Speaker 1: Folks, As we are traveling through the holidays, taking a
Speaker 1: little time off for our own completely non sketching a
Speaker 1: mysterious adventures, we are presenting to you some of our
Speaker 1: favorite classic episodes. Do you guys remember doing this one? No?
Speaker 1: Because I was men in black mind erased about it?
Speaker 2: M wait, what are we talking about? You know?
Speaker 1: Luckily we wrote this down. The past us is helping
Speaker 1: the present us now. Back in twenty nineteen, it was
Speaker 1: us we apparently asked ourselves, can memories be erased? What
Speaker 1: would you do? You know, if you had a very
Speaker 1: troubling traumatic memory of an experience that was so invasive
Speaker 1: it messed with your present day life? You know what
Speaker 1: I mean? This happens since memories a big deal, you know.
Speaker 1: Shout out to every college kid who partied too hard
Speaker 1: one time and now can't see a specific like brand
Speaker 1: of alcohol or drug without five getting nauseated? Is this
Speaker 1: like Sailor Jerry's shout out gold Schlagger? Just okay, not
Speaker 1: as classy as it sounds, so jeger for me.
Speaker 2: Wooo give me all of those guys. I just want
Speaker 2: to drink up that syrupy Southern comfort, just that straight
Speaker 2: triple sec Oh yeah, guys, is this kind of like
Speaker 2: the Blind Eye Society's Memory gun. You know that gravity
Speaker 2: falls thing. I hope everybody's seen gravity falls. I know
Speaker 2: I'm way late to that already, but I finally, like,
Speaker 2: I am obsessed with it and I just can't get enough.
Speaker 1: And you know, maybe I have seen it, but we
Speaker 1: just don't be right. We know that the realm of
Speaker 1: science fiction and science fact is increasingly getting fuzzy. So
Speaker 1: check out this episode. Hope this message finds well. Folks.
Speaker 1: Tell us the weirdest thing that you've seen with memories.
Speaker 1: Oh shout out, uh Mendela effect or Mandala effect or
Speaker 1: barn Steve Potato Potato zane. Here we go.
Speaker 3: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 3: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 3: learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 3: production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt noel
Speaker 2: Is on an audio adventure.
Speaker 1: They call me Ben. We are joined as always with
Speaker 1: our super producer Paul Mission Control decond. Most importantly, you
Speaker 1: are here, and that makes this stuff they don't want
Speaker 1: you to know. Quick before you forget your comments, your feedback,
Speaker 1: your concerns, or your suggestions. Go ahead, at any point
Speaker 1: while this episode is playing, pause it and give us
Speaker 1: a call. Speak your conscience, speak your truth, let us
Speaker 1: know if you do not want your words to go
Speaker 1: on the air.
Speaker 2: That's right. Also speak your untruth whatever you wish, give
Speaker 2: us a call. One eight three three std WYTK. Now
Speaker 2: speaking of truth is an untruth. Then we've spoken many
Speaker 2: times on this show about the the memory that you
Speaker 2: have or an image in your mind is just the
Speaker 2: last time you thought about something, Right.
Speaker 1: That's true. That's true. Longtime listeners will will remember this
Speaker 1: because it's a very handy thing to point out whenever
Speaker 1: we dive into any number of topics. And that is
Speaker 1: a take for instance, well, we'll talk about memories a
Speaker 1: lot today. Take for instance, the memory of the first
Speaker 1: time you ate spaghetti.
Speaker 2: Right, Okay, got it.
Speaker 1: That's it. That's a good that's a good example because
Speaker 1: it ties into taste, smell, texture, all these other sensory
Speaker 1: things that play a huge role in encoding memory.
Speaker 2: But and it's also probably not the first time you
Speaker 2: ate spaghetti.
Speaker 1: It is almost definitely not. It may not even be
Speaker 1: a real time that you ate spaghetti, you are just
Speaker 1: remembering the sensations that you associate with spaghetti. So we
Speaker 1: just may have helped you make up a memory that
Speaker 1: never happened. And today's show is about memories. Think about it, Matt.
Speaker 1: Memories are humanity's earliest version of time travel. You can
Speaker 1: hear a snatch of song, a vivid image pops up
Speaker 1: in your mind, or something as small as a taste
Speaker 1: can send you rocketing out of the present into the past.
Speaker 1: In some cases, this is amazing and beautiful.
Speaker 2: Think about smelling a cookie, a specific kind of cookie,
Speaker 2: sure right, I mean it really is time traveling.
Speaker 1: A fresh baked cinnamon cookie or a Christmas cookie. Yea,
Speaker 1: I see on it. This has been the launching ground
Speaker 1: for so many crucial parts of human existence, and a
Speaker 1: lot of literature and art as well remembrance of things
Speaker 1: passed by proost. Essentially, it all starts because this guy
Speaker 1: dips a Madeline into I think tea or some sort
Speaker 1: of beverage and he tastes it and he goes wow.
Speaker 1: I should write hundreds of pages about us.
Speaker 2: Madeline is a cookie, correct, yes?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Or a biscuit?
Speaker 1: Yeah, biscuit? Oh my gosh, you excuse us, right, But
Speaker 1: then also think about the way people who are suffering
Speaker 1: from Alzheimer's are able to retain memories through music, right, Like,
Speaker 1: they may have difficulty recalling certain people, places or events
Speaker 1: in their lives, but they can sing and hit every
Speaker 1: note of a song from the sixties that they really loved.
Speaker 2: Right. And then in the hope of current research and
Speaker 2: future research is that you can you can use that
Speaker 2: connection in some way to make even further connections.
Speaker 1: Right, exactly, spot on. And here's the thing. This is
Speaker 1: the reason why I really appreciate you using the word
Speaker 1: hope there matts because as amazing as memories are, we
Speaker 1: still do not understand everything about them. We know, for example,
Speaker 1: that memories can be as as you said earlier, surprisingly treacherous,
Speaker 1: and memories of the same event can change drastically over time.
Speaker 1: That's why, especially in the days before widespread video and
Speaker 1: audio capturing ability existed, that's why so many people would
Speaker 1: swear they were at these big historical events after the fact,
Speaker 1: they didn't think they were lying, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: the hundreds of thousands of people people who claimed they
Speaker 1: were watching you know, like the Hindenburg disaster. Well, that
Speaker 1: would probably be more in the millions or people who
Speaker 1: claimed that they were in or around Tombstone at the
Speaker 1: time of the so called wild West, right and during
Speaker 1: the titular shootouts and stuff. Those people don't feel like
Speaker 1: they're lying. They genuinely think they remember it. And now
Speaker 1: we find ourselves inexorably drawn into the world of philosophy.
Speaker 1: If a person's thoughts, their experiences, and their beliefs are
Speaker 1: indeed the basis for the reality in which they exist,
Speaker 1: then were they there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a tough one. And we're also going to
Speaker 2: get into realms here with memories of something like trauma.
Speaker 2: And you know, we're talking everything we've been talking about
Speaker 2: right now, or memories that we would probably want to
Speaker 2: retain or at least a hone or to have the
Speaker 2: best version of, or we think we have the best
Speaker 2: version of.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: But when you're speaking with memories of trauma or something
Speaker 2: like that is there, you know, perhaps there is reason,
Speaker 2: and rightly so, for us to want to alter those
Speaker 2: memories or maybe even change them. Sure, and some people
Speaker 2: have attempted in the past to do this.
Speaker 1: Right, we know that people can, through accident or intention,
Speaker 1: alter memories in various ways. One of the big debates
Speaker 1: regarding this would be the technique known as hypnotic regression.
Speaker 1: There are people who will swear up and down that
Speaker 1: hypnotic regression has been used as a psychotherapeutic tool to
Speaker 1: help people remember things that they had suppressed due to trauma. However,
Speaker 1: and this is not to say that doesn't occur. However,
Speaker 1: the evidence also shows us that people can be guided, steered,
Speaker 1: pushed toward remembering things that did not happen, or remembering
Speaker 1: things that happened in a different way in the objective reality.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there are techniques in psychological ways to try
Speaker 2: and alter your own memories, either for good or for bad,
Speaker 2: or those of other people. But some of the kind
Speaker 2: of self changed things, or like memory palaces, constructing it
Speaker 2: within your mind and then altering the way you view
Speaker 2: this certain time or event. There's a lot of fascinating
Speaker 2: stuff there.
Speaker 1: It's true, and we will inevitably hit different aspects of
Speaker 1: this and along the way today we will show you
Speaker 1: a little bit about how to hack your own memory.
Speaker 1: But this is again for information purposes only. Yes, Paul
Speaker 1: Matt and myself are not doctors. And even if we
Speaker 1: were taking medical vice from a podcast is a terrible idea, uniport,
Speaker 1: no caveat, terrible idea.
Speaker 2: Even basic psychological advice. We don't take it from me
Speaker 2: at least.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't even follow any of our film recommendations of
Speaker 1: being honest, at least none of mine. So I'll also
Speaker 1: share in the course of this episode a very odd
Speaker 1: personal memory. And I would love some help or answers
Speaker 1: about this because I still have questions. But okay, we
Speaker 1: know that we can alter our own memories and other
Speaker 1: people can alter our memories. We know that we don't
Speaker 1: understand everything about memories. But what if we could take
Speaker 1: it a step further? What if we could actually erase
Speaker 1: a person's memory, a specific memory. In other words, what
Speaker 1: if we can take the plot of Eternal Sunshine of
Speaker 1: the Spotless Mind from the big screen to reality. That
Speaker 1: is what we were exploring today, and to do so,
Speaker 1: we need to first understand what exactly human memory is.
Speaker 1: So here are the facts.
Speaker 2: Let's begin with a summation of this idea of what
Speaker 2: is a memory by a gentleman named Richard C. Moe's Mohs.
Speaker 2: He wrote how human memory works for our friends over
Speaker 2: at HowStuffWorks dot com. I was gonna say something that is,
Speaker 2: like we remember thee or something like that, like we're
Speaker 2: no longer officially with them, but they will always be
Speaker 2: with us. Memory itself just describes the process by which
Speaker 2: our minds store and then recall information. And again, it's
Speaker 2: kind of connections, both literally and physically and metaphorically.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm exactly. So for most of us Moe's writes,
Speaker 1: we talk about memory as though it is another part
Speaker 1: of our body, a thing we possess, like our organs
Speaker 1: or our fingers. But the tricky part here is that
Speaker 1: memory does not exist in quite the same way. We
Speaker 1: can't touch it. It's more of a concept for most people,
Speaker 1: or at least this was the case for the majority
Speaker 1: of human history, and it may be tempting for us
Speaker 1: to think of every single memory that we've ever had
Speaker 1: as a single, discrete, specific thing. Imagine your first day
Speaker 1: at school, right, or one of your first days That
Speaker 1: memory probably exists distinct for a lot of people. Or
Speaker 1: remember the first time you told a romantic partner you
Speaker 1: love them and so on. You can put yourself back
Speaker 1: in that moment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just your meet cute, even the first time you
Speaker 2: saw your current partner.
Speaker 1: Right exactly. When we think of these things on the offset,
Speaker 1: we think of them as a single point, a snap
Speaker 1: in this huge tapestry of experience that never ends until
Speaker 1: we die and maybe continues a little bit after that.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But the problem is that all things are interconnected here,
Speaker 1: and memories no different. Your first day of school also
Speaker 1: conjures up the idea of like your trapper keeper, your backpack,
Speaker 1: what you have for lunch. That's sleepless night before the
Speaker 1: first day of school.
Speaker 2: It's also being colored by your subsequent experiences with school
Speaker 2: and how you feel about, you know, high school. Let's
Speaker 2: say you're let's say you're in college. Right now, when
Speaker 2: you're thinking about your first day of school, those memories
Speaker 2: are hitting because of the way memory functions. As we're
Speaker 2: going to get into here, it's hitting all of these
Speaker 2: different parts of your your memories.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, because each of these things is really the
Speaker 1: product of some incredibly, incredibly complex Rube Goldberg esque cognitive processing.
Speaker 1: Every time you or my or anyone recalls a memory,
Speaker 1: our brain is reassembling these very different impressions from a picture.
Speaker 1: A spider web of cells scattered all throughout your brain
Speaker 1: in different areas each memory that you have, and the
Speaker 1: larger concept of what we call memory is a group
Speaker 1: of different systems or webs interacting and playing a role
Speaker 1: in creating, storing, and recalling experiences. Mose has a great
Speaker 1: example of this. He talks about a pen. He says,
Speaker 1: you know, if you think of an object like a pen,
Speaker 1: your brain achieves the object's name, okay, pen, It's shape, cylindrical,
Speaker 1: often right, overwhelmingly, its function okay.
Speaker 2: Rites stuff, disperses in.
Speaker 1: The sound it makes when it scratches across a page.
Speaker 1: For a lot of us, we would probably be more
Speaker 1: familiar with a click sounds. So each part of the
Speaker 1: memory of what a pen is exists in a different
Speaker 1: part of your brain, and then all you need is
Speaker 1: to think or hear the word pen, and boom, it
Speaker 1: all comes together so fast, so quickly. You're not buffering.
Speaker 1: There's no speed, there's no moment where you're totally lost,
Speaker 1: and you're thinking, well, that sounds a sounds familiar.
Speaker 2: Well for some of us, myself included, recalling specifics of
Speaker 2: things is becoming more and more difficult again as myself,
Speaker 2: as I get older. It's odd, it's like the connections
Speaker 2: there aren't quite as steadfast as they once were.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So neurologists are still only at the
Speaker 1: beginning of understanding how all these different little mental processes
Speaker 1: come together to form what we call memory and to
Speaker 1: create what we call remembering. We do know a little
Speaker 1: bit about how memories form. When everything goes right.
Speaker 2: Yeah exactly. So the first thing that happens is your
Speaker 2: senses are interacting with something in the world generally, and
Speaker 2: these things, these sensations that your senses are picking up,
Speaker 2: travel to this place in your brain called your hippocampus,
Speaker 2: which then integrates various separate sensations into a single cohesive experience.
Speaker 2: So again, kind of what we were talking about earlier, Ben,
Speaker 2: let's go back to that love of your life, and
Speaker 2: in this way, let's say it's your meat cutes. The
Speaker 2: first time you turn a corner, there's the person you
Speaker 2: end up being with for the rest of your life.
Speaker 2: You think about the way they looked, perhaps what they're wearing,
Speaker 2: the way their hair was. You heard their voice for
Speaker 2: the first time, or at least what you're imagining now,
Speaker 2: remembering the way their voice sounded. The first time you
Speaker 2: smelled whatever cologne or whatever you smell they had going
Speaker 2: on the deodorant, maybe it was just their natural smell.
Speaker 2: This all gets rolled up into this single experience that
Speaker 2: we consider to be the memory. Right, And according to
Speaker 2: Moe's he actually goes into this into the actual occurrence
Speaker 2: in your brain.
Speaker 1: Right. He walks through how the hippocampus along with the
Speaker 1: frontal cortex analyzes these sensory inputs. This, this is the
Speaker 1: process of encoding. So if essentially think of your hippocampus
Speaker 1: and the frontal cortex as the bouncers at the bar
Speaker 1: of your recollection. Oh right, they're at the door. And
Speaker 1: what they will do is they and we're totally anthropomorphizing
Speaker 1: them here, but they will say, let's say you're walking
Speaker 1: by and you smell an amazing eero stand right, yeah,
Speaker 1: and walking by a whole all guys or whatever, and
Speaker 1: you smell this and it's a great it's a great smell.
Speaker 1: Or you see something distinct there, someone's making shwarma or whatever,
Speaker 1: and this goes to your brain. These sensory inputs, the
Speaker 1: visual input of watching that scene, the olfactory input of
Speaker 1: smelling that food, and then your hippocampus your frontal cortex
Speaker 1: are the they're the entities that say this is or
Speaker 1: is not important, This does or does not make the pass.
Speaker 1: As we indicated earlier, if they make it through, if
Speaker 1: your long term memory, even your short term really, if
Speaker 1: they make it through and become a short term memory.
Speaker 1: They exist in a small chunk for no more than
Speaker 1: twenty to thirty seconds for most people, and then someone
Speaker 1: can ask you like, hey, what was happening there, you know,
Speaker 1: twenty five seconds ago, and you'll be like, oh, there's
Speaker 1: this guy's making sharma. It was great, you know, not
Speaker 1: life changing, but yeah, you want some shwarma. That's how
Speaker 1: that will work. But let's step back for a second.
Speaker 1: So as these bits of infration get collected in short
Speaker 1: term memory, they're stored in different parts of the brain.
Speaker 1: We still don't know how our brains identify all these
Speaker 1: things and know what to match to which events. Right,
Speaker 1: so we know that we do know the physiological or
Speaker 1: i should say the neurochemical process. Here. We all have
Speaker 1: nerve cells in our brains. They connected things called synapsis, right.
Speaker 1: A sygn apse is a connection there, and these cells
Speaker 1: fire electrical pulses across the space between your nerves. And
Speaker 1: when they fire, these electrical pulses. It triggers the release
Speaker 1: of these neurotransmitters. Think of them like chemical corriers. The
Speaker 1: neurotransmitters spread the information they carry across the spaces between
Speaker 1: the cells. Each single brain cell can form thousands and
Speaker 1: thousands of these links, creating all these the connections, these
Speaker 1: webs that we mentioned earlier. The typical brain has about
Speaker 1: typical human brain I should say, has about one hundred
Speaker 1: trillion synapses. But these connections are not set in stone.
Speaker 1: They constantly change as your brain cells organize themselves into
Speaker 1: different groups to process information in different ways. And here's
Speaker 1: where long term comes in. Every time that your brain
Speaker 1: cells send these messages to one another, the synaptic connection
Speaker 1: between them grows stronger. We can't emphasize this enough. This
Speaker 1: is real mind over matter. Your thought processes, the things
Speaker 1: that you choose to think about with no ostensible physical
Speaker 1: action of your own, these things will change the physical
Speaker 1: composition of your brain. I believe we may have mentioned
Speaker 1: it on previous episodes, but we can see this effect
Speaker 1: over time and it becomes quite profound. London taxi drivers right,
Speaker 1: the area of the brain associated with spatial reasoning in
Speaker 1: taxi drivers who have been driving for decades is physically
Speaker 1: noticeably significantly larger than that of the ordinary driver. Same
Speaker 1: thing with the parts of the brain responsible for empathy
Speaker 1: in Buddhist monks who have meditated for quite.
Speaker 2: A while, as well as professional magic the gathering players
Speaker 2: who've been playing for long enough time like, it's crazy
Speaker 2: how many cards they have to remember and all the
Speaker 2: different actions.
Speaker 1: I mean, you've done some real Twilight Zone stuff. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be honest with you. We also know that filtering
Speaker 1: occurs during this encoding process. Most people don't remember most things, right,
Speaker 1: But we still don't know exactly how this works. We're
Speaker 1: going to pause just for a second. Let's all try
Speaker 1: to remember what we examined here, and then we'll be
Speaker 1: back to explore short and long term memory after a
Speaker 1: word from our sponsor.
Speaker 2: And we're back now. As we were discussing before, not
Speaker 2: all memories are created equally, and not all of our
Speaker 2: senses are stored in the same way. Because really, if
Speaker 2: you think about how much stuff we interact with every day,
Speaker 2: how many things we see and smell and touch, if
Speaker 2: we kept all of that, it would be it would
Speaker 2: be nearly impossible to sort through, even with the processing
Speaker 2: power of our brains. So a lot of experts actually
Speaker 2: believe that memory exists in three stages. A lot of
Speaker 2: times you'll hear short term versus long term memory, So
Speaker 2: let's jump in here. The first type is the immediate
Speaker 2: sensory memory. That's just what is occurring right now, the
Speaker 2: way this table feels when I touch it. Then there's
Speaker 2: short term memory, which is again about that twenty seconds
Speaker 2: or a little bit, you know, give or take a
Speaker 2: certain period of time. I remember how that table felt
Speaker 2: when I touched it. And then finally long term men
Speaker 2: and then that is just me when I'm walking around
Speaker 2: at the house thinking about what that table felt like
Speaker 2: when I touched it, right or I'm remembering it for
Speaker 2: the next time. So each memory has to successfully pass
Speaker 2: the filtration to get to the next tier to go
Speaker 2: from sensory to short term to long.
Speaker 1: Term and long term memory can store as far as
Speaker 1: we can tell, an unlimited amount of data for an
Speaker 1: infinite amount of time. But yes or sorry, an indefinite
Speaker 1: amount of time. There's not a hard limit on it
Speaker 1: the way short term memory is. We should also make
Speaker 1: a slight detour here to say yes. So called total
Speaker 1: recall memory edetic memory does exist, but it is very
Speaker 1: very rare. That's the ability to recall something in near
Speaker 1: totality after having only seen it once briefly. And there
Speaker 1: are people who really can do this. There are people
Speaker 1: who have the ability to look at a photograph and
Speaker 1: then draw it really accurately from memory. There are people
Speaker 1: who can tell you what they had for breakfast on
Speaker 1: you know, June fifteenth, nineteen ninety eight, and they can
Speaker 1: tell you what time it was when they had breakfast.
Speaker 2: You know. Yeah, but like you said, extremely rare, extremely
Speaker 2: extremely rare. For me, I couldn't tell you what I
Speaker 2: ate for breakfast yesterday.
Speaker 1: Right, And true photographic memory, as far as we know,
Speaker 1: like the actual facts, true photographic memory has not been
Speaker 1: universally proven. There are compelling things, right. But then this
Speaker 1: ties into the idea of the so called savant syndrome. Right,
Speaker 1: So that's a story for another day. But the rules
Speaker 1: we are describing for memory applied to easily ninety eight percent,
Speaker 1: if not more, of the human population. Matt, You're absolutely right.
Speaker 1: Long term memory is something that you have to earn.
Speaker 1: If you're a little lingering scent of jasmine or lavender,
Speaker 1: you start off in sensory memory, and you have to
Speaker 1: crew up with other sensory with other sensations right to
Speaker 1: progress through that hierarchy and hit the you know, hit
Speaker 1: the big win, the immortality of a long term memory.
Speaker 1: Most people have a pretty good memory. So the brutal
Speaker 1: truth of this is any of your friends, any of
Speaker 1: our friends who say, ah, I'm terrible with names, or
Speaker 1: I just say a goat such a terrible memory. The
Speaker 1: fact of the matter is, I'm not gonna say they're
Speaker 1: lying to you, but they're not really trying to encode memories.
Speaker 1: Most people are pretty good at this sort of stuff.
Speaker 1: Various factors affect our memory at different junctures, and like
Speaker 1: a lot of other physical faculties, memory does seem to
Speaker 1: degrade with age, but we all typically start out with
Speaker 1: a pretty sharp ability to recall things. One thing that's
Speaker 1: interesting about how memory can be affected. Every time this
Speaker 1: great computer cult your brain retrieves, it goes into I'm
Speaker 1: thinking about the best way to put this. Okay, So
Speaker 1: we have all probably heard the idea of set and setting,
Speaker 1: or seen in setting for people who do hallucinogens. Right,
Speaker 1: if you are already feeling anxious and you ingest a
Speaker 1: hallucinogenic substance in a place that is a very stressful environment,
Speaker 1: you know, or like sirens randomly go off, and there
Speaker 1: are four hundred strangers you don't know, right, and they
Speaker 1: all want to get in line for the bathroom. Essentially
Speaker 1: every outdoor concert ever, whatever. Yeah, then you're going to
Speaker 1: have a weird time. Memory is also vulnerable to the
Speaker 1: present physical surroundings that you are in when you generate
Speaker 1: a memory. So if you are having if you are
Speaker 1: having a great time, you're super relaxed. Let's picture it.
Speaker 1: You're on a hot tub on the shore of a
Speaker 1: beautiful island. It's a nice, cool ocean breeze, the sun's setting,
Speaker 1: You're hanging with people you like or whatever. You're at peace,
Speaker 1: get a cold, frosty beverage, sitting on the rim of
Speaker 1: the hot tub, whatever, and you remember something that was
Speaker 1: sad or painful or hurtful. The fact that you are
Speaker 1: in a nice, relaxed, secure, comfortable setting when you recall
Speaker 1: this is going to study show, or studies seem to
Speaker 1: indicate strongly, it's going to help mitigate the psychic trauma
Speaker 1: of that earlier thing. The stuff that surrounds us in
Speaker 1: the present affects the way we see our past.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, that I can totally see that. I mean
Speaker 2: that's why if you're going to see a therapist or something,
Speaker 2: it is in that type of set and setting that
Speaker 2: is meant to be serene right as you're working through
Speaker 2: some memories that are perhaps painful. It makes a lot
Speaker 2: of sense. Now I'm now thinking all therapists should just
Speaker 2: have hot tubs. Yeah, frosty beverages.
Speaker 1: I mean, you've been saying that for years.
Speaker 2: Sunset and it good to go.
Speaker 1: Only at sunset night therapy. That sounds like a strange show,
Speaker 1: maybe on cinematic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was gonna say, yeah, late night HBO something
Speaker 2: like that.
Speaker 1: So, so these long term memories differ from our short
Speaker 1: term memories. Our short term memories are actually going to
Speaker 1: be They're going to have a higher chance of being accurate,
Speaker 1: just because our long term memories are based on the
Speaker 1: repetitive intrusion of our present scene while we're remembering something, right,
Speaker 1: So they get a little diluted. We play that game
Speaker 1: of telephone. But there we have it as a very
Speaker 1: very brief look at what human memory is and how
Speaker 1: it works so far as we know. Now, why are
Speaker 1: we talking about this because for hundreds of years, people
Speaker 1: have been trying to alter memory in one way or another,
Speaker 1: whether through the propagation of differing historical narratives aka burn
Speaker 1: all the books, h censorship, let's get rid of anything
Speaker 1: in that picture at Tianneman Square, right, hypnosis, hypnotic regression,
Speaker 1: brainwashing like that old scene in Star Trek The Next
Speaker 1: Generation where someone is torturing Picard and telling them to
Speaker 1: see a different number of lights.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or a pledge of allegiance that you have to
Speaker 2: say every day when you're at school.
Speaker 1: Right, which I bet is encoded in your memory too,
Speaker 1: and also with a little bit of cadence, right, Like
Speaker 1: you can probably recite the entire alphabet in your native language,
Speaker 1: but if you have a native language that teaches children
Speaker 1: the alphabet in the form of a song, it's kind
Speaker 1: of it's really difficult to do it backwards, right.
Speaker 2: I still can't because.
Speaker 1: We don't know all you know, we don't know all
Speaker 1: the letters independently we know the song. Yeah, it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: which number is H. I'll get to it, just give
Speaker 1: me a second. But yeah, So we've we've had this
Speaker 1: history of people attempting to tweak modify revised memory, and
Speaker 1: we've had mixed results. In fact, for most of human history,
Speaker 1: the idea of purposely, surgically and precisely deleting a memory
Speaker 1: seemed relegated to the world of science fiction. But what
Speaker 1: if we could turn it into science fact. Here's where
Speaker 1: it gets crazy.
Speaker 2: Man. We're already deleting memories, and at least we figured
Speaker 2: out how to do it right. That doesn't mean we're
Speaker 2: doing it effectively necessarily, but some people have been figuring
Speaker 2: out the means, and there are multiple studies, current and
Speaker 2: very recent studies that confirm that it is indeed possible
Speaker 2: to remove a specific memory or memories from an individual's brain.
Speaker 2: That sounds crazy. That sounds like eternal sunshine.
Speaker 1: But it's real, and it is crazy. Be real? Does
Speaker 1: it make it not crazy?
Speaker 2: I know, I know, I agree.
Speaker 1: With you there, like okay, So there's a twenty seventeen
Speaker 1: study from the Columbia University Medical Center on snails.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, all.
Speaker 1: Right, And so they found that different types of memories
Speaker 1: stored in the same neuron of marine snails can be
Speaker 1: selectively erased here's the important part, without removing the other memory.
Speaker 1: So they can just snip the one out. Here's how
Speaker 1: they did it and those as reported by Science Daily.
Speaker 1: They stimulated two sensory neurons connected to a single motor
Speaker 1: neuron of the marine snail. One neuron, one sensory neuron
Speaker 1: was stimulated to induce an associative memory, something that brings
Speaker 1: up other experiences. Another was stimulated to induce a non
Speaker 1: associative memory. And they found that they could measure the
Speaker 1: strength of each connection. And by measuring the strength of
Speaker 1: each of these snaptic connections, they could find the increase
Speaker 1: in the strength of each connection produced by a different
Speaker 1: stimuli was maintained by a different form of a protein
Speaker 1: called protein kinase m PKM. And they have a couple.
Speaker 1: There are two versions of this right side and a
Speaker 1: b side associative memory, non associative. And they found that
Speaker 1: if they blocked the specific type of PKM molecule involved,
Speaker 1: they could block and erase the memory that needed that
Speaker 1: that needed that enzyme in order to hit the conscious mind.
Speaker 1: So it's all just chemistry.
Speaker 2: See this to me, just the fact that it's being
Speaker 2: that snails are our subjects to try and figure out
Speaker 2: if a memory can be you know, changed or deleted.
Speaker 2: It definitely brings up questions for me, more philosophical questions
Speaker 2: about the snail. But we do know neurologically those neurons,
Speaker 2: those the way they're at least if you think about
Speaker 2: it mechanically, how it's functioning is very similar to human neurons.
Speaker 2: There's a you know, there's a thing that that remembers
Speaker 2: a connection that then goes to a motor neuron which
Speaker 2: will cause you to actually do something to physically make
Speaker 2: a physical change in your body. And then these two
Speaker 2: other pieces that they're messing with are just the thing
Speaker 2: that actually holds the connection to the memory.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so they found that not only could you
Speaker 1: block that recollection, but you could erase it by blocking
Speaker 1: not PKM itself, but you could erase the memory by
Speaker 1: blocking other molecules that help produce PKM the enzyme or
Speaker 1: protect it from breaking down. So you can they not
Speaker 1: only found the switch, they found the stuff that removes
Speaker 1: or installs the switch. Whoa again, justin snails, because you
Speaker 1: have to start small so you don't freak people out.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, I guess so, I mean I get it. Well,
Speaker 2: the good thing here is that this isn't some kind
Speaker 2: of diabolical there's no diabolical behind wanting to figure out
Speaker 2: what this is, or at least that's not stated. According
Speaker 2: to our understanding is that these researchers are doing this
Speaker 2: study to try and find some way to remove non
Speaker 2: associative memories that end up triggering PTSD in people. Also
Speaker 2: any kind of anxiety like either in general or otherwise
Speaker 2: within humans. I very much like this. I think many
Speaker 2: of us listening would would could do with this. We
Speaker 2: would appreciate this. But again, the researchers also are very
Speaker 2: very careful, at least according to the sources that we're using.
Speaker 2: They're very careful to say that this is kind of
Speaker 2: a proof of concept, right, a proof of principle, if
Speaker 2: you will, And it's not absolute proof that we can
Speaker 2: do this within humans, right.
Speaker 1: We're more showing the relationship the cause and effect between
Speaker 1: these molecules. But there are other studies in body by
Speaker 1: researchers at the University of California from back in twenty fourteen.
Speaker 1: They found that light can be used to erase specific
Speaker 1: memories from mice using a technique called optogenetics.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is where it's feeling closer and closer
Speaker 2: to the eternal sunshine. Stuff actually using a physical medium
Speaker 2: to change memories.
Speaker 1: Right, and it's not as cool as the memory erasing
Speaker 1: flashlight and men in black. Not yet, not yet, not yet.
Speaker 1: So the scientists in this study used genetically modified mice
Speaker 1: as their experiment and their control groups. The genetically modified
Speaker 1: mice had nerve cells that would literally glow green and
Speaker 1: express a protein allowing the cells to be switched off
Speaker 1: by light. Light being the mechanism, and so this allowed
Speaker 1: the scientists to trace the path of more or less
Speaker 1: a memory from nerve cell in the cortex and hippocampus,
Speaker 1: and they could see which cells were activated in learning
Speaker 1: something new. They could also see which cells turned on
Speaker 1: when the mouse was remembering something, and then they could
Speaker 1: use a fiber optic cable to switch those cells off
Speaker 1: using light.
Speaker 2: Yeah, whoa, it sounds so sci fi, but this is
Speaker 2: how they summarize it.
Speaker 1: Quote.
Speaker 2: They train the mice by placing them in a cage
Speaker 2: where they got a mild electrical shock. Now, normally mice
Speaker 2: placed in a new environment will nose around and explore,
Speaker 2: but when placed in a cage where they have previously
Speaker 2: received a shock, they freeze in place because it's a
Speaker 2: fear response.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, you could see. You can see why it
Speaker 1: would be illegal to do this with human subjects because
Speaker 1: they first showed that they could label the cells involved
Speaker 1: in learning and later in recollection. Then they were able
Speaker 1: to switch those cells off, so that and then put
Speaker 1: the mice back in the place where they got shocked,
Speaker 1: and the mice had no idea because they they their
Speaker 1: memory had been erased.
Speaker 2: So they just nose around like they would if it
Speaker 2: was just another cage.
Speaker 1: And then they did their homework, you know, Methodologically speaking,
Speaker 1: they kept it hygienic because they were able to show
Speaker 1: that turning off different cells didn't mess with the memory
Speaker 1: at all.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Right, So so they did find they were able to
Speaker 1: hunt down the physical manifestation of a memory, which is
Speaker 1: mind blowing. But this is just the beginning. We've talked
Speaker 1: about erasing memories in animals, but what about creating memories?
Speaker 1: What about the memories of human beings like you listening
Speaker 1: along or Matt or Paul or so on. We'll explore
Speaker 1: that after a word from our sponsors.
Speaker 2: And we're back. Now this is where we get into
Speaker 2: the real, possibly creepy territory, because we're talking about making
Speaker 2: memories that aren't real, or at least aren't exactly the
Speaker 2: same as they could be altered too because science, as
Speaker 2: it turns out, they're learning that some of the same
Speaker 2: processes that we used or that we can manipulate to
Speaker 2: erase memories can also be used to insert new recollections
Speaker 2: that we haven't actually ever collected. It won't be a recollection,
Speaker 2: it will be a new collection.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's just be a collection. Yeah, this is interesting.
Speaker 1: This came out just a few days ago, I think
Speaker 1: August twenty seventh, twenty nineteen, in the magazine Nature, scientists
Speaker 1: published a report proving that they've been able to create
Speaker 1: new memories by reverse engineering natural existing memories. And this
Speaker 1: is even weirder than it sounds. Okay, so what they
Speaker 1: did is they took they took one brain, one animal brain,
Speaker 1: and they got a natural memory from it, right, something
Speaker 1: that it would want to avoid because as you can see,
Speaker 1: they're teaching on very primal levels pain response usually. And
Speaker 1: then after they had mapped out the brain circuits involved
Speaker 1: the switches, the patterns they had traced the web essentially
Speaker 1: for this specific memory, they quote unquote trained another animal
Speaker 1: by stimulating the brain cells of that animal in the
Speaker 1: pattern of that first memory. This created an artificial memory
Speaker 1: that behaved in the exact same way as the naturally
Speaker 1: occurring one, the same a recollection pattern, the same retention everything.
Speaker 1: So the quote from Nature reads this way. And these
Speaker 1: were mice, I should say. In the recent study, the
Speaker 1: natural memory was formed by training mice to associate a
Speaker 1: specific odor, in this case cherry blossoms with a foot shock,
Speaker 1: which they learned to avoid by passing down a rectangular
Speaker 1: test chamber to another end that was infused with a
Speaker 1: different odor, Carraway. The Careway scent came from a chemical
Speaker 1: called carbone, while the cherry blossom scent came from another
Speaker 1: chemical acedophenoe. The researchers found that this cherry blossom scented
Speaker 1: chemical activated a specific type of receptor on a discrete
Speaker 1: type of olfactory sensory nerve cell. Again, just like proost,
Speaker 1: smell is a primary a primary medium for the encoding
Speaker 1: of memory, and.
Speaker 2: If you think about it from an evolutionary perspective, it
Speaker 2: makes total sense as most animals over time use that
Speaker 2: the scent, the sense of scent to find.
Speaker 1: Their way, the sense of sense to hunt.
Speaker 2: To know their mate, to know like.
Speaker 1: Everything and that still happens now, right, So, like that
Speaker 1: earlier study, these scientists used optogenetics to activate those olfactory
Speaker 1: nerve cells and what they found, of course, this is
Speaker 1: surgically implanted fiber optic cable in their heads. It's not
Speaker 1: like they're waving a flashlight out.
Speaker 2: The whole thing sounds barbaric when you think about all
Speaker 2: the shocking and the inserted cables, but let's continue.
Speaker 1: But it's for science, that's right. So what they found
Speaker 1: is that they could replicate this memory pattern in another mouse,
Speaker 1: and that mouse would behave as though it had personally
Speaker 1: experienced this earlier foot shock just from the sense, just
Speaker 1: from the scent would help trigger the memory. Right, So
Speaker 1: they have a little bit of insurance here because it
Speaker 1: would you know, technically, theoretically it would be possible just
Speaker 1: to use that experience of pain of shock to make
Speaker 1: a transferable memory, but doubling down by activating olfactory sensations.
Speaker 1: You know, that's pretty much what they're studying there. That
Speaker 1: implies a lot of stuff, potentially not all of it good.
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 1: We're supposed to be very positive and extol the benefits
Speaker 1: that this could pose for people suffering from very real
Speaker 1: very torturous conditions like PTSD or generalized anxiety. But that's
Speaker 1: not where it's not like fire can fire can warm you,
Speaker 1: it can also burn down your house. Technology has never
Speaker 1: come with any sort of inherent and ethical mandate. I
Speaker 1: don't I don't know. You know why I'm I'm so
Speaker 1: boxing a little bit about this, Matt is because, of
Speaker 1: course DARPA has entered the game.
Speaker 2: Of course, of course they were in this game before
Speaker 2: they even announced it. I'm telling you, really, that's going
Speaker 2: ton't surprise any of us that DARPA was like raising
Speaker 2: their hand, going, well, we'd like to be involved, because
Speaker 2: researchers associated with DARPA created this thing. It's a prosthetic
Speaker 2: to allow for better memory.
Speaker 1: Recall, Yeah, the march towards super soldierdom continues. This is incredible.
Speaker 1: They're describing it as a prosthetic, and in the trial
Speaker 1: they conducted, they showed a thirty five percent improvement in
Speaker 1: both short and long term retention of visual information. Couple
Speaker 1: this with the drugs that mean people don't have to sleep.
Speaker 1: Couple this with you know, the genetic research going going
Speaker 1: into the idea of giving people, you know, unbreakable bones.
Speaker 1: Incredible BMI naturally that kind of stuff we're building potentially
Speaker 1: super people. Of course, you know, I'm being a little
Speaker 1: bit alarmist because all of these things are kind of siloed,
Speaker 1: like the I think most of the people who are
Speaker 1: working with DARPA money are just trying to prove they're
Speaker 1: one very specific thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but once you vulture on that stuff, the future
Speaker 2: looks bright for very few.
Speaker 1: So we also know, since we're speaking about humans, we
Speaker 1: know tale as old as times. Certain drugs can impair
Speaker 1: or hinder memory. Right, if someone drinks too much, they
Speaker 1: may not remember the entirety of what they did while
Speaker 1: they were drinking. If someone is using certain narcos or
Speaker 1: something that will also impair their memory, or some herbal supplements, yes,
Speaker 1: some herbal supplements cough cough, but what about how far
Speaker 1: does that go? Are there any drugs that are specifically
Speaker 1: designed to erase entire experiences while and this is the
Speaker 1: tricky part. Yeah, this is the part that herbal substances
Speaker 1: cough cough. Narcotics and alcohol don't do. When they remove memories,
Speaker 1: they remove like entire periods of memories. Yes, what if
Speaker 1: there was a way to reach into the jenga tower
Speaker 1: of human memory and steal entire floors without toppling the tower.
Speaker 2: That would be getting us into fully eternal sunshine territory, right,
Speaker 2: like removing a single person from your memory inside the
Speaker 2: Jenga tower that is all of your memories.
Speaker 1: Right yeah, yeah, a real life eternal sunshine.
Speaker 2: And we have another report here, this time it's from
Speaker 2: Scientific American and quote. Neuroscientists at McGill University and collaborators
Speaker 2: have just reported in Molecular Pain.
Speaker 1: Which is a scientific journal, not a really great name
Speaker 1: for like an early two thousand zip up.
Speaker 2: Well, it certainly sounds like both. But they've stated that
Speaker 2: the chemical with the evocative acronym zip ZIP.
Speaker 1: That's ZIP, not Ziprecruider.
Speaker 2: Nope, but do use them if you need to hire
Speaker 2: ZIP can selectively wipe out the nervous system's memory of
Speaker 2: the chronic aches and pains that plague about one in
Speaker 2: four North Americans, apparently leaving other memories intact. Now that's incredible,
Speaker 2: removing the memory of chronic pain. It makes you wonder
Speaker 2: because again I've said this before, my back hurts. It
Speaker 2: always hurts if I if I don't remember that it hurts.
Speaker 2: Is that what we're talking about here.
Speaker 1: It'll just be a brand new day of pain, like.
Speaker 2: Oh, that that does hurt. That's weird. Why is my
Speaker 2: back hurt?
Speaker 1: It will be your first time, every every time.
Speaker 2: It's what I've always wanted.
Speaker 1: You've always wanted, brand new back pain. I'm tired of
Speaker 1: the same old back pain. Yeah. ZIP is the street
Speaker 1: name for something called zeta inhibitory peptide. This inhibits the
Speaker 1: memory preserving enzymes we mentioned before, pkms, right, so this
Speaker 1: is pkm zeta. We don't know enough to determine exactly
Speaker 1: where this stuff should be applied. We do know that
Speaker 1: it definitely works. So this puts us a very strange,
Speaker 1: very strange crossroads. Here's what would happen if you applied
Speaker 1: it now. It would have to be injected directly into
Speaker 1: your spinal cord. Is done over the counter tablet and
Speaker 1: probably never will be. And if someone did that today,
Speaker 1: injected some of this ZIP up into your spine, we
Speaker 1: don't know. We know it would erase some stuff. We
Speaker 1: just don't know what you might say. Oh okay, eternal
Speaker 1: sunshine style, I no longer have to remember this breakup
Speaker 1: that has riddled my life with regrets which you know
Speaker 1: not to get too personal. I'm sure everybody has personally
Speaker 1: experienced that or knows someone who has. You can see
Speaker 1: why you would want that to go away. But you're
Speaker 1: rolling the dice in a game that no one knows
Speaker 1: the rules for. You might you might remove that breakup. Sure,
Speaker 1: you might also remove the memory of your parents and
Speaker 1: your entire family along with it.
Speaker 2: You'd begin mistaking your wife for a hat.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, exactly. And I think I mentioned earlier the
Speaker 1: idea of talking about an inexplicable memory. I want to
Speaker 1: share this and see if we all have things like this,
Speaker 1: and you know, you might surprise yourself when you find
Speaker 1: that you have a similar thing. I have memories that
Speaker 1: I know logically could not have well, I don't understand
Speaker 1: how they would have occurred. So one of my earliest
Speaker 1: memories is being on the second floor of a church
Speaker 1: window or something like that, looking down and there's very
Speaker 1: bright green grass. There is a police car with the
Speaker 1: sirens on, parked on the grass, and there is a
Speaker 1: white bed by the window with handcuffs and like blood
Speaker 1: on the bed sheets. I've had this memory ever since
Speaker 1: I was a kid, so whole leeh right, So it's
Speaker 1: got to be. It's surely the logic glance would be,
Speaker 1: this is something I saw on television right when I
Speaker 1: was a we tyke, maybe before words something like that.
Speaker 2: Maybe.
Speaker 1: But I think we all have those sensations or those
Speaker 1: those sort of tableaus, right that we we think like
Speaker 1: this is a very vivid image for me, Yeah, but
Speaker 1: I don't know where it's where it's from.
Speaker 2: I have one like that, similarly, in a church with
Speaker 2: a tornado warning of some sort or a sirens going
Speaker 2: off and having to duck down and hide in a
Speaker 2: darkened room while the sounds of a train go by.
Speaker 2: But when I've recalled this to my mother, because it's
Speaker 2: such a vivid memory of mine, sure she doesn't. She's
Speaker 2: not exactly sure where when that would have occurred, or
Speaker 2: which church or anything like that. And it's kind of
Speaker 2: similar in the way that I don't know if it
Speaker 2: actually happened.
Speaker 1: Did we get mind wiped?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: That's the problem with this. Let us know about your
Speaker 1: your strange memories too, because for the first time in
Speaker 1: human history, at least that we can recall, we are
Speaker 1: on the verge of artificially controlling the individual perception of
Speaker 1: the past. We have been making attempts as a species
Speaker 1: to control the collective perception of the past. But now
Speaker 1: we can open up the hood of every individual mind
Speaker 1: and start to tinker with it. We're close to doing that.
Speaker 1: And here's where the conversation gets sticky, because yes, as
Speaker 1: you said, Matt, the obvious hope is this can be
Speaker 1: used to remove painful traumatic experiences that trigger anxiety panic PTSD.
Speaker 1: But also the same technology could possibly be used to
Speaker 1: non consensually remove memories.
Speaker 2: That's the MiB style, right right.
Speaker 1: Or whatever happened to us at that church. That's crazy.
Speaker 1: I had no idea that you had a similar memory.
Speaker 1: But like, what are some examples beyond PTSD about how
Speaker 1: this stuff could be used.
Speaker 2: Well, imagine that you're living in a country with some
Speaker 2: kind of authoritarian rule. Right, Maybe you don't agree with
Speaker 2: those people who are running the country, so you'd be
Speaker 2: considered a dissident. Now imagine that within this country, you
Speaker 2: end up being detained and you don't really recall exactly
Speaker 2: what happens. But let's say you black out for one
Speaker 2: reason or another, and you wake up hours later and
Speaker 2: you can't remember all of the things that your government,
Speaker 2: this authoritarian regime doesn't want you to remember. You remember
Speaker 2: your family, you remember that you have a job that
Speaker 2: you're going to every day. But for some reason, you
Speaker 2: just feel calm, like everything's okay mm hmmm.
Speaker 1: Or maybe you even have a different memory implanted, and
Speaker 1: your memory is about how good it felt to you know,
Speaker 1: say the pledge. Whoa, wow, which sounds like sci fi territory,
Speaker 1: but you know, it wasn't so long ago that the
Speaker 1: idea of erasing memories sounded like sci fi.
Speaker 2: And then imagine that occurring in mass right, not just
Speaker 2: one person.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and here's another one. Imagine this is a little
Speaker 1: bit less less sinister, maybe because this could be legal
Speaker 1: at some point. Imagine you work with an organization, whether
Speaker 1: state or private, that requires you to handle proprietary information,
Speaker 1: sensitive documents, top secret, compartmentalized, your eyes only stuff. Whoa,
Speaker 1: And then part of your contract says that when you retire,
Speaker 1: you leave your job, that set of memories gets wiped.
Speaker 2: Dude, Imagine if it's just a short term contractor position
Speaker 2: with something like Groom Lake or Area fifty one where
Speaker 2: you only work for six months and then you get wiped.
Speaker 1: And then you wake up with you know, hundreds of
Speaker 1: thousands of dollars in your bank account and a very
Speaker 1: vague letter thanking you and warning you.
Speaker 2: From some front company. You'd certainly prevent the next Bobblasar.
Speaker 1: Yeah, quite possibly. And also again to be completely fair,
Speaker 1: this is this is spitballing in speculation. We there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but again I don't think any of these are
Speaker 2: that much of a stretch.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but there's just so much more that would have
Speaker 1: to happen with the science of it. Very true, We're
Speaker 1: still unless the technology already exists and as somehow been
Speaker 1: successfully suppressed, We're still very far away from these things.
Speaker 1: But now they are possible, if that plausible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's very much a black mirror style,
Speaker 2: like we can kind of see this occurring, or these
Speaker 2: would be how it would These are a lot of
Speaker 2: the things we can imagine it being used for.
Speaker 1: And here's another one. This one I think will be
Speaker 1: exciting to some of the entrepreneurs in our audience today.
Speaker 1: Imagine a world where you can pay to recreationally experience
Speaker 1: the memories of other people.
Speaker 2: Hmmm.
Speaker 1: So let's say it's another thing Disney gets evolved in.
Speaker 1: They map out the memories of historic moments as experienced
Speaker 1: by firsthand witnesses. They get like someone who's landed on
Speaker 1: the moon.
Speaker 2: Oh, they get doctor rendezvous memories.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they get doctor buzz rendezvous memory of landing on
Speaker 1: the moon. They map it out, and now you can
Speaker 1: pay whomever for them to implant that memory in your
Speaker 1: head so that you get the first hand experience of
Speaker 1: doing that. You can also live vicariously and do you know, philosophically,
Speaker 1: it's almost the same as doing it yourself, right to
Speaker 1: have the first hand memory, so you could participate in
Speaker 1: crimes that you're not legally culpable for it because they
Speaker 1: already happened.
Speaker 2: That's what it feels like to rob a bank.
Speaker 1: That's what Yeah, exactly, that's what it feels like to
Speaker 1: rob a bank or something.
Speaker 2: Oh. Oh, they would do terrible things for other stuff too.
Speaker 1: Right, And then if the memory becomes inconvenient, just have
Speaker 1: it removed. And given that we would be talking about
Speaker 1: a private entity selling this stuff, I bet there would
Speaker 1: be a lot of money spent on figuring out how
Speaker 1: to make the memory implant temporary. Yeah, because you want
Speaker 1: to sell a service now, right, not a product, so
Speaker 1: it would eventually degrade. But then also to end on
Speaker 1: a positive note, is one I'm personally excited about. Imagine
Speaker 1: the potential for learning. One day we might be able
Speaker 1: to encode knowledge sets. Right.
Speaker 2: That's that's full on matrix stuff right there, exactly.
Speaker 1: It's not that far from neo. Right. You can wake
Speaker 1: up being able to play a piano, speak.
Speaker 2: A new language, or say, I know kung fu.
Speaker 1: Maybe you're in a plane that's going down and you're
Speaker 1: you're talking to the air traffic control and they say, okay,
Speaker 1: break open the glass door by the by the cockpit
Speaker 1: hallway and inject yourself with this, and then you know,
Speaker 1: just lacause now you know how to land the plane.
Speaker 1: You know, we're we're very far away from that, and
Speaker 1: we don't know whether we'll ever reach that level of sophistication.
Speaker 1: But the truth is this is potentially an enormous tool
Speaker 1: for people who have stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 1: They may be able to use it sooner than you think.
Speaker 2: Wow, it's really intense. And just to for my own
Speaker 2: for my own happiness here, I can imagine if you
Speaker 2: combined a bit of a controversial technique which would be
Speaker 2: hypnotic regression, but maybe even take regression out if you
Speaker 2: combined some kind of therapeutic counseling session with some of
Speaker 2: these peptides, with some of the drugs and the enzymes
Speaker 2: that we're talking about with ZIP and these things, and
Speaker 2: to affect PKM. Imagine if you were given a dose
Speaker 2: of something that was going to erase the things that
Speaker 2: you think about for the next ten minutes to thirty minutes.
Speaker 2: Then you have a guided counseling session that walks you
Speaker 2: through the first time you saw your current partner the
Speaker 2: first like the way they smell it, walks you through
Speaker 2: all of that stuff as this enzyme or whatever it
Speaker 2: is is actually degrading all of those connections. Then you
Speaker 2: do it like three, you know, to ten times in
Speaker 2: a row, and then eventually it's just gone.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I see what you're saying. There's also
Speaker 1: this question, though, and of course this changes person to person,
Speaker 1: but there's always this question what makes us us? A
Speaker 1: lot of people who are maybe less on the spiritual
Speaker 1: side will say you are, we are, or every person
Speaker 1: is the sum of their own experiences and their own
Speaker 1: synthesis and understanding of those experiences. Right, what I'm getting
Speaker 1: at here and I need to find more articulate way
Speaker 1: to think of this getting at is the question of threshold.
Speaker 1: How many unsavory or unwanted memories can we remove before
Speaker 1: it begins to affect core components like personality.
Speaker 2: It's a great question. I'm gonna say, around fifty.
Speaker 1: Let's go you know what, Let's go for it. Let's
Speaker 1: let's get past the mice, get straight to the people.
Speaker 1: Let's do some experiments.
Speaker 2: But in all seriousness, if any of the technologies and
Speaker 2: the experiments happening right now, if any of it comes
Speaker 2: to full fruition, and this is only projecting just from
Speaker 2: my own experience, but I can only imagine a lot
Speaker 2: of service men and women, people who've served in militaries,
Speaker 2: people who have been through traumatic experiences, would really appreciate
Speaker 2: it and stand to benefit from a lot of this
Speaker 2: stuff if you could do it in a safe way. True,
Speaker 2: I really like this could be incredible.
Speaker 1: And memories are you know, as they say, memories are
Speaker 1: one of the most important things a person has. Memories
Speaker 1: at least up until now, or one of the only
Speaker 1: things a person could possess that could never be taken
Speaker 1: away from them.
Speaker 2: That's right, Memories and loose.
Speaker 1: Diamonds memories and bags of loose diamonds. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for tuning in, folks. We hope that you found
Speaker 1: this as fascinating as we did, and we hope that
Speaker 1: you find the possible ethical concerns and possible consequences as
Speaker 1: thought provoking and potentially disturbing as we have found them today.
Speaker 1: And that's our classic episode for this evening. We can't
Speaker 1: wait to hear your thoughts. It's right let us know
Speaker 1: what you think you can reach to. They have a
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