Seeing Double | Spitting-image strangers aim to discover science behind doppelgängers | Sunday Night

[Music] [Music] meet John Jameson we do it and Neil Richardson this morning you could be forgiven for thinking they are the same person yes exciting but you're looking at two completely unrelated men gah pick up a dinner don't know I thought about that do you not for dinner tonight no have you thought about John and Neil are doppelgangers two people who share uncanny similarities which in their case extends way beyond the physical after 50 years of marriage you still don't know what I want for dinner they're prolonging myself to death oh uh d-day right you can't even sort out what we're gonna have for dinner I'm trying to work out how I am sitting opposite to gentleman who looks so alike how do you explain it John mm Neil's good fortune there probably are two or three very close replicas of all of us you know with all the billions of humans on the planet it's not surprising we're actually very in bred gene pool is not that varied but what is even more surprising is that John and Neil live just around the corner from each other John and Jenny have lived in Braintree Essex all their married life horror by sheer coincidence Neil and Marian moved here a few years ago after Neil hung up his vicar robes and that's when the lives of both men took a bizarre turn I moved to Braintree and I knew nobody absolutely nobody in the town so I was very surprised to find people waving at me couldn't quite see why because I didn't know anybody did you just think my goodness they're friendly they're a friendly bunch here in Braintree that was my thought exactly you said that to me lots of everybody's waving at me I feel like I feel like I've lived here my whole life and then someone said hello John and waved again and people came up to me said hello John how are you today and then we went to the cafe in the middle of Braintree and this bloke came over from another table and said my wife says you're John Jamison and I said he must be a good-looking chap no no it's not me and the manager of the cafe came up from the back and said hello John how are you so I said look come here I'm not John I'm Neal and he said Oh John stop mucking up mucking about you know to kotoba silly so I had to get my card or credit card out of my pocket and proved to him that my name was Neil not John it must have been a fascinating idea in your mind who is this John it was I kept thinking I must try find out who he is and he looks like me so I'll look for him and I look around we're shopping I looked at people's faces and things like that but no didn't see anyone it was a whole year before Neil ran into this John Jameson chap both were on a day trip with a local history group here's how John remembers their meeting as I got on the coach I was approached by a man that I've not met before it was really quite weird when this chap with a beard said excuse me I'm guessing that you're John Jameson yes I said with a bow what have I done now oh nothing at all please don't fret I've been called by your name and it drives me insane so I thought it was time to leave and what fortuitous meeting that turned out to be I'm shot by your priority John and Neil discovered a shared love of poetry is just one of many things they had have you any question rattle off the similarities you both have if you wouldn't mind please well we both trained to be teachers in the same teacher training college although not at the same time we both started teaching exactly the same simply realistic religious education which isn't exactly a usual subject we both proposed to the women that would become our wives within a short space of time one or two weeks of meeting them and 50 odd years later were still at it and for the grand crescendo you have sons that pay a particular instrument what do they play they play the didgeridoo help me my mind is doing leaps and bounds I can't get my head around that it's strange isn't it it's an accident of fate we have no idea no idea it's crazy but as we'll see tonight Neil and John are the only ones with the crazy good luck of finding the doppelgangers it's thought that everyone on earth has a look-alike now scientists are asking the question why is it all just a mad coincidence or is there some other deeper explanation I am you've okay no very we've set ourselves a challenge and we have no understanding from today and to find people that look really really like us or almost completely identical it started as a bit of a lark Nev Janey set themselves a challenge to find their doppelgangers oh is it yeah I'll just do this for a bit of fun like what I will I really find someone like what are the chances I'll never find someone but when they of her back then was a brunette took her search online she didn't just find one doppelganger she found three a girl from Italy and unbelievably to local lasses from her hometown of Dublin when I met Karen my first stop ugh anger I mean the first few hours we didn't really say much to each other we were just like looking at each other silently really yeah we were just gazing longingly into each other's eyes it was kind of like this you know [Music] almost kind of looking at the side because you don't nearly want to do you know like stare at stare at each other because it's weird it's cool it's really cool but it's weird because it does actually get to the heart of your own image of yourself yeah yeah because like part of your identity is your image a big part of it because you meet these people who look exactly like you are almost completely like you but yet behind that you have different personality traits different confidence levels even though you look the exact same you you don't act completely the same now you tell me about the time you met your second doppelganger so Louisa was my second doppelganger and I flew over to Italy to meet her it's so great to meet you and meet your face the other thing in Archie care is it's a line and it's a very strange experience to find yourself in you know meeting someone that looks like you what about your third doppelganger my third doppelganger Irene I came I think two or three months later is it unsettling it's unsettling but it's amazing [Music] it really kicks you back a notch because you think you're special and unique and there's no one in the world that's like you and then you meet someone who looks you know identical to you and then you realize oh you're not as unique as you thought you were it's a puzzling human phenomenon look-alikes like John and Neil naôve and her three doppelgangers are more common than you might think in fact it's said that most of us have at least one dead ringer out there somewhere how do you explain it so far there is no explanation for it but could they be a scientific reason something deep in our DNA that solves the mystery Sara and Shannon look remarkably similar but as far as they know they're not blood relatives the experience of actually meeting someone that you would consider to be a doppelganger what does it feel like well for me it feels like you know them yeah say much like a stranger but you know them so you can trust them because they look like you which is probably bad but do you know what I mean but like there was no awkwardness ever you're such a good jawline sex is so unfair you're a lot more outgoing oh I think it's a Swedish thing is it yeah yeah it's not just that you know yeah I'd be quite so sure and Sara is very quiet poor old sorry I can't get a word in no but like we'd walk down the street I break hi oh hi and she's like why talk stranger I'm just saying hi using you don't you don't do that Jay yeah I think it's an eye everything no I'm gon fight [Music] shannon and sarah wanted to know how two people born thousands of kilometers apart could look so alike there had to be an explanation so they decided to take part in a doppelgangers study so here's who headed by genetics professor Tim Spector at King's College in London you actually believe from a scientific perspective that everyone has one that there's a doppelganger out there for each of us depending on how you define a doppelganger yes it's kind of weird when you think about we do have some other twins pseudo twins out there walking around looking that could take our place quite easily professor Spector became curious about look-alikes when he saw this photo of two ginger-haired strangers on a plane everyone kept stopping them saying they look like identical twins and these pictures we went viral around the internet he decided to study the phenomenon comparing doppelgangers like Shannon and Sarah using the most advanced facial mapping systems available six camera setup take shots simultaneously giving 3d images which can measure every contour of the face even though the girls aren't related the similarities were astonishing you can hardly tell the difference I would have thought this is the same nose yeah so you're getting a score of 90% on that yes exactly like a transcon so you have twin noses to take Shannon and Sarah might look near identical but DNA testing proved their resemblances finally skin deep genetically they are strangers naôve and her doppelganger eye rain also had their DNA tested Irene's ancestors came from the Middle East while miav is of Western Asian descent so there you have it not sisters not half sisters not even related up to 20,000 years ago mental [Music] but what about John and Neil for these peas in a pod be the product of mere coincidence professor Spector invited them to take part in the study as well when you went to London for this experiment did you believe it was real I have my doubts but once we saw the equipment and we met professor Spector yeah we and we found out who he was and what his qualifications were and how serious he was he looks like an ordinary bloke it doesn't look like a professor or awesome some famous doctor but he is and he was applying scientific criteria to everything about us I love that that YouTube likes thought even even as you're in London you weren't convinced that this wasn't a stitch-up and that you know maybe this was all Wow it just seemed like a you know a load of fluff okay shall we shall we we we look like each other so let's look at the eyes and I think these are amazingly similar yeah yeah and we got a score for about 81 percent similarity on that is close to what we're getting on our identical twins force up their noses are an even closer match well you a 90% really yeah it's amazing really undistinguishable from identical twins gee I mean you could put one of those over the top of the other and you hardly notice anything the nose the eyes and the lips very similar on them we just ignored the fact that the jaws were very different John and Neal's similarities go way beyond their facial features what about body language I noticed talking to them you know that they would have their hands clasped like this similar you know or you know they'd cross their arms in the same way is that something that you actually noted and studied them I noted it informally we didn't have a way of actually testing it and it's something you do notice also in in identical twins they will pick up a teacup the same way they will open a can of beer with the same finger all these reflex actions you both have phenomenal respect for each other as writers and you value each other's opinions you know I've seen John coming to you Neal for advice on something he's written and vice versa I mean there is a mutual respect there isn't it oh yes i I've asked John John's advice several on several occasions about what I've written and he's had the good sense to ignore it every okay to the surprise of John and Neil or the doppelgangers study revealed their vast similarities may in fact be the result of a shared ancestor that neither of them knew anything about John you can see here these darker filled in colors are where the bulk of the DNA comes from and when you compare that to nails yeah you know you're almost exactly the same you're ethnically twins if you like although one small variance has come as a crushing blow to John where his was spinned and swim and death or he becomes more Viking than me right mine was Irish is that a sore point that he's more Viking than you oh of course why I've always thought of myself as being too almost almost pure Viking when Neil tells me you have Viking fingers I do that's a party trick that's one way if anyone's you know getting around brain free and really needs to tell you apart the feel of your fingers ya have to say yeah there's somebody's if somebody says show you your fingers you're tempted to do why are you refusing to give me any light now all this talk about doppelgangers got me thinking is there someone out there lucky or unlucky enough to be my dead ringer leaves helper I'm about to find out using facial recognition software and a search engine my very own doppelganger is just a click away this is a brutal kind of experiment is now okay au hat tell me you're having some sort of an uproarious laugh he's 80 can we looking at your future self there this has been a tough morning he's like he looks friendly he does it welfare I like eating things maybe that is me oh I've come full circle in a few years this is a walkout [Music] you you

Channel: Sunday Night

Views: 427,748

Rating: 4.8975625 out of 5

Keywords: Sunday Night, 7 Network, News, Channel 7, Australia, Australian News, Current Affairs, world news, headlines, story, stories, Melissa Doyle, Matt Doran, doppelganger, doppelgänger, doppelgangers, doppelgängers, lookalike, lookalikes, look-alike, look-alikes, strangers, twins, brother from another mother, body doubles, double, unusual, strange, bizarre, amazing, twin stranger, identical twins, unexplained, science, research, documentary, seeing double, unrelated

Id: xBw2VFsRXao

Length: 17min 30sec (1050 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 19 2019