Speaker 1: Attention world. If you can make it to America, then
Speaker 1: come see us. We are going out on the road
Speaker 1: for s Y s K Live again, and we are
Speaker 1: going to start the whole thing off in Chicago on July,
Speaker 1: that's right. And if you can't make it to America,
Speaker 1: maybe make it to Canada, because we're gonna be in
Speaker 1: Toronto and the next night and Fourth Music Hall. Then
Speaker 1: in August, we're gonna do a couple of dates at
Speaker 1: the Wilburn Boston in October twenty nine. In Portland Mainz
Speaker 1: Lovely State Theater on August, and then we're going to
Speaker 1: be heading down to Florida. We're gonna be at PLASA
Speaker 1: Live on October nine, and then the next night we're
Speaker 1: going to be in New Orleans at the Civic Theater.
Speaker 1: That's right, and then we're gonna round it out in
Speaker 1: Brooklyn October at the Bellhouse. Yep. So come see us.
Speaker 1: You can get tickets and info at s Y s
Speaker 1: K live dot com. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know,
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works? Hey,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's
Speaker 1: Charles W. Chuck Bryan over there, and the ghost of
Speaker 1: Jerry Rowland just seated next to us, just Frank the chair.
Speaker 1: I guess, yeah, hey Frank, Yeah, Jerry. Everyone has a
Speaker 1: hurt shoulder from bowling. Let's to go to the doctor.
Speaker 1: And uh did that deal which she's only done a
Speaker 1: couple of times where she just hits record and leaves
Speaker 1: and it always feels like the teacher is gone. It
Speaker 1: feels really weird in here, and that we should like
Speaker 1: do something disruptive and wrong. So we're practicing paper airplanes. Basically,
Speaker 1: it's the worst thing we could come up with, doing spitballs.
Speaker 1: Josh just threw a couple of Pence's up pencils up
Speaker 1: and stuck them in the ceiling. I still got it,
Speaker 1: remember that old move? Sure, well clearly. And uh what else? Um,
Speaker 1: we started a fire in the metal waste basket. Yeah. Uh,
Speaker 1: Chuck's trying out drugs. Sure, and uh we started listening
Speaker 1: to Miley Crewe. That's right. And we're gonna talk about
Speaker 1: photographic memory, which, as it turns out, it's kind of
Speaker 1: not real. Yeah, it's a semantic thing, photographic memory. As
Speaker 1: you it's funny that we're talking about being an elementary school,
Speaker 1: because that's it's sort of one of those things that
Speaker 1: used to hear a lot on the playground about you know,
Speaker 1: so and so has got a photographic memory. You know,
Speaker 1: they can read a book and like recite every word
Speaker 1: from it or something. There's something so juvenile about claiming
Speaker 1: that you have it yourself as an adult. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: playground thing I hadn't put my finger on. But yeah,
Speaker 1: And as it turns out, what you call photographic memory
Speaker 1: isn't really a thing. There are people with amazing memories
Speaker 1: and people with amazing uh techniques to develop better memories.
Speaker 1: But this whole notion of a photographic memory, like you
Speaker 1: could walk you know, like you see on TV or something,
Speaker 1: isn't really a thing. No. No, it's a from TV,
Speaker 1: it's a thing from books. It's it's something that you know,
Speaker 1: you attribute to like Sherlock Holmes or just some great
Speaker 1: genius us. Sure, obviously everybody knows you had a photographic memory. Um,
Speaker 1: but the the idea that that, yeah, you can just
Speaker 1: walk around, have an experience or you know, flipped through
Speaker 1: a phone book and like a year later recite that
Speaker 1: phone book. That doesn't happen. There's maybe one person who's
Speaker 1: ever lived that came very close to that who we
Speaker 1: talked about before. Kim Peak the the inspiration for rain Man,
Speaker 1: but um, they're still not sure if kim Peak would
Speaker 1: have really fully fit that bill even Yeah, but for
Speaker 1: the most part, that idea is not It isn't it's
Speaker 1: not real. But again it's also a question of semantics,
Speaker 1: because if someone has the abilities of a kim Peak,
Speaker 1: it's like, well, you know, isn't that photographic memory basically? Right? Right? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think maybe. Then let's say it like this. There,
Speaker 1: anyone who says that they have a photographic memory is
Speaker 1: probably full of it. Yes, they probably have a better
Speaker 1: than average memory, that's what they're saying. But that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that they have a perfect memory. Because here's the thing.
Speaker 1: Even people with outstanding amazing memory abilities, they still get
Speaker 1: stuff wrong. And that seems to be part and parcel
Speaker 1: with this idea of a photographic memory, that not only
Speaker 1: is the recall amazing over long periods of time and
Speaker 1: in detail and clarity, but that it's flawless too. That
Speaker 1: they don't get stuff wrong, they don't insert stuff that
Speaker 1: wasn't there originally, they don't misremember things. That's part of
Speaker 1: the photographic memory, and that doesn't exist for sure. That
Speaker 1: would be perfect recall, and the brain just isn't really
Speaker 1: capable of that. All right. Well, we're gonna start out
Speaker 1: this episode though, talking about something else that's a slight
Speaker 1: variation which is called idetic memory I D E T
Speaker 1: I C. And that is something found exclusively in kids
Speaker 1: between the ages of six and twelve, roughly about two
Speaker 1: kids during in that age group. Yeah, So here's what
Speaker 1: they do for these tests. You get a subject. You
Speaker 1: get a little six year old or seven year old,
Speaker 1: or an eight year old, nine year older, ten year older,
Speaker 1: eleven year old or twelve year old. Okay, but no,
Speaker 1: no more beyond that. Uh, And then you show them
Speaker 1: an image. Kid can look at it for whatever seconds.
Speaker 1: Then you take that image away, and then he say,
Speaker 1: what do you recall about that image? And if you
Speaker 1: have idetic memory, uh, for a very short term, you
Speaker 1: can recall with astonishing detail what was in that image. Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe another thirty seconds, maybe up to a couple of minutes.
Speaker 1: And there's a lot going on here, all right, So
Speaker 1: it's not like here, look at this image and then
Speaker 1: that you take the image away and the kid goes
Speaker 1: over and sits down and like really thinks about what
Speaker 1: was in the picture. The kid holds the pose and
Speaker 1: their line of sight just like they were when the
Speaker 1: picture was in front of them, as if they're still
Speaker 1: looking at the picture. And here's the thing about idetic memory.
Speaker 1: The kid who's showing off there, and people who have
Speaker 1: idetic memory are called identic Ersay, I know it's weird,
Speaker 1: but um, the identic er isn't recalling what they saw.
Speaker 1: They never stopped seeing. They're holding it visually in their
Speaker 1: line of sight, even though the picture is no longer
Speaker 1: physically present. Yeah. And one of the ways they can
Speaker 1: tell is that they talk about it in the present
Speaker 1: tent Still they don't say, well, the picture had a
Speaker 1: red car with a weird looking dog driving it, Right,
Speaker 1: it's it's present tense. It's the picture has a red
Speaker 1: car with a weird looking dog driving it. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So that's a big it's a big one, right. That's
Speaker 1: people think, well, that's photographic memory. But that's really the
Speaker 1: closest thing to photographic memory that science has really happened upon. Well,
Speaker 1: one of them will get into another one in a
Speaker 1: little while, but there's a lot of a lot of
Speaker 1: divergence from what you tend to think of as photographic memory.
Speaker 1: For one, Again, it's a very short duration thirty seconds,
Speaker 1: a couple of minutes, and then five minutes later they
Speaker 1: talk about the picture, and the kids like what what picture?
Speaker 1: What picture? Where am I? Why? Why did you drug
Speaker 1: me and tie me up? Apparently even them speaking during
Speaker 1: this period or even blinking can shut it off. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and especially not just speaking but saying what the thing
Speaker 1: is saying out loud. Oh, red car will make the
Speaker 1: picture vanish from there there, almost like a trance or
Speaker 1: something kind of it does really interesting. Uh. They can
Speaker 1: make errors as well and put things in there that
Speaker 1: weren't there, so that obviously is not a photographic memory. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the dog driving the car had a cat friend. That's believable.
Speaker 1: That's really stupid. Kids. Yeah. By the way, everyone, the
Speaker 1: cats and the dogs are getting along great. Just to
Speaker 1: update that everyone's getting along fine. But we have a
Speaker 1: one of the kittens is a bed pier, and so
Speaker 1: we're trying to sort that out, which is not a
Speaker 1: fun problem. You know what. The solution to that is
Speaker 1: kitty diapers, the cutest diapers. Yeah, yeah, we're getting through that.
Speaker 1: Not what do you do? You just like clap loudly
Speaker 1: next to it. Yeah, you try, you know, if you
Speaker 1: catch them, you try and hustle them really quickly into
Speaker 1: the litter box. The whole idea is that get to
Speaker 1: get them associating litter with being, and so it's just like, yeah,
Speaker 1: but usually cats are really intuitive. I've never had a
Speaker 1: cat that wasn't like immediately just literally trained. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: this is a little bit distressing. How long has it
Speaker 1: been going on. We've had like three or four bed piece.
Speaker 1: Oh that's not too bad. They'll pick it up in
Speaker 1: no time. Uh. But anyway, I just want to update everyone. So, oh,
Speaker 1: is this true about the idetic memory Uh studies being
Speaker 1: done by the Nazis? Is that correct? Yeah, the the
Speaker 1: Nazis found out about this. I'm not quite sure how,
Speaker 1: but their attributed with some of the earliest studies of
Speaker 1: idetic memory, and they, in Nazi fashion, gave it a
Speaker 1: really bad name because they were using it to promote
Speaker 1: how the Aryan race was obviously superior because our kids
Speaker 1: have idetic memory. And so since you know, just about
Speaker 1: anything the Nazis studied, whether it was legitimate studies or not,
Speaker 1: it just had a taint to it. Afterward, I choked,
Speaker 1: if you will, Nazi stank pretty much right, and so
Speaker 1: um they it was discontinued for many decades, and then
Speaker 1: I can't find out who picked it up. It's really weird.
Speaker 1: Like when you look up photographic memory, almost everything that
Speaker 1: comes back for research says photographic memories not real. And
Speaker 1: here's why. Um, there are such thing as idetic memory,
Speaker 1: but there's almost no information on like the actual study
Speaker 1: of it, who's conducting it. Usually it will be like
Speaker 1: they'll even sighte like one study everyone will this doesn't
Speaker 1: even have that. It's real cryptic almost in weird and
Speaker 1: just I want to say, fringey. But there's nobody who
Speaker 1: questions the science behind. It's proven that this does exist.
Speaker 1: We know kind of the mechanics of it, how it
Speaker 1: actually or what the process is, what's actually happening or
Speaker 1: how kids display this stuff. We know how to test
Speaker 1: for it. So it is real and there's that catchy
Speaker 1: name identic urs. It's definitely a real thing. But what
Speaker 1: how it's being studying and who's studying is just totally lost.
Speaker 1: I mean, I can't find it well, and we don't
Speaker 1: know you know why it's only in children or really
Speaker 1: a whole lot of concrete conclusions about it other than
Speaker 1: the fact that it happens. Well, there's some interesting hypotheses
Speaker 1: about that. Let's hear it. Well, the fact that kids
Speaker 1: from six to twelve are developing it and it stops
Speaker 1: beyond that. Just that has to do with language development
Speaker 1: and the fact that if you verbalize what the thing is,
Speaker 1: you've labeled it in a certain way and shut your
Speaker 1: brain off. That suggests that has to do with labeled
Speaker 1: or language development too. They think that maybe the kids
Speaker 1: are not compartmentalizing what they saw in abstracts like people
Speaker 1: do with normal memories, and so it's able to stay
Speaker 1: in their in their visual field even after they're no
Speaker 1: longer looking at it. Interesting. Yeah, But about two to
Speaker 1: idetic memory, Well, it is interesting though because the word
Speaker 1: photographic memory. This sounds as close to that as it gets,
Speaker 1: because it almost sounds like they are taking a sort
Speaker 1: of a brain snapshot, because they're just sort of in
Speaker 1: a trance and gazing at what it once was. But again,
Speaker 1: they can't move, they can't speak, they can't blink, and
Speaker 1: with you know, five minutes later, once they do blink
Speaker 1: or whatever and snap out of this trance. If you
Speaker 1: want to call it that, which clearly do. Um, so
Speaker 1: we will. We'll just call it trance. Once they step
Speaker 1: out of the trance, Um, they can't recall the picture.
Speaker 1: So it's not it's not a very good example of
Speaker 1: photographic memory. But it's the closest thing science has shown
Speaker 1: aside from some other ones. Let's talk about later, all right,
Speaker 1: Should we take a break? I think we should. All right,
Speaker 1: let's do it and we'll talk more about PM right
Speaker 1: after this. Alright, So, um, they have not found any
Speaker 1: like again, science hasn't come forward and said, hey, there
Speaker 1: is photographic memory and this is it and this is
Speaker 1: how it works. Right, All those people who are like
Speaker 1: promoting themselves with having a photographic memory, they no one
Speaker 1: they no one's gotten their hands on one of them
Speaker 1: and say, this guy is totally right that he has
Speaker 1: a photographic memory, or she right, or they that's right,
Speaker 1: But that it's still something you hear on the playground.
Speaker 1: It's still something you hear people tout. And there's a
Speaker 1: few reasons why. Um. One one is and this kind
Speaker 1: of has to do with the perfect pitch is. I
Speaker 1: think humans just like to label and assign geniuses with
Speaker 1: these tags like you know, Tesla had a photographic memory,
Speaker 1: and it's very easy just to write that down and
Speaker 1: it looks cool on a piece of paper. Um, And
Speaker 1: that's kind of just as simple as that. He he
Speaker 1: apparently was self proclaimed with a photographic memory. A lot
Speaker 1: of people say this about themselves. He doesn't seem like
Speaker 1: the type who would do that. He seems like the
Speaker 1: type that people would say about him without him claiming it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but Mr T is one who claims to have a
Speaker 1: photo Really so I saw Wow, so he could list
Speaker 1: all the fools He's pittied right, all of them. I'm
Speaker 1: wearring eighteen change right now. It doesn't even have to
Speaker 1: look down. Wow, who else? You got anyone else? Teddy Roosevelt,
Speaker 1: Uh Truman, capodikay um, Leonardo da Vinci. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: if he was self proclaimed or if people just again
Speaker 1: kind of ascribed it to him because he's a genius,
Speaker 1: he is a da Vinci. But it is it's like
Speaker 1: that that um, that kind of thing, like mythologizing extraordinarily
Speaker 1: smart people. Well, we equate memory with intelligence, kind of
Speaker 1: like Sherlock Holmes. Right, of course he's gonna have a
Speaker 1: photographic memory. He's a highly intelligent person. Um so anybody
Speaker 1: who seems extremely intelligent, genius level intelligence, especially someone in history,
Speaker 1: we would describe something like a photographic right to him. Well,
Speaker 1: there was an author name Cava, this Wanathon who there
Speaker 1: was a case where this author was um accused of
Speaker 1: plagiarism from another author. And Kaba was like, uh no,
Speaker 1: I just have a photographic memory. And I'm sure I
Speaker 1: read that book, but it was just so like burned
Speaker 1: into my brain that I must have just repeated these
Speaker 1: things without even knowing about it. She said that in
Speaker 1: the New York Times, and so that gave occasion for
Speaker 1: a lot of journalists and scientists to come for and
Speaker 1: be like, by the way, everybody, there's no such thing
Speaker 1: as photographic memory. So but there is a thing as
Speaker 1: plagiarism there. Yeah, I was looking. I was like, what
Speaker 1: were some of the some of the examples that was
Speaker 1: pretty bad. In the original book, there was a line
Speaker 1: in truly massochistic fashion, they chose to buy diet cokes
Speaker 1: at Cinnabon. Okay, that's the original. The the plagiarized one
Speaker 1: is in truly masochistic gesture, they chose to buy diet
Speaker 1: cokes at Mrs fields. Yeah, that's plagiarism. Yeah it is.
Speaker 1: That's not even like, that's plagiarism. One o one, like
Speaker 1: they I'll swap out one word for a like word
Speaker 1: and then it's fine and like crazy. She said this
Speaker 1: in the New York Times. It was a photographic memory,
Speaker 1: though it's not my fault. Another reason this is still
Speaker 1: sort of out there in the public sphere is um
Speaker 1: is the fact that there are people with amazing memories,
Speaker 1: and there are memory competitions and memory uh exhibitions and
Speaker 1: things like that. Yeah. I looked into that, Chuck, I
Speaker 1: really so I got sucked into memory. I was like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, I forgot how cool memory stuff is. We
Speaker 1: do a few podcasts on it. We talked about it
Speaker 1: in cann of Thinking, Ca't make Me a Genius. We
Speaker 1: talked about in a podcast to Remember Our Memory one.
Speaker 1: We talked about it extensively in the Amnesia episode. Just
Speaker 1: some good stuff. And there's more we could do. But
Speaker 1: one of them is this whole idea of mind sports,
Speaker 1: which includes memory, but it is organized competitions to to
Speaker 1: show off your memory skills. There's actually five mind sports
Speaker 1: memory mind mapping, which is a form of like taking
Speaker 1: notes with like icons and colors and stuff. It's really neat. Like,
Speaker 1: if you ever really need to commit something to memory,
Speaker 1: look into mind mapping, speed reading i Q, which is
Speaker 1: a little iffy to me, and then creative thinking. Like
Speaker 1: there's a mind sport competition for creative thinking. I was like,
Speaker 1: what is that? And you'll be given a question like
Speaker 1: a little passage that says, like the alphabet makes no sense.
Speaker 1: No one can make heads or tails of why it
Speaker 1: follows the order it does. Put the alphabet into a
Speaker 1: sensible order and explain how it makes sense. Stuff like that.
Speaker 1: So there's people who are answering these questions coming up
Speaker 1: with a creative system that makes sense. Though, right, it's
Speaker 1: got to make sense. Yeah, you lose, you'd lose, you'd
Speaker 1: be running out of town on a rail. Yeah, it's Um,
Speaker 1: it sounds really neat, But there's there's with memory in particular.
Speaker 1: There's the World Memory Championship and they're being held in Wuhan,
Speaker 1: China this December two nine. Well, you think of a
Speaker 1: show like Jeopardy, and um, there are things that you
Speaker 1: can certainly figure out question and answer wise on Jeopardy,
Speaker 1: But I would say most of that is recall it
Speaker 1: is recall. And that's the same thing with mine sports too.
Speaker 1: Like if you if you talk to a world memory champion,
Speaker 1: there's one in particular named Dominic O'Brien who is what
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's just funny to think of these
Speaker 1: like a picture of walking in with his boxing robe.
Speaker 1: He know, he's more them. You'd find him with like
Speaker 1: a neat scotch and a cigarette going in like a
Speaker 1: dark bar somewhere. He just strikes me that a super friendly,
Speaker 1: neat guy. And he's just like mumbling presidential returns over
Speaker 1: the past fig you know, he's like running numbers or
Speaker 1: something like that. That's my guest. And he's like a
Speaker 1: bookie in a bar or something. That's what he strikes
Speaker 1: me as. All right again, really nice guy. I don't
Speaker 1: know he's doing anything illegal, but a British man named
Speaker 1: Dominic just strikes me as like a bookie anyway. He's
Speaker 1: an eight time World memory Champion, World memory champion, and
Speaker 1: he'll tell you like it's all training, it's practice, it's
Speaker 1: nemonic devices, and just about anybody who is involved in
Speaker 1: mind sports will say it's all it's all practice, and
Speaker 1: it's using techniques to expand your memory, which is really
Speaker 1: amazing because what these guys are doing, um, one of
Speaker 1: them is is card reading. They will give you a
Speaker 1: deck of cards and you will go through scan it
Speaker 1: in order, maybe be given a minute to scan it,
Speaker 1: maybe three minutes something like that. You'll put it down
Speaker 1: and then twenty minutes later they'll ask you to recall
Speaker 1: the deck in the order of the cards. And these
Speaker 1: guys like get it flawlessly perfect. That's pretty amazing. It
Speaker 1: is amazing. But they are saying, like, I have learned
Speaker 1: to do this. I was not born like this. I
Speaker 1: don't have a photographic memory. I'm using things like devices
Speaker 1: that are that are are techniques to help me remember stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's this, Um, have you ever heard of a memory palace? Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so a memory palace. Then it's just like building a
Speaker 1: castle or whatever, and like different rooms or where you
Speaker 1: put different things and specifically you might have a drawer
Speaker 1: for a specific thing and you remember where that specific
Speaker 1: thing is because you placed it in that drawer in
Speaker 1: that room in your palace that you've built in your mind. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's a very helpful way to remember things for sure. Uh.
Speaker 1: And also shout out to a friend of the show
Speaker 1: and Nate to Mayo and his great Yes, the Memory
Speaker 1: the Memory Past. Oh my gosh, I never I never
Speaker 1: put two and two together. Nate's still around, still a
Speaker 1: great show. Well sure, sure, I don't think he died
Speaker 1: or anything, but I'm saying like I knew, I knew
Speaker 1: his His show is named The Memory Place connection. I
Speaker 1: never did. You should have put it in the Memory Palace.
Speaker 1: That is a great name, Nate, and that is a
Speaker 1: great I liked it even more before, but I was
Speaker 1: just taking it more like like Tolkien sell her door,
Speaker 1: like it was just pretty, you know what I mean. So, um,
Speaker 1: there have been some connections that people have made with
Speaker 1: sinnist eats and uh people with supposedly photographic memories. Um.
Speaker 1: There's a writer named Solomon Schefski who was a writer
Speaker 1: I think I already said that in the twentieth century,
Speaker 1: in the early twentieth century, and he had these really
Speaker 1: amazing powers of memory, and he uses uh or used
Speaker 1: pneumonic techniques like we talked about he did. But he
Speaker 1: was also a cinnist eat. So the point was made
Speaker 1: here was that he basically had been doing this his
Speaker 1: whole life involuntarily because of associations that cynistats make with
Speaker 1: color and sound and shape and things like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's how that's how a memory becomes all more solid,
Speaker 1: is associated with an emotion or a physical sensation. And um,
Speaker 1: he was a multiple synisty, right, So rather than say,
Speaker 1: like a sound having a color, this guy when he
Speaker 1: heard a bell ring, he saw white, tasted salt water,
Speaker 1: and sense something small and round from the sound of
Speaker 1: a bell. He he would not read the paper while
Speaker 1: he was eating because the tastes that the words on
Speaker 1: the page evoked would compete with the taste of the food.
Speaker 1: He was like, he would he had it just powerfully synesthesia.
Speaker 1: That's pretty cool. Um, so yeah, he couldn't help but
Speaker 1: have an amazing memory. Pretty cool. Um. The neemonic devices
Speaker 1: everyone uses those in school or they'd tell you that's
Speaker 1: a good way to remember things. Um. But then there's also,
Speaker 1: um what and this is a grabstor article what he
Speaker 1: just called relentless obsession. And you know, when you if
Speaker 1: you want to go on Jeopardy, memorize the constitution, memorize
Speaker 1: every state flag, every state bird, every state motto. It's
Speaker 1: like it's if you pour yourself into that kind of study,
Speaker 1: and you're obsessed over memorizing a certain thing, then you
Speaker 1: could probably do it over time, right, Yeah, um, ed
Speaker 1: uses the example of them what are they called the
Speaker 1: shas Pollock, Yes, who were a sect of Polish Jews
Speaker 1: who memorized the Babylonian Talmud, which, as from what I gather,
Speaker 1: one of two versions of the Talmud. I think they're
Speaker 1: like eight or twelve books. It's a lot, yeah, like
Speaker 1: five thousand pages. And these these guys would they would
Speaker 1: remember the Talmud so precisely that a case study from
Speaker 1: nineteen seventeen based on eyewitness accounts said that you could
Speaker 1: put a pin on a word on one page and
Speaker 1: push the pin through, say fifty pages, and they could
Speaker 1: tell you the word that that pin came out on
Speaker 1: the fifty pages ahead. So that's geography too kind of.
Speaker 1: That's a really good example of a potential photographic memory, right,
Speaker 1: but also example of obsession. Um. I did a little
Speaker 1: more reading on them too. They were known as uh
Speaker 1: Numonists for neumonic. It's interesting. That's just I don't know,
Speaker 1: I think that might have been a early Eastern European
Speaker 1: and Russian name for someone with amazing memory because the Sheerschewski. Um.
Speaker 1: He was written about as a patient just by the
Speaker 1: pseudonym s by a psychologist, very famous psychologist named Alexander Luria,
Speaker 1: and he he titled his paper book The Mind of
Speaker 1: a New Honest. So I wonder if that was like
Speaker 1: an old timey word for like somebody with an amazing memory.
Speaker 1: That's probably word? What is that? Namu? Oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: like I like yours more? Th Another thing is that
Speaker 1: a lot of times when someone you might think or
Speaker 1: they claim to have a photographic memory, it's on a
Speaker 1: very specific, um thing that they are obsessed with, Like
Speaker 1: a chess player may be able to memorize like these
Speaker 1: incredibly complex sequences or games that they played, but may
Speaker 1: not have a great memory otherwise of other things. I
Speaker 1: can't remember their anniversary, asked their wives. Yeah you know
Speaker 1: for sure? Um, who's this other guy? John Van Newman?
Speaker 1: He was a mathematical genius and he could recite chapters
Speaker 1: of books and pages of the phone book. But apparently
Speaker 1: he was like that was sort of where it ended.
Speaker 1: He didn't have like a memory outside of like these
Speaker 1: very specific things. Right. He also never claimed to have
Speaker 1: a photographic memory, which is pretty cool. Because if anybody
Speaker 1: could claim that he was definitely one of them, and
Speaker 1: he was a polymath just straight up genius in general,
Speaker 1: it's a great varied thinker. Yeah. He I read somewhere
Speaker 1: that he used to tell jokes with his dad in
Speaker 1: in classical Greek at age six, which I mean, if
Speaker 1: you're doing that at age six with your dad, it's
Speaker 1: a specific type of household you're being raised. And yeah,
Speaker 1: that Stephen Wiltshire guy is pretty interesting. Um. I remember
Speaker 1: seeing something on him a while ago. I think we
Speaker 1: talked about him in the Thinking Cap episode two. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that might have been it. He's from London and is
Speaker 1: has autism and he's the guy who, you know it
Speaker 1: takes a helicopter ride over Berlin Lands and then draws
Speaker 1: it and like astonishing detail. Yes, but and it is astonishing.
Speaker 1: But and people put him up as an example of
Speaker 1: photographic memory. There are flaws in the recollection, in the telling.
Speaker 1: These are renderings are not architecturally precise. Yeah, but still,
Speaker 1: I mean better than it's astonishing. No. I think what's
Speaker 1: astonishing is is the art. And I think people should
Speaker 1: just like lay off the photographic memory part of it
Speaker 1: and just say Stephen Wiltscher is an amazing artist who
Speaker 1: I can see a scene and encapsulated on paper with
Speaker 1: ease or seeming ease. Yeah, And then you really can't
Speaker 1: start a conversation about memory of any kind without talking
Speaker 1: about Kim Peak, who we mentioned earlier, who was again
Speaker 1: the the the inspiration for rain Man, but was much
Speaker 1: more friendly, much more outgoing, much happier than rain Man was. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was a real jerk. He was real. He wasn't
Speaker 1: a jerk, but he was much more introverted. Kim Peek
Speaker 1: was much more happy, go lucky, and like very talkative
Speaker 1: and curious and um. For a very long time he
Speaker 1: was considered to have had autism, but now they think
Speaker 1: he had f G syndrome, which is a very specific
Speaker 1: genetic disorder UM that's characterized by people who are friendly, inquisitive, hyperactive,
Speaker 1: and have a short attention span. And from what I understand,
Speaker 1: that describes Kim Peak to a key to T yeah,
Speaker 1: not a key to a KP. He would his his
Speaker 1: whole thing. I mean, he had a great memory, but
Speaker 1: he had basically memorized the calendar. And when you say calendar,
Speaker 1: you mean like that means the calendar of the past. Tuesday.
Speaker 1: Everybody knows that. Yeah, but what day was, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: July first, nineteen seventy seven. He can say, well, that
Speaker 1: was the Thursday, and on this state, these things happened.
Speaker 1: That kind of memory, yeah, which is pretty astounding in
Speaker 1: and of itself. But he was also able to do
Speaker 1: things like read the phone book two pages at a time. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now that's just off the charts. This is he may
Speaker 1: be the only human being who is ever born capable
Speaker 1: of doing. Yeah. His left eye was reading one page
Speaker 1: and his right eye would read another page. Okay, astounding
Speaker 1: that he could do that just visually optically. Yes, he
Speaker 1: would retain this thing, and he could tell you the
Speaker 1: phone number of somebody's name. You went back and and
Speaker 1: said what is you know, what is John von Newman's
Speaker 1: phone number? And he'd say the phone and would be like, really,
Speaker 1: I don't want to call him. I'll talk you about
Speaker 1: to say John bon Jovi for a second. I'm excited.
Speaker 1: I have a joke in Greek. Yeah, I mean that's
Speaker 1: that is. Let's let it that part out really, okay, Um. Really,
Speaker 1: here's the thing with Peak though, is we talked a
Speaker 1: lot about the Corpus colossum in the uh what's it
Speaker 1: called restless hand syndrome, alien Han syndrome one of our
Speaker 1: early early podcasts. That's right, I forgot that showed up
Speaker 1: with the corpus colossum. We talked about it a bunch
Speaker 1: of a bunch of shows. But that's what connects it
Speaker 1: to hemispheres. Kimpek does not have a corpus colossum, like
Speaker 1: not severed, not cut apart, not partial. It did not
Speaker 1: grow in his brain. So he has two independent hemispheres
Speaker 1: of his brain. And so when his left eye is
Speaker 1: inputting all this stuff and his right eyes inputting all
Speaker 1: this stuff, his brain can recall it separately but together.
Speaker 1: That's just astounding. Is he still with us? No, he
Speaker 1: died a few years ago. I don't remember of what
Speaker 1: and like he was in his sixties, I believe. All right,
Speaker 1: Well r I p MR Peak and let's take a
Speaker 1: break now, and then we'll talk about a woman named
Speaker 1: Jil Price right after this, all right, as promised, we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about Jill Price, who I remember from the
Speaker 1: news in two thousand six is when she kind of
Speaker 1: hit hit the big time with the news and she
Speaker 1: was the one that she's called the woman who cannot
Speaker 1: forget and pretty accurately because she has an audit. Well
Speaker 1: they now they could call it a couple of things. Now, Um,
Speaker 1: I saw H S a M. Highly superior autobiographical memory,
Speaker 1: and then another condition called hyperthsmea thymesia hyperthymesia, Yeah with
Speaker 1: a y in seventy that was this misspelled? Okay? Um
Speaker 1: and to delete my correction, And hyper means excessive obviously,
Speaker 1: and then thymesis is remembering, so it's excessive remembering. I like,
Speaker 1: highly superior autobiographical memory though, yeah, and I saw where
Speaker 1: they found they know of at least sixty other people
Speaker 1: that have H S a M. Whereas this said only
Speaker 1: to other people have been diagnosed with hyperthymesia. Right, it's
Speaker 1: the same thing, it is. It's the exact same thing. Okay,
Speaker 1: So are there sixty people or they're three? There's sixty
Speaker 1: one from what I understand. Okay, Well, she can't forget stuff,
Speaker 1: and these people apparently, you know, if you go back
Speaker 1: and say what were you doing, you know, fourteen years
Speaker 1: ago and two months in two days, or give them
Speaker 1: a date date usually and then they will be able
Speaker 1: to say what they did, what they were wearing, who
Speaker 1: they were with what was on TV. Yeah, but the
Speaker 1: thing is, so this is so you say, okay, great, fine,
Speaker 1: we found these are the people with photographic memories. Not really,
Speaker 1: because it's highly superior autobiographical memory, and that is a
Speaker 1: very specific kind of memory. It's a type of episodic memory.
Speaker 1: Episodic memories are personal memories, memories you generate as opposed
Speaker 1: to semantic memory, which is memories that you make of
Speaker 1: things like um uh, a car has two axles or
Speaker 1: something stupid like that, like a fact that you recall,
Speaker 1: rather than an autobiographical memory. So the the semantic memory
Speaker 1: is normal in in people with HSAM or hyperthymesia. It's
Speaker 1: the autobiographical stuff that is astoundingly photographic. Yeah, and people
Speaker 1: also tried after she came out and made a you know,
Speaker 1: kind of a big splash on the news programs, there
Speaker 1: were people trying to poke holes in her condition, saying
Speaker 1: that like, well, starting in her teenage year, she started
Speaker 1: keeping these obsessively detailed diaries every day as well. Um,
Speaker 1: which sure that can help. But just because you write
Speaker 1: an obsessively detailed diary every day doesn't mean you're gonna
Speaker 1: remember it five years later, right, No, that's that's exactly
Speaker 1: the point, right. Yeah, maybe she is even using nemonics
Speaker 1: to solidify it even further. But the fact that you
Speaker 1: can give her a date at random and she can
Speaker 1: remember it without consulting her her journal, um, it's pretty impressive.
Speaker 1: It's definitely its own thing. And there's there's a pretty
Speaker 1: widespread consensus that this is a real condition. But the
Speaker 1: fact that you said it, she she keeps an obsessively
Speaker 1: organized journal. Um. They believe it's possible that it's linked
Speaker 1: to obsessive compulsive disorder. That the brains of people with
Speaker 1: hyperthymesia UM have have the same traits, the same structures, um,
Speaker 1: that people who have o c D have, and they'll
Speaker 1: very frequently have kind of this co morbid collection of
Speaker 1: stuff or um. They have traits that somebody, yeah, somebody
Speaker 1: with o c D might have. I also wonder if
Speaker 1: it has anything to do with narcissism. Oh really, I
Speaker 1: don't know, man. It's autobiographical. Yeah, like they remember everything
Speaker 1: about their life, but they might not be able to
Speaker 1: tell you, like you know who the president is. But
Speaker 1: the okay, if it is narcissism, it's a mass a kid, No,
Speaker 1: it's a massochistic. That's the one where you're bad to yourself, right,
Speaker 1: mean to yourself, because this is sort of a curse. UM.
Speaker 1: So if you if you see interviews with Jill Price,
Speaker 1: she's not a happy person by any stretch of the
Speaker 1: imagination because part of this condition is not being able
Speaker 1: to forget like emotions attached to things. Yeah, she she
Speaker 1: after a very long time, met a man and married
Speaker 1: him and they were very very close. Like she she
Speaker 1: said later that that he just got her. He is
Speaker 1: the first person to ever just get her and accept
Speaker 1: her for who she was. Um. Other family and friends
Speaker 1: would be like, can you not just let this go?
Speaker 1: Can you not get over something that happened twenty years ago?
Speaker 1: And she's like, no, I really can't. This guy just
Speaker 1: accepted her and then of course he dies young from
Speaker 1: I think cancer or something like that. So UM, rather
Speaker 1: than going through the morning period in grieving like a
Speaker 1: person normally would time healing all wounds, that does not
Speaker 1: apply to somebody or hyperthiamesia because when they think of
Speaker 1: that day again or something reminds them of that person
Speaker 1: that and the memory of them is recalled, they experienced
Speaker 1: that same pain like they experience. UM. The first time.
Speaker 1: It happens forever. They cannot forget. It does not fade
Speaker 1: like a sci fi movie basically, but it's a real thing.
Speaker 1: Was the Tom Cruise thing? I repeat, rain Man, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's it. Uh. You know who else has hyperthymesia or
Speaker 1: highly superior autobiographical memory? I think I know this because
Speaker 1: you talked about her at length and the podcast. To
Speaker 1: remember what I'll give you. I'll give you a one
Speaker 1: degree of separation and you'll figure it out. Okay, don't
Speaker 1: say Kevin Bacon Tony Danza what no, I didn't say. Sorry,
Speaker 1: that was not a bad Tony Danza. Mona no um oh,
Speaker 1: oh that's right. Uh. Yes, what's her name? Lisa Milana? No? No,
Speaker 1: Mary Lou Henner from Taxi A Lissa Milana. Well wouldn't she?
Speaker 1: And she just looked up from the gallery and the
Speaker 1: congressional hearing and who me? I forgot about the taxi Mary?
Speaker 1: That's right, Mary Lee has like has it? You can
Speaker 1: say you'll give her a date or even like a
Speaker 1: taxi episode. She'll start reciting lines the other person's line.
Speaker 1: She'll talk about what she's wearing in the scene. Stuff
Speaker 1: from the seventies. It's really impressive. She has the opposite experience,
Speaker 1: though she loves the the the whole thing, like it's
Speaker 1: a gift to her, whereas it's a curse to jil Price.
Speaker 1: My memory is weird because I will and I'm sure
Speaker 1: we talked about this in the other memory episodes, but
Speaker 1: I can have the worst memory on the planet or
Speaker 1: the best, and it all just depends on whatever detail
Speaker 1: it is. It's either in in the old brain or
Speaker 1: it's not. Yeah, Like I can recall some very specifically
Speaker 1: things that people are like, how in the world do
Speaker 1: you remember that? You know? The thing that bothers me
Speaker 1: about this is we have had so much information passed
Speaker 1: through our brains and I retained so little of it.
Speaker 1: It's almost like I really wish I had more of
Speaker 1: it in there. Yeah, it's just not though. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess it is if you drag it, but I
Speaker 1: can't bring it to it to memory very easily. Yeah,
Speaker 1: to find that couples though, whether that's you and I
Speaker 1: or us and our individual wives can complement each other
Speaker 1: with their memories. Yeah, and your abilities, like I'm really
Speaker 1: good at remembering certain things, and Emily is really good
Speaker 1: at remembering other types of things and together it's usually
Speaker 1: works out. It's a whole person, yeah, basically, But you
Speaker 1: do that too. You remember stuff that I don't remember,
Speaker 1: like Mary lew Henterer, and the list goes on and on.
Speaker 1: You remember way more than I do. But I don't
Speaker 1: remember nearly as much as I should, I think, or
Speaker 1: that I wish I did. I don't deal in shouts anymore. Chuck, Right,
Speaker 1: so should we talk about um uh, Charles Stroemeyer, John Merritt,
Speaker 1: and Elizabeth Sure. So this was a little bit wrong,
Speaker 1: But the way I understood from what you sent me
Speaker 1: as a follow up is that Charles Stroemeyer was the
Speaker 1: one who did this initial initial research at Harvard in
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies. Is that right? Okay, So this guy
Speaker 1: plays ads in newspapers. He was trying to do some
Speaker 1: studies on photographic memory, and all these ads were were
Speaker 1: images of random dots. And you could take a test
Speaker 1: your cell just by looking at these dots very briefly
Speaker 1: and then trying to reproduce them. And if you did
Speaker 1: a really good job, you would follow up by getting
Speaker 1: in touch with him saying, Hey, I nailed I nailed
Speaker 1: your test, dude, talk to me I do the turtle
Speaker 1: on the matchbook just right, remember the turtle and the
Speaker 1: turtle night. Yeah, and that there was a pirate too, right,
Speaker 1: What was that all about? It was like an art
Speaker 1: correspondence course where you learn to draw through the mail.
Speaker 1: Oh interesting, I think we talked about that on another episode.
Speaker 1: Surely we have, I think. So sorry for derailing you
Speaker 1: with the turtle thing. Now, that's okay. But that was
Speaker 1: the long and short of what he was trying to
Speaker 1: do and how he was trying to recruit subjects. And
Speaker 1: I believe he got what like thirty people we're successful,
Speaker 1: fifteen of which he was impressed enough by to go
Speaker 1: to their house and follow up with. And one person
Speaker 1: he really followed up with. He did he found out
Speaker 1: of the fifteen, none of them had photographic memory. But
Speaker 1: then later on he came across a woman from a
Speaker 1: different study entirely named Elizabeth. And here's the thing. This
Speaker 1: is nuts man. I he figured out Stromyer figured out
Speaker 1: that if you took remember the three d um so
Speaker 1: in the color Blind episode, Yeah, the magic image or
Speaker 1: whatever where you could see the sailboat and the big
Speaker 1: thing of dots. Right, So this thing was it didn't
Speaker 1: have to do with color. It had to do with
Speaker 1: overlaying the dots to create a three D image. So
Speaker 1: you need two sets of dots and when you put
Speaker 1: them together, they'll create like a magic I poster kind
Speaker 1: of thing. So what Stroemyer figured out is you could
Speaker 1: take these two layers and separate them. Show one of
Speaker 1: the layers to somebody you're testing for photographic memories. They
Speaker 1: really get a look at this. Okay, now I'm gonna
Speaker 1: wait like a day, and then I'll show you the
Speaker 1: second layer. Bring to mind that first layer you saw,
Speaker 1: and overlay it in your mind, and see if you
Speaker 1: can tell me what the three D images. That's amazing.
Speaker 1: It is amazing. And stoe Meyer found one person who
Speaker 1: could do it, a woman named Elizabeth, and he married her.
Speaker 1: And he married her, and the weird thing is he
Speaker 1: wrote like this whole though, this whole right up in
Speaker 1: the journal Nature. Then he married her and no more
Speaker 1: testing after that. So took her off the market every
Speaker 1: way he did. But they so they're like, well, we can't,
Speaker 1: we can't say that this is definitely a case of
Speaker 1: photographic memory. If it were true, this would be the
Speaker 1: closest thing to photographic memory. Anyone's ever come up with. Now,
Speaker 1: Kim Pete holds the title, yet Elizabeth is just could
Speaker 1: be the key, right could probably not though I saw
Speaker 1: that in some follow up tests. This would explain why
Speaker 1: he took her off the market. That, um, she couldn't
Speaker 1: she she she couldn't do it. Really. Yeah, But then
Speaker 1: this guy John Merritt, he came along later and used that, uh,
Speaker 1: use those studies for his own purposes. He did. He
Speaker 1: found that nobody could do this, that nobody is able
Speaker 1: to do that. But they did figure out that, hey,
Speaker 1: this makes a pretty good test to find um identic rs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you don't. You don't show them one layer and
Speaker 1: then take away the other layer and ask him a
Speaker 1: day later. You show them one layer, ask him to
Speaker 1: hold it in their mind, and then put the other
Speaker 1: layer underneath it. And if you're an identic or, you
Speaker 1: are typically able to see in three D and you
Speaker 1: can go do this online. Actually, just don't blink, don't blink,
Speaker 1: and don't say what it is you're looking at, like
Speaker 1: Michael Caine always says, Oh, I've never heard him say that,
Speaker 1: And that was one of he did these kind of
Speaker 1: corny how to active video series I think at one
Speaker 1: point and Letterman used to play bits of them because
Speaker 1: they were really funny. If one of them was the
Speaker 1: secret to great acting don't blink? Was was he trying
Speaker 1: to be funny? The Letterman would played for laughs, don't
Speaker 1: blink and he would say he would show you know
Speaker 1: scenes and he's like, look at me, I'm not blinking,
Speaker 1: And then Letterman would say don't blink like out of
Speaker 1: the blue fifty times the rest of the song. Probably
Speaker 1: love that guy. Yeah, ah, you got anything else, No, sir,
Speaker 1: I've got one more lex Luthor. But he supposedly had
Speaker 1: photographic memory. He's not real, Wellogh all the more likely
Speaker 1: that he had photographic memory. Well, if you want to
Speaker 1: know more about photographic memory, go take that Ideker test.
Speaker 1: You'll love it. The Mr T thing is just back
Speaker 1: to the podcast. Maybe I pity the fool that tripped
Speaker 1: me on fifty seven Street on July. Well, Chuck made
Speaker 1: a Mr. T reference, which means then it's time for listening.
Speaker 1: Maw uh. This is I think just some some warm gratitudes.
Speaker 1: Hey guys, I'm sure you get these emails all the time,
Speaker 1: but I'd be remiss if I didn't thank you for
Speaker 1: all your wonderful work, had a really tough time with
Speaker 1: mental illness, and there have been a lot of nights
Speaker 1: that your wonderful show is staved off panic attacks or worse.
Speaker 1: Thank you for keeping me calm and educated. Thank you
Speaker 1: for making me feel safe even in perilelus circumstances. Thank
Speaker 1: you for giving me something to talk about when my
Speaker 1: depression has kept me in a fog Without your massive
Speaker 1: backlog up seemingly endless supply of fresh, fascinating subjects that
Speaker 1: would surely be lost. Spent some time researching that can
Speaker 1: truly appreciate just how much time and energy goes into
Speaker 1: becoming familiar enough with something to explain it as succinctly
Speaker 1: as you guys do. You are superheroes and rock stars.
Speaker 1: You have truly saved me. Kindest and warmest regards, Georgia.
Speaker 1: And here's the thing, everyone, I may have read this before,
Speaker 1: but let's leave it in there, because if I did
Speaker 1: read this before and forgot it, it will have been
Speaker 1: within the last six or seven weeks, and it will
Speaker 1: be a very funny ending to the memory episode either way.
Speaker 1: The listener mails, so nice, you read it twice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's appropriate. Uh, well, thanks a lot Georgia two times over.
Speaker 1: Maybe thank you Chuck for that great ending. If you
Speaker 1: want to get in touch with this, you can go
Speaker 1: on to stuff you Should Know dot com, check out
Speaker 1: our social links, and you can also send us an
Speaker 1: email to podcasts at i heeart radio dot com. Stuff
Speaker 1: you Should Know is a production of i Heeart Radio's
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows. H