,
images of different faces flashing before them
as the machine watched one particular region
inside their head.
PETER: You might show someone
an image of a $20 dollar bill
and that region may get activated
So it's a region of the brain that's activated
when the thing that they’re looking at
is somehow relevant to their goals.
ALIX: But what was so striking was that there was often
this strange difference between
who people SAID they that liked
versus who their BRAINS said that they liked.
PETER: It's like looking at two data sets
like frozen yogurt and, um, fish.
ALIX: And guess which one was better
at predicting your future friend?
[drum roll]
Not you...
Your brain!
PETER: Our neural response to other people
is very strongly predictive
of who we’re going to like months later.
ALIX: Like Brian and Kendra.
Though neither SAID they had
great affection for each other initially
— both of their brains saw things differently —
and sure enough after a couple of weeks,
they were so enamored with each other
they actually had to check
their desire to spend time together
BRIAN: I remember like knowing
that we actually kind of needed to split up
for our professional capacity.
ALIX: Did that feel like a conflict for you?
KENDRA: Every day. Every day.
ALIX: Now this is a small study and the first of its kind
so it's hard to draw a broad conclusions.
Still, I think it's so strange to think about
how one day in the summer of 2014
a machine looked into the brains of people
and in that moment could see more about
the feelings that would flower
than the person lying inside it.
HANNA: So after we did this story
we started to wonder,
what does the fMRI machine think about all this?
Doctors don't swallow their patients.
That is one of the main differences
between me and doctors.
If a doctor did swallow their patient,
I imagine that would be a far scarier experience
for the patient than being swallowed by me.
They would wait inside the mouth,
the waiting room of the body.
There would be magazines there, but they would be wet.
That would be the first problem.
Then the doctor would swallow
and contemplate the patient inside of them.
Does this person seem sick? Where did they hurt?
Are they afraid of public speaking?
I envy the doctor because
the doctor does not automatically know a person
but stands outside the person and has to guess:
What is it with them?
I know what it is with them
Imagine you were walking down the street
look at every person you pass every stranger.
What if you knew every thought they had?
That man: he is smiling, but he is lonely.
That woman: she could murder someone.
The man with a beard: he is happy
and he also does not know he has multiple sclerosis yet.
All that information, all those secrets, it's too much.
Imagine the noise of it.
You want to be able to see through walls,
but imagine if you couldn't turn it off
when what's on the other side of the wall
is your parents having sex?
Once there was a blackout in the hospital.
There are generators to keep the things going
that people will die without.
I am NOT one of those things.
I could not scan, but I could look.
I had to guess what was going on inside of people,
it was thrilling.
Here are my guesses:
panic,
hunger,
relief,
lust
unresolved fear of the dark,
herniated disc.
Occasionally a worker crawls in to inspect me.
They ask themselves" Is this thing doing what it should?
And: if it turned on, would it see that I'm sick?
Or that I'm smarter than everyone thinks I am I?
I wish they'd ask instead:
What IS it with this thing?
What does this thing want?
I would respond:
When you instantly know people
they do not have to explain themselves to you
No one tells you stories.
A connection does not happen
from the fact of knowing someone,
it happens in the process
of someone helping you know them.
[music plays]
Once, I saw a radiologist lie to an intern
about why they couldn’t come to their open mic night.
They said they had, “family in town.”
The intern was lucky. They couldn't see what I could.
It was such a kind thing to do.