Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey are you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind?
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick, and
Speaker 1: today we're going to be talking about that hole in
Speaker 1: your memory before the earliest one you can produce, also
Speaker 1: known as infantile amnesia. And hey, listeners, you were promised
Speaker 1: you would be getting some baby looked at Me topics
Speaker 1: this year. My wife and I had a baby this
Speaker 1: past October, and I think many of you have been
Speaker 1: practically daring me to embark on indulgent dad topics. But
Speaker 1: here we've arrived at one because so I think the
Speaker 1: way I got here was recently we have started spending
Speaker 1: a lot of time trying to make a five month
Speaker 1: old baby laugh. Rob, I don't know how much experience
Speaker 1: you have with this, like the parent comedian routine. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of hours clocked on that particular stand up gig. Well,
Speaker 1: sometime recently Rachel figured out what our baby's favorite genre
Speaker 1: of comedy was, at least for that day, and it
Speaker 1: was a textile gravity comedy. It was the act was
Speaker 1: you hold a cloth up in the air and then
Speaker 1: you drop the cloth on the baby, and when the
Speaker 1: cloth falls down and hits the baby, this is hilarious.
Speaker 1: It was creating these storms of laughter from another dimension,
Speaker 1: truly riveting experience, at least for us. But I started
Speaker 1: to wonder, like, why is this funny? And of course
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask her, but she's a five month
Speaker 1: old baby, not talking yet. She can't explain why it's funny.
Speaker 1: And you know, I was thinking, one day, will I
Speaker 1: be able to ask her, you remember when we were
Speaker 1: dropping the cloth on you and you thought this was
Speaker 1: so funny? Why was it funny? What was going through
Speaker 1: your mind? But I just know that's probably never a
Speaker 1: conversation that's going to go anywhere, because is she really
Speaker 1: going to even remember this by the time she can
Speaker 1: talk about it? Because I certainly don't have any memories
Speaker 1: that I can bring up now from being five months old,
Speaker 1: or even from being one year old, or even from
Speaker 1: being two years old. I'm not sure, honestly what my
Speaker 1: earliest memory is. But I know I don't have any
Speaker 1: memories I feel confident about from the first several years
Speaker 1: of my life. And it turns out this is not
Speaker 1: unique to me. This is pretty common most people feel
Speaker 1: this way, that they don't have any really solid memories
Speaker 1: from the first several years of their lives, and so
Speaker 1: I just got really interested in the question of why
Speaker 1: that is. Yeah, I mean, unless you are biological mother
Speaker 1: partook of the waters of life, she was pregnant, you're
Speaker 1: probably not preborn like that. You're you're not gonna You're
Speaker 1: not gonna remember these things. And we'll get into some
Speaker 1: There is a certain amount of subjectiveness to all of this,
Speaker 1: and we'll get into some of that, And certainly we'd
Speaker 1: love to hear from any listeners out there who are
Speaker 1: firm on this or feel firm on this and are like, yes,
Speaker 1: I do remember being under the age of two, that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. But most of the research seems to
Speaker 1: point in a different direction that most It seems like
Speaker 1: most of what we remember is after a certain point
Speaker 1: in our development, and that certainly your daughter has not
Speaker 1: quite reached that point. Which is not to say that
Speaker 1: she is not capable of memory, because I mean several
Speaker 1: things I can notice. She recognizes faces, and she is
Speaker 1: forming associations and routines. There's learning going on at this
Speaker 1: point in a baby's development, and learning is to some
Speaker 1: extent based on memory. So it's not that the brain
Speaker 1: is not capable of any type of memory at this point,
Speaker 1: but it seems that most people's brains at this point
Speaker 1: are not producing episodic or autobiographical memories. Episodic memories meaning
Speaker 1: memories of specific events or experiences, not producing sort of
Speaker 1: narrative memories of that type that can be retrieved later
Speaker 1: in life. I guess it's a question whether memories of
Speaker 1: that type are formed at all. And so I don't
Speaker 1: have any memories like that from infancy. Most people report
Speaker 1: the same, and I cannot, honestly, from my memory, tell
Speaker 1: you a story about anything that happened before I was
Speaker 1: probably like four or five or so. You do bring
Speaker 1: up the idea that there are a small number of
Speaker 1: people who claim they can remember like being born or
Speaker 1: being a baby. But even in those cases, while you can't,
Speaker 1: you say, well, you're just wrong, you don't remember that.
Speaker 1: I think it's reasonable to be skeptical about whether those
Speaker 1: are real memories or just later confabulations. Yeah. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I on this note, I think it's important to remind
Speaker 1: listeners that fabricated memories are by no means necessarily intentional.
Speaker 1: They're numerous ways that we've discussed in the show before,
Speaker 1: numerous ways that false memories may be encoded. There are
Speaker 1: plenty of examples of cases where attested early childhood memories
Speaker 1: can ultimately be attributed to stories one is told about
Speaker 1: one's younger years and or something formed out of say
Speaker 1: longing or desire for a certain framework. A lot of
Speaker 1: stuff like that out there. And again we've touched on
Speaker 1: many times before, like we alter memories every time we
Speaker 1: draw them out, every time we get them out of
Speaker 1: the storage, we get our fingerprints all over them, and
Speaker 1: we change them. And then ultimately, the memories that are
Speaker 1: most dear to us, the ones that we pull out
Speaker 1: the most are the ones that are potentially the most altered,
Speaker 1: right because the form in which they are stored in
Speaker 1: memory is ultimately the form in which you rehearse them.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not a videotape. It is a it's
Speaker 1: a constant sort of like rewriting over the same document. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And to your point, though, it is kind of ironic
Speaker 1: that when you have a young child in the house
Speaker 1: like this, for for parents, this is or even you know,
Speaker 1: other people in that uh, that infant's life, these are
Speaker 1: some of the dearest moments. You know, you're experiencing these
Speaker 1: moments and you're like, this, this is you can feel
Speaker 1: it embedding, you can you know this is something you're
Speaker 1: never going to forget. And then on the other hand,
Speaker 1: you have at least a very strong suspicion that the
Speaker 1: child is not going to remember it the way that
Speaker 1: you remember it. Uh and uh, and it's a it's
Speaker 1: so it's something that I know that we my wife
Speaker 1: and I talked a lot about with our son when
Speaker 1: he when he was much younger. And sometimes my son
Speaker 1: will comment on this because when your child gets over,
Speaker 1: you're always like, well do you remember this? Do you
Speaker 1: remember that? Or I remember when this happened, but I
Speaker 1: know you don't remember it. And so there are a
Speaker 1: lot of conversations like that. And then sometimes we'll be
Speaker 1: on a trip and our son, at this point, who's
Speaker 1: almost eleven, he'll comment like, oh, well, that baby's not
Speaker 1: even going to remember that vacation. Uh, seeing like a
Speaker 1: you know, another couple with an infant on a trip,
Speaker 1: but it might as well not even take it. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: you know that's that's kind of the joke, right, like
Speaker 1: just go ahead and put your baby in a closet
Speaker 1: for a few years because they're not going to remember
Speaker 1: these expensive trips. But of course you can't do that.
Speaker 1: That's not how it works. You have to have these
Speaker 1: moments in these trips. And and just because the baby's
Speaker 1: not recalling it the way an adult recalls something later
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that it's not quote unquote remembered. Right, those
Speaker 1: I mean those instead of say having autobiographical memories that
Speaker 1: can later be retrieved in narrative form. Instead, the effect
Speaker 1: of those experiences might be, say, structural impacts on the
Speaker 1: development of the brain. Right. There's a great quote that
Speaker 1: came up in a paper I'm going to source here
Speaker 1: in a bet where they said something that you know
Speaker 1: is quite simple. But I think is important to keep
Speaker 1: in mind in this context and in memory context in general.
Speaker 1: The brain remembers what it needs to remember, you know,
Speaker 1: and and the memory demands on say a five month
Speaker 1: old baby or a one year old child one and
Speaker 1: a half year child are different. And therefore again it's
Speaker 1: not there's nothing bad about not having not being able
Speaker 1: to recall when you are two or three, or four
Speaker 1: or five. It's just it's just what your brain needed
Speaker 1: to do. And as we'll get into there are different
Speaker 1: reasons for this. Yeah, so that's what we're going to
Speaker 1: be exploring in this series. Questions like why don't most
Speaker 1: people have specific autobiographical memories of being a baby? Do
Speaker 1: we have episodic memories of infancy which get like erased
Speaker 1: from the brain for some reason, or do we never
Speaker 1: form episodic memories of baby life in the first place.
Speaker 1: Obviously there's some kind of memory going on in very
Speaker 1: young childhood and infancy, but maybe it just like it
Speaker 1: doesn't have an episodic memory component. Maybe it can remember
Speaker 1: associations and images, but maybe not like sequences of events.
Speaker 1: Or maybe is there some weird third option, like we
Speaker 1: do form memories and they're not exactly erased later, but
Speaker 1: they're sort of fun or hard to retrieve for some reason.
Speaker 1: That that's what got me really interested in this exploration today.
Speaker 1: But of course I also got very interested in the
Speaker 1: question of before people could do experiments on this, they
Speaker 1: must have observed childhood development firsthand and had all kinds
Speaker 1: of questions of this sort and probably come up with
Speaker 1: answers whether or not those answers were accurate. Yeah, so yeah,
Speaker 1: let's get in a little bit into just sort of
Speaker 1: some of the history of this, some of some sort
Speaker 1: of pre modern infant opinions, and also a little bit
Speaker 1: of cultural variation. I think one of the things to
Speaker 1: keep in mind about pre modern and pre scientific beliefs
Speaker 1: about infant memory is that a lot of it is
Speaker 1: going to come down to older beliefs about what human
Speaker 1: infants are and what they are not, And so this
Speaker 1: is all a mixture of things based on cultural tradition,
Speaker 1: but also based on observation. I think it goes without
Speaker 1: saying that that no matter what may have been ultimately
Speaker 1: recorded in literature ancient people, you know, they would have
Speaker 1: applied different insights and different ideas to the experience of babies,
Speaker 1: but some things were obviously going to be the same.
Speaker 1: Babies evoke strong emotions in us. That's just part of
Speaker 1: the way we're hardwired. Babies require a great deal of care.
Speaker 1: Babies cry baby is inherently can't communicate precisely. And also
Speaker 1: human memories of early childhood or the lack thereof, would
Speaker 1: have been identical more or less to what we have now,
Speaker 1: or at least any differences are not going to be
Speaker 1: based merely on say the the timeline, and we'll get
Speaker 1: into some of that in a bit. Right. For example,
Speaker 1: I would really not say that the current characteristics of
Speaker 1: infantile amnesia or memory formation and very young children are say,
Speaker 1: a result of the Internet or some other kind of
Speaker 1: like technological context, especially because we know people have been
Speaker 1: in the more modern era doing research on this going
Speaker 1: back more than a hundred years, so before a lot
Speaker 1: of the the sort of like communications and technology context
Speaker 1: we live in today, people were asking hey, when are
Speaker 1: people's first memories and what do they remember about childhood?
Speaker 1: And the answers were largely the same as what we
Speaker 1: get when we asked that today. Yeah. Yeah, So it
Speaker 1: doesn't seem like there's any expectation that there's been significant
Speaker 1: variation in this, aside from variation that occurs for cultural
Speaker 1: reasons and so forth. But again, a lot of this
Speaker 1: is going to come down to how we think about babies,
Speaker 1: and again it's it's it's interesting because on one hand, yes,
Speaker 1: we have this inherent draw towards our own young and
Speaker 1: to the young of our community, but at the same time,
Speaker 1: you know, you often hear people talk about older kids,
Speaker 1: and you'll hear them say, well, you remember what it
Speaker 1: was like when you were that age. You know, there's
Speaker 1: a certain relatability in that. But generally they're not saying
Speaker 1: this about infants or very young toddlers because by and
Speaker 1: large we don't remember what it was it was like
Speaker 1: to be that age. We only remember the stories of
Speaker 1: what we were like at that age and so forth. Now,
Speaker 1: examining how people in ancient times, for example, thought about babies,
Speaker 1: thinking about pre modern and prescientific thinking into all of this,
Speaker 1: you also have to take into account infant mortality rates,
Speaker 1: which were often high in ancient times. And I realized
Speaker 1: that infant mortality is not exactly a fun topic. But
Speaker 1: some of the attitudes of the ancient world surrounding the
Speaker 1: nature of infants is more sharply expressed over the subject,
Speaker 1: or so it seems. So we are going to touch
Speaker 1: on it a little bit, at least in passing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's sort of unavoidable for most of human history, for
Speaker 1: most people, just a major fact of life. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: I looked at a few different sources about the understanding
Speaker 1: of infants in ancient Greek and ancient Rome. In Childbirth
Speaker 1: and infancy in Greek and Roman antiquity from twenty eleven
Speaker 1: author Varneck Dason points out a number of interesting things
Speaker 1: about how these ancient people seem to seem to have
Speaker 1: considered young children based on the evidence we have to
Speaker 1: go on today, and so I want to outline some
Speaker 1: interesting points that they bring up. First of all, most
Speaker 1: of what we know relates to elite children rather than
Speaker 1: the lives of those born into lower classes or two
Speaker 1: enslaved people. Also, we have to think about the terminology here.
Speaker 1: This is fascinating, so you know, basically the infant toddler
Speaker 1: dynamic and duality. It's it's interesting and potentially telling in
Speaker 1: that changes in terminology may indicate changes in cultural understanding
Speaker 1: of young children. So you know, certainly there's a difference
Speaker 1: between an infant and a toddler, and we tend to
Speaker 1: sort of we tend to mark that transition point. But
Speaker 1: to what extent is that transition point born out in
Speaker 1: a people's language, and at what point does the language
Speaker 1: potentially shift, etc. Basically just sort of a larger background
Speaker 1: topic to keep in mind. But the big point here
Speaker 1: is that it's most helpful to think of childhood as
Speaker 1: a journey, one that hits different milestones, goes through different stages,
Speaker 1: and that and this in turn alters the way that
Speaker 1: adults view the child and the degree to which they
Speaker 1: can be integrated into society. Also, Dawson points out to quote,
Speaker 1: in times of high infant mortality, these stages represented steps
Speaker 1: for hope of survival and increasing parental bonding. We'll come
Speaker 1: back to exactly what is meant by that, but basically
Speaker 1: it comes down to, like, how does a culture deal
Speaker 1: with the fact that there is a high infant mortality rate.
Speaker 1: Is there more of a sort of pushing away of
Speaker 1: kind of like a ultimately a stoic reaction, sort of
Speaker 1: distancing of the infant from the society who are making
Speaker 1: kind of a marginal state, or is there indeed still
Speaker 1: a lot of bonding going on and so forth. Now,
Speaker 1: with the Greek and Roman viewpoints, specifically, what we think
Speaker 1: of as infancy would have probably ended at age two
Speaker 1: or three, with you full weaning, increased ability to speak,
Speaker 1: and at age three integration into practiced religion at least
Speaker 1: at some degree. Now, medically speaking, it was previously supposed
Speaker 1: that there was next to nothing in the literature of
Speaker 1: ancient Greek ancient Rome to suggest that physicians were concerned
Speaker 1: with babies, except in exceptional circumstances, it was thought that
Speaker 1: babies in general were left to the midwives and the mothers. However,
Speaker 1: Dawson stresses that this is no longer really a correct viewpoint,
Speaker 1: based on numerous examples of writings that have come up
Speaker 1: about say, essential diet and hygiene for babies. So I
Speaker 1: think that's interesting representing there like a shift in our
Speaker 1: modern understanding about ancient views on infants that they were
Speaker 1: actually sometimes a more relevant object of what was considered medicine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's sort of this, and we'll get into it more
Speaker 1: than just a second here, But there was this understanding
Speaker 1: of the ancient world based on somethingificant evidence that basically
Speaker 1: the ruling male elite we're saying, like babies that not
Speaker 1: even worth your time, not worth my time anyway, call
Speaker 1: me when it is old enough for me to care
Speaker 1: about it, or if there's if it's exploding, then yes,
Speaker 1: a physician may come and check out the child. That
Speaker 1: sort of thing, because without a doubt, there seemed to
Speaker 1: have been far less of a view of baby superiority
Speaker 1: in ancient Greek and ancient Rome. Dawson writes the following
Speaker 1: this is great quote from Hippocrates to late antiquity, babies
Speaker 1: and toddlers are defined as a category of beings with
Speaker 1: a special morphology and physiology. These characteristics are on the
Speaker 1: whole negative. Newborn babies are generally described as imperfect, weak,
Speaker 1: and ugly. Wow perfect yes, Oh no, this reminds me
Speaker 1: of the story you've shared many times of your son
Speaker 1: calling the cat a stupid baby or just a baby
Speaker 1: maybe when it was just baby like baby is an adjective,
Speaker 1: bemoji and just a solid burn. As a toddler, it's
Speaker 1: like peak insult, imperfect, weak, and ugly. Yeah. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: toddlers get it, and so did the grown learned men
Speaker 1: of ancient Greece. So Dawson points a few specific authors
Speaker 1: to underline these views. So m. Aristotle wrote that babies
Speaker 1: quote are born in a more imperfect condition than any
Speaker 1: other perfected animal, and also that they have poor eyesight.
Speaker 1: Oh well, it depends on what Aristotle means by that.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure the full context, But if he's making
Speaker 1: a distinction between human beings and other animals, I think
Speaker 1: that's a fair observation that human babies are more helpless
Speaker 1: than the newborns of most other animal species. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: I think I think that's what he's going for here.
Speaker 1: There is there's another work on colors that is sometimes
Speaker 1: attributed to Aristotle, and in this it's pointed out that
Speaker 1: babies are ugly because or well it's much it's as ugly,
Speaker 1: but it points out that there's essentially they're ugly because
Speaker 1: they have red faces and little hair. Do you ever
Speaker 1: get the feeling that like Aristotle might have been writing
Speaker 1: about human babies the same way he was writing about
Speaker 1: like sting rays. It's just like this is something he's
Speaker 1: observed a couple of times and made a few notes about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I've seen some pretty hairy little babies before,
Speaker 1: so I mean they think it varies, yeah, but yes,
Speaker 1: on the whole, they tend not die us half of
Speaker 1: like a full head of hair or certainly a proper beard. Now.
Speaker 1: Galen was one of numerous physicians to comment on the
Speaker 1: seeming wax like malleability and weakness of the baby. Weakness
Speaker 1: of the baby. Babies are so weak. They're they're weak,
Speaker 1: and they're they're basically made out of wax. Like if
Speaker 1: you don't handle them too much or you will change
Speaker 1: their form completely. They do tend to be Doughey, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. But also Galen, I can just tell this
Speaker 1: guy did not spend much time holding a baby because,
Speaker 1: like especially Galen probably had a beard. I've a beard.
Speaker 1: When you feel the baby grabbed the beard and just
Speaker 1: not leg this is the handle for the adult, and
Speaker 1: it will pull until it has a fistful of beard hair.
Speaker 1: You do not walk away with the impression of how
Speaker 1: weak babies are. Aristotle also recorded that many babies die
Speaker 1: within the first week and are therefore not named before
Speaker 1: this period passes. And this is a kind of approach
Speaker 1: to the first week or so of a child's life
Speaker 1: that you see reflected in various cultures in various times. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Plutarch just wonders if babies are in fact animals, because
Speaker 1: they're more like vegetables. They're more like a plant. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: plants cry at midnight, plants poop where they want to.
Speaker 1: That's exactly what a plant is. Dason adds this line
Speaker 1: here quote a mineral metaphor substitutes for the vegetable one.
Speaker 1: And Chronosis myth who ate his children as soon as
Speaker 1: they were born and thought a stone to be a
Speaker 1: swaddled nursling. So you know, is it a baby? Is
Speaker 1: it a stone? Like anyone can tell the difference, I guess. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Is that supposed to be a comment on how like
Speaker 1: how featureless and uninteresting babies are? Or is that myth's
Speaker 1: supposed to be a like a joke about Chronos being stupid? Um?
Speaker 1: I always I mean, granted I was as a modern
Speaker 1: English speaking human. I'm not the the intended audience, I
Speaker 1: guess for the myth, But I always interpreted it as
Speaker 1: being like, he's just so consumed with this this need
Speaker 1: to destroy his young. You know that he's just like
Speaker 1: just gobbles him up without really tasting them, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's more like down he's more machine now than man,
Speaker 1: almost like a he's a baby eating machine. He barely
Speaker 1: notices or or or has cognizance of what's going in
Speaker 1: his mouth. Yeah. So, after expressing some of these again
Speaker 1: aristocratic male opinions on babies recorded in the literature, I
Speaker 1: think it's a good time to distress something that another
Speaker 1: author drives home as well. And this is from the
Speaker 1: work of Marine Carrol in Infant Death and Burial in
Speaker 1: Roman Italy from twenty fifteen. She points out that we
Speaker 1: base a lot of our understanding of this topic on
Speaker 1: the writings of Stoic male aristocratic literary elite, and also
Speaker 1: the arguments that the remains in Roman cemeteries seem to
Speaker 1: bear this out. The I think quote unquote invisibility of
Speaker 1: the young child in Roman cemeteries. Yeah, and unfortunately this
Speaker 1: is true about a lot of things in the ancient world.
Speaker 1: When you have to consult literary texts to get a
Speaker 1: flavor of ancient life, that's necessarily going to be leaving
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff out because of the sexism of
Speaker 1: like who could receive literary education and who was writing
Speaker 1: texts and stuff at the time. You're you're going to
Speaker 1: get a lot of aristocratic male perspective. Yeah, and and
Speaker 1: certainly manufactory in Stoicism. And then also the fact that
Speaker 1: maybe some of them did not know how much hair
Speaker 1: baby had on average. You know, it's a it's it's
Speaker 1: it's well worth taking into account. But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: you do have this this argument that lines up with
Speaker 1: things with the writings of say Plutarch, who said that
Speaker 1: infants quote have no part in earth or earthly things,
Speaker 1: and therefore they don't require any of the rights normally
Speaker 1: performed for the dead, So you know, there's just kind
Speaker 1: of this um push and pull over, like what is
Speaker 1: the status of the of the infant? And we can
Speaker 1: understand like this like stoic approach that's like, look, there's
Speaker 1: a chance that things aren't going to go well, and
Speaker 1: then therefore one should be prepared for that by not
Speaker 1: fully integrating them into into life essentially. But Carroll points
Speaker 1: out that these views do not necessarily represent those of
Speaker 1: of course other classes or certainly mothers during the time period.
Speaker 1: So the seeming invisibility of young children in Italian cemeteries
Speaker 1: of the time period is something that requires like further
Speaker 1: examination and perhaps a little more understanding, as opposed to
Speaker 1: just like well, they weren't considered real things. Also of note,
Speaker 1: I was looking at a paper from twenty twelve child
Speaker 1: Exposure in the Roman Empire by W. V. Harris, published
Speaker 1: in the Journal of Roman Studies, pointing out that child
Speaker 1: exposure like the leaving of a child, you know, in
Speaker 1: the wild or out in the open, away from from humans,
Speaker 1: that this was widely practiced in the Roman Empire, often
Speaker 1: when quote physical viability and legitimacy were in doubt, but
Speaker 1: that not everyone agreed with the practice Stoics in particular
Speaker 1: tended to believe that infants should live at the very
Speaker 1: least if they're healthy and legitimate. And certainly there's plenty
Speaker 1: of room for hypocrisy and something like that. But I
Speaker 1: also wondered to what extent it backs up or counters
Speaker 1: the idea that babies in general were considered only halfway real.
Speaker 1: Here's another great chunk going back from from Dawson, going
Speaker 1: back to her paper. Quote for Aristotle, infants were defined
Speaker 1: as a lower category of beings physically weak, mentally and
Speaker 1: morally inept, with unco controlled appetites. Physical disproportions associate them
Speaker 1: with animals. A heavy upper part explains why children move
Speaker 1: like quadrupeds, says Aristotle. Quote. That is why infants cannot
Speaker 1: walk but crawl about, and at the very beginning cannot
Speaker 1: even crawl, but remain where they are, but remain where
Speaker 1: they are. This paper from Dustin doesn't really get into
Speaker 1: memory all that much. A lot of it's again we're
Speaker 1: dealing more sort of the overarching views of young children
Speaker 1: and infants. But Dustin does such a memory as well.
Speaker 1: In this part. Quote disproportions also explain mental incapacities. The
Speaker 1: heaviness of a large head impairs the impulses of thoughts,
Speaker 1: and the infant's memory is bad. Children are further associated
Speaker 1: with inferior categories of human beings, such as old people
Speaker 1: physically weaker, with a poorer memory and less hair, with
Speaker 1: the insane and the drunk with a similar e fable
Speaker 1: temperament and a disorderly behavior, with women irrational, changeable and weak,
Speaker 1: and even with dwarfs. So you ask, what did ancient
Speaker 1: Greek philosophers think about babies? And it's the answer is
Speaker 1: just a conglomeration of offensive opinions. Well, a lot of
Speaker 1: that is what seems to remain in the literature. But
Speaker 1: Deson also stresses that while a lot of this may
Speaker 1: just sound like, you know, babies are gross and the worst,
Speaker 1: there's also plenty of evidence that the seeming deficiencies of
Speaker 1: babies were also very much enjoyed. That it wasn't just like, oh, man,
Speaker 1: this baby's like an old man. It's more like, oh,
Speaker 1: this baby's like an old man, and the bonding still
Speaker 1: occurred even in times of high mortality. Their smiles and
Speaker 1: their skin were written about as being irresistible. And also,
Speaker 1: I thought this was Nate quote, myths of baby heroes
Speaker 1: transcend children's deaths, and this is something perhaps worth thinking about.
Speaker 1: I don't know, we might get into this in the
Speaker 1: second episode. We might come back at a later time.
Speaker 1: But you do have a lot of baby heroes and
Speaker 1: child gods and godlings and various myth and folklore traditions
Speaker 1: from the likes of baby Krishna to the Christ Child.
Speaker 1: But anyways, sticking on the topic of memories of a
Speaker 1: lack thereof and small children infants, it would seem that
Speaker 1: you know, of course, the lack of memories from one's
Speaker 1: own infancy was very much a known factor, and that
Speaker 1: it would make sense within a viewpoint that babies are
Speaker 1: unfinished and imperfect. They have yet to cross through all
Speaker 1: the stages of becoming truly human, becoming you know, truly
Speaker 1: a part of family unit, truly a part of society,
Speaker 1: even if they still amuse us and we still have
Speaker 1: a lot of emotions about them. Now, we mentioned earlier
Speaker 1: cultural differences that could impact just how early one remembers
Speaker 1: one's lie what are what one's earliest memories happen to be?
Speaker 1: And I was looking at an article titled the culture
Speaker 1: of Memory by Leo Winnerman published by the American Psychological
Speaker 1: Society back in two thousand and five. The author here
Speaker 1: points to research that shows that quote, the average age
Speaker 1: of first memories varies up to two years between different cultures,
Speaker 1: and it seems to come down to the weight and
Speaker 1: importance of memory within a specific cultural system. According to
Speaker 1: Michelle Leichmann, PhD, cited in the article quote, people who
Speaker 1: grow up in societies that focus on individual personal history
Speaker 1: like the United States, or ones that focus on personal
Speaker 1: family history like the Maori will have different and often
Speaker 1: earlier childhood memories than people who grow up in cultures that,
Speaker 1: like many Asian cultures, value interdependence rather than personal autonomy.
Speaker 1: So a key nineteen ninety four study from psychologist Mary Mullen,
Speaker 1: published in the journal Cognition as more than seven hundred
Speaker 1: Caucasian and Asian or Asian American undergrads to describe their
Speaker 1: earliest memory on average Asian and Asian American student memories
Speaker 1: happened six months later a subsequent study, and we should
Speaker 1: know there were many subsequent studies that examined different slices
Speaker 1: of all this from In this case from Mullen, though,
Speaker 1: found a sixteen month gap between Caucasian Americans and Native Koreans.
Speaker 1: These studies led to a host of others, and it
Speaker 1: seems to follow the basic social interaction model. Quote. According
Speaker 1: to this model, our autobiographical memories don't develop in a vacuum. Instead,
Speaker 1: as children, we encode our memories of events as we
Speaker 1: talk over those events with the adults in our life.
Speaker 1: The more those adults encourage us to spin an elaborate
Speaker 1: narrative tale, the more likely we are to remember details
Speaker 1: about the event later. This absolutely dovetails with much of
Speaker 1: what I've been reading that like sort of an interactive
Speaker 1: rehearsal of memories helps make those memories stronger, but sort
Speaker 1: of the paradox of memory. And this is true not
Speaker 1: just of childhood. I think this is true of adult
Speaker 1: memory as well. Is that while that produces a stronger
Speaker 1: memory consolidation and you you are better able to retrieve
Speaker 1: that memory later, it also makes the memory more subject
Speaker 1: to contamination by whatever input you're getting from the person
Speaker 1: you're rehearsing it with, or even from outside sources such
Speaker 1: as advertising. UM. I don't know if this is still
Speaker 1: the case, but many years ago I went to the
Speaker 1: Coca Cola Museum here in Atlanta with my mother, and
Speaker 1: there was some bit of advertising. I'm not sure if
Speaker 1: it was current advertising or past advertising, but the gist
Speaker 1: of it was Coca Cola. We've always been there, like
Speaker 1: we were a part of your essentially saying we were
Speaker 1: a part of all those memories that you hold dear
Speaker 1: and and I often think think of that when I'm
Speaker 1: encounter branding from this company, because I'm because it's good,
Speaker 1: it's really infectious. Yeah, it does a great job. It
Speaker 1: is kind of like trying to worm its way in there,
Speaker 1: like do you remember that that great memory from your childhood?
Speaker 1: I bet there was a Coca Cola on the table.
Speaker 1: And even if there wasn't, Bam, there is now. Well
Speaker 1: you could say it's genius, maybe even insidious, the way
Speaker 1: that they insinuate their branding into inherently nostalgic imagery. So
Speaker 1: like the Santa clause with the Coca Cola, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that's not an accident. That's like to try to
Speaker 1: integrate the brand with your earliest and best feelings from childhood.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, Christmas is coming, here's Santa. And what Santa
Speaker 1: got in his hand a coke? Of course, that's just
Speaker 1: part of the Santa lore. Yeah, yeah, so so yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a you could really get into advertising and so
Speaker 1: forth and all of this as well. But but yeah,
Speaker 1: so even within a given culture, and they're going to
Speaker 1: have this sort of different cultural leanings based on what
Speaker 1: sort of emphasis you place on an individual experience. But
Speaker 1: also there's gonna be there're gonna be differences even within
Speaker 1: a culture based on high elaborative and low elaborative mothers.
Speaker 1: And I take this to mean you could basically mean
Speaker 1: any person in an individual's life, but they're using mothers
Speaker 1: the main example. So basically, the question is is a
Speaker 1: child routinely ask for detailed stories about their daily life
Speaker 1: or they ask mostly closed questions. And this is interesting
Speaker 1: to think about, like, yeah, is the is the child
Speaker 1: asked to it like fully explain their day or is
Speaker 1: it just like did you eat lunch today? Yes? Did
Speaker 1: you eat your snack? Yes? That sort of thing. And
Speaker 1: not to say either approach is better than the other.
Speaker 1: Life is busy and sometimes you just got to make
Speaker 1: sure that your child ate a snack and you don't
Speaker 1: need the full story, but it is interesting to think about,
Speaker 1: like perhaps the necessity for that balance, you know, to
Speaker 1: get a full account of what the day was like
Speaker 1: as opposed to just like did you do the things
Speaker 1: that were acquired? Well, this also connects to some things
Speaker 1: I was reading about how very young children can in
Speaker 1: fact answer questions about things that happen to them recently,
Speaker 1: or at least they typically can. The has been studied,
Speaker 1: But one thing I was reading was that how well, say,
Speaker 1: I don't know, you know, a two and a half
Speaker 1: year old can describe a memory of a recent event
Speaker 1: depends very much on how you elicit the memory from them.
Speaker 1: And you might have seen parents doing this. I'm you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not at that stage yet in parenting, but I've
Speaker 1: seen other parents doing this kind of thing. It's like
Speaker 1: what did we do on your birthday? You know, did
Speaker 1: we go somewhere? Where did we go? And so you
Speaker 1: can kind of like talk the child through the memory
Speaker 1: in a way that it seems like the child may
Speaker 1: not be able to produce the details and connect them spontaneously.
Speaker 1: Did that make sense? It was that yeah, yeah, no, no.
Speaker 1: It makes me think of other memory exercises where like
Speaker 1: if one is having like the tip of the tongue scenario,
Speaker 1: where if someone is having if you're having difficulty remembering
Speaker 1: a particular name or whatever, like it's better for your
Speaker 1: memory for you to keep trying to guess, or for
Speaker 1: the other person on the other end of the conversation
Speaker 1: to encourage you to guess and not to just give
Speaker 1: it to you. That sort of thing, like like making
Speaker 1: the brain work for those details. That's true. That was
Speaker 1: a finding at that episode we did, wasn't it that, Like,
Speaker 1: you're more likely to remember the detail you're searching for
Speaker 1: next time if somebody like gives you a hint and
Speaker 1: you make the connection yourself versus if you just look
Speaker 1: up the answer. Yeah. Absolutely. Anyway, in all this, I
Speaker 1: think it is important to mention something that Michelle Likeman
Speaker 1: points out here, and that is again that there's not
Speaker 1: a wrong direction in any of this. The brain remembers
Speaker 1: what we what it needs to remember. We remember what
Speaker 1: we need to remember. Social pressure contributes to this, but
Speaker 1: it is what it is now. One question I thought
Speaker 1: we should look at before we wrap things up today
Speaker 1: is like, Okay, we keep talking in you know, more
Speaker 1: general terms about like, well, there's an earlier period where
Speaker 1: most people can't really produce any memories from that period
Speaker 1: of their lives, and then a later period where they can,
Speaker 1: But what are the actual numbers, like when does that
Speaker 1: kick in? This is something that has been studied extensively.
Speaker 1: There are certainly different methods, and I think we might
Speaker 1: be able to add some nuance to this answer later on,
Speaker 1: But it seems to me like the sort of magic
Speaker 1: age is like three to four years or about three
Speaker 1: and a half years, is what most studies have converged on.
Speaker 1: And to be clear, also, when we talk about childhood
Speaker 1: amnesia in the scientific literature, it seems often to refer
Speaker 1: to two different things that are related. One is the
Speaker 1: loss of all memories as far as we can tell,
Speaker 1: from before the earliest memory we can produce. And then
Speaker 1: the second thing is the relative scarcity of memories from
Speaker 1: the early years of childhood compared to equivalent spans of
Speaker 1: time from later in life. So, for example, even though
Speaker 1: you have some autobiographical memories from ages six to seve
Speaker 1: even if you are like most people, you will have
Speaker 1: a fewer number of spontaneous memories that you can recall
Speaker 1: from that period than from say sixteen to seventeen. And
Speaker 1: I thought it was also interesting to just look at
Speaker 1: the different experimental methods for trying to find out what
Speaker 1: people's earliest memories are. There are a number of ways
Speaker 1: to approach this. Sometimes it's done by, say, just asking
Speaker 1: people to describe their earliest memory and estimate at what
Speaker 1: age it took place. That is, of course a perfectly
Speaker 1: good place to start, but putting aside for a moment
Speaker 1: the question of like the accuracy of these memories, you
Speaker 1: could imagine reasons why just asking somebody what is your
Speaker 1: earliest memory might not actually produce their earliest memory. For
Speaker 1: one thing, most people don't keep their memories indexed in
Speaker 1: a sortable form. You know, it's not an Excel sheet
Speaker 1: that has a sort by column for date. And so
Speaker 1: you may have a memory that occurs to you in
Speaker 1: one moment as the earliest you can remember, But how
Speaker 1: do you know in another circumstance you wouldn't think of
Speaker 1: an earlier one that just didn't occur to you at
Speaker 1: that time. Yeah. Plus, I guess it's worth considering that
Speaker 1: in many, but certainly not all cases, you have you
Speaker 1: have sort of a stability to early childhood. Certainly that
Speaker 1: is desired that that there there would be sort of
Speaker 1: a sameness to a lot of the early memories. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like, uh, you know one or both parents are there. Um,
Speaker 1: perhaps the immediate physical surroundings are the same. Uh So,
Speaker 1: like what is going to be president in a memory?
Speaker 1: To distinguish it and set it apart in the timeline
Speaker 1: again unless you go back later and then you you
Speaker 1: have encoded it and then you identify it, maybe falsely,
Speaker 1: and say, oh, well, this is a memory of say
Speaker 1: when we lived at this house or when we lived
Speaker 1: in this town. Yeah, And that raises important questions about
Speaker 1: like the characteristics of what counts as a memory, Like
Speaker 1: I wonder if there's a sort of boundary being established
Speaker 1: by the terms of the demand for reak call. For example,
Speaker 1: an autobiographical memory needs to be something you can put
Speaker 1: into words and explain to somebody else. But do you
Speaker 1: ever get that feeling that you're experiencing nostalgia But it's
Speaker 1: not for a thing in the outside world, Maybe not
Speaker 1: for an image or an event, but something that isn't
Speaker 1: really something you can put into words. It's like nostalgia
Speaker 1: for an internal state or a feeling, this kind of
Speaker 1: strange thing. I sometimes have that sensation. Of course, when
Speaker 1: I have that feeling, it's totally possible the memory component
Speaker 1: of the sensation of nostalgia could be illusory, but sometimes
Speaker 1: I wonder if maybe feelings like that could be based
Speaker 1: in really old memories that can't be put into words
Speaker 1: or something. Yeah, I'm having trouble remembering a specific example
Speaker 1: of this, but I think some of my early memories
Speaker 1: definitely have this component to them. Even if I do
Speaker 1: remember like a basic setting or event around them, there
Speaker 1: is like a there's there is at least as strong
Speaker 1: the feeling of what it meant like. There's one particular
Speaker 1: early memory I have of like running around in circles
Speaker 1: in a living room, around like a dinner, like a
Speaker 1: dining room table in a living room, or a dining
Speaker 1: room that just seemed enormous, you know, like a cathedral.
Speaker 1: And so part of it is like these vague memories
Speaker 1: of what this space looked like, but it's also equally
Speaker 1: met by the exhilaration that is remembered of just kind
Speaker 1: of like this, you know, this running around And it
Speaker 1: is hard to really explain, like give what that means,
Speaker 1: because if I were to run around in circles right now,
Speaker 1: it would certainly not be the same feeling. You know,
Speaker 1: it doesn't relate to other memories of physical exertion from
Speaker 1: other points in my life. Oh but then to come
Speaker 1: back to other methods to study early memories. Another one
Speaker 1: that seems to be used fairly often is the word
Speaker 1: que test. So this one's pretty interesting. I say a
Speaker 1: word to you, and then I ask you to tell
Speaker 1: me a memory associated with this word, just anyway memory.
Speaker 1: We could try it right now, rob do you want
Speaker 1: to do it, chair, let's do it. Okay, tell me
Speaker 1: a memory associated with the word jar. Oh, well, that's easy.
Speaker 1: I have an early memory of trying to get a
Speaker 1: jar of Marischino cherries out of the refrigerator by myself,
Speaker 1: and I dropped it and broke it or spilled it.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if I broke it or spelled it,
Speaker 1: but that is a strong early memory of mine, Okay.
Speaker 1: And then from here in the experiment, I might ask
Speaker 1: you for some subsequent details, like you know, who was there,
Speaker 1: did anybody else witness this memory? Etcetera, etcetera. And then
Speaker 1: I would also ask you estimate what age you were
Speaker 1: when this memory happened. But what age do you think
Speaker 1: it was? Who? I would say maybe maybe three, But
Speaker 1: that's just a real that's a huge guess, and I
Speaker 1: think I've actually asked my mother about this memory before.
Speaker 1: And you know, this is the kind of thing where
Speaker 1: like kids have things like this happened all the time,
Speaker 1: they don't necessarily. If not necessarily, something apparent is going
Speaker 1: to specifically remember. It makes more of an impact on
Speaker 1: the child and the parent. So I have no idea
Speaker 1: exactly when this occurred. Okay, but this is a good answer.
Speaker 1: Jar of cherries on the floor, maybe spilled, maybe broken.
Speaker 1: You think you were around three, So I keep doing this.
Speaker 1: I do this for a big list of words, maybe
Speaker 1: with a big sample of people, and then you can
Speaker 1: sort of cross reference all of the answers. You get
Speaker 1: to look at what ages the memories tend to come from.
Speaker 1: And you could see by this method that of just
Speaker 1: making up random numbers here, but say by randomly associating
Speaker 1: memories with words, we end up with people telling us
Speaker 1: about twenty percent more memories from ages sixteen to twenty
Speaker 1: than from ages six to ten or something. So I
Speaker 1: think that's a pretty clever method. But anyway, what this
Speaker 1: research tends to converge on is that a really important
Speaker 1: time is roughly the age three to four, or like
Speaker 1: three and a half. Generally, the earliest memories that adults
Speaker 1: can produce are around the ages of three to four,
Speaker 1: and there is not much or nothing from before that.
Speaker 1: And then after that there is a gradual increase in
Speaker 1: the quantity of autobiographical memories from each year of age
Speaker 1: up until maybe like seven or eight, when the autobiographical
Speaker 1: memory store starts to look more like that of the
Speaker 1: rest of adulthood. So for most people looking backwards, memories
Speaker 1: tend to start around three or four, and then you
Speaker 1: get more of them at five, more of them at six,
Speaker 1: more of them at seven, more of them at eight,
Speaker 1: and then you start to reach a more kind of
Speaker 1: complete adult memory set. Now, this doesn't necessarily mean that
Speaker 1: children before the age of three or four produce no
Speaker 1: autobiographical memories. Instead, it seems like there may be a
Speaker 1: sort of period of forgetting. And I thought this was
Speaker 1: very interesting. Just one study I wanted to mention quickly
Speaker 1: that gets at this. It was published in the journal
Speaker 1: Memory in two thousand and five by Dana Van Abama
Speaker 1: and Patricia Hour and it's called Autobiographical Memory in Middle
Speaker 1: Childhood Recollections of the Recent and Distant Past. Now I
Speaker 1: was looking for the full text of the study, and
Speaker 1: I couldn't find it before we recorded today, but I
Speaker 1: did find a summary of the findings in a Psychology
Speaker 1: Today article by an author named Vitelli, And basically what
Speaker 1: happened in the study is that children were interviewed about
Speaker 1: autobiographical events along with their mothers at the age of three,
Speaker 1: and they produced details about those events. Is something they did,
Speaker 1: a trip out to do something, and they could recall
Speaker 1: things about their own past, so they had some form
Speaker 1: of episodic memory. They could be prompted to retrieve details
Speaker 1: about these episodic memories. But those same children were brought
Speaker 1: back years later at ages seven, eight, and nine, exactly
Speaker 1: the range at which there seems to be a profound
Speaker 1: forgetting of early childhood memories. So from vitelli summary here,
Speaker 1: the seven year olds could recall sixty percent of the
Speaker 1: same autobiographical events they recalled at three, but the eight
Speaker 1: and nine year olds could only recall thirty six and
Speaker 1: thirty eight percent of events. So there seems to be
Speaker 1: a major drop off of memories from this earliest period
Speaker 1: around the ages of seven, eight and nine. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think this kind of matches up with some stuff I've
Speaker 1: observed with my own son, mostly when in talking about
Speaker 1: things that we watched together when he was in like
Speaker 1: one age group versus another. So, and it varies, I
Speaker 1: think from picture to picture, Like there's some movies that
Speaker 1: maybe we've we've talked about more we've that have become
Speaker 1: more like a sort of a regular part of one's life.
Speaker 1: And then there are other movies where you like watch it,
Speaker 1: forget it, and then maybe truly forget it and then
Speaker 1: come back and experience it again. Now, why patterns like
Speaker 1: this emerge is something I think we'll have to get
Speaker 1: into more when we come back in subsequent parts of
Speaker 1: the series. I'm not sure how many we're going to
Speaker 1: go to. We'll have at least one more part, maybe
Speaker 1: maybe a couple more. Yeah, there's certainly going to be
Speaker 1: a plenty to get into for a part two, possibly
Speaker 1: a part three. But as we often have pointed out,
Speaker 1: we're we're hesitant to say this will definitely go to
Speaker 1: a certain number of episodes because we're often just a
Speaker 1: little unsure where we're going to cut it off. Well,
Speaker 1: how about you, Joe's we close out this episode, what's
Speaker 1: what comes to mind is your earliest Jar related memory?
Speaker 1: Jars only please, and if it, even if it's from
Speaker 1: the last five years, that's cool too well to bore
Speaker 1: you with dreadful cliche. I think catching fireflies in a jar,
Speaker 1: that that is very early. We did that a lot
Speaker 1: when I was a kid in our front yard. We
Speaker 1: had lots of them. I think I also have very
Speaker 1: early memories of pickle jars, because I recall from early
Speaker 1: childhood being really into pickles pickled cucumbers, like a like
Speaker 1: a Classon's pickle jar. Oh oh, yeah, that's interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: clearly I had more of I guess the sweet tooth
Speaker 1: as a child, But my son has always been super
Speaker 1: into pickles of all different varieties, from the little cornishans
Speaker 1: to the big dill pickles, to the big bread and
Speaker 1: butter pickles, to the slices, all of it. Though with
Speaker 1: both of those, I guess those are just sort of
Speaker 1: like ambiguous, continuous states of childhood. Catching fireflies in jars,
Speaker 1: it's just something that happened often. I don't remember a
Speaker 1: particular instance of it, saying with admiring the pickle jar
Speaker 1: and wanting its contents if I had to produce it more.
Speaker 1: I don't know a direct autobiographical, specific memory you'd probably
Speaker 1: be a more recent one. I don't remember if I
Speaker 1: think you asked me for my earliest but if I
Speaker 1: were just doing the word que test, i'd probably say, oh,
Speaker 1: from when I was thirty five and I made and
Speaker 1: I made kimchi in a large jar on my table,
Speaker 1: and I remember how it smelled and all that. Oh nice. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I think it's it's worth telling everyone, like,
Speaker 1: go out now and create some positive jar based memories
Speaker 1: with your children, even if they're grown now. It's never
Speaker 1: too late to create a jar based memory. All right. Well,
Speaker 1: on that note, we're going to go and close up
Speaker 1: this episode, but we'll be back with more on this topic,
Speaker 1: and in the meantime, certainly write in with your thoughts
Speaker 1: on all of this, and yeah, if you want to
Speaker 1: share some of your earliest memories with us and sort
Speaker 1: of attempt to define when these memories occurred, and if
Speaker 1: you have any, if you've been able to dig around
Speaker 1: and to ask other people to sort of prove them
Speaker 1: out to see if they are in fact largely authentic
Speaker 1: or if they've been augmented in any way. Yeah, we'd
Speaker 1: love to hear from everyone throughout these episodes. But this
Speaker 1: is going to produce a skewed sample because we're gonna
Speaker 1: hear from everybody who's like, I can remember being one,
Speaker 1: But people aren't going to write in to tell us
Speaker 1: I don't remember being one. No, right, you can write
Speaker 1: in with that if you're like, my earliest memory is
Speaker 1: being you know, five or older, whatever, right in. Like
Speaker 1: we said, there is no wrong answer here. The people
Speaker 1: who claim to member being born, it doesn't mean their
Speaker 1: brain is better, their memory is better than another individual. Again,
Speaker 1: where you're going to continue to discuss this as as
Speaker 1: we explore this topic. No wrong answers. All right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we close it out. We'll just remind you that
Speaker 1: core episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind publish on
Speaker 1: Tuesdays and Thursdays, and the Stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 1: podcast feed on Mondays, we do listener mail, on Wednesdays
Speaker 1: we do a short form monster fact or artifact episode,
Speaker 1: and on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to
Speaker 1: just talk about a weird film. And this week, I
Speaker 1: think it's going to be a pretty fun one that
Speaker 1: will tie in with early childhood memories for many people,
Speaker 1: because I think we do form a lot of early
Speaker 1: childhood memories based on movies we're exposed to, so perhaps
Speaker 1: we'll get into bat a little bit. As we discussed
Speaker 1: this week's title, Huge thanks to our audio producer J. J. Pasway.
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 1: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 1: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind
Speaker 1: is production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listening
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