Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of iHeartRadio. Hey,
Speaker 1: You're welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back
Speaker 1: with part two of our series on childhood amnesia, which
Speaker 1: is the name for the fact that most adults and
Speaker 1: even most older children don't really seem to have any
Speaker 1: memories from before about the age of three or four.
Speaker 1: And that number is slightly different depending on the culture
Speaker 1: you grow up in and some other factors that we
Speaker 1: may continue to explore in this series, but generally, on average,
Speaker 1: around three or four is when the memories start kicking in,
Speaker 1: and even then people don't seem to have as many
Speaker 1: memories as they will for later years in life. That
Speaker 1: the number of memories people seem to be able to
Speaker 1: recall sort of goes up each year after that. More
Speaker 1: from You or five, more from six, More from seven. Now,
Speaker 1: if you haven't heard part one yet, you should probably
Speaker 1: go back and check that one out first. It is
Speaker 1: where it is where we learned that that Rob here
Speaker 1: was indeed once a very naughty boy and smashed a
Speaker 1: jar of cherries on the floor or something. What is
Speaker 1: it you do. Well. I mean, I guess the naughty
Speaker 1: part was going into the refridgerator to get them anyway,
Speaker 1: because I don't think I was supposed to have them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: were you explicitly forbidden cherries or I guess it's just
Speaker 1: a general understanding. If you're a child, you should not
Speaker 1: climb into the fridge to serve yourself anything. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I guess looking back on it. As
Speaker 1: a child, you're often sort of testing the boundaries of
Speaker 1: your world, and part of a memory like that is
Speaker 1: when you realize you're not supposed to Apparently I was
Speaker 1: not supposed to go back and get cherries for a
Speaker 1: number of reasons, some practical, uh, some maybe you know,
Speaker 1: arguable from from my standpoint. But yeah, that's that's kind
Speaker 1: of a There's a lot of stuff going on in
Speaker 1: those early years, which I think is something we tried
Speaker 1: to get across and all is that, Um, the brain
Speaker 1: of an infant or a small child is not inert.
Speaker 1: It is it is extremely busy, but the brain remembers
Speaker 1: what it needs to remember. And uh, and so we're
Speaker 1: going to continue with that in mind in this episode.
Speaker 1: That is a scary and kind of thrilling headspace to
Speaker 1: get back into the moment when you're like a child
Speaker 1: and you're doing something where you you really don't know
Speaker 1: if you are allowed to do this or not, and
Speaker 1: you suspect that you might not be, but you it's
Speaker 1: never been said outright, you know, or you just suspect
Speaker 1: that you are, you know. I mean, there's there's so
Speaker 1: much that that comes up in raising a child on
Speaker 1: this end where you're like, oh, yeah, I can't really
Speaker 1: be mad at him for thinking this or acting in
Speaker 1: this way because we've never said don't approach whatever the
Speaker 1: topic is this way. It's this is the learning experience. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So to start us off today, I just wanted to
Speaker 1: share something that I got to thinking about after the
Speaker 1: last episode. So this particular tangent is not something I
Speaker 1: have like direct scientific evidence for us, just something I
Speaker 1: started wondering about after the last part in the series.
Speaker 1: So I was thinking about childhood amnesia in the context
Speaker 1: of another subject we covered, I guess sometime last year
Speaker 1: it was the Hot Cold empathy Gap. Do you remember
Speaker 1: this episode, Rob, I do, Yes. This is an observed
Speaker 1: psychological phenomenon where we not only sometimes fail to understand
Speaker 1: accurately model and predict the thoughts and behaviors of other people.
Speaker 1: We not only have interpersonal failures of empathy, we also
Speaker 1: sometimes fail to accurately model ourselves in different affective states,
Speaker 1: so we have intra personal failures of empathy. So a
Speaker 1: simple way to put this is that people who are
Speaker 1: not currently in an affective state, so not currently angry
Speaker 1: or not currently hungry or not currently sad, are actually
Speaker 1: somewhat bad at at predicting how they themselves would react
Speaker 1: in a situation if they were actually in one of
Speaker 1: those states, and vice versa. If you are currently hungry,
Speaker 1: you're not very good at predicting how you would behave
Speaker 1: and react if you were not hungry. Yeah, like the
Speaker 1: fear area, for example. I mean it's it's easy to
Speaker 1: sort of rehearse what you're going to do in a
Speaker 1: certain situation, but then when the frightening thing occurs, you're
Speaker 1: in a different frame of mind and you may behave
Speaker 1: entirely differently. I reminded of there's a great scene in
Speaker 1: Congo with Ernie Hudson. Do you remember this scene where
Speaker 1: he's he's a very cool cucumber. His character the whole movie,
Speaker 1: there's a part where he's he's putting up a brave front,
Speaker 1: but then when the scary thing happens involving a gorilla
Speaker 1: like you, you turn back to him and he's he's
Speaker 1: a he's moved away, and or he's run away just
Speaker 1: a little bit, and asking what happened, he's like, I
Speaker 1: ran away. Yeah. He had just given a speech about
Speaker 1: how you can't run away because that will show Yeah,
Speaker 1: then the gorilla will chase you, so you can't stand
Speaker 1: your ground. But then I run away. Yes. So when
Speaker 1: we're not in these affective states, we actually can't relate
Speaker 1: very well to the person we are when we're in them,
Speaker 1: and vice versa. When we're in them, we can't really
Speaker 1: relate very well to the person we are when we're
Speaker 1: not in them. And so the hot cold empathy gap
Speaker 1: can be demonstrated over a span of only a few minutes.
Speaker 1: But it got me thinking about a similar self reflective
Speaker 1: empathy gap that applies not across different affective states, but
Speaker 1: different stages of life. So what I'm talking about here
Speaker 1: is when I think back on a memory of doing
Speaker 1: something or saying something, or dressing a certain way or
Speaker 1: liking a certain thing, When I was young, and especially
Speaker 1: if I pick something embarrassing, but not just with embarrassing things,
Speaker 1: with all kinds of things, I can often find myself
Speaker 1: totally unable to relate to that person. I say that
Speaker 1: thing that you've probably heard people say of similar similar
Speaker 1: reactions to their own past. What was I thinking? And
Speaker 1: at least when I say this, I truly often do
Speaker 1: not know. It's like I cannot internally simulate the mindset
Speaker 1: that led me to wear that T shirt, even though
Speaker 1: it was me. I can't relate to that person, and
Speaker 1: I can't even really remember or imagine what it was
Speaker 1: like to be them, even though again it was me.
Speaker 1: From what I gathered, this is a common experience. It's
Speaker 1: it's I'm not alone here, right Oh yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it's like basically comes down to the reality that
Speaker 1: we are not consistently the same across a small lengths
Speaker 1: of time, much less across the course of a lifetime.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I mean it's it's a you know, a
Speaker 1: turn of phrase, what was I thinking? Sometimes we can
Speaker 1: piece together some of what our thought press us as
Speaker 1: were you know, you'd be like, well, I was a
Speaker 1: teenager and I thought this band was cool, so of
Speaker 1: course I wore that T shirt even if I would
Speaker 1: not be into that band. And now as as as
Speaker 1: a grown person or what have you, or with you know,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a certain amount of of clarity based
Speaker 1: on where you are now in life. But other times, yeah,
Speaker 1: you may genuinely look back and you're like, I just
Speaker 1: don't know what was going through my mind. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure what the thought process was. I seem to have
Speaker 1: a different thought process going on now. Yeah, And so
Speaker 1: obviously it's not this way with all memories from different
Speaker 1: stages of life. Like I have a feeling that I
Speaker 1: can re experience or relate to lots of memories from
Speaker 1: childhood but not other ones, And so I don't always
Speaker 1: know what makes the difference. But I wonder if the
Speaker 1: proportion of memories for behaviors and experiences we can no
Speaker 1: longer empathize with tends to increase the farther back you
Speaker 1: go into childhood. I don't know this is the case.
Speaker 1: I'm wondering if it does, or if say it actually
Speaker 1: doesn't go up in a linear fashion. You could imagine
Speaker 1: it also like pequing in teenage years or something like that.
Speaker 1: But so that's one question I was wondering about, and
Speaker 1: then I was also wondering if there's any kind of
Speaker 1: relationship between our current ability to empathize with our feelings
Speaker 1: and behavior in a past event and our tendency to
Speaker 1: actually remember that event in the first place. So, in
Speaker 1: other words, are we more likely to remember doing or
Speaker 1: feeling or saying something when we can empathize with it,
Speaker 1: like when we can get back in that mind space,
Speaker 1: and less likely to remember it when we can no
Speaker 1: longer empathize with it. And I asked this specifically because Rob,
Speaker 1: I wonder if you have the same experience. I feel
Speaker 1: like a lot of these what was I thinking memories
Speaker 1: are prompted by external intrusions, like seeing a photo of
Speaker 1: yourself that you didn't expect to see, or having somebody say, hey,
Speaker 1: do you remember when we did this or when you
Speaker 1: said that yeah, yeah, And it does make me I
Speaker 1: was thinking about this in terms of like childhood versus say,
Speaker 1: like junior high teen years sort of reflections, or even
Speaker 1: like early or really all of one's twenties. I guess,
Speaker 1: depending on where you are in life, how from fire
Speaker 1: removed you are from particular time period. But like for
Speaker 1: very young children, it seems like so much of what
Speaker 1: you end up doing and wearing, etc. Is almost entirely
Speaker 1: shaped by your parents anyway. Yeah, yeah, so like what
Speaker 1: was I thinking is not really a question because it's
Speaker 1: like you weren't thinking, you were just doing or you
Speaker 1: were just you wore this because it was provided to
Speaker 1: you and everyone else in your family liked it, so
Speaker 1: it seemed like you liked it. That sort of thing.
Speaker 1: Not all the time, but like I feel like maybe
Speaker 1: like eighty percent of the time that is something that
Speaker 1: may be the case. But then it's when you're getting
Speaker 1: into that area where you are willfully setting out on
Speaker 1: your own, choosing things for yourself, that might be the
Speaker 1: area where I mean, you're you're legitimately asking what was thinking?
Speaker 1: What was my intention in all of that? That is
Speaker 1: a good point, like what role agency or self control
Speaker 1: has in the event that you're remembering? So yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know if our empathy gap with our past self
Speaker 1: actually does just increase the farther back you go. I
Speaker 1: wonder if that could be measured. But if it does,
Speaker 1: I wonder how does that also relate to the relative
Speaker 1: paucity of memories from early childhood and the foremost people
Speaker 1: complete lack of memories from four ages three or four. Yeah, Now,
Speaker 1: I this is interesting to think about. And one possible
Speaker 1: answer to this might be, well, the reason that you
Speaker 1: have trouble knowing or understand what you were thinking about
Speaker 1: in a particular time might be because you have completely
Speaker 1: blocked it out because their thought process was so traumatic
Speaker 1: that you just had to erase it from like easy
Speaker 1: access of the conscious mind. Ah, speaking of what we're rethinking,
Speaker 1: I guess, as with many topics in psychology, unfortunately, if
Speaker 1: you want to trace the history of how we understood
Speaker 1: this over the past one hundred years, you really you
Speaker 1: have to go back to Freud. Not because the Freudian
Speaker 1: explanations carry any scientific currency today they almost never do. Instead,
Speaker 1: it's just because you got to understand how influential Freudian
Speaker 1: theories were in the history of how people thought about
Speaker 1: this exactly. Yeah, yeah, and of course, yeah, we're talking
Speaker 1: about Sigmund Freud here, Austrian neurologist and founder of psychoanalysis,
Speaker 1: and he too explored the topic of quote unquote infantile amnesia,
Speaker 1: postulating that these lost memories constitute repressed memories repressed due
Speaker 1: to their psycho sexual nature. Here's a quote from Freud
Speaker 1: Obviously in translation quote, I believe that the infantile amnesia,
Speaker 1: which causes the individual to look upon his childhood as
Speaker 1: if it were a prehistoric time and conceals from him
Speaker 1: the beginning of his own sexual life. That this amnesia
Speaker 1: is responsible for the fact that one does not usually
Speaker 1: attribute any value to the infantile period in the development
Speaker 1: of the sexual life. Right. So, I think the common
Speaker 1: understanding of the Freudian view is that early childhood is
Speaker 1: a time of strange sexual fixations and realizations that we
Speaker 1: can't bear to think back about as adults, so we
Speaker 1: repress those memories as a type of trauma. I don't
Speaker 1: think there's any good empirical evidence for the Freudian psychosexual
Speaker 1: view of development today. Yeah. Yeah, It frankly doesn't gel
Speaker 1: with any of the science we've we've looked at in
Speaker 1: our research for these episodes, and it's mainly worth mentioning
Speaker 1: because of its place in the history of the topic
Speaker 1: and so forth. But it's also it's interesting to think about,
Speaker 1: like what's going on with this approach to infantile amnesia,
Speaker 1: to the seeming lack of real, congrete memories of early life,
Speaker 1: because you can think of them as sort of like
Speaker 1: blank spots upon which you can you can focus ideas
Speaker 1: like this, There's there's no possible memory there to contradict
Speaker 1: the backward looking explanation. You know. Well, Yet not only
Speaker 1: because it's a blank spot you can fill in with
Speaker 1: your explanations, but because of the particular characteristics of memory
Speaker 1: as a function of human brains, it's also actually not
Speaker 1: only possible, but quite trivial to place memories. There are
Speaker 1: things that feel like memories that do not reflect events
Speaker 1: that actually happened. Yeah, it brings to mind that the
Speaker 1: use of so called repressed memories not only in psychotherapy,
Speaker 1: but in the pursuit of paranormal experiences as well, such
Speaker 1: as alien abductions and ritual satanic abuse. Right, And this
Speaker 1: is a really dangerous area because, for one thing, I
Speaker 1: think it's important to acknowledge that it's impossible to rule
Speaker 1: out the idea that repressed memories exist. Right. It is
Speaker 1: possible that the brain somehow does retain memories that are
Speaker 1: not easily retrieved with you know, just regular conscious effort,
Speaker 1: but that could be retrieved by some other method. But
Speaker 1: while it's possible, one thing that research makes very clear
Speaker 1: is that it is incredibly easy to mistake false recovered
Speaker 1: memories for real ones, and the false memories feel completely convincing,
Speaker 1: just as real as actual memories. In fact, they are
Speaker 1: often even stronger and more vivid than real memories. And
Speaker 1: you can show this with experiments where you know, people
Speaker 1: will say, like, we consulted with your family and they
Speaker 1: they told us a story about a time, you know,
Speaker 1: that you got lost at the playground, but then you
Speaker 1: met this person and whatever, and this will be completely
Speaker 1: made up for the purpose of the experiment, but many
Speaker 1: people will start to believe that is a real memory
Speaker 1: they have in their head. Just vividly imagine a scenario
Speaker 1: proposed by someone else is often enough to make someone
Speaker 1: totally convinced of it as a memory. Yeah, then these
Speaker 1: alien abductions and ritual satanic abuses are both the topics
Speaker 1: we've discussed on the show before. But like very briefly,
Speaker 1: like just the the the idea is so heartbreaking that
Speaker 1: you could be manipulated into creating a memory of trauma
Speaker 1: and the memory would be traumatic like like once it
Speaker 1: has been sort of created and or augmented in your memory,
Speaker 1: like it's um you know, it's it's a thing that
Speaker 1: is that is real to you. So yeah, but heartbreaking
Speaker 1: is it as it is? It also just drives home
Speaker 1: something that is possible in all of our memories and
Speaker 1: really is going on at a less traumatic level with
Speaker 1: so many everyday memories in our lives. Yes, and while
Speaker 1: I would also point out that it seems especially easy
Speaker 1: to do this with the idea of early childhood memories,
Speaker 1: this also works for adults, like you can you can
Speaker 1: get adults to remember events that did not take place
Speaker 1: by by causing them to vividly imagine the event or
Speaker 1: something like that. All right, well, we'll getting away from
Speaker 1: from even the idea of alien abductions. Let's get back
Speaker 1: into what the actual research seems to illuminate about this topic. Well,
Speaker 1: one thing I think we should say at the beginning
Speaker 1: is that it's still somewhat an open question why childhood
Speaker 1: amnesia occurs, and there are competing theories that might that
Speaker 1: are to some degree competing, but they might also be complementary.
Speaker 1: There might be multiple factors contributing to this overall pattern
Speaker 1: where most adults can not really remember much of anything
Speaker 1: from before age about three or four, and then have
Speaker 1: this gradual accumulation of more memories to about seven or eight.
Speaker 1: We'll probably explore some hypotheses in this part and then
Speaker 1: more or in the next part in this series, But
Speaker 1: there was one I wanted to talk about because it
Speaker 1: seems like a pretty straightforward explanation based on neural development,
Speaker 1: the development of regions of the brain, especially a region
Speaker 1: known as the hippocampus. And so this was in a
Speaker 1: paper I was reading by Christina m. Alberini and Alessio
Speaker 1: Travaglia published in the Journal of Neuroscience in twenty seventeen
Speaker 1: called infantile amnesia a critical period of learning to learn
Speaker 1: and remember. And this paper highlights a seeming paradox. So
Speaker 1: on one hand, there's this phenomenon we've talked about at
Speaker 1: length now, early experiences seem to be forgotten very rapidly,
Speaker 1: and yet simultaneously, early experiences seem to be incredibly influential
Speaker 1: on adult behavior and adult brain development, to the extent
Speaker 1: that early childhood experience is a very well documented risk
Speaker 1: factor for various adult psychopathologies and disorders. Just to cite
Speaker 1: one example, there is extensive evidence that neglect during early
Speaker 1: childhood development can lead to disorders, including depression and anxiety,
Speaker 1: as well as learning and cognitive disabilities in later life.
Speaker 1: And there are similar findings about childhood poverty leading to
Speaker 1: cognitive and learning deficits that persist into later life. A
Speaker 1: lot of these effects are thought to be at least
Speaker 1: in part related to chronic stress in early childhood, though
Speaker 1: the authors of this paper proposed that it might not
Speaker 1: just be the effects of stress leading to these outcomes,
Speaker 1: but also the absence of what they call quote enrichment
Speaker 1: in episodic or declarative experiences in early development. So we
Speaker 1: know that early childhood experiences have this profound impact on
Speaker 1: how your brain works later in life, and yet much
Speaker 1: of what we learn in this period cannot be recalled
Speaker 1: later in narrative or episodic form. So the authors say, quote,
Speaker 1: how then can memories that are rapidly forgotten and of
Speaker 1: which there is virtually no recollection in adulthood exert a
Speaker 1: lifelong effect on the brain and cognitive function. And the
Speaker 1: answer that the authors of this paper propose lies in
Speaker 1: the hippocampus. So the hippocampus is crucial for the formation
Speaker 1: and maintenance of episodic memories. It's thought to be necessary
Speaker 1: for certain kinds of learning for the encoding of long
Speaker 1: term memory and related brain functions like spatial memory and
Speaker 1: navigation of spaces. And an interesting fact is that this
Speaker 1: is not true just of humans, but it's true of
Speaker 1: humans and non human mammals. The hippocampus is part of
Speaker 1: the limbic system, so it is part of the brain
Speaker 1: that we share with other mammals, and the author is
Speaker 1: right that in both humans and non human mammals. But
Speaker 1: they call wwww memories, which I guess is more of
Speaker 1: a shorthand when you type it than you say it
Speaker 1: out loud. But that stands for who, what, when, and
Speaker 1: where memories. So these are explicit memories that require conscious recollections.
Speaker 1: That this would have some overlap with the idea of
Speaker 1: like episodic memories, memories of like events that happened that
Speaker 1: you can recall in detail. The authors say that these
Speaker 1: memories are processed by the hippocampus dependent learning and memory system,
Speaker 1: also known as the medial temporal lobe dependent learning and
Speaker 1: memory system. So based on comparing what we know about
Speaker 1: hippocampal development in humans with the results of studies based
Speaker 1: on learning in early development in rats, the authors actually
Speaker 1: argue that quote, the hippocampal memory system, like sensory functions
Speaker 1: and language matures through experience and undergoes what they call
Speaker 1: a developmental critical period. Now, they deal with a couple
Speaker 1: of pre existing hypotheses about what's going on here. They
Speaker 1: identify as the developmental hypothesis, which basically says that these
Speaker 1: wwww memories, they are not stored in the long term
Speaker 1: quote because the hippocampus is immature and therefore unable to process, consolidate,
Speaker 1: and store contextual and episodic representation. So it's just functionally
Speaker 1: not competent to do this yet. And then on the
Speaker 1: other hand, there's this hypothesis known as the retrieval hypothesis,
Speaker 1: which quote posits that infantile memories are not gone, but
Speaker 1: are instead stored in some form that cannot be expressed
Speaker 1: due to retrieval failure, and they essentially thread the needle.
Speaker 1: They argue that both of these kind of get something right,
Speaker 1: but neither one is exactly right, and instead they end
Speaker 1: up arguing that the hippocampus and the hipocampal learning system
Speaker 1: are very active in early childhood and they are very
Speaker 1: much processing experiences during this early developmental period. But instead
Speaker 1: of storing memories exactly the same way it will once
Speaker 1: it is a mature organ it is learning how to learn.
Speaker 1: I also have to mention here, though, that it is
Speaker 1: interesting that the developmental hypothesis and the retrieval hypothesis, both
Speaker 1: of these in their own way reflect different former ideas
Speaker 1: about the minds of young children. Developmental being well, like,
Speaker 1: that's not a full blown human yet, of course, it's
Speaker 1: not gonna think the way we think or remember the
Speaker 1: way we think. And in the retrieval hypothesis, it's kind
Speaker 1: of in some you know, it's not exactly like Freud,
Speaker 1: but you know, it gets into that similar area, like, oh,
Speaker 1: those memories are there, They're just not in a way
Speaker 1: in there in a place that we can easily get
Speaker 1: to them, right. And I think these authors think that
Speaker 1: there is an element of truth to both of these views,
Speaker 1: but that neither one is exactly correct. That instead, it's
Speaker 1: that the hippocampus is working really hard to process experiences
Speaker 1: during this time, but the main thing it's doing with
Speaker 1: those experiences is learning how to learn. So the hippocampus
Speaker 1: does store memories, which can be maintained, they say, through
Speaker 1: frequent recalls, but they say without some form of ongoing
Speaker 1: recall or subsequent activation or modulation, those memories can tend
Speaker 1: to decay rather quickly. And so they say, quote the
Speaker 1: types of experience to which an individual is exposed during
Speaker 1: development shape learning abilities an important implication that highlights the
Speaker 1: fundamental roles of developmental environments. So this period is very important,
Speaker 1: and it does change the brain in a way that
Speaker 1: will affect the person throughout the rest of their life.
Speaker 1: But a lot of that, they argue, is through affecting
Speaker 1: how the hippocampus develops and thus how the brain learns
Speaker 1: to learn. And I'm not going to go into great
Speaker 1: granular detail on what the mechanisms are within this, but
Speaker 1: basically they propose a process by which there's sort of
Speaker 1: a sequence of different stages of development within critical periods
Speaker 1: for development in the brain. And this is true of
Speaker 1: not just learning and memory. It's true of like sensory functions,
Speaker 1: like certain sensory things come online and the development of
Speaker 1: one seems to affect the development of the subsequent one,
Speaker 1: and then the next one and so forth. And they
Speaker 1: argue that the same thing may well be happening with
Speaker 1: the maturation of hippocampus dependent learning. So they say, quote,
Speaker 1: our hypothesis is supported by the observation that complex hippocampal
Speaker 1: learning takes place only after simple learning has matured. For example,
Speaker 1: the ability to learn about a single queue or object
Speaker 1: seems to mature earlier than episodic learning and memory, which
Speaker 1: require the more complex function of binding together several objects,
Speaker 1: sequences and time. Again, this is the four W learning.
Speaker 1: And then finally they say, thus we speculate the different
Speaker 1: types of hippocampal learning mature sequence in order of increasing complexity.
Speaker 1: So they have like a diagram where they they speculate
Speaker 1: that it might go sort of learning about objects and
Speaker 1: then learning about places, and then learning about space more generally,
Speaker 1: and then finally the four W learning. And but once
Speaker 1: again kind of gotting back to what we were talking
Speaker 1: about in the first episode, it's like childhood and chata
Speaker 1: development as a series of gates that you pass through
Speaker 1: as a series of phases that you progress through towards
Speaker 1: full integration into society as an adult. Yeah, and under
Speaker 1: this model, at least how and when you pass through
Speaker 1: the previous gate affects how and when you pass through
Speaker 1: the next gate and the next gate and the next gate.
Speaker 1: But also too as I said earlier that this is
Speaker 1: one take within this sort of broader genre of explanations
Speaker 1: of the of childhood amnesia. This is the sort of
Speaker 1: the structural brain development type argument. Now, there are some
Speaker 1: other types of explanations, maybe some involving language interestingly and
Speaker 1: other things, but maybe we will save that for the
Speaker 1: next episode, because I know Rob you today in your
Speaker 1: heart there's there's a burning icon on the surface of
Speaker 1: your heart and it is in the shape of a
Speaker 1: super baby. Yeah, we mentioned the possibility of discussing mythic babies,
Speaker 1: babies of religious significance, and actually we actually heard at
Speaker 1: least from a couple of people that were like, yes,
Speaker 1: bring on the myth babies. So yeah, to whatever extent
Speaker 1: it helps us understand this topic, we will give you
Speaker 1: mythic babies that to some degree each exhibits superior abilities
Speaker 1: and or cognition or something else that's worth touching on.
Speaker 1: So in general, though, I think in most, if not all,
Speaker 1: these examples, we're going to be touching on a very
Speaker 1: widespread religious archetype of the divine boy. And you know,
Speaker 1: once you you see it, you you can recognize it
Speaker 1: in all its various forms and incarnations. And I suppose,
Speaker 1: especially in modern media, you also have to consider it's
Speaker 1: opposite in the form of various like Damiens and various
Speaker 1: hell children, right, yeah, the Cursed Boy. Yeah. Well, I
Speaker 1: mean I almost think that in the modern era we
Speaker 1: I'm about to say something I don't really know it
Speaker 1: is true. Okay, well, we'd go with it anyway. What
Speaker 1: I was going to say is it seems like today
Speaker 1: we're more likely to interpret a child with like superabilities
Speaker 1: or super intellect as creepy rather than as something really cool.
Speaker 1: You know. Like's more, we're more predisposed to the Damian
Speaker 1: direction than the than the child you know, the child
Speaker 1: sage direction. Yeah, and I think it's very well illustrated
Speaker 1: in a couple of fictional examples I'll bring up here
Speaker 1: in a bit too. Yeah. That it's even if you're
Speaker 1: going for the divine, you end up touching on the uncanny,
Speaker 1: because it is there is an uncanny aspect to it,
Speaker 1: for sure, if you're imagining like a baby that has
Speaker 1: or a small child that has like the rational demeanor
Speaker 1: of a full blown adult. All right, well, let's let's
Speaker 1: start with baby Jesus, who we've talked about on the
Speaker 1: show before. I think we did a whole episode one
Speaker 1: Christmas about images of the Christ Child from Renaissance art
Speaker 1: that look like tiny ugly men and why they look
Speaker 1: like tiny ugly men. Go back and listen to that
Speaker 1: if you need more weird baby action. But yeah, depictions
Speaker 1: of the Christ Child in the history of Western art,
Speaker 1: it varies greatly from believable human infant to tiny mandlings
Speaker 1: that sometimes exude of philosophic air other times look like
Speaker 1: vaguely grumpy getting into that, you know what we've talked
Speaker 1: about in the last episode about babies or like are
Speaker 1: like old people, and we can't quite get that out
Speaker 1: of our heads. And we have accounts of the adventures
Speaker 1: that range from basically nothing from just like Christ's early
Speaker 1: life being just a just unrecorded, to other traditions such
Speaker 1: as the like Christ's role lowering the not just Christ,
Speaker 1: but the Christ infant lowering Christmas gifts from Heaven on
Speaker 1: a golden string. You know that is a that is
Speaker 1: a tradition in uh in parts of Europe, to other
Speaker 1: even wilder adventures. Oh well, Rob, I think you're trying
Speaker 1: to set me up to talk about the The infancy
Speaker 1: Gospel of Thomas is that right. Yes, okay, this is
Speaker 1: an ancient text that we have discussed off Mike here.
Speaker 1: So uh. You know, if you read the four gospels
Speaker 1: that are canonical to most Christians, the ones that are
Speaker 1: in the New Testament, there's very little about the baby Jesus.
Speaker 1: We don't get really many stories of what Jesus did
Speaker 1: before he was a full grown man. Two of the
Speaker 1: gospels have a story of his birth, Matthew and Luke do,
Speaker 1: but he doesn't do anything, or he just gets born.
Speaker 1: There's really only one story in the canonical gospels of
Speaker 1: the of the baby Jesus or the boy Jesus, and
Speaker 1: that is the so called finding at the Temple story
Speaker 1: in the Gospel of Luke, which is essentially kind of
Speaker 1: a boy wonder story. It is that Mary and Joseph
Speaker 1: take take Jesus to the temple and then they leave
Speaker 1: and then realize that he's not with them anymore, so
Speaker 1: they go back to the temple and he is there
Speaker 1: teaching the wise men about the about the law and
Speaker 1: about the scripture. So he's showing off just his his
Speaker 1: great learning and intellect even as a child. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: I definitely remember this one from Sunday School Days of Old.
Speaker 1: But if you go outside of the New Testament canon,
Speaker 1: there are gospels from the ancient world that do talk
Speaker 1: about They tell other stories of Jesus as a child,
Speaker 1: including the I frankly hilarious Infancy Gospel of Thomas. This
Speaker 1: is a text from I think is generally believed to
Speaker 1: be from the second century that you can find and
Speaker 1: read online in an English translation. Translation I found was
Speaker 1: by Mr James from Clarendon Press, Oxford, nineteen twenty four,
Speaker 1: published in a collection called the Apocryphal New Testament. I
Speaker 1: think the Infancy Gospel of Thomas is sometimes considered a
Speaker 1: Gnostic text, but I know there are some texts that
Speaker 1: were previously considered gnostic that now scholars don't so much
Speaker 1: think of his gnostics, So I'm not sure where this
Speaker 1: lands on the gnosticism scale of today. But the stories
Speaker 1: in it are wild and consist of child Jesus running around,
Speaker 1: well actually Jesus basically in this is Damien from the Omen.
Speaker 1: He's just running around cursing and killing other children. So
Speaker 1: there's like a scene where he is playing by a
Speaker 1: brook and he at one point he takes these He
Speaker 1: takes clay and fashions that into twelve little birds made
Speaker 1: out of clay. And then baby Jesus is accused of
Speaker 1: having violated the Sabbath because he did this on the
Speaker 1: Sabbath day. And then he gets mad and rebukes that,
Speaker 1: and he turns the clay sparrows into living sparrows and
Speaker 1: they fly away. I have to say to this, this
Speaker 1: version of it that you shared with me, it's really
Speaker 1: hard not to read it in your head in the
Speaker 1: voice of like an ecclesiastical eric Idol from Monty Python
Speaker 1: than in the Holy Grail, you know, reading about the
Speaker 1: Holy hand grenade. Okay, I'm not gonna do eric Idle voice,
Speaker 1: but you can imagine eric Idol as I read from
Speaker 1: the following. This is the Mr. James translation. It says,
Speaker 1: but the son of Annas the scribe, was standing there
Speaker 1: with Joseph, and he took a branch of a willow
Speaker 1: and dispersed the waters which Jesus had gathered together. Oh yeah, Jesus,
Speaker 1: like he gathered together waters from the from the brook.
Speaker 1: I guess. So he does this. And when Jesus saw
Speaker 1: what was done, he was wroth and said, unto him, oh, evil,
Speaker 1: ungodly and foolish one, what hurt the pools and the waters.
Speaker 1: Do thee behold now? Also, thou shalt be withered like
Speaker 1: a tree, and shalt not bear leaves, neither root nor fruit.
Speaker 1: And straightway, that lad withered up wholly. But Jesus departed
Speaker 1: and went onto Joseph's house. But the parents of him
Speaker 1: that was withered took him up, bewailing his youth, and
Speaker 1: brought him to Joseph and accused him for that, Thou
Speaker 1: hast such a child, which doth such deeds. And then
Speaker 1: I'm not going to keep reading, but it goes. Jesus
Speaker 1: gets like mad at the people who were accusing them,
Speaker 1: and further curses and kills people. It's intense. So the
Speaker 1: kid Jesus straight space vampire. This kid essentially yes, withered
Speaker 1: him right there on the spot. It's like, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like the movie Life Force. So it's interesting. I don't know.
Speaker 1: One thing I don't fully understand is how this type
Speaker 1: of story would have been received by its intended audience.
Speaker 1: So if you are one of the people reading this
Speaker 1: story in the second century and you think this is
Speaker 1: an authentic story about the child Jesus, like what are
Speaker 1: you supposed to think about it? Like? Wow, he did
Speaker 1: you know he really did show that kid or I'm
Speaker 1: not sure. Yeah, yeah, Like they're a different way. You
Speaker 1: can sort of read this and instantly go in the
Speaker 1: Damien direction, like that's dangerous for a child to have
Speaker 1: those kind of powers, or I can easily imagine someone
Speaker 1: going in a more sort of theological direction, like what
Speaker 1: does this say about like the power and authority of
Speaker 1: Christ and so forth? But yeah, it's it's certainly a
Speaker 1: head scratcher for us. Anyway. I think later in the
Speaker 1: text he does sort of take back or magically undo
Speaker 1: at least some, maybe all, of his curses and killings.
Speaker 1: So okay, well that that would that would that would
Speaker 1: sound appropriate? Yeah all right, well let's move through some
Speaker 1: other examples from major world religions. First stop, the infant Muhammad,
Speaker 1: so according to the Prophet Muhammad and Ritual by Marion
Speaker 1: Holmes cat It's published and in twenty tens the Cambridge
Speaker 1: Companion to Muhammad. There are also miraculous accounts of Muhammad
Speaker 1: as a child. Quote as depicted in the most widely
Speaker 1: circulated molded texts, the infant prophet was a luminous figure
Speaker 1: whose radiance ignited his mother's room, and whose Holiness blessed
Speaker 1: all who approached him. So there are accounts of him
Speaker 1: as an infant causing the breast of his foster mother,
Speaker 1: who was also caring for another child, to overflow with
Speaker 1: sustaining milk. This was in a time of drought and famine,
Speaker 1: if I remember correctly. And also it said that her
Speaker 1: emaciated donkey was invigorated simply by being in the presence
Speaker 1: of the child. Okay, so one could see this as
Speaker 1: a legend of the prophet sort of prefiguring the future
Speaker 1: blessings he would help facilitate bringing even in his childhood
Speaker 1: or even as a baby. Yeah, his whole presence is
Speaker 1: just kind of brilliant and empowering, all right. Up next,
Speaker 1: baby Krishna or Bala Krishna, which I think just means
Speaker 1: like the child Krishna or kid Krishna or something to
Speaker 1: that effect. This is, of course, Krishna is the blueskinned
Speaker 1: avatar of Vishnu who plays a major role in Hinduism.
Speaker 1: But he was also once a baby, a little blueskinned baby,
Speaker 1: and there are a lot of tales of him and
Speaker 1: his exploits, and generally speaking, these tales tend to exhibit
Speaker 1: a very young child with abilities beyond his years, which
Speaker 1: is very much, you know, a part of the whole
Speaker 1: divine boy archetype. But there's still also a trickster element
Speaker 1: to him as well, with the main thing that he
Speaker 1: does being the stealing of butter, like it's such a
Speaker 1: big deal. You'll find numerous images and illustrations of this
Speaker 1: of of blueskinned Krishna stealing a little butter. And so
Speaker 1: you have infant Krishna also doing things that are not
Speaker 1: necessarily are certainly not attributes of the adult Christna, like
Speaker 1: adult Krishna is not going around stealing butter. Wait a minute,
Speaker 1: so you attached a picture of Bala Krishna here, and
Speaker 1: does he have his hand in a butter jar? I
Speaker 1: believe so. I believe that is what this image represents.
Speaker 1: And there are numerous images that have this basic this
Speaker 1: this basic theme going on. This is his trying to
Speaker 1: get the Marischino cherries experience exactly. There's also another tale
Speaker 1: that I ran across um and this is one of
Speaker 1: another child accusing child Krishna of eating mud. So basically saying, mom,
Speaker 1: Krishna is eating mud, make him stop right, and so
Speaker 1: his foster mother says, okay, Krishna, open your mouth, let's see.
Speaker 1: And then he opens his mouth, but within his mouth
Speaker 1: she sees herself and then has a cosmic vision of
Speaker 1: all universal matter within um. So so that that I
Speaker 1: love because it starts out like seeming like a very
Speaker 1: childhood story and then takes a sharp turn into more
Speaker 1: the sort of anale and become death, the destroy of worlds.
Speaker 1: You know, that's sort of um aspect of the of
Speaker 1: the grown Krishna. Because all of my references are lowbrow trash.
Speaker 1: What I'm imagining with this inspiring myth is Tim Curry
Speaker 1: is Pennywise opening his mouth to show the deadlights. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean kind of a similar vibe, except on the
Speaker 1: sacred end of the spectrum, as opposed to to the horrific.
Speaker 1: All right, next up, baby Buddha. Yes, And I have
Speaker 1: to admit I hadn't really thought about this as much
Speaker 1: of a possibility, because first of all, I wasn't familiar
Speaker 1: with any stories of the historical Buddha as an infant,
Speaker 1: and I sort of go to understanding of Sidharta Gattama,
Speaker 1: the man who would become the Buddha, is that of
Speaker 1: the of a prince who undergoes an existential crisis and
Speaker 1: turns his back on riches to instead pursue equanimity, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's kind of the standard. But there
Speaker 1: are all, of course, a lot of different interpretations of
Speaker 1: and writings about the Buddha, and some of them do
Speaker 1: discuss the idea of the Buddha as a baby, and
Speaker 1: in fact, there are traditions depicting the newborn Buddha or
Speaker 1: Buddha as a divine child in both Chinese and Japanese traditions.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, this image of Hercules. Sorry, yes, please
Speaker 1: do the trip. Oh yeah, let's move things back in
Speaker 1: the mythic direction, because of course we have to mention Hercules.
Speaker 1: Baby Hercules, famous for strangling the snake that was placed
Speaker 1: by an assassin in his cradle, and if memory serves
Speaker 1: the luferign No Hercules movie that we watched the Weird
Speaker 1: House Cinema also has a scene with baby Hercules strangling snakes. Bam,
Speaker 1: and the hold, I'm sorry you attached an image. It's
Speaker 1: like a I don't know, a mosaic of baby Heracles
Speaker 1: that does look like it's from the ancient world in
Speaker 1: which the artist has tried to simultaneously capture like muscles
Speaker 1: because it's heracles, you know, so he's muscley, but also
Speaker 1: give him the little like chub stick legs of a baby. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a strange image. It's some sort of like mosaic image.
Speaker 1: I don't know the exact origins of it. But yeah,
Speaker 1: he has a serpent in each hand crushing their necks,
Speaker 1: strangling him. A very fierce looking baby here. So he's
Speaker 1: just got a little like balloon legs like a baby has.
Speaker 1: But then also some ripples indicating he's ripped underneath that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's uncanny. Now, briefly skipping into more
Speaker 1: modern ideas of the divine child, I mean, I'd be
Speaker 1: remiss if I didn't point out that in our modern
Speaker 1: myth making, Anakin Skywalker is a child with abilities that
Speaker 1: surpassed that of other children and even humans human adults.
Speaker 1: In his midst at a very young age, he's already
Speaker 1: a phenomenal pilot, and his ability as a pilot factor
Speaker 1: into his earliest adventures. Is he not also a product
Speaker 1: of parthenogenesis? Yes, yes, yes, so so yeah, Anakin, that's
Speaker 1: a choice. Good job, Lucas he was born out of
Speaker 1: the force. There they are various theological treatments of this
Speaker 1: as well. Then, of course, there are three main examples
Speaker 1: of exceptional children in Frank Herbert's Dune Saga. You have
Speaker 1: Aliah A Treedes, who pops up in the second half
Speaker 1: of the book, so she hasn't appeared in the new
Speaker 1: movies yet, and due to the exposure to her exposure
Speaker 1: to the water of life while still in the womb,
Speaker 1: she's born with the full powers of an adult Benny
Speaker 1: Jester at Reverend Mother. I think people who've seen the
Speaker 1: David Lynch adaptation are well familiar with this figure, and
Speaker 1: it certainly comes off now. It would say that the
Speaker 1: Dune Saga in general embraces the creepiness of the divine
Speaker 1: child as well as the you know, the sacred aspects.
Speaker 1: I was about to say, can we admit that this
Speaker 1: character is creepy, and maybe it is supposed to be creepy,
Speaker 1: certainly Lynch plays. It'll be interesting to see what the
Speaker 1: new film adaptation how it approaches it. But yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: how can she not be because she's a small child
Speaker 1: talking about like like ruthless murder and so forth, and
Speaker 1: revenge and it's very unchildlike in the way that she
Speaker 1: talks to people. You don't want a child telling you
Speaker 1: who is and is not the quizat's head. Rack. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: by the third book, in Children of Dune, we have
Speaker 1: two more super Dune babies. We have Leto the second
Speaker 1: and Ghanema Treedes, who both possess adult consciousness before birth
Speaker 1: due to their mother's spice consumption. And so a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of space in Children of Doune and
Speaker 1: Children of Done is a long book, or at least
Speaker 1: in my experience, it was a long read. There. There
Speaker 1: are a lot of scenes of these two like talking
Speaker 1: to and out talking adults and like burning adults with
Speaker 1: various insults and reminders that they are in fact of
Speaker 1: brilliant minds just sort of encased in the bodies of
Speaker 1: small children. Oh yeah, yeah, plenty of plenty of creepy
Speaker 1: content going on in this book as well, well, Rob,
Speaker 1: I think we need to wrap up today's episode there,
Speaker 1: but I'm loving your super baby sidebars, and I think
Speaker 1: we will have to continue this in the next part
Speaker 1: of the series as well, So we'll be back next
Speaker 1: time to talk more about childhood amnesia. This this gap
Speaker 1: in the memory of children, what might cause it, and
Speaker 1: other interesting facts about it. And yeah, we are certainly
Speaker 1: not done with super babies and babies with super brains
Speaker 1: all right. In the meantime, if you want to check
Speaker 1: out other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, you'll
Speaker 1: find our core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays and the
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed which you can
Speaker 1: get wherever you get your podcasts, and we'll remind you
Speaker 1: that Mondays that's our listener mail episode. Wednesdays we do
Speaker 1: a short form artifact or monster fact episode, and on
Speaker 1: Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to just talk
Speaker 1: about a weird film on Weird House Cinema. Huge thanks
Speaker 1: to our audio producer jj Pauseway. If you would like
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us with feedback on this
Speaker 1: episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,
Speaker 1: or just to say hello, you can email us at
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