What’s worth remembering?

Summary

Neuroscientist Charan Ranganath joins Sean Illing to challenge common misconceptions about memory. He argues that memory’s primary function is not to archive the past, but to serve as a dynamic resource for understanding the present and planning the future. The conversation explores why we forget details quickly, the difference between episodic and semantic memory, and why remembering more isn’t necessarily better—as illustrated by people with highly superior autobiographical memory who often describe it as a curse.

Ranganath explains how memory is reconstructive, more like a painting than a photograph, and how this creative process shapes our personal narratives and sense of self. He delves into the neuroscience of traumatic memories, explaining how emotional intensity locks them in, and discusses the possibility of remembering painful events without the debilitating emotional charge. The discussion also covers the powerful role of music as a memory trigger, linking specific songs to distinct emotional states and periods of our lives.

The conversation expands to the societal level, examining how collective memories form the basis of group identities, from sports fandoms to political movements. Ranganath warns that the malleability of memory, magnified in groups and accelerated by modern media ecosystems, poses a significant threat to shared reality and democratic discourse. He connects individual memory processes to broader issues like misinformation, political polarization, and the manipulation of history by authoritarian regimes.

Finally, Ranganath and Illing explore the relationship between memory, forgiveness, and moving forward—both personally and societally. They discuss whether societies need to forget to reconcile, or if the path forward involves remembering differently—changing our relationship to the past rather than erasing it. The episode concludes with practical advice: memory is not free or automatic, and setting clear intentions about what we want to remember is the most powerful tool we have.

Recommendations

Books

Why We Remember — Charan Ranganath’s book, which forms the basis of the conversation. It explores the science of memory and challenges common misconceptions about remembering and forgetting.

Concepts

Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory (HSAM) — A rare condition where individuals can recall detailed memories from virtually every day of their lives. Discussed as an example that more memory isn’t necessarily better, as it often leads to rumination and isn’t linked to greater success or happiness.
Episodic vs. Semantic Memory — Key distinction in memory types: episodic memory ties experiences to specific times and places (like a particular event), while semantic memory involves general knowledge and facts (like historical information).
Self-Schemas — Mental frameworks or blueprints about ourselves that help organize our memories into coherent narratives of cause and effect, fundamentally shaping our identity.
Collective Memory — Shared memories within groups that form the basis of communal identity, from families to nations. Discussed as both a source of social bonding and a vulnerability to manipulation and distortion.

People

Danny Kahneman — Nobel Prize-winning economist referenced for his insights about memory, particularly that people remember beginnings, endings, highs, and lows of experiences.
Elizabeth Loftus — Memory researcher known for groundbreaking work on the malleability of memory and how misinformation can alter recollections of events.
Stan Klein — Philosopher at UC Santa Barbara who has studied people with amnesia and questions about whether personal identity persists without memory.
Endel Tulving — Psychologist who pioneered the concept of episodic memory and studied patients like ‘Casey’ who lacked the ability to mentally time travel to past experiences.
Felipe De Brigard — Philosopher and cognitive neuroscientist at Duke running the Memory and Forgiveness Project in Colombia, exploring how understanding memory can aid reconciliation.
Matt Walker — Sleep scientist referenced for research on how sleep helps transform traumatic memories, making them less emotionally toxic over time.

Topic Timeline

00:03:44 — The true purpose of memory — Ranganath explains that memory is not for storing every past experience, but rather serves as a resource to understand the present and anticipate the future. He challenges the common complaint of having a ‘bad memory,’ arguing that truly dysfunctional memory prevents independent living. The discussion establishes that remembering more isn’t necessarily better, using the example of people with highly superior autobiographical memory who often find it burdensome.
00:08:23 — Why we forget names and faces — Ranganath analyzes the specific difficulty of remembering names and faces. He compares memory retrieval to finding items on a cluttered desk, where similar items compete with each other. Names and faces are particularly challenging because they’re highly similar (all faces have eyes, noses, mouths) and the association between a name and face is arbitrary, unlike historical names tied to occupations. This explains why this universal memory complaint persists despite our general cognitive abilities.
00:10:57 — How memory changes with age — The conversation distinguishes between semantic memory (facts, knowledge) and episodic memory (specific events tied to time and place). While people complain about declining episodic memory as they age—forgetting details, misplacing things—semantic memory remains stable or even improves. The decline is linked to reduced executive function and prefrontal cortex efficiency, affecting our ability to regulate attention and employ memory strategies rather than destroying stored information.
00:14:43 — Memory shapes happiness more than experience — Ranganath discusses research showing that our satisfaction with decisions comes more from what we remember than from the actual experience. He references memory’s transience—we lose about 60% of details within an hour—and Danny Kahneman’s observation that we remember beginnings, endings, highs, and lows. This leads to the insight that deliberately focusing on and remembering positive aspects can enhance well-being, making memory a tool for crafting happiness.
00:17:18 — Memory as painting, not photography — Ranganath introduces the central metaphor of memory as a painting rather than a photograph. Like Van Gogh’s interpretation of a church, memories incorporate perspective, emphasis, and emotion rather than objective accuracy. This reconstructive nature means we can reinterpret past experiences—even traumatic ones—from new vantage points. Ranganath shares a personal example of a near-death paddleboarding experience that has transformed from terrifying to a funny story he enjoys telling.
00:18:22 — Trauma and emotional memory — The discussion turns to how traumatic memories differ neurologically. Emotionally significant events trigger chemical releases (noradrenaline, cortisol, dopamine) that enhance memory formation. However, Ranganath distinguishes between the detailed content of a memory and the visceral emotional component. He emphasizes that the goal for trauma survivors shouldn’t be forgetting, but rather remembering without the debilitating emotional ‘punch in the face,’ a process that naturally occurs during sleep for many people.
00:22:11 — Music as a powerful memory trigger — Ranganath explains why music evokes such strong memories and emotions. Emotions form part of the ‘context’ that organizes episodic memories. When we hear music associated with a particular emotional state or life period, it activates memories linked to that context. Both Illing and Ranganath share personal examples—Illing with a song tied to his mother’s death, Ranganath with music linked to childhood experiences. Music provides access not just to events, but to who we were during different life phases.
00:29:38 — Memory, narrative, and the self — Illing asks whether the self is essentially a memory system holding a story together. Ranganath discusses ‘self-schemas’—mental blueprints about who we are—that help organize memories into causes and effects. We remember not just events, but why they happened, stitching them into coherent narratives. This narrative construction is fundamental to our identity and our ability to imagine the future, making memory central to the experience of being a self.
00:32:31 — Can we be ourselves without memory? — Exploring a philosophical question, Illing asks if someone who loses memories can remain the same self. Ranganath references research on amnesia patients who maintain a sense of identity but experience it as ‘thinner’ or ‘emptier.’ People with severe memory loss often get ‘stuck in time,’ still identifying with their younger selves. The conversation suggests that while a core self might persist, rich episodic memories provide the texture and continuity that make us feel like coherent persons over time.
00:35:34 — Collective memory and political identity — The discussion scales up to how groups use shared memories to build collective identity. Ranganath defines collective memory as narratives shared among people, whether in families, sports fandoms, or nations. He notes that authoritarian regimes consistently manipulate collective memory by controlling statues, education, and archives. Shared memories create social bonds but also enable selective, distorted narratives that reinforce group biases and make people susceptible to preferred misinformation.
00:42:38 — Memory segregation as a political crisis — Illing asks if increasingly segregated informational environments, combined with memory’s reconstructive nature, create an unsustainable political problem. Ranganath agrees, calling it one of today’s biggest threats, exacerbated by AI. He critiques the assumption that long-form media automatically leads to truth, noting people selectively remember what confirms existing beliefs. Vivid anecdotes (like vaccine side effects) outweigh statistical realities in shaping beliefs, demonstrating how memory’s biases magnify in polarized societies.
00:54:38 — Forgiveness, forgetting, and moving forward — The conversation concludes with whether societies must forget to reconcile. Ranganath references truth and reconciliation efforts, noting that merely ‘regurgitating’ trauma can retraumatize. He shares a project in Colombia teaching about ‘remembering without pain’ and a quote: ‘forgiving is not forgetting; forgiving is remembering without pain.’ The key is changing our relationship to memories, not erasing them. This applies to self-forgiveness too—viewing past mistakes as learning opportunities rather than absolute markers of identity.

Episode Info

Podcast: The Gray Area with Sean Illing
Author: Vox
Category: Society & Culture Philosophy News Politics News Commentary
Published: 2025-10-06T08:00:00Z
Duration: 00:58:54

References

URL PocketCasts: https://pocketcasts.com/podcast/1d3ce9a0-ae3d-0133-2e33-6dc413d6d41d/episode/aa224443-222d-4df2-8a32-f10bc25b2317/
Episode UUID: aa224443-222d-4df2-8a32-f10bc25b2317

Podcast Info

Name: The Gray Area with Sean Illing
Type: episodic
Site: https://www.vox.com/vox-conversations-podcast
UUID: 1d3ce9a0-ae3d-0133-2e33-6dc413d6d41d

Transcript

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[00:01:03] Go to vox.com slash members to join.

[00:01:06] Now here’s the show.

[00:01:09] Close your eyes.

[00:01:12] Think of the first voice you ever loved.

[00:01:18] The smell of a room you can’t quite place.

[00:01:22] Or think of something much simpler,

[00:01:25] like the last time you took a walk in the woods.

[00:01:27] Or the last time you took a walk on a sunny day.

[00:01:28] Or that last company Christmas party,

[00:01:31] where you’re absolutely positive your dumb joke offended the CEO.

[00:01:36] Sit with those memories for a moment.

[00:01:39] The feelings they evoke.

[00:01:41] The sensations they bring back.

[00:01:44] Are you actually remembering all that?

[00:01:48] Or are you inventing it?

[00:01:50] We think of memory as a record of the past,

[00:01:54] but remembering is also an act of creativity,

[00:01:57] and it’s possible that the next time you remember

[00:02:00] taking a walk on a sunny day,

[00:02:02] you’ll also remember that you were listening to this podcast episode,

[00:02:05] even though that’s definitely not the case.

[00:02:08] Memory doesn’t keep the past.

[00:02:11] It remakes it.

[00:02:13] It stitches fragments into stories.

[00:02:16] And those stories, true or not,

[00:02:19] are what we end up calling our life.

[00:02:21] And on a group level,

[00:02:23] it’s what we end up calling our history.

[00:02:27] I’m Sean Elling,

[00:02:28] and this is The Gray Area.

[00:02:34] My guest today is Sharan Ranganath,

[00:02:38] a neuroscientist and author of a book called Why We Remember.

[00:02:42] I asked him to join me for a conversation

[00:02:45] about the strange alchemy of remembering

[00:02:48] and how the stories our minds create

[00:02:51] end up creating us.

[00:02:57] Dr. Sharan Ranganath, welcome to the show.

[00:03:00] Thanks for having me, Sean.

[00:03:01] It’s a pleasure.

[00:03:03] It’s been too long since we had a legit,

[00:03:06] full-blown scientist on the show.

[00:03:08] Lots of pressure there.

[00:03:10] Yeah, you got to carry the banner.

[00:03:12] Let’s get into this wonderful book you wrote.

[00:03:15] I learned a lot.

[00:03:16] And one of the things you say very early on

[00:03:21] is that the most important message to come out of the whole,

[00:03:26] the whole science of memory

[00:03:27] isn’t that we should remember more,

[00:03:30] which is what everyone just naturally wants to do.

[00:03:34] You say that we actually have the wrong expectation

[00:03:36] about what memory is actually for.

[00:03:40] So I just wanted to start there.

[00:03:42] What is memory for?

[00:03:44] Well, I could tell you what it’s not for,

[00:03:46] and this is where the wrong expectation comes in.

[00:03:49] It’s not for storing and hoarding

[00:03:51] every experience from the past.

[00:03:52] It’s about really giving us a resource

[00:03:56] that we can draw upon

[00:03:57] to understand what’s happening right here and now

[00:04:00] and to plan ahead

[00:04:02] and to anticipate what could happen in the future.

[00:04:05] So when people say,

[00:04:08] I have a bad memory,

[00:04:10] my memory sucks,

[00:04:11] my memory is spotty,

[00:04:13] what do you think they’re actually misunderstanding

[00:04:16] about how memory functions?

[00:04:19] Yeah, I mean, it’s a great question.

[00:04:20] I have that voice in my head, too,

[00:04:22] that says I have a terrible memory, right?

[00:04:25] But I mean,

[00:04:26] I’ve been saying that for a long time

[00:04:27] and I never struggled in school.

[00:04:30] I could always remember things

[00:04:33] that I needed to for work, for instance.

[00:04:37] And it wasn’t so much that I had a bad memory

[00:04:41] as much as I couldn’t always remember

[00:04:43] what I felt was important in the moment when I needed it.

[00:04:48] And I think that’s what sometimes people feel.

[00:04:50] But if somebody really has a bad memory,

[00:04:54] like a bad memory,

[00:04:56] they couldn’t function in life.

[00:04:57] They couldn’t work.

[00:04:58] They couldn’t live independently.

[00:05:00] And I know because I’ve tested people

[00:05:02] and I’ve interviewed patients with bad,

[00:05:05] really bad, clinically bad memories,

[00:05:07] and they just can’t function.

[00:05:09] So I think often when I see people complain

[00:05:12] about their memory,

[00:05:13] they’re often hyper-functioning people

[00:05:15] who just feel like they should be remembering everything.

[00:05:19] And so that’s what I’m talking about

[00:05:21] is I’m really addressing those people.

[00:05:24] If a truly…

[00:05:26] Bad memory means you can’t function

[00:05:28] as an adult in the world, fair enough.

[00:05:31] But clearly some memories are better than others, right?

[00:05:34] Or is the mistake, my mistake,

[00:05:36] insisting on using words like better or worse?

[00:05:39] That’s exactly the mistake

[00:05:41] is using words like better or worse, right?

[00:05:43] So it’s often…

[00:05:45] And I say that meaning that

[00:05:46] people often conflate more with better.

[00:05:51] So here’s a good example of this, right?

[00:05:53] So there’s people who have what’s called…

[00:05:56] highly superior autobiographical memory.

[00:05:58] So these are people who can go back years into the past

[00:06:02] and recall from a particular date

[00:06:05] like what they did for…

[00:06:07] what they had for breakfast

[00:06:08] or who won a baseball game that day

[00:06:11] and what the score was,

[00:06:12] the weather that day.

[00:06:15] All of these details

[00:06:16] that most neurotypical people would not remember, right?

[00:06:21] And so you think,

[00:06:22] okay, these people have a great memory.

[00:06:25] But for one,

[00:06:26] they don’t in the sense that

[00:06:27] if you ask them to learn a new language,

[00:06:31] they will probably learn at the same speed

[00:06:34] as anyone who doesn’t have

[00:06:36] highly superior autobiographical memory

[00:06:38] based on the research that’s out there so far.

[00:06:41] There doesn’t seem to be some kind of a benefit

[00:06:44] that makes them just better at everything.

[00:06:47] The second thing is we know

[00:06:49] if you look at reports from people

[00:06:52] with highly superior autobiographical memory,

[00:06:54] it’s not like they’re, like,

[00:06:56] Bradley Cooper on Limitless.

[00:06:57] They’re not, like, controlling the world.

[00:07:00] They’re not any more happy or successful

[00:07:03] than other people as far as we can tell.

[00:07:06] And if anything,

[00:07:07] they’re a little bit plagued by this memory

[00:07:09] because they often will ruminate

[00:07:12] about things that happen,

[00:07:13] even very minor things that happen that were negative.

[00:07:16] And so is that a better memory?

[00:07:18] I mean, some people online I’ve seen

[00:07:20] have described it as a curse

[00:07:22] that they wouldn’t wish on anyone.

[00:07:24] Yeah, I mean, look,

[00:07:25] I don’t…

[00:07:26] I don’t want to be, you know,

[00:07:28] Rain Man or Bradley Cooper here.

[00:07:31] But I’m sure I’m not alone.

[00:07:33] I wouldn’t mind being Bradley Cooper for a day.

[00:07:35] Well, I’m sure he has his own issues.

[00:07:38] Everybody does, right?

[00:07:39] Fair.

[00:07:40] It would be fun to be more handsome for a day.

[00:07:42] But setting that aside,

[00:07:44] my question would be,

[00:07:46] why is it that I can have

[00:07:48] near photographic memories

[00:07:51] about certain things,

[00:07:53] certain books, certain events,

[00:07:55] other memories,

[00:07:56] mostly random, stupid, trivial stuff,

[00:07:58] and have so little capacity,

[00:08:00] so often,

[00:08:01] to remember things like faces and names,

[00:08:05] even though I’d very much like

[00:08:07] to remember faces and names.

[00:08:09] And I think there are very good reasons,

[00:08:12] moral, social, whatever,

[00:08:14] to remember faces and names.

[00:08:16] And yet I just consistently botch it.

[00:08:21] Why is that?

[00:08:23] Well, there’s a whole lot of reasons.

[00:08:26] But if we talk about the problem of faces and names,

[00:08:29] this is something that everyone

[00:08:31] who complains about memory,

[00:08:34] this is the first thing that comes up.

[00:08:35] So you’re not alone.

[00:08:37] Essentially, when we’re trying to pull information

[00:08:39] from memory, we have a challenge,

[00:08:42] which is that memories compete with each other.

[00:08:45] So any experience that we have,

[00:08:48] there’s all sorts of competition for it.

[00:08:50] And just as an analogy,

[00:08:52] my desk right now,

[00:08:53] I’m trying to gather information for my taxes,

[00:08:55] because I postponed them.

[00:08:57] And so there’s just papers all over my desk.

[00:09:00] And I spend a good amount of time

[00:09:02] trying to find things all the time, right?

[00:09:04] And so memory can be thought of in a very similar way,

[00:09:07] that when you have a lot of similar things

[00:09:11] cluttered around and not organized,

[00:09:13] you’re going to have a lot of competition,

[00:09:15] a lot of trouble finding it.

[00:09:17] But if there was one thing that truly stood out here,

[00:09:20] like if I had a violin amidst all these other things,

[00:09:23] I would be able to find that pretty easily.

[00:09:25] So here’s the problem now,

[00:09:28] getting back to faces and names,

[00:09:30] is we hear many, many similar names,

[00:09:34] sometimes the same name attached to multiple faces, right?

[00:09:37] And faces are exceptionally similar to one another.

[00:09:42] Obviously, your face is different from mine,

[00:09:45] but we both have two eyes,

[00:09:47] we have a nose, we have mouths.

[00:09:49] And even amongst people we know well,

[00:09:53] there’s often a lot of similarity.

[00:09:56] So now we have a real problem,

[00:09:58] is that we have a bunch of faces

[00:09:59] that kind of are similar to each other.

[00:10:01] There’s a number of names that are similar to one another

[00:10:04] that we’ve seen in the past.

[00:10:06] And the association between a name and a face

[00:10:09] is just utterly ridiculous, right?

[00:10:11] I mean, how do you,

[00:10:12] there’s nothing meaningful linking a name to a face.

[00:10:16] So if you met somebody whose name was Baker,

[00:10:19] you know, hundreds of years ago,

[00:10:20] that would be easier because at least

[00:10:22] they were probably baking bread.

[00:10:24] And, you know,

[00:10:25] or Smith would be the guy who’s making your suit of armor

[00:10:28] or your swords or whatever, right?

[00:10:30] And so now there’s just no link between names and faces.

[00:10:34] There’s nothing meaningful there.

[00:10:35] So that’s why it’s so hard.

[00:10:38] How differently does memory function

[00:10:41] at different stages of life?

[00:10:43] I think we all understand that memory declines

[00:10:47] as we get older,

[00:10:49] but there are certain kinds of memory

[00:10:51] that seem to hold up better than others as we age, right?

[00:10:55] What is the reason for that?

[00:10:57] Well, let’s get into the different kinds of memory,

[00:10:59] first of all.

[00:11:00] So there’s many different kinds of memory.

[00:11:03] Memory researchers love to slice them and dice them

[00:11:05] in different ways.

[00:11:07] But one that I think is meaningful,

[00:11:09] especially when we talk about development,

[00:11:11] is the distinction between what’s called semantic memory

[00:11:14] and episodic memory.

[00:11:16] So semantic memory might be like, you know,

[00:11:19] remembering something about, let’s say,

[00:11:22] like, you know, a history lesson

[00:11:25] that you took when you were in high school

[00:11:26] and remembering the facts about World War II

[00:11:29] or being able to build knowledge about, like, computers

[00:11:34] or something like that

[00:11:36] and that kind of expertise that you can build up.

[00:11:38] But episodic memory is the ability to link something

[00:11:42] to one particular moment in time,

[00:11:44] like a movie that you saw about World War II

[00:11:47] when you were on a strange date

[00:11:50] when you were in college or something

[00:11:51] and for some reason you decided to see an old showing

[00:11:54] of midnight.

[00:11:55] Or whatever it is, right?

[00:11:57] And those particular events that are unique to a place

[00:12:01] in a time are called episodic memories.

[00:12:04] And so when people say their memory gets worse

[00:12:07] as they get older,

[00:12:08] they’re almost always talking about episodic memory.

[00:12:12] When you get older, you find yourself more forgetful,

[00:12:16] misplacing things and not being able to remember

[00:12:18] where they were or not being able to remember faces

[00:12:21] and names or the details from a conversation.

[00:12:25] Semantic memory actually remains solid

[00:12:28] and even kind of improves a little bit

[00:12:30] as people get older.

[00:12:32] That knowledge about the world,

[00:12:34] it’s not like when you’re 70,

[00:12:36] you lose knowledge about all the things

[00:12:38] that you’ve learned, all that wisdom, so to speak, right?

[00:12:42] So what you do lose, though,

[00:12:44] is the ability to pull up those facts sometimes.

[00:12:48] And so you’ll end up being like,

[00:12:50] I know the name of that actor, but I can’t get it.

[00:12:53] It’s that guy who’s…

[00:12:55] And that happens a lot, too.

[00:12:57] And that’s not an issue of losing the memory

[00:13:00] or not being able to form semantic memories

[00:13:03] as much as it is a problem

[00:13:04] of not being able to pull up that information.

[00:13:08] And that has to do with something else altogether,

[00:13:11] which we call executive function.

[00:13:13] And in fact, that’s actually probably

[00:13:15] one of the biggest reasons why episodic memory

[00:13:18] gets worse as you get older,

[00:13:20] is you lose that ability to regulate your attention,

[00:13:23] that ability to pull up,

[00:13:25] strategies, that ability to kind of like,

[00:13:27] not just make memories, but make memories useful.

[00:13:32] And that’s related to the functions of an area

[00:13:34] called the prefrontal cortex.

[00:13:36] And the prefrontal cortex’s function

[00:13:37] starts to decline pretty much from the age of 30,

[00:13:41] and it’s a gradual decline in most people

[00:13:43] that continues throughout the lifespan.

[00:13:45] I’m on the wrong side of that.

[00:13:47] Yeah, me too.

[00:13:49] Unfortunately.

[00:13:50] I always tell people the biggest memory hack

[00:13:53] I can give,

[00:13:55] is to tell people,

[00:13:57] what do you want,

[00:13:58] ask yourself,

[00:13:59] what do I want to remember in the first place?

[00:14:01] What’s the important thing

[00:14:02] that I need to take away from this?

[00:14:04] If you came in to a cocktail party

[00:14:07] and you knew you wanted to be a good person

[00:14:10] and get to know the names of all the people you meet

[00:14:13] and remember them,

[00:14:15] then start with that intention.

[00:14:17] Most people think that they’ll get the memories for free,

[00:14:19] and that’s just wrong.

[00:14:21] There are studies showing that,

[00:14:25] the happiness and satisfaction we get

[00:14:29] from the outcomes of our decisions

[00:14:32] do not come as you might expect

[00:14:36] from what we actually experienced,

[00:14:39] but rather it comes from what we remember.

[00:14:43] That seems like a pretty significant finding.

[00:14:46] What is the explanation for that?

[00:14:49] Well, memory really is so transient.

[00:14:54] And what I mean,

[00:14:55] by this is that we don’t forget everything, right?

[00:14:58] But we forget many of the details very, very quickly.

[00:15:01] Some of the earliest studies of memory

[00:15:03] showed that, in fact,

[00:15:05] within about one hour of memorizing things,

[00:15:09] that you would lose about 60%

[00:15:11] of what you tried to memorize.

[00:15:14] Now think about that.

[00:15:14] That’s like 60% of the details

[00:15:17] of your experiencing self at this moment

[00:15:21] gone in an hour, right?

[00:15:23] Now, that doesn’t mean that you’re going to forget

[00:15:25] That doesn’t mean that you don’t remember anything,

[00:15:26] but Danny Kahneman,

[00:15:28] who won the Nobel Prize in Economics,

[00:15:30] he has actually said a lot of smart things about memory.

[00:15:34] Like, he just said smart things about a lot of things,

[00:15:36] but one was memory, where he said,

[00:15:38] people generally remember the beginnings

[00:15:39] and the endings and the highs and the lows.

[00:15:42] And that, in some ways,

[00:15:44] is the important stuff that you need

[00:15:46] for making a decision,

[00:15:47] not necessarily every bit of experience.

[00:15:51] One takeaway for me here is,

[00:15:55] is that the stories we tell ourselves,

[00:15:58] the narratives that make up our memory,

[00:16:01] really matter in terms of our well-being.

[00:16:05] And that would seem to mean that

[00:16:07] we could gain more happiness in life

[00:16:10] by deliberately focusing on the right things,

[00:16:14] by trying to remember the right things.

[00:16:17] I think that was a beautiful way of putting it.

[00:16:20] I like to say that memory is more like a painting

[00:16:22] than a photograph.

[00:16:23] You know, there’s a famous painter,

[00:16:24] this painting by Van Gogh of this French church.

[00:16:27] And I like to show this sometimes

[00:16:29] when I’m talking to people,

[00:16:31] and people will immediately recognize the painting

[00:16:33] as one of the church, right?

[00:16:36] But it by no means is exactly like the church that’s there.

[00:16:40] I mean, there’s a lot of stuff

[00:16:41] that could be thought of as missing

[00:16:43] or distorted relative to what it looks like.

[00:16:46] But there’s a lot that’s just his perspective

[00:16:48] that’s in there,

[00:16:49] and that’s what makes a painting beautiful in some ways,

[00:16:52] is stuff that’s neither accurate,

[00:16:54] nor inaccurate,

[00:16:55] but it’s just how the person sees the world.

[00:16:57] He painted it at night.

[00:16:58] You could have just as easily painted it in the morning.

[00:17:01] You could paint it from a different point of view.

[00:17:04] You could paint it small.

[00:17:06] You could paint it big.

[00:17:07] You could look at one door, you know?

[00:17:09] And every time we remember an event,

[00:17:11] we’re creating a new painting, right?

[00:17:14] So often people will tell me about good and bad memories,

[00:17:18] good and bad experiences,

[00:17:19] but that could change.

[00:17:21] And I think even though that seems a little bit,

[00:17:24] counterintuitive,

[00:17:25] I think many of us have had times in our life

[00:17:28] which were objectively bad, sometimes terrible.

[00:17:33] And we can look back on that

[00:17:35] from a completely different point of view.

[00:17:37] So in my book, I talk about an experience

[00:17:39] which is just like almost everything that could go wrong

[00:17:42] did go wrong when I was going on this paddleboarding expedition.

[00:17:46] I almost died, you know, in that thing.

[00:17:49] And now it’s a pretty funny story.

[00:17:51] I really like to share it.

[00:17:53] Yeah, well, that story actually in the book made me think about trauma and memory and even worse kinds of traumatic experiences than that, right? I mean, so for someone who’s been through real trauma, just terrible, terrible trauma, forgetting can feel impossible. I mean, how do traumatic memories differ from ordinary memories in the brain? Do they differ at all?

[00:18:22] Oh, they do, for sure. For one thing, the brain is wired in a way to preferentially keep memories for things that are emotionally significant. And the reason is our emotions are tied to, they’re not equivalent to, but they’re tied to these motivational circuits in our brain that are trying to keep us alive, right?

[00:18:44] And so often when people have a traumatic event, they feel an existential threat, and they’re often arousing or stressful. And there’s chemicals in our brain that are released during these experiences. Noradrenaline’s one. Cortisol is a stress hormone. There’s gobs of hormones that are released during stress.

[00:19:04] But there’s also exciting, kind of more positive experiences, like that kind of moment when you’re going to get your first kiss or something like that.

[00:19:14] There’s also dopamine release in the brain. There’s all sorts of chemicals like this. They promote plasticity. They allow new memories to be locked in much more effectively, right?

[00:19:25] So that’s why these traumatic memories tend to stick with us often. But what’s interesting about it is we’ve studied some stressful memories and some emotionally significant memories, not in ways that are remotely like something that a survivor really experiences.

[00:19:43] Right.

[00:19:44] And we find even with those, there’s a difference between the brain systems that actually are involved in giving you the details of what happened and the brain systems that actually just rev you up and give you the visceral feeling of the experience, right?

[00:20:02] So let’s say you got into a car accident. Later on, you remember the car accident. Well, there’s the details of what happened, right? Like this person ran a stop sign, and they crashed right into me, and they’re driving like a red car.

[00:20:14] Right.

[00:20:15] And then there’s the feeling, the feeling of imminent danger, the feeling of pain when you got hit and you jerked forward or something, right? And it turns out that those are different, but the thing that makes people feel like it’s a photographic memory or they can experience it in the moment is not the details. It’s really the emotion that’s associated with it. And so that’s a key thing that makes traumatic memories different.

[00:20:42] And this brings me to another point that I like to bring up.

[00:20:44] I like to bring up to people who tell me, you know, can you help me forget this experience? It’s a common thing, and it’s a tragic thing, and I never, ever, every time I hear this, I feel like a lot of empathy, and I don’t say this in a trivial manner. But you don’t want to forget those experiences. You want to be able to remember them without that emotional punch in the face, right?

[00:21:10] Lots of people who do survive traumas can do that.

[00:21:14] The brain has natural ways. Matt Walker says that it happens during sleep, and I think that is a part of it, that the brain changes these memories to become more useful to us and less toxic to us later on, less radioactive. But when it doesn’t happen, that’s when people get PTSD.

[00:21:38] I really enjoyed the bits in the book about music and the unique power it has.

[00:21:44] And I thought it was fascinating when you were talking about the study you worked on, I think when you were just a baby grad student, and you expected that having subjects listen to sad music would make it easier for them to remember sad events in their lives, and that remembering sad events would make them sad.

[00:22:11] Why does listening to sad music make us sad?

[00:22:14] Why does listening to sad music make us remember sad events? And does the dynamic also work in the opposite direction?

[00:22:19] I think this is a very important point, is that our episodic memories are rooted to a place in time.

[00:22:27] And part of what makes a unique time in our lives, a unique moment in time significant, is the feelings that we have in the time.

[00:22:38] You might be remembering something like, you know, your high school graduation.

[00:22:43] And there’s the context.

[00:22:44] You might be remembering the content of that memory.

[00:22:46] But then there’s also the feelings that you had at that moment.

[00:22:49] And that those feelings are part of what we call the context.

[00:22:53] And so if you imagine episodic memories, if they were books in a library, you would be sorting those books not according to the content, but really to the context.

[00:23:06] And that, as I said, the emotions are part of that context.

[00:23:09] And so if in the moment you are in a particular emotional state,

[00:23:15] it makes it’s almost like as if you’re looking at the section of the library that has information relevant to that context.

[00:23:24] And so that’s why music can be such a powerful vehicle.

[00:23:28] And it’s not only the emotional part.

[00:23:30] It also can be because you listen to particular kinds of music during particular times in your life.

[00:23:36] Yeah, that’s it’s such a unique trigger in that way.

[00:23:40] I think you mean you talk in the book about, you know, if you hear.

[00:23:43] A couple of chords of born in the USA, it reminds you of some of the racist bullshit you would hear when you were in junior high or high school.

[00:23:53] And, you know, it made me think if I hear the Rolling Stones song, Wild Horses, it takes me right back to when my mom died in 2020.

[00:24:03] I listened to that song over and over again when she passed away because it reminded me of her.

[00:24:08] It was her favorite song.

[00:24:09] And for the rest of my life, if that song comes on, I am right back.

[00:24:13] When that happened, I mean, it’s just and it’s just there’s nothing else that quite does that in that way.

[00:24:21] Yeah, I think part of it is the emotional pull and part of it is the uniqueness of particular kinds of music or pieces of music to particular kinds of relationships we have or times in our life.

[00:24:34] Who we are is constantly changing, right?

[00:24:37] And music is often tied to our sense of who we are, that it’s like we change.

[00:24:43] We choose particular times of music based on who we are at a particular time in our life.

[00:24:47] And so music is this beautiful vehicle to access those memories of who we were.

[00:24:55] And that’s part of, I think, why there’s this nostalgia that’s associated with music is because it really takes us back not only to the memories of what happened, but the feeling of what we were like when we were at that point in our lives.

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[00:27:53] It’s the new year, so you probably have a long list of resolutions to make your life happier and more productive.

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[00:29:12] I wanted to ask you about the role of memory

[00:29:34] in shaping our identities, our sense of self.

[00:29:38] And you talk about how our life narrative

[00:29:41] is really…

[00:29:42] This thing stitched together through memory

[00:29:46] and our social interactions and the stories

[00:29:50] we tell about who we are and what we are.

[00:29:54] My question is, why do we need these stories

[00:29:59] in the first place?

[00:30:00] I mean, is the self or whatever we call the self

[00:30:03] just a memory system holding a story together?

[00:30:08] In some ways, yes.

[00:30:09] I think so.

[00:30:10] In fact, there are people who,

[00:30:12] and I talk in my field about the self memory system.

[00:30:16] I, in the book, if there’s one thing I’m guilty of

[00:30:19] is avoiding some of the hard questions,

[00:30:22] questions about consciousness and the self.

[00:30:25] That’s smart, man.

[00:30:26] Yeah, that was just a little bit of a cop out.

[00:30:29] I totally admit that.

[00:30:31] But I think you’re onto something.

[00:30:33] And I think that it’s like we have…

[00:30:36] So I talk in the book about schemas

[00:30:38] as a very powerful way in which we can…

[00:30:42] So schemas, for instance, could be something as simple as,

[00:30:45] I know what happens during a basketball game.

[00:30:48] I know what happens during a wedding.

[00:30:49] So these particular kinds of events,

[00:30:52] we have blueprints in our head

[00:30:53] about things that are almost certain to happen,

[00:30:57] things that could happen,

[00:30:58] and things that won’t happen, right?

[00:31:01] And that helps us orient ourselves

[00:31:04] towards the unique aspects

[00:31:05] of what you’re trying to remember at any given time.

[00:31:09] But we also have those ideas

[00:31:11] about ourself called a self schema.

[00:31:14] And I think this is important

[00:31:16] because a big part of imagination and planning

[00:31:20] is understanding a little bit about who we are

[00:31:24] and why we do things.

[00:31:27] We don’t just remember the past

[00:31:28] in terms of regurgitating a bunch of details.

[00:31:32] When we’re really remembering events,

[00:31:34] we stitch it into causes and effects.

[00:31:37] And that’s really important

[00:31:39] because if something is not a cause,

[00:31:41] or an effect,

[00:31:43] it’s kind of window dressing, right?

[00:31:46] And so we don’t remember

[00:31:48] that somebody was like, you know, left the room,

[00:31:52] but we remember they left a room

[00:31:54] because they were angry at us

[00:31:56] or because they just got interrupted

[00:31:59] by an emergency phone call.

[00:32:02] And I think our sense of who we are

[00:32:04] gives us a way of organizing our past

[00:32:08] and organizing things into causes and effects.

[00:32:11] This is more of a philosophical question

[00:32:16] than a scientific one,

[00:32:18] but this is the show,

[00:32:20] so I’m going to ask anyway.

[00:32:23] If someone loses their memories,

[00:32:26] if they cannot remember their life,

[00:32:29] can they still be themselves?

[00:32:31] Can they be the same self they were?

[00:32:36] There’s a person named Stan Klein

[00:32:40] at UC Santa Barbara,

[00:32:41] who asked this very question,

[00:32:43] and he makes a strong case.

[00:32:45] I tend to think of philosophy

[00:32:46] as above my pay grade,

[00:32:47] but I tend to invert the usual

[00:32:52] kind of tech bro view of the world,

[00:32:54] and I kind of think of math and physics

[00:32:55] as easy fields because there’s an answer,

[00:32:58] and psychology is much more of a hard science

[00:33:00] because there’s not really clear answers,

[00:33:02] and philosophy is like

[00:33:03] where you get into the stratosphere.

[00:33:06] It’s like, yeah, so anyway.

[00:33:08] We just have to sound like we know

[00:33:10] what we’re talking about,

[00:33:11] and you people, the scientists,

[00:33:13] actually have to know

[00:33:14] what you’re talking about.

[00:33:15] Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[00:33:15] I think it’s like the real experts

[00:33:17] will say, I don’t know,

[00:33:18] and I don’t know,

[00:33:19] but Stan has studied people

[00:33:21] with very, very dense amnesia

[00:33:23] and has made a good case

[00:33:25] that these people still have a sense

[00:33:27] of who they are,

[00:33:28] but here’s the thing.

[00:33:30] So there’s not cases literally

[00:33:32] of people losing every memory

[00:33:34] of what they’ve experienced,

[00:33:36] but there are people,

[00:33:37] for instance, like a patient named Casey

[00:33:39] that Endel Tolving studied,

[00:33:41] and he came up with the concept

[00:33:44] of episodic memory,

[00:33:45] and the claim was

[00:33:46] he could look all the way back in the past

[00:33:48] and he still didn’t have that ability

[00:33:50] to mentally time travel, right?

[00:33:52] And there’s a little bit of an emptiness to them,

[00:33:55] a little bit of a flatness.

[00:33:57] They’re in the moment,

[00:33:58] but there’s not a sense

[00:34:00] of what they could do

[00:34:02] or what they could be

[00:34:04] because they don’t have

[00:34:06] these episodic memories to draw upon

[00:34:08] to give them kind of more of a flavor

[00:34:11] of who they are.

[00:34:14] And I think that’s really important

[00:34:16] because, like I said,

[00:34:18] our sense of self normally

[00:34:20] is constantly changing

[00:34:21] as we keep acquiring episodic memories.

[00:34:24] But people who have amnesia,

[00:34:27] even if it’s like something more like

[00:34:30] the typical kind of amnesia

[00:34:31] is you have a stroke or something

[00:34:33] and you’re unconscious for a while

[00:34:35] when you come to,

[00:34:36] you lose memories for something,

[00:34:38] you lose your ability to form new memories

[00:34:40] and you might lose your ability to form new memories.

[00:34:41] You might lose memories going back 10 years,

[00:34:43] but you still remember your childhood.

[00:34:45] And what happens is these patients

[00:34:46] who have severe amnesia

[00:34:48] will get stuck in time.

[00:34:51] You know, they’ll look in the mirror

[00:34:53] and they’ll say,

[00:34:53] oh my gosh, who is this person?

[00:34:56] But to them, it’s like

[00:34:57] they still feel like they were the person

[00:35:00] they were, you know, 20 years ago, 30 years ago.

[00:35:03] And in some cases,

[00:35:05] I think that’s why people with severe Alzheimer’s,

[00:35:07] you sense that they’re regressing

[00:35:09] as they kind of like,

[00:35:11] lose that ability to go back

[00:35:13] to that wellspring of episodic memories.

[00:35:15] So I think, yeah, we have a capability

[00:35:17] of being, having a self,

[00:35:19] but that self becomes much emptier and thinner

[00:35:22] as you lose memories.

[00:35:26] Can we say that political movements

[00:35:28] in some sense are doing the same thing

[00:35:31] just at another level?

[00:35:34] Are they stitching collective memory

[00:35:38] into a collective identity?

[00:35:41] 100%, 100%.

[00:35:44] This idea of collective memory

[00:35:46] is still one that we’re,

[00:35:50] it’s still a developing concept in our field.

[00:35:53] A lot of the work that’s been done

[00:35:55] in collective memory is actually done

[00:35:56] in the fields of history and sociology,

[00:35:58] but it’s a very relevant concept.

[00:36:02] How would you define that,

[00:36:03] if you don’t mind me asking?

[00:36:03] Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

[00:36:05] I mean, you can define it very broadly,

[00:36:07] which is a memory that’s shared

[00:36:08] amongst multiple people.

[00:36:10] If you have close family members,

[00:36:11] you probably have a collective memory of the family.

[00:36:15] And that gives you a sense of your familial identity

[00:36:18] because you all have this shared story, right?

[00:36:21] And your experience might be different

[00:36:23] than the experience of your parents or siblings.

[00:36:26] But once you share those experiences with each other,

[00:36:29] it’s no longer your memory.

[00:36:32] Just the act of expressing that memory

[00:36:34] in a way that someone else can understand it

[00:36:36] changes the memory for you.

[00:36:39] And then now the other person

[00:36:40] has a memory of the family.

[00:36:40] They have a memory for something

[00:36:41] they’ve never experienced before

[00:36:43] because you’ve told them about it.

[00:36:46] And so as these memories get passed back and forth,

[00:36:49] they’re constantly modified, right?

[00:36:52] And I think this is key to what makes humans

[00:36:54] so successful in the world

[00:36:56] is that we can build memories

[00:36:59] and benefit from other people’s experiences

[00:37:02] and, you know, wisdom.

[00:37:04] But it creates huge problems

[00:37:06] because memory can be selective

[00:37:08] and memory can be, you know,

[00:37:10] so it can be highly incomplete

[00:37:12] and it can also be inaccurate many times, right?

[00:37:17] And so…

[00:37:17] Sometimes intentionally.

[00:37:18] Sometimes intentionally, exactly.

[00:37:20] So if you want to form an authoritarian regime,

[00:37:24] the first thing you do is you seize collective memory.

[00:37:28] You take down statues.

[00:37:30] You start to regulate, you know,

[00:37:33] the teaching of history in schools.

[00:37:35] You remove references in historical archives, right?

[00:37:40] Almost any authoritarian regime,

[00:37:43] this is part of the playbook.

[00:37:45] And I think it’s a powerful one

[00:37:48] because once you start to shape that narrative,

[00:37:51] just like people have narratives of,

[00:37:54] I’m terrible at math

[00:37:55] or I’m like a failure in life.

[00:37:58] And those are often rooted

[00:37:59] in a particular interpretation of your past.

[00:38:02] If you can enforce most people

[00:38:05] to have a particular view of their nation’s past,

[00:38:08] that’s going to shape their sense

[00:38:10] of what it means to be a member of that nation

[00:38:12] or that society.

[00:38:13] The relationship between individual memory

[00:38:17] and collective memory

[00:38:18] or between individual identity and collective identity

[00:38:22] is so fascinating to me.

[00:38:25] How much of our sense of self is determined

[00:38:30] or shaped by our social or tribal affiliations?

[00:38:36] I imagine the relationship here is pretty damn complicated.

[00:38:40] But there has to be a relationship there.

[00:38:43] There’s absolutely a relationship

[00:38:45] and it’s a two-way relationship.

[00:38:47] So a lot of the research shows that on the one hand,

[00:38:51] you develop your sense of tribal affiliations

[00:38:57] or familial relationships

[00:38:59] through these kind of collective memories that you have.

[00:39:03] But also, you’re able to connect with other people

[00:39:07] if you have shared collective memories.

[00:39:10] And you view those memories in a similar light.

[00:39:12] And so what I mean by that is,

[00:39:14] if you’re in England and you support, say,

[00:39:17] the Tottenham Spurs or something like that,

[00:39:19] you can meet someone anywhere.

[00:39:21] And once you start talking about the same game,

[00:39:24] they will become friends, right?

[00:39:27] Here in the US, it would be like an American football team

[00:39:30] or a baseball team, same thing, right?

[00:39:32] Or let’s say you both have similar political views

[00:39:36] and you both saw the same debate

[00:39:39] or something like that.

[00:39:41] Just sharing those collective memories

[00:39:43] can make you feel more connected with that person.

[00:39:46] Oh, I grew up in the South.

[00:39:48] That’s where I am now.

[00:39:50] And, you know, like college football is sort of our thing.

[00:39:52] It’s a religion.

[00:39:54] But it is people who didn’t grow up in that

[00:39:57] don’t quite understand it at this level.

[00:40:00] What kind of cultural, shared cultural language it is.

[00:40:05] I mean, it is that shared memory really is,

[00:40:08] you meet someone,

[00:40:09] and they got on an LSU Tigers shirt.

[00:40:11] And before you know it, you’re having a conversation about,

[00:40:13] oh, no, I went there when I was five, the Auburn game.

[00:40:15] Could you believe, you know what I mean?

[00:40:16] It has this way of stitching together a history

[00:40:20] and a community in a way that very few things can.

[00:40:23] But it is that shared cultural language and history

[00:40:28] that’s like the container for the community, really,

[00:40:32] in lots of ways.

[00:40:33] Yeah, it’s beautiful in many ways,

[00:40:35] and it’s toxic in many ways, right?

[00:40:37] Oh, yeah.

[00:40:38] It’s like, that’s where I was going.

[00:40:40] Yeah, yeah.

[00:40:40] I mean, it’s both because it’s like,

[00:40:42] you see someone else with an LSU Tigers thing, shirt,

[00:40:46] and now you feel like you’ve got a bond with them.

[00:40:49] And that’s a really good thing.

[00:40:50] But then you’re both watching an LSU Tigers game,

[00:40:53] and you talk to each other,

[00:40:55] and you’ll remember the game based on your love for the LSU Tigers.

[00:40:59] And you’ll go, yeah, the ref totally blew that call.

[00:41:03] And you might forget a really good play that was made by the other team.

[00:41:07] And the other person reinforces that story.

[00:41:10] And you build a collective memory that’s more selective

[00:41:13] and more distorted than it would be

[00:41:16] had you never talked to each other.

[00:41:18] And that’s the downside of collective memory,

[00:41:20] is if we’re not careful,

[00:41:22] if we don’t surround ourselves by a lot of checks and balances,

[00:41:25] what happens is we can develop very impoverished

[00:41:29] and inaccurate collective memories.

[00:41:31] And we’re very susceptible to misinformation

[00:41:34] because we like misinformation,

[00:41:36] and we like misinformation,

[00:41:36] if it comes in a flavor that we already like.

[00:41:40] And we’re much more likely to take it in and digest it.

[00:41:43] Yeah.

[00:41:44] Now, this is something,

[00:41:47] this is the challenge,

[00:41:49] or one of the challenges,

[00:41:50] that comes from the fact that memory itself

[00:41:54] is so constructed and slippery in this way.

[00:41:57] I mean, even in the book,

[00:41:58] you talk a bit about how,

[00:42:00] as we grow more segregated,

[00:42:04] politically, culturally,

[00:42:06] we end up with just totally different memories

[00:42:09] of the same events.

[00:42:11] And therefore, different realities.

[00:42:13] And if memory is reconstructive

[00:42:17] in the ways you’re talking about,

[00:42:19] and we are moving more and more into a world

[00:42:22] that’s segregated informationally,

[00:42:25] does that seem like a massive, massive

[00:42:28] political problem to you?

[00:42:30] I mean, I’ve argued that it’s just straight up unsustainable,

[00:42:33] but it’s also possible that I’m being dramatic.

[00:42:36] So I put it to you.

[00:42:38] I think this is one of the biggest threats

[00:42:41] we have in the present day,

[00:42:42] and one of the biggest dangers that I foresee

[00:42:45] as technologies like AI become more and more powerful,

[00:42:50] is, and maybe I’m looking at this

[00:42:53] from too much of a personal lens

[00:42:55] and too much of a,

[00:42:57] often we kind of look at things like now

[00:42:59] as somehow special, right?

[00:43:00] But I do feel like I’ve never lived in a time

[00:43:04] where it’s so easy,

[00:43:06] for people to just believe what makes them happy, right?

[00:43:11] We used to all have shared news sources

[00:43:14] and shared sources of information and expertise

[00:43:17] that, you know, they could tell us things

[00:43:21] that we didn’t like, like smoking is unhealthy.

[00:43:24] And even if we didn’t like that,

[00:43:26] we sort of had to believe it

[00:43:28] because we were all, you know,

[00:43:30] because we had news sources that fact-checked

[00:43:33] and we had like experts,

[00:43:36] who we trusted.

[00:43:38] And experts aren’t always right, you know,

[00:43:40] and news sources are definitely not always right.

[00:43:43] And, you know, news can be a selective lens

[00:43:45] on collective memory.

[00:43:47] But now we have so many sources of information.

[00:43:53] And the thing that I often, you know,

[00:43:55] I’ve done a lot of podcasts now,

[00:43:57] and it’s been a fascinating experience for me

[00:43:59] because I hear, you know,

[00:44:01] I remember going on one podcast

[00:44:02] and the person was talking about

[00:44:04] the legacy media is dead.

[00:44:06] And they’re trying to go after podcasters

[00:44:09] because podcasters are telling it like it is

[00:44:11] and giving people these long-form things.

[00:44:13] And the idea is somehow,

[00:44:15] if we hear somebody talking for an hour

[00:44:17] and we just let them say whatever they want,

[00:44:20] that eventually people will figure out the truth, right?

[00:44:24] But that’s not really how it works.

[00:44:25] What happens is people pick and choose

[00:44:28] what they will remember

[00:44:29] from all of the podcasts they’ve listened to

[00:44:31] based on what they believe.

[00:44:35] That’s how they’re going to form

[00:44:36] that memory.

[00:44:36] For all those things

[00:44:38] that they’ve been exposed to.

[00:44:40] And the more we allow misinformation to thrive,

[00:44:44] the more likely it is

[00:44:47] that people can just pick and choose

[00:44:50] what they get

[00:44:52] in a way that makes them feel good.

[00:44:55] I brought up this idea of causes

[00:44:56] as being really important causes and effects.

[00:45:00] And so we often will decide about facts

[00:45:05] and we’ll make decisions

[00:45:06] about things in the world

[00:45:07] based on our understanding of causes and effects.

[00:45:11] But the way our brains do it

[00:45:13] is kind of like making the best of bad information.

[00:45:18] So for instance, it’s like

[00:45:19] if I were to hear about somebody

[00:45:23] who gets a shot

[00:45:25] and they, you know, gets a vaccination

[00:45:27] and they developed a severe allergic reaction to it,

[00:45:31] they go into anaphylaxis,

[00:45:33] I will be more likely to think

[00:45:35] that that vaccine,

[00:45:36] causes problems and is dangerous.

[00:45:40] But I’m not hearing the stories

[00:45:42] about a bunch of people

[00:45:43] who took the vaccine and didn’t get sick.

[00:45:46] I’m not hearing them

[00:45:47] because that’s not an event.

[00:45:49] That’s not something that you can form a memory for.

[00:45:52] It’s something that didn’t happen.

[00:45:53] You know, hearing a statistic

[00:45:55] that nine out of 10 people who took the shot

[00:45:57] didn’t get COVID or whatever,

[00:45:59] that’s not really going to produce a vivid memory

[00:46:02] that’s going to influence you nearly as much

[00:46:05] as this vivid memory of somebody,

[00:46:07] you know, even if it wasn’t you,

[00:46:08] just somebody telling a story about this.

[00:46:11] Do we understand how malleable

[00:46:13] collective memory is?

[00:46:15] Is this something that can evolve pretty quickly?

[00:46:17] If I can tell myself a new story

[00:46:20] about myself that transforms

[00:46:22] how I experience the world

[00:46:25] or think about the world,

[00:46:26] and if you can do that as an individual,

[00:46:29] can a country do that?

[00:46:31] Can a community do that?

[00:46:34] Everything we know about collective memory,

[00:46:36] which is not a lot,

[00:46:38] but everything we know

[00:46:39] has really pointed to the idea

[00:46:42] that collective memory just magnifies

[00:46:45] the strengths and the weaknesses

[00:46:47] of individual memory.

[00:46:49] And so what I mean by that is

[00:46:51] we know that I can give people misinformation

[00:46:53] after an event has occurred.

[00:46:56] So you, you know, Elizabeth Loftus

[00:46:58] did some really beautiful work on this

[00:46:59] where she would show, you know,

[00:47:02] a slideshow of this car accident

[00:47:04] and then the car accident,

[00:47:06] like somebody might have run through

[00:47:08] like a stop sign and she’ll say,

[00:47:11] how fast was it going when it passed the yield sign?

[00:47:14] And later on, people might be more likely

[00:47:16] to remember that there was a yield sign there

[00:47:18] instead of a stop sign, right?

[00:47:20] Those are effects that you can find in the lab

[00:47:22] for fairly mundane kind of pieces of information.

[00:47:25] But now you’re in a group of people

[00:47:27] and you’re remembering that

[00:47:28] and one person remembers something wrong,

[00:47:31] especially if that person has

[00:47:33] kind of a position of status.

[00:47:35] They’re a little bit higher,

[00:47:36] status, and they talk more,

[00:47:39] which we can all think of

[00:47:40] what kinds of groups tend to do this, right?

[00:47:43] You know, mansplaining things and so forth.

[00:47:46] Those people will have an undue influence

[00:47:49] on how people remember the event later on.

[00:47:51] And that misinformation can really thrive.

[00:47:55] Like, I mean, they talk about it as a social contagion

[00:47:58] because it spreads like a virus.

[00:48:00] So that selectivity and that malleability of memory

[00:48:04] that we have as individuals,

[00:48:06] even if it’s not a virus,

[00:48:06] even fairly mundane experiences

[00:48:08] tends to just magnify in groups.

[00:48:11] But of course, you also have the power of belief.

[00:48:14] And the beliefs are this kind of filter

[00:48:17] that affects what kind of memories we can pull up

[00:48:20] and what kind of memories we have.

[00:48:23] What’s the causal direction here, right?

[00:48:25] I mean, do we have memories

[00:48:28] and then we form beliefs on the basis of those memories?

[00:48:31] Or do we choose beliefs

[00:48:34] and then selectively arrange them?

[00:48:36] Or do we change our memory

[00:48:36] so it has to validate those beliefs?

[00:48:41] My sense is yes.

[00:48:44] That is that it’s like we build our beliefs based on,

[00:48:48] partly we build our beliefs based on memories

[00:48:51] for things that we’ve learned.

[00:48:53] But I think also based on things that we’ve done.

[00:48:57] There’s a literature on what’s called cognitive dissonance

[00:49:00] that’s very old.

[00:49:01] And in the cognitive dissonance studies,

[00:49:03] they used to have people write essays,

[00:49:06] essays on things that they didn’t actually believe

[00:49:08] that went against their beliefs.

[00:49:10] And then later on,

[00:49:12] their beliefs would change to accommodate what they did.

[00:49:16] It’s kind of like the tail wagging the dog, right?

[00:49:19] And so that memory for what we’ve done

[00:49:22] and what we’ve heard,

[00:49:24] or what loved ones, people we like and care about have done,

[00:49:29] will often have a pull on what we believe later on.

[00:49:32] But of course, what we believe will affect

[00:49:35] the kinds of memories we can access

[00:49:37] and the way we remember them, right?

[00:49:40] So just at the simplest level,

[00:49:42] people tend to remember positive events

[00:49:46] more from their lives than negative events.

[00:49:48] But more importantly, when they reconstruct them,

[00:49:50] they tend to remember them more positively

[00:49:52] and they tend to remember themselves more positively.

[00:49:56] And that can be good in some ways,

[00:49:58] but it can also mean that you tend to think

[00:50:01] that you’re better than you really are, right?

[00:50:02] And so now you magnify that to your social group.

[00:50:05] And you pull up collective memories about the past

[00:50:09] based on your beliefs.

[00:50:10] And then you construct a narrative out of it.

[00:50:14] And maybe that narrative is that our people are great.

[00:50:18] Maybe that narrative is we used to be great

[00:50:20] and now we’re terrible and we need to be great again.

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[00:54:28] do we sometimes have to forget let go of memories in order to forgive and move on or is there another

[00:54:38] way to do that i’m really asking about this at both the individual and the social level you know

[00:54:43] we’re talking about politics and and tribal identities and shared memories i mean do you

[00:54:48] think even at the level of society that sometimes we need to forget in order to move forward or is

[00:54:55] the price of that kind of amnesia too high and you know i’m not sure if that’s the right way to do it but i’m

[00:54:58] thinking of something like you know truth and reconciliation yes commissions right yeah or

[00:55:03] even the battles we have in this country uh over our history i mean i’ve always believed that we

[00:55:09] have to confront the truth of our past uh before we can move beyond it but i guess i i can also

[00:55:14] understand how someone might say if we’re constantly litigating the past and re-remembering the past

[00:55:21] we’ll be stuck there forever yeah and i i think the answer is somewhere in between based on what

[00:55:28] we know right now and again these are there’s serious limits to what we know but um i had a

[00:55:33] whole section in my book that i wrote at one point on truth and reconciliation uh uh um and

[00:55:40] restorative justice and memory and uh i had to delete it because like my editor said this is

[00:55:47] just too controversial and uh oh really not necessarily substantive enough and i think

[00:55:52] they’re right that the substance was a little bit low in terms of the science um but um it’s a very

[00:55:58] controversial topic um you can look at south africa as a great example of this um and this

[00:56:04] comes back to what we talked about before with trauma and this idea that you don’t want to

[00:56:09] forget but you want to remember it in a way that’s not radioactive and uh so a friend of

[00:56:15] mine named uh um felipe de brigard at duke is doing this beautiful beautiful project called

[00:56:22] the memory and forgiveness project and he’s both a philosopher and a cognitive neuroscientist

[00:56:27] and

[00:56:28] he grew up in colombia and uh the time he grew up in was just really tumultuous there were all

[00:56:35] these paramilitary groups and government and crackdowns and uh insurgencies and so forth and

[00:56:42] just many many many people were killed the whole country is still traumatized from this you know

[00:56:48] um he has experiences of you know harrowing you know things you know he had a pretty privileged

[00:56:54] life compared to a lot of people but just all sorts of harrowing memories from

[00:56:58] it so what he did was he decided to bring in people into communities and actually teach them

[00:57:05] about memory and forgiveness and not tell them you have to forgive people but just give them

[00:57:10] the information and see what they do with it and so the jury’s out we don’t know um but what i

[00:57:16] love from this is he has this quote from somebody named celia cruz and the quote is

[00:57:22] forgiving is not forgetting forgiving is remembering without pain and i think this is

[00:57:28] because often you have experiences like the Truth Commission in South Africa, and I think where they

[00:57:35] went, where it might have been really making things worse for people, or at least that’s what

[00:57:41] some people have reported, is they often felt like it was just regurgitating the past but not

[00:57:49] processing it. And people can find this in psychotherapy, too, where you can have therapists

[00:57:55] who just dig and dig and dig for trauma, but they don’t do much to kind of actually—the

[00:58:03] assumption is always the truth will set you free, and if you remember something that’s traumatic,

[00:58:08] somehow you’ll just be free of the psychopathology. And that’s not at all true. I mean,

[00:58:14] like we’ve talked about, remembering something horrible makes you feel horrible, right?

[00:58:19] So unless you work to change the way you think about the past,

[00:58:24] it’s going to be—

[00:58:25] it’s going to be just kind of like re-traumatizing people over and over again. And I think that’s

[00:58:30] where forgiveness comes in, is forgiveness is changing the way you look at the past,

[00:58:35] not changing the memories of what happened per se, but changing your relationship with them.

[00:58:41] What about self-forgiveness? For someone who

[00:58:45] is stuck in the past or cannot help but ruminate over

[00:58:54] what they did wrong,

[00:58:55] what they could have done,

[00:58:57] mistakes that were made, etc., and can’t forgive themselves and sort of move on.

[00:59:04] What do you think about that? Do you have advice for people who are stuck in that way?

[00:59:10] Well, I mean, I look at—I’m one of those people, so it’s really hard for me to give advice in the

[00:59:16] sense of telling people confidently, this is what you do. But ultimately, if we think of memory as

[00:59:24] this resource, as a tool for us to be able to do things that we don’t want to do, we don’t want to do.

[00:59:25] As opposed to this repository of absolute facts, right? Then you can take the same

[00:59:32] information from the past and make it useful or make it, you know, counterproductive, right? I

[00:59:38] mean, the past is literally over. It does not exist anymore, at least, you know, I mean,

[00:59:43] aside from physicists telling you something about quantum mechanics, you know, the past doesn’t

[00:59:47] exist anymore. Therefore, it’s almost like as if it’s not real. All we’re living in is the present

[00:59:54] moment.

[00:59:55] So to the extent that we have this ability to call on the past, the question is,

[01:00:00] what do we do with that, right? If we see that past as being something that’s an absolute marker

[01:00:06] of who we are and what we’re capable of, that’s not going to be productive. But you can look at

[01:00:14] the past in a different way, right? I mean, I talk about in the book just at a very minor level

[01:00:18] that giving you yourself the opportunity to make mistakes is the most powerful way to learn, right?

[01:00:25] And self-forgiveness in some ways is really about seeing the things that you’ve done that were

[01:00:32] theoretically wrong and learning from them. And so, like, yeah, you can always look at mistakes

[01:00:40] you’ve made and see them as learning experiences as part of what it takes to, you know, learn and

[01:00:47] grow. Or you can see them as, you know, markers of how bad you are and how incompetent you are.

[01:00:54] Obviously, one’s more productive.

[01:00:55] than the other.

[01:00:57] I’m still beating myself up for stupid shit I did in junior high, so I may be a lost cause.

[01:01:04] Yeah, middle school for me was like being in a state prison, so I definitely get that idea.

[01:01:10] Is there anything else you want to say or any advice you want to offer to anyone listening

[01:01:15] before we ride off into the sunset?

[01:01:19] The point that I really want people to get, and I have to hammer this home over and over again,

[01:01:23] is memory’s not…

[01:01:25] Not free, memory’s not easy, and memory’s not absolute. And so the first thing you have to do

[01:01:32] is set an intention to what really is important for you to remember, whether it’s going on a

[01:01:39] family trip and, you know, deciding, do I want to take movies all the time or do I want to be

[01:01:43] there and experience it? Or being at a party and trying to memorize people’s names. It’s all,

[01:01:49] you know, the same kind of thing, which is that your intention will change what,

[01:01:55] you remember, and how you remember it for the better.

[01:01:58] Once again, the book is called Why We Remember. It’s fantastic, as was this conversation. Thank you.

[01:02:05] Thanks a lot for having me. It’s been a lot of fun.

[01:02:15] All right, friends, I hope you enjoyed this episode. I’m sure you could tell how much I did.

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[01:02:38] the show. This episode was produced by Beth Morrissey, edited by Jorge Just,

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