Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 2: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and
Speaker 2: it's Saturday. Time to go into the vault for an
Speaker 2: older episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. This one
Speaker 2: originally published April fourth, twenty twenty three, and it's part
Speaker 2: one of our series called Before You Could Remember, about
Speaker 2: the age at which we start forming permanent memories or
Speaker 2: memories that we can access later. We get into all
Speaker 2: the nuances there in the episode, so we hope.
Speaker 1: You like it. Yeah, these were a lot of fun
Speaker 1: and they generated a lot of listener commentary. So if
Speaker 1: you have fresh thoughts on this episode and the ones
Speaker 1: to follow, write in. We'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert.
Speaker 2: Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and today we're going to
Speaker 2: be talking about that hole in your memory before the
Speaker 2: earliest one you can produce, also known as infantile amnesia.
Speaker 2: And hey, listeners, you were promised you would be getting
Speaker 2: some baby looked at Me topics this year. My wife
Speaker 2: and I had a baby this past October, and I
Speaker 2: think many of you have been practically daring me to
Speaker 2: embark on indulgent dad topics. But here we've arrived at
Speaker 2: one because so I think the way I got here
Speaker 2: was recently we have started spending a lot of time
Speaker 2: trying to make a five month old baby laugh. Rob,
Speaker 2: I don't know how much experience you have with this,
Speaker 2: like the parent comedian routine.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, a lot of hours clocked on
Speaker 1: that particular stand up game.
Speaker 2: Well, sometime recently Rachel figured out what our baby's favorite
Speaker 2: genre of comedy was, at least for that day, and
Speaker 2: it will a textile gravity comedy. It was. The act
Speaker 2: was you hold a cloth up in the air and
Speaker 2: then you drop the cloth on the baby, and when
Speaker 2: the cloth falls down and hits the baby, this is hilarious.
Speaker 2: It was creating these storms of laughter from another dimension,
Speaker 2: truly riveting experience, at least for us. But I started
Speaker 2: to wonder, like, why is this funny? And of course
Speaker 2: I wanted to ask her, but she's a five month
Speaker 2: old baby, not talking yet, she can't explain why it's funny.
Speaker 2: And I was thinking, one day will I be able
Speaker 2: to ask her. You remember when we were dropping the
Speaker 2: cloth on you, and you thought this was so funny.
Speaker 2: Why was it funny? What was going through your mind?
Speaker 2: But I just know that's probably never a conversation that's
Speaker 2: going to go anywhere, because is she really going to
Speaker 2: even remember this by the time she can talk about it,
Speaker 2: Because I certainly don't have any memories that I can
Speaker 2: bring up now from being five months old, or even
Speaker 2: from being one year old, or even from being two
Speaker 2: years old. I'm not sure, honestly what my earliest memory is,
Speaker 2: but I know I don't have any memories I feel
Speaker 2: confident about from the first several years of my life.
Speaker 2: And it turns out this is not unique to me.
Speaker 2: This is pretty common. Most people feel this way, that
Speaker 2: they don't have any really solid memories from the first
Speaker 2: several years of their lives. And so I just got
Speaker 2: really interested in the question of why that is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, unless you are biological mother partook of
Speaker 1: the waters of life, she was pregnant, you're probably not
Speaker 1: pre born like that. You're not gonna You're not gonna
Speaker 1: remember these things. And we'll get into some there is
Speaker 1: a certain amount of subjectiveness to all of this, and
Speaker 1: we'll get into some of that, and certainly we'd love
Speaker 1: to hear from any listeners out there who are firm
Speaker 1: on this or feel firm and are like, yes, I
Speaker 1: do remember being under the age of two that sort
Speaker 1: of thing. But most of the research seems to point
Speaker 1: in a different direction that most. It seems like most
Speaker 1: of what we remember is after a certain point in
Speaker 1: our development, and that certainly your daughter has not quite
Speaker 1: reached that point.
Speaker 2: Which is not to say that she is not capable
Speaker 2: of memory, because I mean several things I can notice.
Speaker 2: She recognizes faces, and she is forming associations and routines.
Speaker 2: There's learning going on at this point in a baby's development,
Speaker 2: and learning is to some extent based on memory. So
Speaker 2: it's not that the brain is not capable of any
Speaker 2: type of memory at this point. But it seems that
Speaker 2: most people's brains at this point are not producing episodic
Speaker 2: or autobiographical memories. Episodic memories meaning memories of specific events
Speaker 2: or experiences, not producing sort of narrative memory of that
Speaker 2: type that can be retrieved later in life. I guess
Speaker 2: it's a question whether memories of that type are formed
Speaker 2: at all, And so I don't have any memories like that.
Speaker 2: From infancy. Most people report the same, and I cannot,
Speaker 2: honestly from my memory, tell you a story about anything
Speaker 2: that happened before I was probably like four or five
Speaker 2: or so. You do bring up the idea that there
Speaker 2: are a small number of people who claim they can
Speaker 2: remember like being born or being a baby. But even
Speaker 2: in those cases, while you can't say, well, you're just wrong,
Speaker 2: you don't remember that, I think it's reasonable to be
Speaker 2: skeptical about whether those are real memories or just later confabulations.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And on this note, I think it's important
Speaker 1: to remind listeners that fabricated memories are by no means
Speaker 1: necessarily intentional. They are numerous ways that we've discussed in
Speaker 1: the show before, numerous ways that false memories may be encoded.
Speaker 1: There are plenty of examples of cases where attested early
Speaker 1: childhood memories can ultimately be attributed to stories one is
Speaker 1: told about one's younger years and or something formed out
Speaker 1: of say longing or desire for a certain framework. A
Speaker 1: lot of stuff like that out there. And again, we,
Speaker 1: as we've touched on many times before, like we alter
Speaker 1: memories every time we draw them out, every time we
Speaker 1: get them out of the storage. We get our fingerprints
Speaker 1: all over them, and we change them. And then ultimately,
Speaker 1: the memories that are most dear to us, the ones
Speaker 1: that we pull out the most are the ones that
Speaker 1: are potentially the most altered.
Speaker 2: Right because the form in which they are stored in
Speaker 2: memory is ultimately the form in which you rehearse them.
Speaker 2: You know, it's not a videotape. It is a it's
Speaker 2: a constant sort of like rewriting over the same document.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. And and to your point, though, it is
Speaker 1: kind of ironic that when you have a young child
Speaker 1: in the house like this, for parents, this is or
Speaker 1: or even you know, other people in that infant's life,
Speaker 1: these are some of the dearest moments. You know, you're
Speaker 1: experiencing these moments and you're like, this, this is you
Speaker 1: can feel it in you can you know this is
Speaker 1: something you're never going to forget. And then on the
Speaker 1: other hand, you have at least a very strong suspicion
Speaker 1: that the child is not going to remember it the
Speaker 1: way that you remember it. Uh And and it's it's
Speaker 1: so it's something that I know that we my wife
Speaker 1: and I talked a lot about with our son when
Speaker 1: he when he was much younger, and sometimes my son
Speaker 1: will come in on this, because when your jow gets over,
Speaker 1: you're always like, well do you remember this? Do you
Speaker 1: remember that? Or I remember when this happened, but I
Speaker 1: know you don't remember it. And so there are a
Speaker 1: lot of conversations like that. And then sometimes we'll be
Speaker 1: on a trip and our son, at this point, who's
Speaker 1: almost eleven, he'll comment like, oh, well, that baby's not
Speaker 1: even going to remember that vacation, seeing like a you know,
Speaker 1: another couple with an infant on a trip, but.
Speaker 2: It might as well not even take it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, you know that's that's kind of the joke, right,
Speaker 1: Like just go and put your baby in a closet
Speaker 1: for a few years because they're not going to remember
Speaker 1: these expensive trips. But of course you can't do that.
Speaker 1: That's not how it works. You have to have these
Speaker 1: moments and these trips, and and just because the baby's
Speaker 1: not recalling it the way an adult recalls something later
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that it's not quote unquote remembered.
Speaker 2: Right, those I mean those instead of say having autobiographical
Speaker 2: memories that can later be retrieved in narrative form. Instead,
Speaker 2: the effect of those experiences might be say structural impacts
Speaker 2: on the development of the brain.
Speaker 1: Right, there's a great quote that came up in a
Speaker 1: paper I'm going to source here in a bet where
Speaker 1: they said something that you know, it's quite simple, but
Speaker 1: I think is important to keep in mind in this
Speaker 1: context and memory context in general. The brain remembers what
Speaker 1: it needs to remember, you know, and and the memory
Speaker 1: demands on say a five month old baby or a
Speaker 1: one year old child one and a half year old
Speaker 1: child are different. And therefore, again, it's nothing bad about
Speaker 1: not having not being able to recall when you were
Speaker 1: two or three or four or five. It's just it's
Speaker 1: just what your brain needed to do. And as we'll
Speaker 1: get into, there are different reasons for this.
Speaker 2: Yes, So that's what we're going to be exploring in
Speaker 2: this series. Questions like why don't most people have specific
Speaker 2: autobiographical memories of being a baby. Do we have episodic
Speaker 2: memories of infancy which get like erased from the brain
Speaker 2: for some reason, or do we never form episodic memories
Speaker 2: of babe life in the first place. Obviously there's some
Speaker 2: kind of memory going on in very young childhood and infancy,
Speaker 2: but maybe it just like it doesn't have an episodic
Speaker 2: memory component. Maybe it can remember associations and images, but
Speaker 2: maybe not like sequences of events. Or maybe is there
Speaker 2: some weird third option, like we do form memories and
Speaker 2: they're not exactly erased later, but they're sort of fuzzy
Speaker 2: or hard to retrieve for some reason. That that's what
Speaker 2: got me really interested in this exploration today. But of
Speaker 2: course I also got very interested in the question of
Speaker 2: before people could do experiments on this, they must have
Speaker 2: observed childhood development firsthand and had all kinds of questions
Speaker 2: of this sort and probably come up with answers whether
Speaker 2: or not those answers were accurate.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So yeah, let's get in a little bit into
Speaker 1: just sort of some of the history of some of
Speaker 1: some sort of pre modern infant opinions, and also a
Speaker 1: little bit of cultural variation. I think one of the
Speaker 1: things to keep in mind about pre modern and pre
Speaker 1: scientific beliefs about infant memory is that a lot of
Speaker 1: it is going to come down to older beliefs about
Speaker 1: what human infants are and what they are not, And
Speaker 1: so this is all a mixture of things based on
Speaker 1: cultural tradition but also based on observation. I think it
Speaker 1: goes without saying that no matter what may have been
Speaker 1: ultimately recorded in literature ancient people, you know they would
Speaker 1: have applied different insights and different ideas to the experience
Speaker 1: of babies, but some things were obviously going to be
Speaker 1: the same. Babies evoke strong emotions in us. That's just
Speaker 1: part of the way we're hardwired. Babies require a great
Speaker 1: deal of care. Babies cry baby is inherently can't communicate precisely.
Speaker 1: And also, human memories of early childhood or the lack thereof,
Speaker 1: would have been identical more or less to what we
Speaker 1: have now, or at least any differences are not going
Speaker 1: to be based merely on say the timeline, and we'll
Speaker 1: get into some of that in a bit.
Speaker 2: Right. For example, I would really not say that the
Speaker 2: current characteristics of infantile amnesia or memory formation and very
Speaker 2: young children are say, a result of the Internet or
Speaker 2: some other kind of like technological context, especially because we
Speaker 2: know people have been in the more modern era doing
Speaker 2: research on this going back more than one hundred years,
Speaker 2: so before a lot of the sort of like communications
Speaker 2: and technology context we live in today, people were asking, Hey,
Speaker 2: when are people's first memories and what do they remember
Speaker 2: about childhood? And the answers were largely the same as
Speaker 2: what we get when we ask that today.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, So it doesn't seem like there's any expectation
Speaker 1: that there's been significant variation in this, aside from variation
Speaker 1: that occurs for cultural reasons and so forth. But again,
Speaker 1: a lot of this is going to come down to
Speaker 1: how we think about babies. And again it's interesting because
Speaker 1: on one hand, yes, we have this inherent draw towards
Speaker 1: our own young and to the young of our community.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, you know, you often hear
Speaker 1: people talk about older kids, and you'll hear them say, well,
Speaker 1: you remember what it was like when you were that age.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a certain relatability in that. But generally
Speaker 1: they're not saying this about infants or very young toddlers,
Speaker 1: because by and large, we don't remember what it was
Speaker 1: it was like to be that age. We only remember
Speaker 1: the stories of what we were like at that age
Speaker 1: and so forth. Now, examining how people in ancient times,
Speaker 1: for example, thought about babies, thinking about pre modern and
Speaker 1: pre scientific thinking into all of this, you also have
Speaker 1: to take into account infant mortality rates, which were often
Speaker 1: high in ancient times, and I realized that infant mortality
Speaker 1: is not exactly a fun topic. But some of the
Speaker 1: attitudes of the ancient world surrounding the nature of infants
Speaker 1: is more sharply expressed over the subject, or so it seems.
Speaker 1: So we are going to touch on it a little bit,
Speaker 1: at least in passing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's sort of unavoidable for most of human history,
Speaker 2: for most people, just a major fact of life.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So I looked at a few different sources about
Speaker 1: the understanding of infants in ancient Greek and ancient Rome.
Speaker 1: In Childbirth and Infancy in Greek and Roman Antiquity from
Speaker 1: twenty eleven, author Varonech Dawson points out a number of
Speaker 1: interesting things about how these ancient people seems to seem
Speaker 1: to have considered young children based on the evidence we
Speaker 1: have to go on today. And so I want to
Speaker 1: outline some interesting points that they bring up. First of all,
Speaker 1: most of what we know relates to elite children rather
Speaker 1: than the lives of those born into lower classes or
Speaker 1: to enslaved people. Also, we have to think about the
Speaker 1: terminology here. This is fascinating. So you know, basically the
Speaker 1: infant toddlerdynamic and duality. It's interesting and potentially telling in
Speaker 1: that changes in terminology may indicate changes in cultural understanding
Speaker 1: of young children. So you know, certainly there's a difference
Speaker 1: between an infant and a toddler, and we tend to
Speaker 1: sort of we tend to mark that transition point. But
Speaker 1: to what extent is that transition point born out in
Speaker 1: a people's language, and at what point does the language
Speaker 1: potentially shift, etc. Basically just sort of a larger background
Speaker 1: topic to keep in mind, but the big point here
Speaker 1: is that it's most helpful to think of childhood as
Speaker 1: a journey, one that hits different milestones, goes through different stages,
Speaker 1: and that in this in turn alters the way that
Speaker 1: adults view the child and the degree to which they
Speaker 1: can be integrated into society. Also, Dawson points out quote
Speaker 1: in times of high infant mortality, these stages represented steps
Speaker 1: for hope of survival and increasing parental bonding. We'll come
Speaker 1: back to exactly what is meant by that, but basically
Speaker 1: it comes down to, like, how does a culture deal
Speaker 1: with the fact that there is a high infant mortality rate.
Speaker 1: Is there more of a sort of pushing away kind
Speaker 1: of like a ultimately a stoic reaction sort of distancing
Speaker 1: of the infant from the society or making it kind
Speaker 1: of a marginal state, or is there indeed still a
Speaker 1: lot of bonding going on and so forth. Now, with
Speaker 1: the Greek and Roman viewpoints, specifically, what we think of
Speaker 1: as infancy would have probably ended at age two or three,
Speaker 1: with full weaning, increased ability to speak, and at age
Speaker 1: three integration into practiced religion at least at some degree. Now,
Speaker 1: Medically speaking, it was previously supposed that there was next
Speaker 1: to nothing in the literature of ancient Greek and ancient
Speaker 1: Rome to suggest that physicians were concerned with babies except
Speaker 1: in exceptional circumstances. It was thought that babies in general
Speaker 1: were left to the midwives and the mothers. However, Dawson
Speaker 1: stresses that this is no longer really a correct viewpoint,
Speaker 1: based on numerous examples of writings that have come up
Speaker 1: about say, essential diet and hygiene for babies. So I
Speaker 1: think that's interesting, representing a shift in our modern understanding
Speaker 1: about ancient views on infants.
Speaker 2: That they were actually sometimes a more relevant object of
Speaker 2: what was considered medicine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's sort of this, and we'll get into it
Speaker 1: more in just a second. Here but there was this
Speaker 1: understanding of the ancient world based on some significant evidence
Speaker 1: that basically the ruling male elite were saying, like, babies
Speaker 1: that don't not even worth your time, not worth my
Speaker 1: time anyway, call me when it is old enough for
Speaker 1: me to care about it, or if there's if it's exploding,
Speaker 1: then yes, a physician may come and check out the child.
Speaker 1: That sort of thing. Without a doubt, there seems to
Speaker 1: have been far less of a view of baby superiority
Speaker 1: in ancient Greek and ancient Rome. Dawson writes the following
Speaker 1: this is great quote from Hippocrates. To late antiquity, babies
Speaker 1: and toddlers are defined as a category of beings with
Speaker 1: a special morphology and physiology. These characteristics are on the
Speaker 1: whole negative. Newborn babies are generally described as imperfect, weak,
Speaker 1: and ugly.
Speaker 2: Wow perfect yes, oh no. This reminds me of the
Speaker 2: story you've shared many times of your son calling the
Speaker 2: cat a stupid baby or just a baby.
Speaker 1: Maybe when it was just baby, like baby is an
Speaker 1: adjective baby mochi and just a solid burn. As a toddler,
Speaker 1: it's like.
Speaker 2: Peak insult, imperfect, weak and ugly.
Speaker 1: Yeah yee toddlers get it, and so did the grown
Speaker 1: learned men of ancient Greece. So Dawson points a few
Speaker 1: specific authors to underline these views. So Aristotle wrote that
Speaker 1: babies quote are born in a more imperfect condition than
Speaker 1: any other perfected animal, and also that they have poor eyesight.
Speaker 2: Oh well, it depends on what Aristotle means by that.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure the full context, but if he's making
Speaker 2: a distinction between human beings and other animals, I think
Speaker 2: that's a fair observation that human babies are more helpless
Speaker 2: than the newborns of most other animal species.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, I think that's what he's going for here.
Speaker 1: There's another work on colors that is sometimes attributed to Aristotle,
Speaker 1: and in this it's pointed out that babies are ugly
Speaker 1: because or well, it's I'm not sure it says ugly,
Speaker 1: but it points out that they're's Essentially, they're ugly because
Speaker 1: they have red faces and little hair.
Speaker 2: Do you ever get the feeling that like Aristotle might
Speaker 2: have been writing about human babies the same way he
Speaker 2: was writing about like stingrays. It's just like this is
Speaker 2: something he's observed a couple of times and made a
Speaker 2: few notes about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I've seen some pretty hairy little babies before,
Speaker 1: so I mean they think it ferries. Yeah, but yes,
Speaker 1: on the whole they tend not die guess half of
Speaker 1: like a full head of hair or certainly a proper beard. Now.
Speaker 1: Galen was one of numerous physicians to comment on the
Speaker 1: seeming wax like malleability and weakness of the baby. Weakness
Speaker 1: of the baby. Babies are so weak. They're they're weak,
Speaker 1: and they're they're basically made out of wax. Like if
Speaker 1: you don't handle them too much or you will change
Speaker 1: their form completely. They do tend to be doe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true. But also Galen, I can just tell
Speaker 2: this guy did not spend much time holding a baby because,
Speaker 2: like especially Galen, probably at a beard. I've got a beard.
Speaker 2: When when you feel the baby, grab the beard and
Speaker 2: just not leg this. This is the handle for the adult,
Speaker 2: and it will pull until it has a fist full
Speaker 2: of beard hair. You do not walk away with the
Speaker 2: impression of how weak babies are.
Speaker 1: Aristotle also recorded that many babies die within the first
Speaker 1: week and are therefore not named before this period passes.
Speaker 1: And this is a kind of approach to the first
Speaker 1: week or so of a child's life that you see
Speaker 1: reflected in various cultures in various times. Meanwhile, Plutarch just
Speaker 1: wonders if babies are in fact animals, because they're more
Speaker 1: like vegetables. They're more like a plant.
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, plants cry at midnight, plants poop where
Speaker 2: they want to. That's exactly what a plant is.
Speaker 1: Dason adds this line here quote a mineral metaphor substitutes
Speaker 1: for the vegetable one in Chronos's myth, who ate his
Speaker 1: children as soon as they were born and thought a
Speaker 1: stone to be a swaddled nursling. So you know, is
Speaker 1: it a baby is it a stone? Like anyone can
Speaker 1: tell the difference?
Speaker 2: I guess yeah. Is that supposed to be a comment
Speaker 2: on how featureless and uninteresting babies are? Or is that
Speaker 2: myth supposed to be like a joke about Chronos being stupid?
Speaker 1: I mean, granted I was as a modern English speaking human,
Speaker 1: I'm not the intended audience, I guess for the myth,
Speaker 1: but I always interpreted it as being like he's just
Speaker 1: so consumed with this need to destroy his young. You
Speaker 1: know that he's just like just gobbles them up without
Speaker 1: really tasting them, you.
Speaker 2: Know, Yeah, more like he's more machine now than man,
Speaker 2: almost like a he's a baby eating machine. He barely
Speaker 2: notices or has cognizance of what's going in his mouth.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, after expressing some of these, again aristocratic male
Speaker 1: opinions on babies recorded in the literature, I think it's
Speaker 1: a good time to stress something that another author drives
Speaker 1: home as well. And this is from the work of
Speaker 1: Marine Carrol in Infant Death and Burial in Roman Italy
Speaker 1: from twenty fifteen. She points out that we base a
Speaker 1: lot of our understanding of this topic on the writings
Speaker 1: of stoic male, aristocratic literary elite, and also the arguments
Speaker 1: that the remains in Roman cemetery seem to bear this out.
Speaker 1: The I think, quote unquote invisibility of the young child
Speaker 1: in Roman cemeteries.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and unfortunately this is true about a lot of
Speaker 2: things in the ancient world. When you have to consult
Speaker 2: literary texts to get a flavor of ancient life, that's
Speaker 2: necessarily going to be leaving a lot of stuff out
Speaker 2: because of the sexism of like who could receive literary
Speaker 2: education and who was writing texts and stuff at the time.
Speaker 2: You're going to get a lot of aristocratic male perspective.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and certainly in a factor in stoicism, and then
Speaker 1: also the fact that maybe some of them did not
Speaker 1: know how much hair baby had. On the on average,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's it's it's well worth taking into account.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, you do have this this
Speaker 1: argument that lines up with things with the writings of
Speaker 1: say Plutarch, who said that infants quote have no part
Speaker 1: in earth or earthly things, and therefore they don't require
Speaker 1: any of the rites normally performed for the day. So
Speaker 1: you know, there's just kind of this push and pull
Speaker 1: over like what is the status of the infant? And
Speaker 1: we can understand like this like stoic approach that's like, look,
Speaker 1: there's a chance that things aren't going to go well,
Speaker 1: and then therefore one should be prepared for that by
Speaker 1: not fully integrating them into life essentially. But Carroll points
Speaker 1: out that these views do not necessarily represent those of
Speaker 1: of course other classes or certainly mothers during the time period.
Speaker 1: So the seeming invisibility of young children in Italian cemeteries
Speaker 1: of the time period is something that requires like further
Speaker 1: examination and perhaps a little more understanding. As opposed to
Speaker 1: just like well, they weren't considered real things. Also of note,
Speaker 1: I was looking at a paper from twenty twelve, Child
Speaker 1: Exposure in the Roman Empire by W. V. Harris, published
Speaker 1: in the Journal of Roman Studies, pointing out the child
Speaker 1: exposure like the leaving of a child, you know, in
Speaker 1: the wild or out in the open, away from humans,
Speaker 1: that this was widely practiced in the Roman Empire, often
Speaker 1: when quote physical viability and legitimacy were in doubt, but
Speaker 1: that not everyone agreed with the practice. Stoics in particular
Speaker 1: tended to believe that infants should live at the very
Speaker 1: least if they're healthy and legitimate. And certainly there's plenty
Speaker 1: of room for hypocrisy in something like that, But I
Speaker 1: also wonder to what extent it backs up or counters
Speaker 1: the idea that babies in general were considered only halfway real.
Speaker 1: Here's another great chunk going back to from Dawson, going
Speaker 1: back to her paper quote for Aristotle, infants were defined
Speaker 1: as a lower category of beings physically weak, mentally and
Speaker 1: morally inept, with uncontrolled appetites, physical disproportions associate them with animals.
Speaker 1: A heavy upper part explains why children move like quadrupeds,
Speaker 1: says Aristotle. Quote that is why infants cannot walk but
Speaker 1: crawl about, and at the very beginning cannot even crawl,
Speaker 1: but remain where they are, but remain where they are.
Speaker 1: This paper from Duston doesn't really get into memory all
Speaker 1: that much. A lot of it is again we're dealing
Speaker 1: more sort of the overarching views of young children and infants,
Speaker 1: But Dustin does such on memory as well in this part.
Speaker 1: Quote disproportions also explain mental incapacities. The heaviness of a
Speaker 1: large head impairs the impulses of thoughts, and the infant's
Speaker 1: memory is bad. Children are further associated with inferior categories
Speaker 1: of human beings, such as old people physically weaker with
Speaker 1: a poorer memory and less hair, with the insane and
Speaker 1: the drunk with a similar irritable temperament and a disorderly behavior,
Speaker 1: with women irrational, changeable and weak, and even with dwarfs.
Speaker 2: So you ask what did ancient Greek philosophers think about babies?
Speaker 2: And the answer is just a conglomeration of offensive opinions.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, a lot of that is it seems to
Speaker 1: remain in the literature, But that's and also stresses that
Speaker 1: while a lot of this may just sound like, you know,
Speaker 1: babies are gross and the worst, there's also plenty of
Speaker 1: evidence that the seeming deficiencies of babies were also very
Speaker 1: much enjoyed. That it wasn't just like, oh, man, this
Speaker 1: baby's like an old man. It's more like, oh, this
Speaker 1: baby's like an old man, and the bonding still occurred
Speaker 1: even in times of high mortality. Their smiles and their
Speaker 1: skin were written about as being irresistible. And also, I
Speaker 1: thought this was neat quote. Myths of baby heroes transcend
Speaker 1: children's deaths, and this is something perhaps we're thinking about.
Speaker 1: I don't know, we might get in this in the
Speaker 1: second episode. We might come back at a later time,
Speaker 1: but you do have a lot of baby heroes and
Speaker 1: child gods and godlings and various myth and folkloric traditions
Speaker 1: from the likes of baby Krishna to the Christ Child.
Speaker 1: But anyways, sticking on the topic of memories of the
Speaker 1: lack thereof and small children infants, it would seem that
Speaker 1: you know, of course, the lack of memories from one's
Speaker 1: own infancy was very much a known factor, and that
Speaker 1: it would make sense within a viewpoint that babies are
Speaker 1: unfinished and imperfect. They have yet to cross through all
Speaker 1: the stages of becoming truly human, becoming you know, truly
Speaker 1: a part of a family unit, truly a part of society,
Speaker 1: even if they still amuse us and we still have
Speaker 1: a lot of emotions about them. Now, we mentioned earlier
Speaker 1: cultural differences that could impact just how early one remembers
Speaker 1: one's life are what one's earliest memories happened to be,
Speaker 1: and I was looking at an article titled the Culture
Speaker 1: of Memory by Leo Winterman, published by the American Psychological
Speaker 1: Society back in two thousand and five. The author here
Speaker 1: points to research that shows that quote the average age
Speaker 1: of first memories up to two years between different cultures,
Speaker 1: and it seems to come down to the weight and
Speaker 1: importance of memory within a specific cultural system. According to
Speaker 1: Michelle Leichtmann, PhD, cited in the article quote, people who
Speaker 1: grow up in societies that focus on individual personal history,
Speaker 1: like the United States, or ones that focus on personal
Speaker 1: family history like the Maori will have different and often
Speaker 1: earlier childhood memories than people who grow up in cultures that,
Speaker 1: like many Asian cultures, value interdependence rather than personal autonomy.
Speaker 1: So a key nineteen ninety four study from psychologist Mary
Speaker 1: Mullen published in the journal Cognition as more than seven
Speaker 1: hundred Caucasian and Asian or Asian American undergrads to describe
Speaker 1: their earliest memory. On average, Asian and Asian American student
Speaker 1: memories happened six months later. A subsequent study and Know
Speaker 1: there were many subsequent studies that examined different slices of
Speaker 1: all this. In this case from and found a sixteen
Speaker 1: month gap between Caucasian Americans and Native Koreans. These studies
Speaker 1: led to a host of others, and it seems to
Speaker 1: follow the basic social interaction model. Quote. According to this model,
Speaker 1: our autobiographical memories don't develop in a vacuum. Instead, as children,
Speaker 1: we encode our memories of events as we talk over
Speaker 1: those events with the adults in our life. The more
Speaker 1: those adults encourage us to spin an elaborate narrative tale,
Speaker 1: the more likely we are to remember details about the
Speaker 1: event later.
Speaker 2: This absolutely details with much of what I've been reading
Speaker 2: that sort of an interactive rehearsal of memories helps make
Speaker 2: those memories stronger. But sort of the paradox of memory.
Speaker 2: And this is true not just of childhood. I think
Speaker 2: this is true of adult memory as well, is that
Speaker 2: while that produces a stronger memory consolidation and you are
Speaker 2: better able to retrieve that memory later, it also makes
Speaker 2: the memory more subject to contamination by whatever input you're
Speaker 2: getting from the person you're rehearsing it with.
Speaker 1: Or even from outside sources such as advertising. I don't
Speaker 1: know if this is still the case, but many years
Speaker 1: ago I went to the Coca Cola Museum here in
Speaker 1: Atlanta with my mother and there was some bit of advertising.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if it was current advertising or past advertising,
Speaker 1: but the gist of it was Coca Cola. We've always
Speaker 1: been there, like we were a part of your essentially
Speaker 1: saying we were a part of all those memories that
Speaker 1: you hold deer and I often think think of that
Speaker 1: when I'm encounter branding from this company, because I'm because
Speaker 1: it's good, it's really infectious. It does a great job,
Speaker 1: but it is it is kind of like trying to
Speaker 1: worm its way in there, Like do you remember that
Speaker 1: that great memory from your childhood? I bet there was
Speaker 1: a Coca Cola on the table. And even if there wasn't, bam,
Speaker 1: there is now Well.
Speaker 2: You could say it's genius, maybe even insidious, the way
Speaker 2: that they insinuate their branding into inherently nostalgic imagery. So
Speaker 2: like the Santa Claus with the Coca Cola, Yeah, I
Speaker 2: think that's not an accident. That's like to try to
Speaker 2: integrate the brand with your earliest and best feelings from childhood.
Speaker 2: Oh boy, Christmas is coming, here's Santa. And what Santa
Speaker 2: got in his hand a coke? Of course, that's just
Speaker 2: part of the Santa lore.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so so yeah, there's a you could really
Speaker 1: get into into advertising and so forth and all of
Speaker 1: this as well. But yeah, so even within a given culture,
Speaker 1: and they're gonna have this sort of different cultural leanings
Speaker 1: based on what sort of emphasis you place an individual experience.
Speaker 1: But also there's gonna be there are gonna be differences
Speaker 1: even within a culture based on high elaborative and low
Speaker 1: elaborative mothers. And I take this to mean you could
Speaker 1: basically mean any person in an individual's life, but they're
Speaker 1: using mother it's the main example. So basically the question
Speaker 1: is is a child routinely ask for detailed stories about
Speaker 1: their daily life or they ask mostly closed questions. And
Speaker 1: this is interesting think about like yeah. Is the child
Speaker 1: asked to like fully explain their day or is it
Speaker 1: just like did you eat lunch today? Yes? Did you
Speaker 1: eat your snack? Yes? That sort of thing, and not
Speaker 1: to say either approach is better than the other. Life
Speaker 1: is busy and sometimes you just got to make sure
Speaker 1: that your child ate a snack and you don't need
Speaker 1: the full story. But it is interesting to think about,
Speaker 1: like perhaps the necessity for that balance, you know, to
Speaker 1: get a full account of what the day was like,
Speaker 1: as opposed to just like did you do the things
Speaker 1: that were acquired?
Speaker 2: Well, this also connects to some things I was reading
Speaker 2: about how very young children can in fact answer questions
Speaker 2: about things that happened to them recently, or at least
Speaker 2: they typically can. This has been studied, but one thing
Speaker 2: I was reading was that how well, say, I don't
Speaker 2: know a you know, a two and a half year
Speaker 2: old can describe a memory of a recent event depends
Speaker 2: very much on how you elicit the memory from them.
Speaker 2: And you might have seen parents doing this. You know,
Speaker 2: I'm not at that stage yet in parenting, but I've
Speaker 2: seen other parents doing this kind of thing. It's like,
Speaker 2: what did we do on your birthday? You know, did
Speaker 2: we go somewhere? Where did we go? And so you
Speaker 2: can kind of like talk the child through the memory
Speaker 2: in a way that it seems like the child may
Speaker 2: not be able to produce the details and connect them spontaneously.
Speaker 2: Did that make sense or was that?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, no, no, It makes me think of other
Speaker 1: memory exercises where like if one is having like the
Speaker 1: tip of the tongue scenario, where if someone is having
Speaker 1: if you're having difficulty remembering a particular name or whatever,
Speaker 1: like it's better for your memory for you to keep
Speaker 1: trying to guess, or for the person on the other
Speaker 1: end of the conversation to encourage you to guess and
Speaker 1: not to just give it to you. That sort of thing,
Speaker 1: like making the brain work for those details.
Speaker 2: That's true. That was a finding at that episode we did,
Speaker 2: wasn't it that? Like you're more likely to remember the
Speaker 2: detail you're searching for next time if somebody gives you
Speaker 2: a hint. Can you make the connection yourself versus if
Speaker 2: you just look up the answer? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Absolutely. Anyway, and all this, I think it is important
Speaker 1: to mention something that Michelle Likeman points out here, and
Speaker 1: that is again that there's not a wrong direction in
Speaker 1: any of this, the brain remembers what it needs to remember.
Speaker 1: We remember what we need to remember. Social pressure contributes
Speaker 1: to this, but it is what it is now.
Speaker 2: One question I thought we should look at before we
Speaker 2: wrap things up today is like, Okay, we keep talking
Speaker 2: in more general terms about like, well, there's an earlier
Speaker 2: period where most people can't really produce any memories from
Speaker 2: that period of their lives, and then a later period
Speaker 2: where they can. But what are the actual numbers, like
Speaker 2: when does that kick in? This is something that has
Speaker 2: been studied extensively. There are certainly different methods, and I
Speaker 2: think we might be able to add some nuance to
Speaker 2: this answer later on, but it seems to me like
Speaker 2: the sort of magic age is like three to four years.
Speaker 2: About three and a half years is what most studies
Speaker 2: have converged on. And to be clear, also, when we
Speaker 2: talk about childhood amnesia in the scientific literature, it seems
Speaker 2: often to refer to two different things that are related.
Speaker 2: One is the loss of all memories as far as
Speaker 2: we can tell, from before the earliest memory we can produce.
Speaker 2: And then the second thing is the relative scarcity of
Speaker 2: memories from the early years of childhood compared to equivalent
Speaker 2: spans of time from later in life. So, for example,
Speaker 2: even though you have some autobiographical memories from ages six
Speaker 2: to seven, if you are like most people, you will
Speaker 2: have a fewer number of spontaneous memories that you can
Speaker 2: recall from that period than from say, sixteen to seventeen.
Speaker 2: And I thought it was also interesting to just look
Speaker 2: at the different experimental methods for trying to find out
Speaker 2: what people's earliest memory are. There are a number of
Speaker 2: ways to approach this. Sometimes it's done by, say, just
Speaker 2: asking people to describe their earliest memory and estimate at
Speaker 2: what age it took place. That is, of course a
Speaker 2: perfectly good place to start, but putting aside for a
Speaker 2: moment the question of like the accuracy of these memories,
Speaker 2: you could imagine reasons why just asking somebody what is
Speaker 2: your earliest memory might not actually produce their earliest memory.
Speaker 2: For one thing, most people don't keep their memories indexed
Speaker 2: in a sortable form. You know, it's not an Excel
Speaker 2: sheet that has a sort by column for date. And
Speaker 2: so you may have a memory that occurs to you
Speaker 2: in one moment as the earliest you can remember, but
Speaker 2: how do you know in another circumstance, you wouldn't think
Speaker 2: of an earlier one that just didn't occur to you
Speaker 2: at that time.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Plus, I guess it's worth considering that in many,
Speaker 1: but certainly not all cases, you have sort of a
Speaker 1: stability to early childhood. Certainly that is desired that there
Speaker 1: would be sort of a sameness to a lot of
Speaker 1: the early memories. You know, it's like you know one
Speaker 1: or both parents are there, perhaps the immediate physical surroundings
Speaker 1: are the same. So, like, what is going to be
Speaker 1: present in a memory to distinguish it and set it
Speaker 1: apart in the timeline again, unless you go back later
Speaker 1: and then you have encoded it and then you identify it,
Speaker 1: maybe falsely, and say, oh, well, this is a memory of,
Speaker 1: say when we lived at this house or when we
Speaker 1: lived in this town.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that raises important questions about like the characteristics
Speaker 2: of what counts as a memory, Like I wonder if
Speaker 2: there's a sort of boundary being established by the terms
Speaker 2: of the demand for recall. For example, an autobiographical memory
Speaker 2: needs to be something you can put into words and
Speaker 2: explain to somebody else. But do you ever get that
Speaker 2: feeling that you're experiencing nostalgia, but it's not for a
Speaker 2: thing in the outside world. Maybe not for an image
Speaker 2: or an event, but something that isn't really something you
Speaker 2: can put into words. It's like nostalgia for an internal
Speaker 2: state or a feeling that's kind of strange thing. I
Speaker 2: sometimes have that sensation. Of course, when I have that feeling,
Speaker 2: it's totally possible the memory component of the sensation of
Speaker 2: nostalgia could be illusory. But sometimes I wonder if maybe
Speaker 2: feelings like that could be based in really old memories
Speaker 2: that can't be put into words or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm having trouble remembering a specific example of this,
Speaker 1: but I think some of my early memories definitely have
Speaker 1: this component to them. Even if I do remember like
Speaker 1: a basic setting or event around them, there is like
Speaker 1: a there is at least as strong the feeling of
Speaker 1: what it meant. Like. There's one particular early memory I
Speaker 1: have of like running around in circles in a living room,
Speaker 1: around like a dinner, like a dining room table in
Speaker 1: a living room or a dining room that just seemed enormous,
Speaker 1: you know, like a cathedral, And so part of it
Speaker 1: is like these vague memories of what this space looked like,
Speaker 1: but it's also equally met by the exhilaration that is
Speaker 1: remembered of just kind of like this, you know, this
Speaker 1: running around And it is hard to really explain, like
Speaker 1: give what that means, because if I were to run
Speaker 1: around in circles right now, it would certainly not be
Speaker 1: the same feeling. You know, it doesn't relate to other
Speaker 1: memories of physical exertion from other points in my life.
Speaker 2: Oh. But then, to come back to other methods to
Speaker 2: study early memories, another one that seems to be used
Speaker 2: fairly often is the word Q test. So this one's
Speaker 2: pretty interesting. I say a word to you, and then
Speaker 2: I ask you to tell me a memory associated with
Speaker 2: this word. Just any memory. We could try it right now, rob,
Speaker 2: do you want to do it, cheer, let's do it. Okay,
Speaker 2: tell me a memory associated with the word jar.
Speaker 1: Oh, that's easy. I have an early memory of trying
Speaker 1: to get a jar of Maraschino cherries out of the
Speaker 1: refrigerator by myself, and I dropped it and broke it
Speaker 1: or spilled it. I'm not sure if I broke it
Speaker 1: or spilled it, but that is a strong early memory of.
Speaker 2: Mine, Okay. And then from here in the experiment. I
Speaker 2: might ask you for some subsequent details, like you know,
Speaker 2: who was there, did anybody else witness this memory? Et cetera,
Speaker 2: et cetera, And then I would also ask you estimate
Speaker 2: what age you were when this memory happened. But what
Speaker 2: age do you think it was?
Speaker 1: I would say maybe maybe three, But that's just a
Speaker 1: real that's a huge guess. And I think I've actually
Speaker 1: asked my mother about this memory before. And you know,
Speaker 1: this is the kind of thing where like kids have
Speaker 1: things like this happen all the time, they don't necessarily,
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily something a parent is going to specifically remember.
Speaker 1: It makes more of an impact on the child than
Speaker 1: the parent. So I have no idea exactly when this occurred.
Speaker 2: Okay, but this is a good answer. Jar of cherries
Speaker 2: on the floor, maybe spilled, maybe broken. You think you
Speaker 2: were around three? So I keep doing this. I do
Speaker 2: this for a big list of words, maybe with a
Speaker 2: big sample of people, and then you can sort of
Speaker 2: cross reference all of the answers. You get to look
Speaker 2: at what ages the memories tend to come from. And
Speaker 2: you could see by this method that of just making
Speaker 2: up random numbers here, but say by randomly associating memories
Speaker 2: with words, we end up with people telling us about
Speaker 2: twenty percent more memories from ages sixteen to twenty than
Speaker 2: from ages six to ten or something. So I think
Speaker 2: that's a pretty clever method. But anyway, what this research
Speaker 2: tends to converge on is that a really important time
Speaker 2: is roughly the age three to four, or like three
Speaker 2: and a half. Generally, the earliest memories that adults can
Speaker 2: produce are around the ages of three to four, and
Speaker 2: there is not much or nothing from before that, and
Speaker 2: then after that there is a gradual increase in the
Speaker 2: quantity of autobiographical memories from each year of age up
Speaker 2: until maybe like seven or eight, when the autobiographical memory
Speaker 2: stores starts to look more like that the rest of adulthood.
Speaker 2: So for most people looking backwards, memories tend to start
Speaker 2: around three or four, and then you get more of
Speaker 2: them at five, more of them at six, more of
Speaker 2: them at seven, more of them at eight, and then
Speaker 2: you start to reach a more kind of complete adult
Speaker 2: memory set. Now, this doesn't necessarily mean that children before
Speaker 2: the age of three or four produce no autobiographical memories. Instead,
Speaker 2: it seems like there may be a sort of period
Speaker 2: of forgetting, and I thought this was very interesting. Just
Speaker 2: one study I wanted to mention quickly that gets at this.
Speaker 2: It was published in the journal Memory in two thousand
Speaker 2: and five by Dana Van Abama and Patricia Bauer, and
Speaker 2: it's called Autobiographical Memory in Middle Childhood Recollections of the
Speaker 2: Recent and Distant Past. Now, I was looking for the
Speaker 2: full text of the study and I couldn't find it
Speaker 2: before we recorded today, but I did find a summary
Speaker 2: of the findings in a Psychology Today article by an
Speaker 2: author named Vitelli. And basically what happened in the study
Speaker 2: is that children were interviewed about autobiographical events along with
Speaker 2: their mothers at the age of three, and they produced
Speaker 2: details about those events. So something they did, you know,
Speaker 2: a trip out to do something, and they could recall
Speaker 2: things about their own past, so they had some form
Speaker 2: of episodic memory. They could be prompted to retrieve details
Speaker 2: about these episodic memories. But those same children were brought
Speaker 2: back years later at ages seven, eight, and nine, exactly
Speaker 2: the range at which there seems to be a profound
Speaker 2: forgetting of early childhood memories. So from vitelli summary here,
Speaker 2: the seven year olds could recall sixty percent of the
Speaker 2: same autobiographical events they were called at three, but the
Speaker 2: eight and nine year olds could only recall thirty six
Speaker 2: and thirty eight percent of events, So there seems to
Speaker 2: be a major drop off of memories from this early
Speaker 2: period around the ages of seven, eight, and nine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think this kind of matches up with some
Speaker 1: stuff I've observed with my own son, mostly in talking
Speaker 1: about things that we watched together when he was in
Speaker 1: like one age group versus another, so and and it
Speaker 1: varies I think from picture to picture, Like there's some
Speaker 1: movies that maybe we've we've talked about more that have
Speaker 1: become more like of sort of a regular part of
Speaker 1: one's life, and then there are other movies where you
Speaker 1: like watch it, forget it, and then maybe truly forget
Speaker 1: it and then come back and experience it again.
Speaker 2: Now, why patterns like this emerge is something I think
Speaker 2: we'll have to get into more when we come back
Speaker 2: in subsequent parts of the series. I'm not sure how
Speaker 2: many we're going to go to. We'll have at least
Speaker 2: one more part, maybe maybe a couple more.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's certainly going to be a plenty to get
Speaker 1: into for a part two, possibly a part three, But
Speaker 1: as we often have pointed out, we're we're hesitant to
Speaker 1: say this will definitely go to a certain number of
Speaker 1: episodes because we're often just a little unsure where we're
Speaker 1: going to cut it off. Well, how about you, Joe's
Speaker 1: we close out this episode. What's what comes to mind
Speaker 1: is your earliest jar related memory? Jars only, please, and
Speaker 1: if it even if it's from the last five years,
Speaker 1: that's cool too.
Speaker 2: Well to bore you with dreadful cliche. I think catching
Speaker 2: fireflies in a jar that is very early. We did
Speaker 2: that a lot when I was a kid in our
Speaker 2: front yard. We had lots of them. I think I
Speaker 2: also have very early memories of pickle jars, because I
Speaker 2: recall from early childhood being really into pickles pickled cucumbers,
Speaker 2: like a like a Clawson's pickle jar.
Speaker 1: Oh oh yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, clearly I had more
Speaker 1: I guess the sweet tooth as a child, but my
Speaker 1: son has always been super into pickles of all different varieties,
Speaker 1: from the the little cornishans to the big dill pickles,
Speaker 1: to the big bread and butter pickles, to the slices,
Speaker 1: all of it.
Speaker 2: Though with both of those, I guess those are just
Speaker 2: sort of like ambiguous continue states of childhood. Catching fireflies
Speaker 2: in jars. It's just something that happened often. I don't
Speaker 2: remember a particular instance of it. Same with admiring the
Speaker 2: pickle jar and wanting its contents. If I had to
Speaker 2: produce a more I don't know, a direct autobiographical specific memory,
Speaker 2: it'd probably be a more recent one. I don't remember.
Speaker 2: If I think you asked me for my earliest but
Speaker 2: if I were just doing the wordqu test, i'd probably say, oh,
Speaker 2: from when I was thirty five and I made and
Speaker 2: I made kim chi and a large jar on my table,
Speaker 2: and I remember how it smelled and all that.
Speaker 1: Oh nice. Well, you know, I think it's worth telling everyone, like,
Speaker 1: go out now and create some positive jar based memories
Speaker 1: with your children, even if they're grown now. It's never
Speaker 1: too late to create a jar based memory. All right. Well,
Speaker 1: on that note, we're going to go and close up
Speaker 1: this episode, but we'll be back with more on this topic,
Speaker 1: and in the meantime, certainly right in with your thoughts
Speaker 1: on all of this, and yeah, if you want to
Speaker 1: share some of your earliest memories with us and sort
Speaker 1: of attempt to define when these memories occurred, and if
Speaker 1: you have any, if you've been able to dig around
Speaker 1: and to ask other people to sort of prove them out,
Speaker 1: to see if they are in fact largely authentic or
Speaker 1: if they've been augmented in any way. Yeah, we'd love
Speaker 1: to hear.
Speaker 2: From everyone throughout these episodes, but this is going to
Speaker 2: produce a skewed sample because we're going to hear from
Speaker 2: everybody who's like, I can remember being one, But people
Speaker 2: aren't going to write in to tell us I don't
Speaker 2: remember being one.
Speaker 1: No, right, you can write in with that if you're like,
Speaker 1: my earliest memory is being you know, five or older whatever,
Speaker 1: right in. Like we said, there is no wrong answer here.
Speaker 1: The people who claim to remember being born, it doesn't
Speaker 1: mean their brain is better, their memory is better than
Speaker 1: another individual. Again, we're going to continue to discuss this
Speaker 1: as as we explore this topic. No wrong answers, all right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we close it out. Will just remind you that
Speaker 1: core episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind publish on
Speaker 1: Tuesdays and Thursdays, and the Stuff to Blow Your Mind
Speaker 1: podcast feed on Mondays. We do listener mail. On Wednesdays,
Speaker 1: we do a short form Monster Factor Artifact episode, and
Speaker 1: on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to just
Speaker 1: talk about a weird film and oh and this week,
Speaker 1: I think it's going to be a pretty fun one
Speaker 1: that will tie in with early childhood memories for many people,
Speaker 1: because I think we do form a lot of early
Speaker 1: childhood memories based on movies we're exposed to. So perhaps
Speaker 1: we'll get into a bat a little bit as we
Speaker 1: discussed this week's title.
Speaker 2: Huge Thanks to our audio producer JJ Posway. If you
Speaker 2: would like to get in touch with us with feedback
Speaker 2: on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic
Speaker 2: for the future, or just to say hello, you can
Speaker 2: email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 2: dot com.
Speaker 3: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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