Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 2: And I'm Joe McCormick, and we are back finally with
Speaker 2: part three of our series on childhood amnesia. We had
Speaker 2: a bit of an interruption in the series last week
Speaker 2: to first of all, to some sick days and then
Speaker 2: to a scheduled interview. But now we return to finish
Speaker 2: off the series, so I thought we should do a
Speaker 2: brief refresher on the stuff we talked about in the
Speaker 2: past couple of episodes here. So the term childhood amnesia
Speaker 2: refers to a couple of different facts, which are, first
Speaker 2: of all, the fact that most adults cannot conjure any genuine,
Speaker 2: first hand episodic memories from before roughly the age of three.
Speaker 2: And there are some minor variations in that age horizon
Speaker 2: that have been observed to correlate with variables like gender.
Speaker 2: Girls tend to have slightly earlier memories culture. Different cultures
Speaker 2: have on average different memory horizons, but on average we
Speaker 2: can say most people's earliest memories tend to be somewhere
Speaker 2: in the range of three years old or between three
Speaker 2: or four. And then the other fact is that once
Speaker 2: we do start having memories, for the next four to
Speaker 2: five years after that, we have fewer memories than would
Speaker 2: be predicted by the normal rate of forgetting. That holds
Speaker 2: true throughout the rest of your life. So first you've
Speaker 2: got no memories usually, and then you've got fewer memories,
Speaker 2: and then finally the regular rate of forgetting kicks in,
Speaker 2: maybe somewhere around seven or eight or so. Now, some
Speaker 2: people do claim to have much earlier memories, and we've
Speaker 2: heard from some of them in email. Even some people
Speaker 2: claim to have memories even up to and before birth,
Speaker 2: and you know, it's impossible.
Speaker 1: To rule that out.
Speaker 2: It's possible in some cases people do have those memories.
Speaker 2: But these claims also have to be considered alongside the
Speaker 2: fact that research shows it is very easy to create
Speaker 2: the false impression of a childhood memory, spurred by all
Speaker 2: kinds of external prompting, anything from a photo, whether a
Speaker 2: real photo or a doctored one, a story told by
Speaker 2: a parent. And it's clear that these false memories implanted
Speaker 2: later in life in many cases feel completely genuine to us,
Speaker 2: even if they are fabricated purely for the purpose of
Speaker 2: an experiment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, So we want to continue to drive that
Speaker 1: home that to whatever extent a memory is accurate, augmented, fabricated,
Speaker 1: et cetera, that doesn't take away from the subjective reality
Speaker 1: of the memory and the importance of the memory, or
Speaker 1: the or the pain of the memory.
Speaker 2: Well sure, you know, one of the ways I would
Speaker 2: put it is that like the fact that someone has
Speaker 2: a false memory, as in they have a memory of
Speaker 2: an event that did not actually happen, does not mean
Speaker 2: that they're like lying it. You know, like we literally
Speaker 2: cannot tell the difference between real memories involves memories in
Speaker 2: many cases.
Speaker 1: Right and I think it's safe to say that the
Speaker 1: many memories, if not all memories, are false to some degree.
Speaker 2: Right now. In previous parts, we also talked about some
Speaker 2: of the experimental methods used to test for memory at
Speaker 2: early ages, including you know, straightforward earliest memory prompts, tell
Speaker 2: me your earliest memory, things like the word Q test,
Speaker 2: so tell me a memory associated with the following word.
Speaker 2: We use the example of jar and so forth. Now,
Speaker 2: some research we discussed in previous episodes made a pretty
Speaker 2: convincing case, at least to me, that the explanation is
Speaker 2: not that the brain is incapable of forming memories before
Speaker 2: the average age of three or four. One of the
Speaker 2: other studies we talked about included a scenario in which
Speaker 2: three year olds could produce details about recent events in
Speaker 2: their lives when interviewed along with their mothers, showing that
Speaker 2: they did have memories of recent things that had happened,
Speaker 2: and these memories could be elicited with cues from parents.
Speaker 2: Though it seems in a lot of cases children this
Speaker 2: young will not offer details from memory spontaneously, but if
Speaker 2: you kind of coax it out of them, they can
Speaker 2: produce details on their own that show they do remember things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, plusive mom is there to help you know, right.
Speaker 2: But when those very same kids were interviewed years later,
Speaker 2: after having been able to produce memories about recent events
Speaker 2: at age three, between the ages of seven and nine,
Speaker 2: many of those memories of early events were lost, and
Speaker 2: a lot more were lost by the ages of eight
Speaker 2: and nine than were lost by the age of seven.
Speaker 2: So there appears to be in later childhood kind of
Speaker 2: a period of rapid massive forgetting, where a lot of
Speaker 2: our earliest memories kind of vanish, like memories of a dream.
Speaker 2: So the big question is why is it that many
Speaker 2: of these earliest memories, or what memories exist of earliest events,
Speaker 2: cannot be produced later in life, either later in childhood
Speaker 2: or especially in adulthood. There have been a lot of
Speaker 2: attempts to answer this question. There, of course, is still
Speaker 2: a lot of controversy about it. It is not a
Speaker 2: settled debate. But many of the proposed answers are based
Speaker 2: in the developing structure of the brain. And while I
Speaker 2: think there is absolutely something to these arguments, the neurodevelopmental
Speaker 2: structural arguments, they don't exactly mean that the immature brain
Speaker 2: cannot make memories yet, because again we as we've seen,
Speaker 2: sometimes you can get younger children to provide details about
Speaker 2: recent events, and also young children can show examples of learning,
Speaker 2: say learning how to manipulate a simple mechanism in a toy,
Speaker 2: in experiments that show that they do have memories that
Speaker 2: in some cases last for weeks months, even before the
Speaker 2: age of three, so there is some remembering going on. Instead,
Speaker 2: it seems to me more likely that what's happening here
Speaker 2: is the memories that the brain makes at age one
Speaker 2: or two are prone to more rapid forgetting than the
Speaker 2: kinds of memories we would make at age eleven or
Speaker 2: twelve or Also, those memories might be different than the
Speaker 2: memories made in later life in a way that makes
Speaker 2: them more difficult to retrieve after we age passed that
Speaker 2: memory horizon. So for the neurodevelopmental structural arguments, we looked
Speaker 2: at one paper in Part two arguing that the hippocampal
Speaker 2: memory system is actually very active in the first few
Speaker 2: years of life. That's the normal memory system. A lot
Speaker 2: is going on there when you're two years old or so.
Speaker 2: But this paper argued that instead of making memories of
Speaker 2: the kind that will be stored for the rest of
Speaker 2: your life, what it's primarily doing with the processing of
Speaker 2: information from experiences is learning how to learn. And complementary
Speaker 2: to this, I think one structural developmental explanation's been offered
Speaker 2: is that a lot of early autobiographical memories may be
Speaker 2: lost due to the rapid rate of neurogenesis during childhood.
Speaker 2: So as new brain cells are formed, especially in the hippocampus,
Speaker 2: this may erode the stability of the structural basis of
Speaker 2: existing memories. So, you know, the hippo campus is developing rapidly.
Speaker 2: You're sort of like you know, rebuilding the house constantly
Speaker 2: in real time, in which case the rooms that existed,
Speaker 2: you know, a year ago, might not really exist anymore
Speaker 2: as rooms down the road.
Speaker 1: It's almost heartbreaking to think about that with common memories.
Speaker 2: Of the house is getting bigger. You know, you can
Speaker 2: put more in it, but you're also dismantling as you do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I guess it's like you're thinking of it
Speaker 1: in terms of the young child. It's like the house
Speaker 1: that is being built is going to be magnificent as well,
Speaker 1: and it's built on the bones of the house that
Speaker 1: came before, So you can't get too sentimental about that
Speaker 1: which is being lost as a necessary part of the
Speaker 1: child's maturing. But I still reserve the right to cry
Speaker 1: a little bit.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, well, if you're recalled. I got interested in
Speaker 2: this whole idea because of a story about my daughter,
Speaker 2: who is actually I said five months last time. You know,
Speaker 2: she's coming up on six months now, wow, And we
Speaker 2: were trying to figure out Okay, so we've been really
Speaker 2: making her laugh a lot by dropping a cloth on
Speaker 2: her face. She thinks this is hilarious. Just lay her
Speaker 2: down on the blanket and drop the cloth from above
Speaker 2: and we were like, is she going to remember that
Speaker 2: she thought this was funny? Will she be able to
Speaker 2: explain why she thought it was funny when she's older,
Speaker 2: And unfortunately it breaks my heart. I think the answer
Speaker 2: is probably not.
Speaker 1: Still, these are prime years to just kill it as
Speaker 1: a dad standout, so it just keep developing that material.
Speaker 2: But anyway, so while the while the overall causes of
Speaker 2: childhood amnesia are still being debated in the scientific literature,
Speaker 2: I'm very one over that at least one of the
Speaker 2: major causes probably is the neurodevelopmental issue we talked about
Speaker 2: in the last episode, the hippocampus coming online and developing.
Speaker 2: Of course, it also seems plausible that it's a phenomenon
Speaker 2: with multiple contributing causes, and maybe some are based not
Speaker 2: just in the physical development of the brain, but possibly
Speaker 2: in some more externally visible developmental milestones, maybe based in
Speaker 2: the environment and things we learn. And so I thought,
Speaker 2: before we move away from this topic, we should explore
Speaker 2: a few of those ideas as well. So another factor
Speaker 2: I've read about linked to childhood amnesia, possibly explaining elements
Speaker 2: of it is language. This seems like an obvious place
Speaker 2: to go. The language and the linguistic environment in which
Speaker 2: a child grows up. What if the extent to which
Speaker 2: we record experiences as memories in the form in which
Speaker 2: they're stored, and our later ability to retrieve and make
Speaker 2: sense of those memories is in some way dependent on language.
Speaker 2: The typical childhood memory horizon tends to come pretty much
Speaker 2: right in the middle of a period of rapid development
Speaker 2: of language skills and the acquisition of vocabulary. So could
Speaker 2: it be that the adult capacity for memory greatly depends
Speaker 2: on the use of words and concepts that we gain
Speaker 2: during this language acquisition period. Could be coincidence, but developing
Speaker 2: skills and manipulating different types of subjects and predicates I
Speaker 2: think could play a role in the onset of autobiographical
Speaker 2: memories that persist over time, because language obviously plays a
Speaker 2: major role in how we as adults remember and tell
Speaker 2: autobiographical memories. Like you ever, notice how when you tell
Speaker 2: a story from memory you often end up using the
Speaker 2: same or similar words to do so. Why is that?
Speaker 2: I mean? Even if so, you can understand how if
Speaker 2: you are, like reporting speech in a memory, you would
Speaker 2: want to use the same words to do so because
Speaker 2: you're reporting what somebody said. But so you're reporting a
Speaker 2: non verbal event, just like a walk you went on
Speaker 2: and things you saw. Very often you use the same
Speaker 2: or similar words to do so, or at least I
Speaker 2: think I do, and most people I notice seem to do.
Speaker 2: Would this be your experience?
Speaker 1: Also, yeah, and I do. It kind of brings me
Speaker 1: back to the topic of Dad stand up comedian, because
Speaker 1: I wonder, like, to a large extent, it's like you
Speaker 1: keep retelling a story more or less the same way
Speaker 1: because you know what's really working, you know, like what, yeah,
Speaker 1: what makes it more dramatic, what makes it more funny?
Speaker 1: Which you know, how you can frame it in a
Speaker 1: way that also brings to mind, like scenes from movies
Speaker 1: or something. So yeah, yeah, I think there's a lot
Speaker 1: of that going on.
Speaker 2: Oh well, it's interesting you bring up the role of
Speaker 2: entertainment and the language used to relate a memory. That'll
Speaker 2: come up again in just a minute. But yeah, so
Speaker 2: I think I would acknowledge that certain types of vocabulary
Speaker 2: might actually make the difference between the ability to coherently
Speaker 2: remember an event and recall it years later versus that,
Speaker 2: you know, the characteristics that often come up when people
Speaker 2: are describing their very earliest memories, even the ones we've
Speaker 2: heard of from listeners in the email we got after
Speaker 2: the first couple of parts, like the kind of rare, fragmented,
Speaker 2: decontextualized sensory memories that people often produce as their very
Speaker 2: earliest those have a very different character than a lot
Speaker 2: of later memories, and that may it seems to me
Speaker 2: like those differences could correlate with not really having the
Speaker 2: language to organize them as memories at the time they're formed.
Speaker 2: But if language does play an important role in establishing
Speaker 2: the capacity for long term memories about your life, what
Speaker 2: if it's not just conceptual vocabulary. Another way language could
Speaker 2: have some thing to do with memory in early childhood
Speaker 2: is narrative. So when you are asked to explain a
Speaker 2: memory from childhood, for example, you know, what's the first
Speaker 2: time you can remember swimming in the ocean, you could
Speaker 2: say I was in Florida, I was about three, Or
Speaker 2: you could say, well, I was with my mom and
Speaker 2: dad and we were in Florida and the sand was white,
Speaker 2: and I remember I saw a crab and it scared me,
Speaker 2: but my dad told me it was safe and the
Speaker 2: crab wouldn't chase me. And then the water was cold.
Speaker 2: It was colder than the bath, and then saltwater got
Speaker 2: in my nose and I didn't like that at first,
Speaker 2: but then I did. And then later we went to
Speaker 2: dinner at a restaurant and my dad got steamed crabs,
Speaker 2: and he remembered the crab on the beach and he
Speaker 2: kept teasing me. He made the crab creep up on
Speaker 2: me on the table.
Speaker 1: Oh, is this an actual memory for you?
Speaker 2: No, I just made it up, But it seems like
Speaker 2: it could.
Speaker 1: Be, because I mean, you do have a certain fascination
Speaker 1: with crabs. So if this were a legitimate memory, perhaps Joe,
Speaker 1: perhaps we were retrieving this memory through the exercise of podcasting.
Speaker 2: This explains everything. It's how I got corm and brain
Speaker 2: and now it's just leaking out in a made up
Speaker 2: story right here. But no, so, at least in the
Speaker 2: way you tell stories from childhood, there is a wide
Speaker 2: range of stylistic flexibility. You could mention things in a dry,
Speaker 2: informational manner, reporting just where you were and what happened,
Speaker 2: or you could offer information more in the kind of
Speaker 2: narrative style that people enjoy and make meaning out of
Speaker 2: when they tell stories to each other. And you could
Speaker 2: call this distinction sort of reporting versus reminiscing, you know,
Speaker 2: with the storytelling being more social in nature and more
Speaker 2: entertainment focused. Honestly, So that comes back to your thing
Speaker 2: about having a certain format of the memory that is
Speaker 2: based around the language you've found is best to express
Speaker 2: it for entertainment value or for communicating what you're trying
Speaker 2: to get across.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. And exaggeration also, I find is also a
Speaker 1: tool you often see employed sometimes, I guess at later
Speaker 1: ages you see it used intentionally, intentionally exaggerating the emotional
Speaker 1: context of an event in order to make a better
Speaker 1: story out of it. Though I've also seen much younger
Speaker 1: children do that. I remember and this was like a
Speaker 1: birthday party I took my son to and there's a
Speaker 1: slipping slide. Tensions were running high, I think, and an
Speaker 1: adult went down the slipping slide, and then the birthday
Speaker 1: boy exclaimed, this is a disaster, and see'd rather perturbed
Speaker 1: by the whole scenario. I don't know how that experience
Speaker 1: matured or state or it sticks stuck around as a memory,
Speaker 1: but like that kind of exaggeration I can imagine could
Speaker 1: make it if it was truly viewed as a disaster
Speaker 1: as a catastrophe of a non child going down the
Speaker 1: slip and slide.
Speaker 2: Well, just think about yeah, if that child later tells
Speaker 2: that story, all the different ways that the story could
Speaker 2: be loaded. I mean, it could be loaded with like humor,
Speaker 2: sort of ironic reflection on how one feels as a child,
Speaker 2: or I don't know, maybe if you mature a certain way,
Speaker 2: you might still take it very seriously and be upset
Speaker 2: about the slip and slide. But there's all this loading
Speaker 2: in stories that is not just merely reporting the facts
Speaker 2: about an event, but to make the facts reported make
Speaker 2: sense within some broader story. You might call this having
Speaker 2: the facts contexted. That's how it was expressed in the
Speaker 2: abstract of a paper I was looking at. But you
Speaker 2: also make evaluative statements and implications about those facts. So
Speaker 2: not just why happened, but I felt X about why.
Speaker 2: And I've read numerous sources alleging that there could be
Speaker 2: a link between the narrative reminiscing style of say the
Speaker 2: family or the environment in which a child grows up
Speaker 2: and the age at which those children form lasting memories.
Speaker 2: I was reading about this in one article in the
Speaker 2: Berkeley Greater Good magazine by Gene Shinsky and another article
Speaker 2: in the BBC from twenty sixteen by Zaria Gorvitt. These
Speaker 2: were essentially making the link that some researchers think more elaborate,
Speaker 2: coherent narratives could cause children to have memories that last longer.
Speaker 2: In one example was cited in that BBC article. It
Speaker 2: was a paper done by the Cornell University psychology professor
Speaker 2: Chi Wang, who was the author of a paper called
Speaker 2: culture Effects on Adult's Earliest childhood Recollection and Self Description
Speaker 2: Implications for the Relation between Memory and the Self published
Speaker 2: in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in two
Speaker 2: thousand and one, and this found that by comparing childhood
Speaker 2: stories told by Chinese and American college students, American students
Speaker 2: stories tended to be longer, more elaborate, with more self
Speaker 2: focused evaluations, whereas the Chinese stories were more restrained and factual.
Speaker 2: And also the average earliest memories of the American students
Speaker 2: were a little bit earlier. And this personally squared with
Speaker 2: Wong's experience of growing up in China, where she said
Speaker 2: that the cultural norm was that there was less emphasis
Speaker 2: on stories of early childhood memories and she gives a
Speaker 2: quote to the BBC saying, if society is telling you
Speaker 2: those memories are important to you, you'll hold on to them.
Speaker 2: And this also relates to cross cultural studies saying that
Speaker 2: some of the examples of the people on average the
Speaker 2: earliest childhood memories tend to be people of the Maori culture,
Speaker 2: and these same studies find that Maori families tend to
Speaker 2: place a lot of emphasis on elaborate narrative storytelling in
Speaker 2: the past. So I thought this was interesting that this
Speaker 2: could connect to some of the differences we've already read
Speaker 2: about and I think talked about in the first episode
Speaker 2: about cross culture differences in the age of the earliest memories,
Speaker 2: and also gender differences, because there have been some studies
Speaker 2: showing that girls tend to have slightly earlier memories on
Speaker 2: average than boys, and that girls in childhood tend to
Speaker 2: relate stories in a more contexted and evaluative manner. But
Speaker 2: whatever the particulars of how it works, it's certainly not
Speaker 2: hard for me to imagine that the storytelling environment in
Speaker 2: which you grow up plays a large role on what
Speaker 2: and how you remember things from your earliest childhood.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it's fascinating, and something also Just to keep
Speaker 1: in mind too, that I remember one of the sources
Speaker 1: I quoted in maybe the first episode mentioned, and that
Speaker 1: is that there's no right or wrong way. Like earlier
Speaker 1: memories of childhood versus later memories, neither one is healthier
Speaker 1: or more correct. The brain remembers what it needs to remember.
Speaker 2: Right and while playing on that, one way to interpret
Speaker 2: these findings, if they are correct, is that maybe by
Speaker 2: inhabiting an environment where there is a lot of elaborate
Speaker 2: narrative storytelling that involves a lot of contexting of events
Speaker 2: and including evaluations, that is an environment that tells the
Speaker 2: child that they need to remember things in that manner
Speaker 2: and thus makes them easier to retrieve and relate later on.
Speaker 2: Of course, the interesting thing being that again this is
Speaker 2: all coming back to autobiographical memories, the kind of memories
Speaker 2: for events in your life that, like you can later
Speaker 2: retell as stories. And this doesn't necessarily correspond to other
Speaker 2: types of memory, like say, memory of how to do something,
Speaker 2: you know, memories that we often think of not as
Speaker 2: quote memory but as learning. All right, So, the language
Speaker 2: based memory development idea has been around for a long
Speaker 2: time and it has its proponents, though I think also
Speaker 2: it has its critics, and I don't think we should
Speaker 2: place too much emphasis on things like the role of language,
Speaker 2: because one big reason here is that some analogs to
Speaker 2: infantile amnesia have been discovered in animals like rats. You know,
Speaker 2: so there are rat experiments showing kind of similar patterns
Speaker 2: of forgetting of the earliest experiences as rats age into adulthood.
Speaker 2: Rats of course never acquire language, but show some similar patterns.
Speaker 2: So it's clear that language is not the deciding factor,
Speaker 2: but may play a role in, say, the timing of
Speaker 2: different stages of memory acquisition. Another older idea that might
Speaker 2: still have something to do with childhood amnesia what about
Speaker 2: the role of what researchers have called the cognitive self.
Speaker 2: I was reading about this in a paper called on
Speaker 2: Resolving the Enigma of Infantile Amnesia by Mark Howe and
Speaker 2: Mary Courage published in Psychological Bulletin in nineteen ninety three,
Speaker 2: and they discussed the idea of what if the crucial
Speaker 2: factor in the establishment of lasting autobiographical memories is the
Speaker 2: development of the concept of I and me, related in
Speaker 2: a way to the concept of theory of mind, understanding
Speaker 2: that your mind is different from the minds of others,
Speaker 2: that you know things other people don't know, and have
Speaker 2: thoughts and feelings other people don't have, and that they
Speaker 2: likewise know things and have thoughts and feelings that you
Speaker 2: cannot share in unless they tell you. Under this proposal,
Speaker 2: it's not until we have mastered the concept of a
Speaker 2: self different from others that we're able to organize our
Speaker 2: memories into a sensical form that can be retrieved across time.
Speaker 2: How encourage right in their conclusion quote. A series of
Speaker 2: significant developmental events take place when infants are between eighteen
Speaker 2: and thirty months of age that prepare them to talk
Speaker 2: about personally experienced events. First, at about eighteen months of age,
Speaker 2: infants learned to recognize their features in the mirror. The
Speaker 2: next acquisition is a more advanced representation of the self,
Speaker 2: reflected in the pronomial reference to the self as I
Speaker 2: and me. In the early months of the second year, Finally,
Speaker 2: the child learns to talk about immediate and then more
Speaker 2: distant past events in narrative the language of autobiographical memory.
Speaker 2: Both narrative and autobiographical memory continue to develop in structure, organization,
Speaker 2: and content over the preschool years, but by that time
Speaker 2: infantile amnesia is indeed a phenomenon of the past. And
Speaker 2: so this one's a little bit different because this one
Speaker 2: does not depend while it's related to language, their idea
Speaker 2: of the concept of the cognitive self does not rely
Speaker 2: entirely on language, and they think there are ways that
Speaker 2: the cognitive self can be demonstrated before a child acquires
Speaker 2: the words in which to express it. But they they
Speaker 2: think that the child needs a concept of self and
Speaker 2: I separate from the world and the events in the
Speaker 2: world in order to put the memories into a form
Speaker 2: that can later be accessed and expressed.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, because it sounds like without that,
Speaker 1: there's no there's no like weight, there's no structure. It's
Speaker 1: just like memories of potentially of just environments and in
Speaker 1: groups of people, without the actual connection of like this
Speaker 1: that this is a value because I am at the
Speaker 1: center of it.
Speaker 2: That's right, And that would connect again to the ideas
Speaker 2: about narrative and maybe the important role of say, evaluative
Speaker 2: statements about memories helping us to be able to recall
Speaker 2: them later.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The child is yeah, oh sorry, Yeah, the child
Speaker 1: is like, it's nice, but what is in it for me? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I remember it.
Speaker 2: So in the end, when I'm looking at all these explanations,
Speaker 2: I don't know. Of course, I'm you know, I'm not
Speaker 2: a neuros scientist or a developmental psychologist, so I don't
Speaker 2: pretend to be expressing expertise on this, but I just say, personally,
Speaker 2: I feel pretty convinced by the neurodevelopmental arguments, the ones
Speaker 2: about the development of the hippocampal memory system, that there's
Speaker 2: clearly some kind of like structural change going on in
Speaker 2: the brain in the early years of life, and this
Speaker 2: this plays a major role in why we don't retain
Speaker 2: all these memories until later life. As far as these
Speaker 2: explanations based in language and the cognitive self and stuff,
Speaker 2: I don't know. It seems like the evidence for them
Speaker 2: is a little bit softer, but I'm very interested in them,
Speaker 2: and they seem plausible to me at least. M yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: But basically, all the papers I read on this subject,
Speaker 2: or you know the old cliche, they're calling for more research,
Speaker 2: like you know, widely acknowledging this is not a settled question,
Speaker 2: and so you know that we have some interesting ideas,
Speaker 2: but ultimately we don't know for sure. Childhood amnesia happens,
Speaker 2: and maybe more research could help settle it.
Speaker 1: Now, we've discussed false memories a good bit in these episodes,
Speaker 1: you know, talking about very early childhood memories that are
Speaker 1: to some degree falsified unaugmented, and you know, I think
Speaker 1: it's easy to mostly focus on the potential pitfalls of
Speaker 1: false memories or to land somewhere on sort of like
Speaker 1: the neutral impact that they may have. But I also
Speaker 1: wanted to tackle the question of just like why is
Speaker 1: it also advantageous to have false memories? Like why would
Speaker 1: this it all be adaptive? Is there an upside to
Speaker 1: this mental ability? Or is this just kind of junk?
Speaker 1: Is this just kind of a byproduct of the way
Speaker 1: that our brains have developed.
Speaker 2: Well, I would say that this is not the only
Speaker 2: way in which our brains consistently generate false beliefs. And
Speaker 2: I think when our brains do that, they're usually doing
Speaker 2: it for a reason.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and yeah, certainly this ties into larger issues
Speaker 1: of how we falsify beliefs, how we falsify memories, how
Speaker 1: we obsess over perhaps impractical ideas of what the future
Speaker 1: might hold. You know, I'm reminded of a couple of
Speaker 1: quotes here. I believe it was Alan Rogerley who commented
Speaker 1: that he may have been quoting somebody else actually, that
Speaker 1: repetition and recollection are the same force, but in different directions.
Speaker 1: I remember too, I think our Scott Baker commenting that
Speaker 1: science fiction and fantasy kind of both fulfill the same purpose,
Speaker 1: but going either into the past or into the future,
Speaker 1: sort of constructing an unrealistic but far fetched version of
Speaker 1: the future based on where we are now, and then
Speaker 1: the other is a version of the past that is
Speaker 1: equally fantastic and illogical and obviously not true, but telling
Speaker 1: about where we are in the present. So you know,
Speaker 1: we're these strange creatures that see ourselves as occupying this space,
Speaker 1: this now, and remembering what came before, predicting what is
Speaker 1: about to come. And then it's kind of open to
Speaker 1: discussion if there is actually a now point, like are
Speaker 1: we actually there? Or is that also a construction of
Speaker 1: the past. But any rate, I wanted to see what
Speaker 1: experts were saying about this, so I was reading a
Speaker 1: paper titled false Memories, What the Hell Are They For?
Speaker 1: By Aaron J. Newman and D. Stephen Lindsay published in
Speaker 1: Applied Cognitive Psychology Back in two thousand and nine, and
Speaker 1: I thought the author's made some good points here, and
Speaker 1: a number of these are going to be things that
Speaker 1: you know, we've discussed on the show before, or I
Speaker 1: guess generally understood about memory in the brain. But first
Speaker 1: of all, this is all part of mental our mental
Speaker 1: time travel abilities that enable us to experience our memories
Speaker 1: of the past with a feeling of subjective clarity, while
Speaker 1: also enabling us to produce mental models of potential futures. Quote.
Speaker 1: Recalling an autobiographical experience involves piecing together activated memorial information
Speaker 1: while at the same time making inferences based on other
Speaker 1: information available to us. Biases, stereotypes, and expectations that act
Speaker 1: on our current thinking also act on inferences that we
Speaker 1: make about mental events arising from the past. So obviously,
Speaker 1: given this system, failures are inevitable. Memory failures are inevitable
Speaker 1: false memories, along with inaccurate or unlikely ruminated scenarios of
Speaker 1: the future. This is all just part of living with
Speaker 1: our human understanding of reality, and so various methods can
Speaker 1: be used and have been studied to produce false memories
Speaker 1: of events. The authors point out these include suggestion via imagination, exercises,
Speaker 1: the use of photographs, dream interpretation, guided imagery, and paraphrasing.
Speaker 1: I mean, even this kind of joking example that we
Speaker 1: busted out earlier, of you bringing up a hypo ethical,
Speaker 1: entirely made up memory of childhood about crabs, and it
Speaker 1: was so loaded with crabs. It's a relatively easy exercise
Speaker 1: for one to then turn that back on the person
Speaker 1: who created and saying, well, is that completely made up?
Speaker 1: What does that say about you? Why did you bring
Speaker 1: up the crabs so many times? You know? And you
Speaker 1: can begin to build on that.
Speaker 2: Well, yes, And if you took that same story and said, hey,
Speaker 2: you know your parents told us the story about when
Speaker 2: you went to the beach when you were little. Do
Speaker 2: you remember this? Well, you might not necessarily at first,
Speaker 2: or you might think, well, maybe I do, And then
Speaker 2: over time that could very easily turn into what feels
Speaker 2: like a real memory for you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it also Now, there are a number of
Speaker 1: factors to keep in mind too. It's worth noting that
Speaker 1: the results and experiments involving the creation or the fostering
Speaker 1: of false recollections it depends on the degree to which
Speaker 1: a memory is falsified. For example, in many of these experiments,
Speaker 1: you'll find examples where they'll find out about an actual
Speaker 1: childhood memory, like they would in this case, say talk
Speaker 1: to one of your parents and ask about your earliest
Speaker 1: speech encounter and then use that in the construction of
Speaker 1: a false memory. And then you also have to take
Speaker 1: into account the weight of the memory that is being
Speaker 1: built up or augmented. So it's one thing, for example,
Speaker 1: for me to suggest, yeah, maybe you were really fascinated
Speaker 1: by crabs like you like you were in this false
Speaker 1: story of childhood. It's another to say, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: that they had a you know, just you were profoundly
Speaker 1: frightened by the crabs and this like totally shaped to you.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like how how much weight are you
Speaker 1: putting on the memory? For instance, one study referenced in
Speaker 1: this paper had high results of memory inception when you
Speaker 1: were trying to get them to remember a childhood prank. Now,
Speaker 1: you know, nothing too severe, but you know something that
Speaker 1: where it's not going to like shake the core of
Speaker 1: their being or really mess around too many understandings of stuff.
Speaker 1: Is just like, let's generate this memory of this prank
Speaker 1: that probably didn't actually occur.
Speaker 2: Yes, So if I'm understanding, right, this might imply it's
Speaker 2: easier to generate a false memory for an event that
Speaker 2: is not really like, does not shake the core of
Speaker 2: your what how you would characterize your childhood, but rather
Speaker 2: for a kind of like weird, quirky, funny little event
Speaker 2: that doesn't really change anything about your life.
Speaker 1: Right. And of course, a lot of the very sorts
Speaker 1: of memories, early childhood memories that we've been discussing here,
Speaker 1: the kind that are sort of shared among family, are
Speaker 1: exactly the sort of memory you know. They're not necessarily
Speaker 1: profound or anything. They're amusing, they're fun, and therefore it's
Speaker 1: easy to grab onto it now. The authors also point
Speaker 1: out that social factors such as group membership in the
Speaker 1: media as well can seemingly influence memories like this as
Speaker 1: well quote socially driven distortions in memory these and they
Speaker 1: have several benefits for the individuals, such as improving social
Speaker 1: relationships within a group, or they may improve social group coherence.
Speaker 1: So false memories can be self enhancing in many ways,
Speaker 1: but they can also be group enhancing. And in this
Speaker 1: we're getting we're speaking broadly beyond merely like childhood memories,
Speaker 1: but even getting into things where say you were a
Speaker 1: part of a group, you join a group where memories
Speaker 1: of say even paranormal experiences have value. They bring you
Speaker 1: closer to the people in a group, or they enhance
Speaker 1: the overall connectivity of the group.
Speaker 2: This is exactly what I was going to hypothesize earlier
Speaker 2: when you were talking about so I brought up you know,
Speaker 2: there are other ways that our brain consistently produces false beliefs,
Speaker 2: and there you would suspect that there's probably an adaptive
Speaker 2: reason for doing that, like there's survival benefit, that's why
Speaker 2: our brains work that way. And my guess was going
Speaker 2: to be social function there that the same way that
Speaker 2: you know, we can have not false memories, but false
Speaker 2: beliefs about the external world. These can easily be induced
Speaker 2: through a concept known as identity protective cognition. You know,
Speaker 2: people will reason in ways that are not strictly logical
Speaker 2: and will come to conclusions that they would find to
Speaker 2: be false if they were disinterested in the issue, but
Speaker 2: there is some social identity reason for coming to that belief.
Speaker 2: You know, in order to fit in with my social group,
Speaker 2: I need to be the kind of person that believes X.
Speaker 2: So Actually I do believe X, and it is right,
Speaker 2: And I think the same could easily be true of memories.
Speaker 2: It probably matters more for your survival that you're getting
Speaker 2: along good with your group than that, like, you actually
Speaker 2: remembered what happened last Tuesday a year ago correctly. So
Speaker 2: if there's a way to remember that event incorrectly, but
Speaker 2: that would be sort of like fun to share as
Speaker 2: a group together, to tell that story and all bond
Speaker 2: and all feel good about each other, well then maybe
Speaker 2: you'll go that way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And I mean all this makes sense, I
Speaker 1: think because of course humans are highly social creatures. We've
Speaker 1: we've talked about this before. This has had an enormous
Speaker 1: impact on the human animal. So is it any surprise
Speaker 1: that we help each other remember events of our past.
Speaker 1: Is it any surprise that these memories may be distorted
Speaker 1: for the betterment of one's own integration with a group
Speaker 1: or the overall coherence of the group. Because for the
Speaker 1: social animal, the group is it's not just nice to
Speaker 1: have like the group is survival. Being able to bond
Speaker 1: with the group has has a real adaptive advantage and
Speaker 1: may and being able to fit in even if you're
Speaker 1: distorting the actual occurrence of events in the past. This
Speaker 1: may frequently outweigh the value of objective reality.
Speaker 2: So it's better if all your friends are laughing about, Hey,
Speaker 2: you remember that time, Johnny, I don't know, Yeah, chase
Speaker 2: me with esteamed crab and you don't really remember that.
Speaker 2: It's probably better for your brain to convince you you
Speaker 2: do remember that, so you can laugh along with everybody
Speaker 2: else than to say, like, no, I don't think that happened.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But again, these are generalizations, so you know, individual
Speaker 1: experience is gonna is going to differ, and they are
Speaker 1: all sorts of caveats that can come into play. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I think this is fascinating to think about now. In
Speaker 1: I think both of the last couple of episodes, we
Speaker 1: talked a little bit about myth babies and legendary babies
Speaker 1: of history, child Hercules, child Jesus, child Christian, and so forth.
Speaker 1: So I do have just a little bit more on this,
Speaker 1: getting into the idea of the child hero and the
Speaker 1: child saint.
Speaker 2: Okay, we're gonna do another super baby sidebar here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this one, this one is going to end
Speaker 1: up bringing up child mortality again. So my apologies. It
Speaker 1: was not my intent to discuss this more, but in
Speaker 1: just diving into the topic it becomes an essential part
Speaker 1: of understanding some of these traditions. Okay, so first of all,
Speaker 1: just talking about infant heroes in Greek tradition. One paper
Speaker 1: I was looking at here is Baby and Child Heroes
Speaker 1: in Ancient Greece by Kareem and Dina Pash. And when
Speaker 1: it comes to the child hero proper and not merely
Speaker 1: the infant form of adult heroes, so not just merely
Speaker 1: baby hercules, but like a child hero that is a
Speaker 1: hero in and of itself. They are defined not by
Speaker 1: their actions and exploits, as with adult heroes, but by
Speaker 1: their untimely deaths, which immortalize them as in hero cults.
Speaker 1: And these include such examples as the children of Medea
Speaker 1: and the children of Heracles. To quote Pash here quote
Speaker 1: from parental fears and sense of guilt arise. The stories,
Speaker 1: songs and sanctuaries honoring child heroes, both myth and ritual,
Speaker 1: articulate these very basic human anxieties. Yet the emphasis is
Speaker 1: ultimately on the beauty that transcends the gruesomeness of these
Speaker 1: narratives and transforms dread into poetry. I think this is
Speaker 1: also interesting to consider when you look at the long
Speaker 1: list of child saints in the Christian tradition, and these
Speaker 1: include both martyred children and adults, as well as children
Speaker 1: who died at a young age, but were said to
Speaker 1: have been very mature, very holy in their young life
Speaker 1: in a way that it's almost like they were too
Speaker 1: holy for this world and therefore could not remain here.
Speaker 1: So just a couple of examples to illustrate both of
Speaker 1: these categories. There's Saint Rumwald of Buckingham from the year
Speaker 1: six sixty two, said to have lived only for three days,
Speaker 1: but the child was said to be able to speak
Speaker 1: and profess his faith right away. In fact, it's, according
Speaker 1: to the legend, requested his own baptism and even delivered
Speaker 1: a sermon.
Speaker 2: He requested it, But did he get it?
Speaker 1: Did they baptiste? Yeah, I believe that's part of the story.
Speaker 1: You got the baptism and then got to deliver a sermon,
Speaker 1: which you know is a comical image in some in
Speaker 1: some ways, but also you understand where the like the
Speaker 1: creative energy of this comes from, like the idea of
Speaker 1: like a child and the and the attachment we feel
Speaker 1: to a child, the perfection and yet imperfection of a child,
Speaker 1: and then if there is, and then when you factor
Speaker 1: in these various faith models of how salvation is supposed
Speaker 1: to work, if you you factor in just the trauma
Speaker 1: of losing a young child, you can see where stories
Speaker 1: like this could be created. And then, of course you
Speaker 1: also have examples of martyrs. Uh. There is a secarius
Speaker 1: of Bethlehem said to have been killed in King Herod's
Speaker 1: massacre of the innocent somewhere between seven and two BCE.
Speaker 1: The alleged remains of the child are still held as
Speaker 1: holy relics today. So in these cases, you know, the
Speaker 1: child is not my understanding, at least in this case.
Speaker 1: And this may vary from telling to telling. A case
Speaker 1: where the child itself is not said to have been
Speaker 1: holy or done anything holy, but was victim of some
Speaker 1: or allegedly the victim of some sort of heinous act.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'd lean on allegedly on that one, because I
Speaker 2: think the story of the slaughter of the innocence, from
Speaker 2: what I recall, is largely considered to be legendary.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's And of course it's very notable that some
Speaker 1: of the more notorious examples of child martyrs were utilized
Speaker 1: in cases of blood libel against Jewish communities. Hugh of
Speaker 1: Lincoln in the thirteenth century and Simon Trent in the
Speaker 1: fifteenth century, ving two prime examples. And these are sadly
Speaker 1: not the only examples. You can pull out cases where
Speaker 1: the you know, the alleged murder of a child was
Speaker 1: then used as an excuse for acts of violence against
Speaker 1: communities that were blamed with that to death. So obviously
Speaker 1: kind of a depressing place, I know, to wind up
Speaker 1: in this tangent, and I didn't really again, didn't really
Speaker 1: want to discuss dead children again, but I guess it's unavoidable.
Speaker 1: You know, why does a child stand out in a
Speaker 1: mythic narrative. It may be about who that child will become,
Speaker 1: but there's also a weight to the child that does
Speaker 1: not pass on into mythic adulthood, you know. And it
Speaker 1: can be clearly be leveraged in different ways as a
Speaker 1: rallying cry of martyrdom, as an inspiration of innocence, as
Speaker 1: an inspiration for violence and horror. You know, it can
Speaker 1: be the kind of narrative that can circumvent the cruelty
Speaker 1: of the world or inspire more cruelty there's you know
Speaker 1: you can you can go in various directions with it. Now,
Speaker 1: one final thing I wanted to discuss you a little bit,
Speaker 1: and I think we alluded to it a little bit
Speaker 1: earlier in this episode, is that you know. As we've
Speaker 1: discussed already, there are numerous examples of suggested falsified memories
Speaker 1: to turn to, including memories of various pair normal encounters,
Speaker 1: different forms of abuse, and indeed we can also throw
Speaker 1: supposed memories of past lives into the mix. You know
Speaker 1: you can, You'll have you. You can certainly find people
Speaker 1: who claim to remember very early childhood, people who claim
Speaker 1: to remember their birth, but also people who claim to
Speaker 1: remember a time before their birth, before they were born,
Speaker 1: either in the womb or before the womb, in another
Speaker 1: life before the womb. And you know, so you know
Speaker 1: it's uh. This again speaks to the power of our
Speaker 1: ability to create and falsify meaningful memories. And it's not
Speaker 1: too big of a leap, right, If you can already
Speaker 1: create a memory of a thing that didn't occur, it's
Speaker 1: not too much of a leap to remember supposed lives
Speaker 1: before this one as well, right, And there's a lot
Speaker 1: of individuals have written on this and theorized on this
Speaker 1: sort of thing. Check. Psychiatrist Stanislav Groff theorized that some
Speaker 1: near death experiences are actually a kind of channeling of
Speaker 1: birth memories, with the so called model of light representing
Speaker 1: the birth canal. This is skeptical about that, Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is you know, very everyone has a right to
Speaker 1: be very skeptical of this. I've seen it refuted by
Speaker 1: skeptics on a number of grounds, including that the experience
Speaker 1: of being born would not look like this even if
Speaker 1: your infant head were in the right position and your
Speaker 1: eyes were actually open, and again you were capable of
Speaker 1: forming memories like this. So I think there's very strong
Speaker 1: reasons to be skeptical of this being an actual memory.
Speaker 1: But like we've said, you get in there and you
Speaker 1: start tinkering with your memories, start recalling them. You start
Speaker 1: bringing in content you know from different communities and learned individuals.
Speaker 1: You can start augmenting things, you can start falsifying things,
Speaker 1: and what you end up with can still be highly meaningful.
Speaker 1: It can still you know, to you. It can also
Speaker 1: have an impact on the creation of art and literature.
Speaker 1: If the name Stanislovgrov sounds familiar longtime listeners might remember
Speaker 1: it coming up in an episode that Christian and I
Speaker 1: did on the art of hr Giger, because these very metaphors,
Speaker 1: you know, the tunnel of light, near death, and pre birth,
Speaker 1: these were explored in some of Giger's art work, and
Speaker 1: Groff actually authored a twenty eighteen book of Giger's work
Speaker 1: titled hr Giger and the Zeitgeist of the Twentieth Century. Groff,
Speaker 1: by the way, was also a technical advisor on Douglas
Speaker 1: Trumbull's nineteen eighty three film Brainstorm that had Christopher Walkin
Speaker 1: in it. I believe so again not to say that
Speaker 1: these can't be potent ideas, but they do seem to
Speaker 1: stand outside of science there. You know, these are more
Speaker 1: We're getting more into the area of religion and myth
Speaker 1: and even the paranormal. But I think it all speaks
Speaker 1: to just how invested we can become in the story
Speaker 1: of us and those vast blank spaces in our recollection,
Speaker 1: as you know, as well as any glimmers that we
Speaker 1: might sense in the dark that we could then augment
Speaker 1: and sentuate into something else, something that is meaningful to
Speaker 1: us or makes us feel part of a group. Et cetera.
Speaker 1: And you know, there are examples of this line of
Speaker 1: thinking from outside of science, concepts of pre existence in
Speaker 1: various cultures. There's the concept of reincarnation or the transmigration
Speaker 1: of the soul, and we see this in various traditions,
Speaker 1: Greek traditions, early Jainism, Buddhism, Hinduism, medieval Jewish mysticism, new
Speaker 1: religious movements, and so many more examples.
Speaker 2: There were some early Christians who believed in reincarnation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I was reading a little bit about this,
Speaker 1: you know, the idea of a pre mortal existence of
Speaker 1: the soul. Various strains of thought concerning that not only
Speaker 1: the idea that the human soul was was pre had
Speaker 1: a pre existence, that it was say, created before the
Speaker 1: physical creation of the universe. And I guess you know,
Speaker 1: the souls are just setting around waiting to be installed
Speaker 1: in a physical form. And then there is also a
Speaker 1: fair amount of thought about the idea of the pre
Speaker 1: existence of Jesus, of Jesus Christ, the idea that yes,
Speaker 1: God is going to take on this sort of mortal
Speaker 1: incarnation because he has to go to earth and die
Speaker 1: for everyone sins and so forth. But then there are
Speaker 1: there are these some lines of thought that are like, okay,
Speaker 1: well what was he doing before then? And I guess
Speaker 1: on one hand, you could say, well, he just had
Speaker 1: God had not incarnated yet, so it's like he hadn't
Speaker 1: butted off into a physical form. But then there are
Speaker 1: these other lines of thought it's like, oh, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: he's there, he's just setting around waiting, but he just
Speaker 1: hasn't gone to earth yet. For example, I was reading
Speaker 1: that there was one early Christian theologian I believe this
Speaker 1: is origin of I'll think of Alexandria, I lived at
Speaker 1: one through two fifty three, taught that human souls existed
Speaker 1: for before creation, and this was something that he would
Speaker 1: later be accused of heresy for. But yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think the big take home from all
Speaker 1: of this is that we have an impressive ability to
Speaker 1: create meaningful memories out of various sources that are not
Speaker 1: pure recollection to the limited extent that there is purely
Speaker 1: recollection of anything. And you know, I guess I don't
Speaker 1: think there's anything intrinsically wrong with fostering memories of infancy,
Speaker 1: birth or life before birth, so long as it improves
Speaker 1: one's quality of life, and it doesn't take anything away
Speaker 1: from you or others. You know. If that's the case,
Speaker 1: then what's the harm in it?
Speaker 2: I think the way I'd put my feeling is reminisce
Speaker 2: and enjoy your memories, but also be aware of the
Speaker 2: fact that some of them may not have a factual basis.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. When I was thinking about this, I was
Speaker 1: trying to think, well, how could it be harmful? And
Speaker 1: I think that the main sticking point that I could
Speaker 1: come up with is if one's claims of false memories
Speaker 1: could embolden harmful models and others. So this is just
Speaker 1: a purely hypothetical scenario. But imagine that you, through one
Speaker 1: method or another, we've discussed your fostered memory of alien
Speaker 1: abduction that for you is awe inspiring and beneficial. Like
Speaker 1: I remember seeing aliens when I was a child, and
Speaker 1: isn't that great? I you know, this this is my
Speaker 1: you know, brain expanding cosmost appreciating moment. But what if
Speaker 1: your pronounced belief in these experiences enable someone else to
Speaker 1: further engage in a harmful variation on it? Or on
Speaker 1: the other hand, what if here's another scenario, what if
Speaker 1: your harmless accounts of a past life embolden someone else
Speaker 1: to and then wind up in a situation where they're
Speaker 1: being manipulated or conned by someone who is taking advantage
Speaker 1: of this you know, longing for or recollection of a past.
Speaker 2: Life, telling you this stuff is real and I can
Speaker 2: I can find your past selves for you for a price.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean, and you know, there's of course,
Speaker 1: there's can be a lot of gray area in any
Speaker 1: scenario like that, but you know, and this is hypothetical,
Speaker 1: but you know, it's worth considering. I think that in
Speaker 1: any given paranormal area, you know, it's going to be
Speaker 1: dependent on more than just mere professed experience and or
Speaker 1: augmented or false memories. There may also be disingenuous actors involved,
Speaker 1: manipulators of disinformation, and of course just outright con artists
Speaker 1: as well. So I don't know, food for thought.
Speaker 2: Yeah, i'd reiterate what I said. I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: you can, you can enjoy all your family memories and
Speaker 2: all the you know, all the good stuff, but also
Speaker 2: just be realistic about the fallibility of memory.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if there were a video camera present, it may
Speaker 2: not actually have happened to the way you remember it.
Speaker 2: But you know that our memories all we've got, yeah,
Speaker 2: or in many cases it's all we got. I guess
Speaker 2: sometimes you did have a video.
Speaker 1: Camera there, Yeah, yeah, you have the video, the video
Speaker 1: and you have the photographs which then can of course
Speaker 1: be used to multi my memories. Yeah. So yeah, there's
Speaker 1: and of course with advances and technology, things are only
Speaker 1: going to get more complicated on that. On those grounds,
Speaker 1: all right, we're going to go and close out this
Speaker 1: trilogy of episodes here, but we'd continue to love to
Speaker 1: hear from everyone out there if you have thoughts on
Speaker 1: early childhood memories, you want to share early childhood memories,
Speaker 1: you know, memories of past live is it, any of
Speaker 1: anything that falls under the under the heading of the
Speaker 1: topic here, you know, write in We would love to
Speaker 1: listen to you and discuss any of this potentially on
Speaker 1: future episodes of Listener Mail. Listener Mails published on Mondays.
Speaker 1: On Wednesdays, we do short form artifact or monster fact episodes.
Speaker 1: Core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and on Fridays we
Speaker 1: do Weird House Cinema. That's our time to set aside
Speaker 1: most serious concerns and just talk about a weird film.
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.
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