Imagine That

Brandie and Cathy are two strangers who have something unusual in common. They both suffer from a literal lack of imagination – a condition called aphantasia. In this episode, they talk with Nora and Marcel about what it means to grieve the loss of something they never had to begin with.

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Transcripts may not appear in their final version and are subject to change.

Marcel Malekebu [00:00:03] So I'm Marcel Malekebu, and this is "Terrible, Thanks for Asking." Now, Nora, I have you here with me for a conversation. How are you doing?

Nora McInerny [00:00:14] I'm well.

Marcel Malekebu [00:00:16] So, Nora, before we start, I want you to just imagine something for me really quickly. I want you to picture yourself on vacation. Like the vacation of your dreams.

Nora McInerny [00:00:32] Okay.

Marcel Malekebu [00:00:33] What do you see? What do you imagine? What are you seeing right now?

Nora McInerny [00:00:37] So, I am on a beach. It's 80 / 85 degrees.

Marcel Malekebu [00:00:47] Okay.

Nora McInerny [00:00:49] I'm wearing obviously 100% sun protective gear. I'm underneath an umbrella. I've got like the long-sleeved shirt. I'm wearing SPF 100. I'm on a chair. I'm adjacent to the sun. I'm not in the sun. I'm reading. There's like a stack of books that I've already read right next to me. There's one in my hand. I've got like, a bucket of iced Topo Chicos next to me. The waves are crashing. That's all I hear. Because on this vacation, I am alone. 100%. There's not a single other soul with me.

Marcel Malekebu [00:01:29] [laughs] That's fucked up. I'm telling.

Nora McInerny [00:01:33] [laughs]

Marcel Malekebu [00:01:34] I'm telling. A vacation. A solo vacay. Okay.

Nora McInerny [00:01:39] A solo vacation. The only vacation that counts is me alone in, you know, very, very controlled circumstances.

Marcel Malekebu [00:01:51] And you're sure you're not listening to Joni Mitchell?

Nora McInerny [00:01:53] Yeah, there might be. That may be just like coming from like a speaker down the beach, you know, somewhere, or, you know, within like, the resort. But the resort is also only women who are traveling alone. So there's no ... I don't have to hear any other couples fight. I don't have to hear anyone else's kids. It's just, it's like, I'm on a- I think I'm at a reading resort. And I think, I just invented something.

Marcel Malekebu [00:02:21] Yeah. Let's make sure. It's good we're recording because we're going to keep that as an idea. That's now intellectual property.

Nora McInerny [00:02:28] That's my idea. I'm planting the flag. That is a a reading resort. Trademark.

Marcel Malekebu [00:02:32] And so do you see this in your head? Like, can you, when you say you see this, like, what is it like to see a vacation? Because your eyes were open. That was kind of weird that you're seeing the vacation and your eyes are open.

Nora McInerny [00:02:46] Yeah, my eyes are open. I'm seeing sort of like bits and pieces of vacations that I've taken, but I've sort of like mentally Photoshopped out the elements that weren't relaxing to me -- like the bachelorette party that was happening in the Airbnb next to us in Mexico. Which was that was wild. I was like, "Oh, guys, some of us want to be asleep at 8:30. Just putting that out there." So I'm mentally erasing things that I don't want to have there. I'm also pulling in, I think, mentally elements of other things I've seen places, like maybe Instagram or The White Lotus and that's what I see. I see sort of just bits and pieces from places that I have been and places that I have seen. But it all looks like something that I've never seen because they're all mixed together. Does that make sense? It's hard to describe what's in your head to another person.

Marcel Malekebu [00:03:44] Yeah, I mean, our ability to even just see things in our mind, you know, that's one of the things that allows us to be creative in the first place or even like create those images is the fact that we do have that sort of stage in our mind to create something. And also, you know, our memory allows us to like, pull stuff obviously. I don't know how all of this works in terms of the brain.

Nora McInerny [00:04:11] Yeah, like what do you see like in your mind when, like, maybe a vacation is a good example.

Marcel Malekebu [00:04:16] Yeah. I mean, my dream vacation, it varies, you know, given the time of year. But most of the time it involves a beach. I'm also alone. I could be with with my family, but I would be like walking. Like if we went to a beach, they would be, like, playing and I would be walking along the beach. I like to collect rocks and then throw them back in the water or back on the beach. The water is really calming to me, so it's fun for me just in general, sometimes I just imagine the water and that's like a vacation enough for me, you know? I love cruise ships. I know you're you're anti-cruise and anti-boat, but that is my shit. I love being just in the middle of the ocean with no control over what's going to happen and looking at the water and seeing dolphins and shit at five in the morning because I can't stay asleep and it's me and like the captain jogging around the whole ship and it's just the two of us on the deck, you know? And I'm like, "First off, why the fuck are you out here jogging?"

Nora McInerny [00:05:30] "Who's driving the boat?"

Marcel Malekebu [00:05:32] "Who's driving this fucking like two city block-long craft. So I would say I'd drink an alcoholic drink, but most of the time I don't want to drink alcohol, so probably like a juice or something.

Nora McInerny [00:05:44] Can I ask why we're talking about this?

Marcel Malekebu [00:05:46] Yeah. Yeah. So. Well, we're talking about this because a woman wrote in to the show talking about her experience with a condition called aphantasia, which is essentially a condition where you don't have the ability to imagine things. And so it kind of led me to think about the concept of imagination, like what that means for us, what it means to be able to see something in your mind. Because until I spoke with the two guests in this episode, it's something that I took for granted. Like I didn't never really think about imagining something as this important ability, but as we've like sort of, you know, gone over in this exercise, like our ability to imagine is like what gives us the ability to, like, imagine literally a future, like plan the future, create a vacation in our heads, create a business plan. If a builder is building a building, they have to, you know, draft plans for that building and create something. And you have to see something in your mind before you can see it in physical reality. So I just think about our ability to imagine being something that I think we all really take for granted. And so after I read this letter from a woman named Cathy about this condition, I wanted to learn a little bit more about it.

Cathy [00:07:17] Most people when they close their eyes and you say, "Picture your spouse or picture your child or picture a soccer ball," they see it on some sort of screen in their mind's eye. You could tell me, "Close your eyes, Cathy. Imagine your spouse." It's a black screen.

Nora McInerny [00:07:38] So yeah, when I shut my eyes, it's not as though I'm seeing a movie playing like, of course. I just see, you know, the insides of my eyelids, but what does Cathy mean?

Marcel Malekebu [00:07:51] Frankly, I'm not 100% sure, because I can't imagine what she's talking about. But I think what she means is that the way that we even conceptualize something in our brain, like the way that we conceptualize sitting on a chair at a beach, it's not ... I don't always see something as vividly as that. I don't literally see myself in third person on a beach because my experience in real life is first person. So I like will see a chair and I'll see sand and I'll see water. And in my brain I just am able to sort of experience those things all at once, if that makes sense.

Nora McInerny [00:08:34] Yeah. Or like when I am in a big box retailer and I see all these pallets of plastic water bottles, I just imagine them as a mass in the ocean or, you know, as part of a landfill. Like I'm not always seeing vacations, right? So like, I'm also seeing things that I don't want to see. But Cathy doesn't even have that. You're telling me.

Marcel Malekebu [00:09:01] No, no, she doesn't.

Cathy [00:09:05] I'm just assuming that a lot of people are very distracted by their B-roll and their TV, so maybe it's just easy to not have that distraction.

Nora McInerny [00:09:18] Okay. I do love the idea of calling all of that litter in my mind B-roll. I do have a lot of B-roll. I've got a lot of B-roll in my mind that I can pull from. But I also ... I'm struggling to understand what her experience is like because this concept of what you see in your mind, it doesn't really come up in conversation and you only know your own brain.

Marcel Malekebu [00:09:51] Yeah.

Nora McInerny [00:09:52] So I don't know if what's happening in your mind is the same as what's happening in my mind, because we only even know our own minds. And how would you even know that you don't have a mind's eye? How did Cathy realize not that she had aphantasia, but that her brain was different?

Marcel Malekebu [00:10:12] She was watching "Friends."

Nora McInerny [00:10:14] Like the show?

Marcel Malekebu [00:10:16] Yeah. Like the '90s American sitcom.

Cathy [00:10:19] There was this episode where Jennifer Aniston and Ross, her boyfriend, they were in broken up phase. She had to go to an event, a fancy event. And her old boyfriend, Ross, was the only one around that could help her zipper dress up because her back hurt so much, she couldn't get her dress on.

Ross (from "Friends") [00:10:37] Okay. Come on. All right, I got to go. So good luck at the party. Okay?

Rachel (from "Friends") [00:10:42] Oh, Ross, could you just stay and help me get dressed?

Cathy [00:10:46] They had been dating before that. And she says to him, "Turn around while I get changed. And he says to her ..."

Ross (from "Friends") [00:10:57] What?

Ross (from "Friends") [00:10:57] Well, I don't want you to see me naked.

Ross (from "Friends") [00:10:59] Rachel, I've seen you naked a million times. I ate hot fudge off you naked. I sucked that mini marshmallow out of your belly button.

Cathy [00:11:08] And she says, "Well, because it's different, you know, we're not going out." And so he turns his back to her and he says, "Well, I can see you in my mind's eye without having to see you." And he's like, "I'm seeing you now! You're naked!" And she's like, "Stop it, stop it."

Ross (from "Friends") [00:11:24] All I have to do is close my eyes. See? Woohoo!

Rachel (from "Friends") [00:11:33] Ross! Stop that. Cut it out. Cut it out!

Ross (from "Friends") [00:11:37] Okay. Okay. I'm sorry. Will never happen.

Cathy [00:11:40] And I'm on the couch with my husband and I said to him, "Can you see me naked in your mind?" And he said, "Absolutely." Now I'm like, "No, no, no. You close your eyes and you picture me, you really see me, you know, with clothes on. Without clothes on?" He goes, "Yeah, absolutely." And I say, "How come I can't do that? And you can do that." And it just blew my mind. I mean, it just really blew my mind when someone said, you know, "Picture in your mind's eye," I thought it's a metaphor. And when I found out that that was not true, that there are many people who literally see something ... with their eyes open or closed, that they can literally we create something visually. That was news to me.

Marcel Malekebu [00:12:30] And of course, that was news to Cathy, right? Like, how would she know that? She couldn't imagine something if it never came up. Like you said before, it's like if you don't know what's going on in other people's brains, there's no way for you to even know that. And it's not like people walk around, you know, stopping strangers on the street saying, "Hey, excuse me, might I inquire what you see in your mind's eye when you're asked to visualize an object or person?" Like, you know, most people would ask, like, "What's the big deal with this?" You know, she can't picture a day at the beach or her husband's naked body or a dinosaur on a skateboard or a bird hotel. But in Cathy's case, it's not just images that she can't create. She also doesn't hear sounds in her mind's ear, or she doesn't smell smells in her mind's nose. She doesn't feel feels in her mind's everything else.

Cathy [00:13:32] I can't create, and I can't recall a sensory memory, whether that memory is visual, smell, sound, touch, taste. I can't recall it and recreate it in my mind's eye or my mind's ear. You know, if you told me to think of a song, you know, let's say "The Star Spangled Banner," you know, if I just sat here, it's not coming up in my head until I sing it and hear it myself. Like I can recall "The Star Spangled Banner," and I could sing it, but it would be because I'm hearing it.

Nora McInerny [00:14:16] So "The Star Spangled Banner" is not a huge loss. No offense to people who love that song. No offense to the Francis Scott Key fans among stars, but I would be fine if I never heard that song again.

Marcel Malekebu [00:14:31] It should be, "I'm Proud to Be an American."

Nora McInerny [00:14:35]  It should be Toby Keith or nothing. So, no, that's not even what's the Toby Keith one that's also extremely nationalistic and problematic?

Marcel Malekebu [00:14:50] American Soldier?

Nora McInerny [00:14:52] I don't know. It came out after 9/11. And one of the lines is, "We'll put a boot in your ass. It's the American way." Yikes.

Marcel Malekebu [00:15:04] It's called Courtesy of the Red White and Blue. The angry American ...

Nora McInerny [00:15:06] Oh god.

Marcel Malekebu [00:15:13] Let's go, Toby.

Nora McInerny [00:15:16] But Toby had to imagine that, right? He had imagined that. [laughs]

Marcel Malekebu [00:15:20] Toby has a strong mind's eye because he was seeing a boot in somebody's ass.

Nora McInerny [00:15:24] Toby has a very strong mind's eye. Okay. So not not being able to, like, hear songs in your head honestly sounds great because one line from a song will repeat in my head for days, like days and days and days, days and days. It's horrible. So not hearing a song in my head, fine. But like ... not being able to imagine my dead dad's face. Not to be able to, like pull up sense memories.  There's just so much to miss without even realizing that you're missing it.

Marcel Malekebu [00:16:04] Yeah. I mean, you know, learning this or like, experiencing aphantasia, definitely in retrospect after the conversation would be a very emotional thing for me. But it's only emotional because I've already had the ability, if that makes sense, you know? And I know I have that ability and I've never questioned it. I think there's like a sense of regret that you have around, you know, learning that you've been missing something for a very long time and then realizing what you didn't have. And, you know, that's got to be hard. And then the cognizance after the fact, right? Because like, it's one thing where, let's say there's a restaurant in your city that you never went to and everyone's been going and you're just not in on it. And then one day you learn that your friends have been going there every Thursday night. You're like fuck you. Okay? Steve? But in that case, it's like, I can just go to the restaurant next week. But in Cathy's case, she's not able to go to that restaurant, period. So now she's hearing about a place that she hasn't been able to go and she can't go there. So it's almost worse, which is why, like when I read Cathy's email, I was caught off guard because I wasn't sure how to talk about someone not having this ability. Like, obviously on TTFA, we try to help the listener understand what it's like to go through what the guest is going through. But on this one, it's like, I'm not really sure if we could ever bring you into Cathy's world.

Nora McInerny [00:17:41] Does she know? Once she realized that she had this, does she have a sense of why she has it?

Marcel Malekebu [00:17:50] I'm not really sure how Cathy got it, and she's not really sure either or when, you know, she's pretty sure that she had it since she was born. She's dealt with this condition, said she was born. And, you know, I was wondering if maybe the condition was caused by stress or trauma. But Cathy had said that she had a pretty normal childhood.

Nora McInerny [00:18:13] So the only other time that I've heard of this, I was on another podcast, "Lady to Lady." It's a comedy podcast. Three comedians, one of them is named Brandie Posey. So I heard about this story and I said, "We got to talk to Brandie."

Brandie Posey [00:18:29] So I'm a touring comedian, and I was in central Pennsylvania doing a show, and one of my openers had a joke about how he had aphantasia, and he had realized when he'd been reading about it that the idea of a spank bank was an actual literal thing. The whole point of his like joke basically was it blew his mind that there were people that were actually just like closing their eyes and like that. Like a spank bank is the thing that lives in your brain. I'm just like, "Oh, I can like, replay all this stuff in my head." And like, he was like, "What? That's real? What the hell?" Like, and he was like, "Everyone's a pervert around me because they're just like, closing their minds and thinking about naked people." That was the bit, was very funny. And I was watching him tell this, but I was like, "Oh, that's funny." But I was like, "Wait, that is a real thing." Like, it really ... I felt the room do that zoom in, zoom out, zoom out moment of like, "Wait, do I also have this thing?" And then I was reading about it, when I should have in preparing for my set. And then I went up on stage and yelled about how I also had aphantasia for like an hour, basically.

Nora McInerny [00:19:39] Brandie learns about this pretty much just like Cathy did -- not through "Friends," but through this very sudden realization that she's aphantasic.

Marcel Malekebu [00:19:48] Yes. So what we did was we tried an exercise and we had Brandie explain what she sees in her mind when she's prompted with three words: ball, tree, zebra.

Nora McInerny [00:20:00] How did you pick those words? Just randomly.

Marcel Malekebu [00:20:03] Yeah, I think like the conversation with Cathy, she mentioned the ball or something. And then I was like, I don't know. I just thought of like three simple objects that are different enough. But in that first grade, like sight word bucket or something.

Nora McInerny [00:20:21] It is. These are sight words for sure.

Marcel Malekebu [00:20:24] I try to keep it very simple, something that we all know. So.

Nora McInerny [00:20:29] All right. So how did Brandie do?

Marcel Malekebu [00:20:32] Oh, terrible.

Brandie Posey [00:20:35] When you say ball, what my brain just did was, "Ooh!" And I didn't even hear this question. But it's as if I have like a bunch of filing cabinets and a room without windows, and somewhere my brain went, "Ball! Okay. The last time we used a ball, oh, we played softball a few weeks ago." And it just like pulls just facts about the things that you mentioned. Like Zebra, I was like, "Oh, zebras have stripes." Like, that's what my brain said to me. So when you say zebra, I'd go, "Oh, yeah, it's like a horse that has stripes. Oh, the last time I saw a zebra was with my dad on this road trip, like, five years ago." But I don't pull any pictures of any of that. It just lists facts about and like personal experiences with basically, which maybe sounds psychotic to other people.

Nora McInerny [00:21:27] We'll be right back.

Brandie Posey [00:21:50] I had like a tumultuous childhood in a couple of different ways, so I couldn't tell you what if there is like a moment that something happened? But I do know there is just a lot that I don't remember. My dad's best friend was this alcoholic loser guy that like, got divorced and moved in with us for years. Shouldn't have. He, like, would steal money from us to go buy booze. And my dad thought he was doing right by his friends. But what he did was create a very unsafe space in the house for his kids. And like, you know, we were kind of neglected because of that. But my dad's mom, my grandmother, lived with us, and she was the one that was very like, "This is wrong. This man should not be here. He should just be out doing his own thing. Like you are a father now. You need to be choosing your kids." So her and my dad would just get into, like, big fights where she was the only person that kind of, like, stuck up for us, basically. And then, you know, they would, my dad liked having his friend around and he was going through a really stressful time where he was like building his own businesses, you know? And I think he liked having a friend that his friend to come home to at the end of the day, that they could like get drunk and play pool in the basement and things, you know, it was just a really irresponsible thing for him to do.

Nora McInerny [00:23:07] So when I met Brandie, she mentioned that she thinks that her advantage is from childhood trauma. But when you talk to her, there's not a lot of recall about her childhood, right?

Marcel Malekebu [00:23:24] Yeah. She you know, the stories mostly ... it's kind of disjointed, and she speaks about it in sort of like generalities and like feelings. So she claims that she remembers the emotional value of the past and like past memories. But some of the specific, you know, words and conversations and most of the images and experiences are kind of a blur to her.

Brandie Posey [00:23:54] I've read that in some people's experiences it can be like, Ooh, a thing basically for your survival. It was like, "Let's not relive this. We don't want this to be a thing that we come back to with any, you know, emotional resonance or anything." And I kind of think something like that is probably what happened. I couldn't tell you what it is, exactly, but there's like moments where I'm like, "Hmm, maybe that's when I turned off my mind's eye.".

Nora McInerny [00:24:20] So to me, that's not an unreasonable theory. Like, when I didn't want to see a scary or uncomfortable part of a movie growing up -- and by uncomfortable, I do mean a sex scene, and by growing up, I do mean, like, well into my 20s -- I would just leave the room. I'd leave the room for 60 seconds or however long I thought it might take and then just come back in or I'd turn off the TV if it was playing on TV, and then I'd turn it back on later while it just kept playing on broadcast television. But it's not like Brandie and Cathy can just turn their mind's eye back on. That's not how it works, right?

Marcel Malekebu [00:24:57] No. So aphantasia is still kind of in the infancy stage of research, and it's not an official disorder or anything. So there's no official way that Cathy or Brandie can get a diagnosis. So back in 2012, when Cathy is realizing that she doesn't have the ability to visualize things, she has to do a whole bunch of research on the Internet to figure out exactly what is going on.

Cathy [00:25:24] And I Googled, "Can't visualize," you know, "Can't, unable to see anything in my mind's eye, blank screen." You know, like Google, Google, Google. Nothing out there. You know, some old what would you call it, like bulletin board type of things. You know, like there was nothing, you know, mainstream that I could find.

Nora McInerny [00:25:52] So how long does it take for Cathy to find a name for this condition that she's had, I guess, her entire life?

Marcel Malekebu [00:26:01] It took three years for her to find a name for it. She actually ended up stumbling across an article called "Lives Without Imagery: Congenital Aphantasia," in 2015.

Nora McInerny [00:26:13] So if you Google this paper, if you go on aphantasia.com, it seems like this study kicked off more mainstream interest in aphantasia. And there had been articles previously about people who had reported losing their ability to visualize. But this study names what Cathy has been experiencing her whole life as congenital aphantasia.

Cathy [00:26:39] In that paper, it said, "If you have this or you want more information, send us your email." And so I did. I reached out. I sent my email. He sent me back a questionnaire type of thing that I could take, which I took. I got my husband to take it. But it just walks you through some questions. Like I said to you, you know, close your eyes. They give you five choices. You know, it's it's as if I'm looking at it in real life. It's kind of like I'm looking at real life. It's a little blurry, you know? It's super blurry. It's hard to distinguish and it's a black screen. And I think you gave like one point, two point, three point, four point, five point. And I had like one point all the way through all the questions.

Nora McInerny [00:27:26] So before we get to Cathy and her husband's results, you have another visualization exercise for the audience.

Marcel Malekebu [00:27:34] I do. I want you guys, beautiful audience, I want you to imagine yourself sitting down. You have a cup of tea, a nice cup of peppermint tea at your side. You're about to meditate and finally dream up your perfect living room. Or vacation. And yes, I'm asking you right now to visualize yourself visualizing. Okay. Did it work? If it did, you probably don't have aphantasia. But if you couldn't see any of this, well, you might be aphantasic.

Cathy [00:28:20] There's people at my end of the spectrum, which is the black screen, and then there's people at the what they call hyperphantasia, which happens to be my husband. He can see me in his mind's eye. He can rotate me. He can walk around me. He can change when I'm wearing. All in his mind's eye. So like, my husband scored 100 and I scored 20. And they gave me a chart that showed if you scored, you know, here, you were aphantasia, and if you scored over here, you were hyperaphantasia. And then there was all the possibilities in between.

Nora McInerny [00:29:03]  Cathy's score validates what she has always believed: that she has aphantasia. So she's not surprised.

Cathy [00:29:15] It's kind of one of these things like, yeah, I knew that! Since 2012 I was aware that I lacked this skill. It was just confirming what I already knew. So yeah, I definitely felt happy to know that somebody cared about it and was trying to learn more about it because there's so many questions that don't have answers even at this point. I think my overwhelming emotion was, you know, this sense of loss for something that appeared that most people have an ability that I never had and still don't have. Kind of sad to realize there seems like missing out on something in life that seems important. You know, this is not at all comparable, but, you know, like, let's say you never had kids. And now you want kids and you've found out you can't have them. You are grieving or something you can't have. It's in that category of, you know, everybody can do this and I can't. And what would like, be like if I could?

Nora McInerny [00:30:35] What would life be like if she could? What would life be like if Brandie could? We'll be right back.

Nora McInerny [00:31:06] Cathy and Brandie both expressed really similar sentiments to us. It felt like a sense of grief around all these internal experiences that they've never had or will never have, and the sense of sadness that they didn't have the opportunity to deal with that loss because they never knew. And even though aphantasia isn't debilitating for Cathy or Brandie, there are some challenges that they've had to overcome.

Cathy [00:31:35] There's been a number of occasions where I've had to interact with an interior designer and they would say, "Can't you picture blah, blah, blah?" You know, this paint, this wall blue, do this, do that. And I would say to them, "What, do you have magic eyes?" This would be my reaction that they were special. So that's the only time that I can think of where I felt the distinction. But it was me thinking, "I'm the majority and you have a superpower." Now I think everyone has the superpower.

Brandie Posey [00:32:11]  I've always been a little bit blown away by what some people tell a story as they have all these details. They could fill it in, and they can tell you all the stuff about it. And I just don't have that ability. And it's always made me feel a little insane because I'm like, "But I'm like, really good at, I'm really good at writing and like, you know, my joke structure is actually very visual, because I work it all out." But like in the moment, it's like hard for me to come up with stuff. And I think I remember just being like, "This might be a reason that I've been butting up against this way of communicating," because I'm just not pulling data to share in conversations the same way that other people do. You know, especially in relationships, it's like, I think I can seem very forgetful and now I can be like, "Hey, I'm not. I'm actually extremely thoughtful and remember a lot, but I just need you to, like, trigger the thing in my brain to find what you're talking about." And then I'm fine. Rifling through a filing cabinet in the dark is very hard. I just need you to give me, like, one thing to find the folder, basically.

Marcel Malekebu [00:33:18] So the challenges that Cathy and Brandie deal with, due to their literal lack of imagination, are something that Cathy and Brandie just have to learn how to adapt to. And they both mostly unknowingly have.

Cathy [00:33:34] I've memorized, like, unwittingly, the floor plan of our house. And I know how many windows there are. I don't have to walk through our house to count them. I can tell you, because I have memorized the house. You know, I store memories as almost like a set of facts. And you know that concept, a picture is worth a thousand words. Well, if you're able to store a memory as a photo or an image. You got a thousand less words in your head than I do. So I think the database is full. At least if your brain has a section for images and words. My images empty. My words is overflowing.

Brandie Posey [00:34:29] I'm very tuned in to like the immediate emotions of others in the room. I feel like I can kind of like tell if something's off or whatever, and I can kind of feel that out. I don't really call myself an empath, but I do have a lot of empathy and I think I could kind of really pass that out. I think also because my. I got a real good bullshit meter too. Because of that, I think. I think there's there's been a couple of times in comedy where there's been somebody that I that I've met that everyone's like, "Oh, they're great." And I'm like, "Something's wrong. I don't ... I don't like this person." And then something will come out later and I'm like, "I was right." There's always something. And I think a lot of it is like because they don't have these, like, fun memories that I'm pulling when I see somebody. I'm like oh, yeah. Like, you know, I remember all these fun times we had them was like, yeah, I saw you at a thing that was fun is kind of what my brain does. But then so it's like in this moment, what are you doing to earn my conversation or like, earn, you know, earn my trust in this moment?

Marcel Malekebu [00:35:33] So the interesting thing about aphantasia is that though people living with the condition have issues recalling images in certain cases, researchers don't really think that aphantasia has any significant effect on memory itself. So, like they can remember good times from the past, they can remember bad times, too. They just can't re-experience them.

Brandie Posey [00:35:59] I don't relive, you know, embarrassing moments or any of those things. I've talked to my friends about aphantasia. That has been the thing that, you know, the first will be like, "Oh, that's so sad. You can't see things in your mind." Then I'm like, "Yeah, but I don't see all the bad things either." And they're like, "Oh, you lucky. That sounds so amazing."

Marcel Malekebu [00:36:21] Yeah. I mean, it would suck to not be able to recall visual images, but one way that they've both found that they can deal with this is they've both become amateur photographers.

Brandie Posey [00:36:33] I'm a huge concert fan. That's where all of my money is ever gone to, is like going to concerts and stuff. But I couldn't close my eyes and relive a moment or feel that way. You know, I'm one of those jerks that has a phone up because I can't remember it otherwise.

Cathy [00:36:49] I usually have lots of photographs, physical representations of my family around me. And in retrospect, I think that might be because I'm not calling them on my head and I want to be able to see them. I was the team photographer for every sport that my kids were involved with, every activity, you know, that they were part of, I was the team photographer. So taking pictures, having pictures might be important to me because of my inability to conjure a visual image up in my mind.

Nora McInerny [00:37:27] I was joking before when I said, "Oh, you know, I want that kind of aphantasia." I was mostly joking. I was mostly joking. But I have spent, Marcel, you know,  like a significant amount of my life just running in a loop, a loop of my past in my brain, just and not, not only bad things, right? I do have joy. When I remember the way that Matthew looked at me after I had our baby. After I had Baby Q. I just will never forget that. He has never looked at me that way since. [laughs] Never looked that way before. I have that bottled in my brain and thank God for that.

Marcel Malekebu [00:38:11] The whole relationship is hanging by that thread. [laughs]

Nora McInerny [00:38:15] It's like I can still see ... I fell off the the slide. I was climbing on top of the tube slide in fifth grade, fell off. It got the wind knocked out of me. And I can see Michael Kelly, Mike Kelly's face over me, looming over me, going, "Imagine squirrels playing volleyball," and miming squirrels playing volleyball. I couldn't breathe, but I was laughing so hard. But I could also see, you know, I can see Aaron's face when he was healthy, but I can also see the way his legs looked under the hospital blanket when he was in the hospice bed in our house. I can hear my dad's voice calling people fucking idiots whenever I see people on the plane, like getting up and pushing towards the front. And, you know, it is sad that for Cathy, for Brandie, for anyone who has aphantasia that, you know, they won't get to relive their greatest or their worst moments, like for better or worse. They're just in the now.

Cathy [00:39:30] I think there's such a richness to being able to pull a memory up that's still a visual for you. It's hard to say at this point what the loss really is, because I don't know what I don't know. If I had a day to not have this condition, I would be much better positioned to know what I'm missing out on. You know, finding out something when you're 54, you know, it's like it's better to know. Not that you could change it if if you could maybe be different, but I'm a truth seeker. And to get caught off guard, you know, was a little unsettling. So I guess I am motivated by wanting people to have an opportunity to know more about themselves, good or bad. And, you know, it's all about just facing the truth and dealing with it and moving forward.

Brandie Posey [00:40:35] Learning about aphantasia has been amazing and then also learning that all the all the different senses exist on different spectrums because it's really made me realize how many things are are not black and white about how anybody perceives the world and how different every individual person's experience could be of the exact same thing. And I think it's given me quite a bit of empathy for people that experience something different or took something away from the exact same thing that I went through. And it's like, okay, you perceived things differently and you know, there is probably some weird evolutionary reason for it. And, you know, it kind of just turned me into basically a Buddha, I think.

Nora McInerny [00:41:29] Marcel, this episode was unexpectedly deep. Thank you for joining me.

Marcel Malekebu [00:41:33] Yeah, no problem. Nice to be here.

Nora McInerny [00:41:37] And now I am obsessed with what I can or can't see in my mind. It's it's like when somebody points something out to you, then you're hyper aware of that.

Marcel Malekebu [00:41:45] And now you're just every day trying to prove it that you don't have aphantasia or you do.

Nora McInerny [00:41:52] I see it, right? I do see it.

Marcel Malekebu [00:41:53] You see like, oh, actually, I have aphantasia. Because I don't see shit, okay?

Nora McInerny [00:42:16] Thank you to you, Brandie, and thank you to Cathy for joining us and sharing their story. Brandie Posey is so, so funny. If you like laughing and you like funny women, you would like the podcast "Lady 2 Lady." There's a digit in there. Lady 2 Lady." I enjoy it. It's one of my regular listens. It makes me laugh a lot. This has been "Terrible, Thanks for Asking." I am Nora McInerny.

Marcel Malekebu [00:42:42] I am Marcel Malakebu.

Nora McInerny [00:42:44] The rest of our team is:.

Marcel Malekebu [00:42:46] Jordan Turgeon.

Nora McInerny [00:42:48] Megan Palmer.

Marcel Malekebu [00:42:50] Larissa Witcher.

Nora McInerny [00:42:51] Eugene Kidd.

Marcel Malekebu [00:42:51] Claire McInerney.

Nora McInerny [00:42:54] Nobody else.

Marcel Malekebu [00:42:57] Music made by Geoffrey Lamar Wilson.

Nora McInerny [00:43:00] Yes. He has a new project out called Lamar. So you should download that. He's wonderful. We are a production of ...

Marcel Malekebu [00:43:08] Feelings & Co.

Nora McInerny [00:43:09] Feelings & Co. Marcel recorded this in.

Marcel Malekebu [00:43:12] Malekebu Studios.

Nora McInerny [00:43:14] In ...

Marcel Malekebu [00:43:17] Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Marcel Malekebu [00:43:19] I recorded this in my office that Marcel wants me to stop recording in because he wants me pushed into a closet for acoustics. I will get back in there. But our closet is not ... it's not insulated. It's so cold. Our house is ... It's an Arizona house from like the '50s. It's built out of concrete. It's cold as hell. If I go in that closet, I could freeze to death. It's so cold. Don't make me go back in there. Thank you so much for being here. You can find more from our show at TTFA.org. Jordan spent weeks, weeks, weeks, weeks, weeks building out a great Substack that has so much more episode discussions, other things. I really was paying attention when she showed it to us. She did such a good job. We'll have a link to that in our show notes and other sources that we used to write this episode. All right, that's it, I think. Is that it?

Marcel Malekebu [00:44:14] I'd imagine. [laughs]

Nora McInerny [00:44:19] Wow. [laughs]