Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 2: And I am Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. We are
Speaker 2: going into the old Vault to get an episode from
Speaker 2: April sixth, twenty twenty three. This is part two of
Speaker 2: our series called Before You Could Remember.
Speaker 3: 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.
Speaker 2: Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with part
Speaker 2: two of our series on childhood amnesia, which is the
Speaker 2: name for the fact that most adults and even most
Speaker 2: older children don't really seem to have any memories from
Speaker 2: before about the age of three or four, and that
Speaker 2: number is slightly different depending on the culture you grow
Speaker 2: up in and some other factors that we may continue
Speaker 2: to explore in this series, but generally, on average, around
Speaker 2: three or four is when the memories start kicking in,
Speaker 2: and even then people don't seem to have as many
Speaker 2: memories as they will for later years in life. That
Speaker 2: the number of memories people seem to be able to
Speaker 2: recall sort of goes up each year after that. More
Speaker 2: from year five more from six. More from seven. Now,
Speaker 2: if you haven't heard part one yet, you should probably
Speaker 2: go back and check that one out first. It is
Speaker 2: where it is where we learned that the rob here
Speaker 2: was indeed once a very naughty boy and smashed a
Speaker 2: jar of cherries on the floor or something.
Speaker 1: What is it you did? Well, I mean, I guess
Speaker 1: the naughty part was going into the refrigerator to get
Speaker 1: them anyway, because I don't think I was supposed to
Speaker 1: have them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, where you explicitly forbidden cherries or I guess it's
Speaker 2: just a general understanding if you're a child you should
Speaker 2: not climb into the fridge to serve yourself anything.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, I don't know. I guess looking back
Speaker 1: on it it As a child, you're often sort of
Speaker 1: testing the boundaries of your world, and part of the
Speaker 1: a memory like that is when you realize you're not
Speaker 1: supposed to Apparently I was not supposed to go back
Speaker 1: and get cherries for a number of reasons, some practical, uh,
Speaker 1: some may be you know, arguable from from my standpoint,
Speaker 1: but yeah, that's that's kind of a There's a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff going on in those early years, which I
Speaker 1: think is something we we tried to get across in
Speaker 1: all of this is that the brain of a of
Speaker 1: an infant or a small child is not inert. It
Speaker 1: is it is extremely busy, but the brain remembers what
Speaker 1: it needs to remember. And and so we're going to
Speaker 1: continue with that in mind in this episode.
Speaker 2: That is a scary and kind of thrilling headspace to
Speaker 2: get back into the moment when you're like a child
Speaker 2: and you're doing something where you you really don't know
Speaker 2: if you were allowed to do this or not, and
Speaker 2: you suspect that you might not be, but you it's
Speaker 2: never been said outright, you know.
Speaker 1: Or you just suspect that you are.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's there's so much that that comes up
Speaker 1: and raise a child on this end where you're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I can't really be mad at him for thinking this
Speaker 1: or acting in this way because we've never said don't
Speaker 1: approach whatever the topic is this ways. This is the
Speaker 1: learning experience.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So to start us off today, I just wanted
Speaker 2: to share something that I got to thinking about after
Speaker 2: the last episode. So this particular tangent is not something
Speaker 2: I have like direct scientific evidence for. It's just something
Speaker 2: I started wondering about after the last part in the series.
Speaker 2: So I was thinking about childhood amnesia in the context
Speaker 2: of another subject we covered, I guess sometime last year.
Speaker 2: It was the Hot Cold Empathy Gap. Do you remember
Speaker 2: this episode, Rob, I do, Yes. This is an observed
Speaker 2: psychological phenomenon where we not only sometimes fail to understand,
Speaker 2: accurately model and predict the thoughts and behaviors of other people.
Speaker 2: We not only have interpersonal failures of empathy, we also
Speaker 2: sometimes fail to accurately model ourselves in different affective states,
Speaker 2: so we have intra personal failures of empathy. So a
Speaker 2: simple way to put this is that people who are
Speaker 2: not currently in an affective state, so not currently angry
Speaker 2: or not currently hungry or not currently sad, are actually
Speaker 2: somewhat bad at predicting how they themselves would react in
Speaker 2: a situation if they were actually in one of those states,
Speaker 2: and vice versa. If you are currently hungry, you're not
Speaker 2: very good at predicting how you would behave and react
Speaker 2: if you were not hungry.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like the fear area, for example, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: easy to sort of rehearse what you're going to do
Speaker 1: in a certain situation, but then when the frightening thing
Speaker 1: occurs you're in a different frame of mind, and you
Speaker 1: may behave entirely differently. I'm reminded of there's a great
Speaker 1: thing in Congo with Ernie Hudson. Do you remember this
Speaker 1: scene where he's he's a very cool cucumber his character
Speaker 1: the whole movie, there's a part where he's he's putting
Speaker 1: up a brave front. But then when the scary thing
Speaker 1: happens involving a gorilla like you, you turn back to
Speaker 1: him and he's he's he's moved away and or he's
Speaker 1: run away just a little bit, and ask him what happened.
Speaker 1: He's like, I ran away. Yeah.
Speaker 2: He had just given us a speech about how you
Speaker 2: can't run away because that will show. Yeah, then the
Speaker 2: gorilla will chase you, so you got to stand your ground.
Speaker 2: But then I run away.
Speaker 1: Yes, So when.
Speaker 2: We're not in these affective states, we actually can't relate
Speaker 2: very well to the person we are when we're in them,
Speaker 2: and vice versa. When we're in them, we can't really
Speaker 2: relate very well to the person we are when we're
Speaker 2: not in them, And so the hot cold empathy gap
Speaker 2: can be demonstrated over a span of only a few minutes,
Speaker 2: but it got me thinking about a similar self reflective
Speaker 2: empathy gap that applies not across different affective states, but
Speaker 2: different stage of life. So what I'm talking about here
Speaker 2: is when I think back on a memory of doing something,
Speaker 2: or saying something, or dressing a certain way or liking
Speaker 2: a certain thing when I was young, and especially if
Speaker 2: I pick something embarrassing, but not just with embarrassing things,
Speaker 2: with all kinds of things, I can often find myself
Speaker 2: totally unable to relate to that person. I say that
Speaker 2: thing that you've probably heard people say of similar reactions
Speaker 2: to their own past. What was I thinking? And at
Speaker 2: least when I say this, I truly often do not know.
Speaker 2: It's like I cannot internally simulate the mindset that led
Speaker 2: me to wear that T shirt, even though it was me.
Speaker 2: I can't relate to that person, and I can't even
Speaker 2: really remember or imagine what it was like to be them,
Speaker 2: even though again it was me. From what I gathered,
Speaker 2: this is a common experience. It's I'm not alone here, right.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, I mean, it's like basically comes down
Speaker 1: to the reality that we are not consistently the same
Speaker 1: across small lengths of time, much less across the course
Speaker 1: of a lifetime. And yeah, I mean it's a you know,
Speaker 1: a turn of phrase, what was I thinking? Sometimes we
Speaker 1: can piece together some of what our thought processes were.
Speaker 1: You know, you'd be like, well, I was a teenager
Speaker 1: and I thought this band was cool, so of course
Speaker 1: I wore that T shirt, even if I would not
Speaker 1: be into that band. And now as a as a
Speaker 1: grown person or what have you, or with you know,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a certain amount of clarity based on
Speaker 1: where you are now in life. But other times, yeah,
Speaker 1: you may genuinely look back and you're like, I just
Speaker 1: don't know what was going through my mind. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure what the thought process was. I seem to have
Speaker 1: a different thought process going on now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so obviously it's not this way with all
Speaker 2: memories from different stages of life. Like I have a
Speaker 2: feeling that I can re experience or relate to lots
Speaker 2: of memory from childhood but not other ones. And so
Speaker 2: I don't always know what makes the difference. But I
Speaker 2: wonder if the proportion of memories for behaviors and experiences
Speaker 2: we can no longer empathize with tends to increase the
Speaker 2: farther back you go into childhood. I don't know this
Speaker 2: is the case. I'm wondering if it does or if, say,
Speaker 2: it actually doesn't go up in a linear fashion. You
Speaker 2: could imagine it also like peaking in teenage years or
Speaker 2: something like that. But so that's one question I was
Speaker 2: wondering about. And then I was also wondering if there's
Speaker 2: any kind of relationship between our current ability to empathize
Speaker 2: with our feelings and behavior in a past event and
Speaker 2: our tendency to actually remember that event in the first place. So,
Speaker 2: in other words, are we more likely to remember doing
Speaker 2: or feeling or saying something when we can empathize with it,
Speaker 2: like when we can get back in that mind space,
Speaker 2: and less likely to remember it when we can hand
Speaker 2: no longer empathize with it. And I asked this specifically
Speaker 2: because I, uh, Robi, I wonder if you have the
Speaker 2: same experience. I feel like a lot of these what
Speaker 2: was I thinking memories are prompted by external intrusions, like
Speaker 2: seeing a photo of yourself that you didn't expect to see,
Speaker 2: or having somebody say, hey, do you remember when we
Speaker 2: did this or when you said that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And it does make me I was thinking
Speaker 1: about this in terms of like childhood versus say, like
Speaker 1: junior high, teen years sort of reflections or even like
Speaker 1: early or really all of one twenties. I guess, depending
Speaker 1: on where you are in life how far removed you
Speaker 1: are from particular time period. But like for very young children,
Speaker 1: it seems like so much of what you end up
Speaker 1: doing and wearing, et cetera is almost entirely shaped by
Speaker 1: your parents. Anyway. Yeah, yeah, so like what was I
Speaker 1: thinking is not really a question because it's like you
Speaker 1: weren't thinking, you were just doing or you were just
Speaker 1: you wore this because it was provided to you, and
Speaker 1: everyone else in your family liked it, so it seemed
Speaker 1: like you liked it that sort of thing. Not all
Speaker 1: the time, but like I feel like maybe like eighty
Speaker 1: percent of the time that may be the case. But
Speaker 1: then it's when you're getting into that area where you
Speaker 1: are willfully setting out on your own, choosing things for yourself,
Speaker 1: that might be the area where I mean, you're legitimately
Speaker 1: asking what was I thinking? What was my intention in
Speaker 1: all of that?
Speaker 2: That is a good point, like what role agency or
Speaker 2: self control has in the event that you're remembering? So, yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't know if our empathy gap with our past
Speaker 2: self actually does just increase the farther back you go.
Speaker 2: I wonder if that could be measured. But if it does,
Speaker 2: I wonder how does that also relate to the relative
Speaker 2: paucity of memories from early childhood and the for most people,
Speaker 2: complete lack of memories from before ages three or four.
Speaker 1: Yeah, now, I this is interesting to think about, and
Speaker 1: one possible answer to this might be, well, the reason
Speaker 1: that you have trouble knowing or understand what you were
Speaker 1: thinking about in a particular time might be because you
Speaker 1: have completely blocked it out because their thought process was
Speaker 1: so traumatic that you just had to erase it from
Speaker 1: easy access of the conscious mind.
Speaker 2: Ah, speaking of what were we thinking? I guess, as
Speaker 2: with many topics in psychology, unfortunately, if you want to
Speaker 2: trace the history of how we understood this over the
Speaker 2: past one hundred years, really you have to go back
Speaker 2: to freud not because the Freudian explanations carry any scientific
Speaker 2: currency today they almost never do. Instead, it's just because
Speaker 2: you've got to understand how influential Freudian theories were in
Speaker 2: the history of how people thought about this exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And of course you we're talking about Sigmund
Speaker 1: Freud here Austrian neurologist and founder of psychoanalysis, and he
Speaker 1: too explored the topic of quote unquote infantile amnesia, postulating
Speaker 1: that these lost memories constitute repressed memories repressed due to
Speaker 1: their psychosexual nature. Here's a quote from Freud, obviously in
Speaker 1: translation quote. I believe that the infantile amnesia, which causes
Speaker 1: the individual to look upon his childhood as if it
Speaker 1: were a prehistoric time and conceals from him the beginning
Speaker 1: of his own sexual life. That this amnesia is responsible
Speaker 1: for the fact that one does not usually attribute any
Speaker 1: value to the infantile period in the development of the
Speaker 1: sexual life.
Speaker 2: Right, So, I think the common understanding of the Freudian
Speaker 2: view is that early childhood is a time of strange
Speaker 2: sexual fixations and realizations that we can't bear to think
Speaker 2: back about as adults, so we repress those memories as
Speaker 2: a type of trauma. I don't think there's any good
Speaker 2: empirical evidence for the Freudian psychosexual view of development today.
Speaker 1: It frankly doesn't gel with any of the science we've
Speaker 1: we've looked at in our research for these episodes, and
Speaker 1: it's mainly worth mentioning because of its place in the
Speaker 1: history of the topic and so forth. But it's also
Speaker 1: it's interesting to think about, like what's going on with
Speaker 1: this approach to infantile amnesia, to the seeming lack of real,
Speaker 1: congrete memories from early life, because you can think of
Speaker 1: them as sort of like blank spots upon which you
Speaker 1: can focus ideas like this. There's there's no possible memory
Speaker 1: there to contradict the backward looking explanation. You know.
Speaker 2: Well, Yet not only because it's a blank spot you
Speaker 2: can fill in with your explanations, but because of the
Speaker 2: particular characteristics of memory as a function of human brains,
Speaker 2: it's also actually not only possible, but quite trivial to
Speaker 2: place memories. There are things that feel like memories that
Speaker 2: do not reflect events that actually happened.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it brings to mind that the use of you
Speaker 1: so called repressed memories not only in psychotherapy, but in
Speaker 1: the pursuit of paranormal experiences as well, such as alien
Speaker 1: abductions and ritual satanic abuse.
Speaker 2: Right, And this is a really dangerous area because, for
Speaker 2: one thing, I think it's important to acknowledge that it's
Speaker 2: impossible to rule out the idea that repressed memories exist, right,
Speaker 2: it is possible that the brain somehow does retain memories
Speaker 2: that are not easily retrieved with you know, just regular
Speaker 2: conscious effort, but that could be retrieved by some other method.
Speaker 2: But while it's possible, one thing that research makes very
Speaker 2: clear is that it is incredibly easy to mistake false
Speaker 2: recovered memories for real ones. And the false memories feel
Speaker 2: completely convincing, just as real as actual memories. In fact,
Speaker 2: they are often even stronger and more vivid than real memories.
Speaker 2: And you can show this with experiments where you know,
Speaker 2: people will say, like, we we consulted with your family
Speaker 2: and they they told us a story about a time,
Speaker 2: you know, that you got lost at the playground, but
Speaker 2: then you met this person and whatever, and this will
Speaker 2: be completely made up for the purpose of the experiment,
Speaker 2: but many people will start to believe that is a
Speaker 2: real memory they have in their head. Just vividly imagining
Speaker 2: a scenario proposed by someone else is often enough to
Speaker 2: make someone totally convinced of it as a memory.
Speaker 1: Yeah, these alien abductions and ritual satanic abuses are both
Speaker 1: the topics we've discussed on the show before. But like
Speaker 1: very briefly, like just the the the idea is so
Speaker 1: heartbreaking that you could be manipulated into creating a memory
Speaker 1: of trauma and the memory would be traumatic like like
Speaker 1: once it has been sort of created and or augmented
Speaker 1: in your memory, like it's you know, it's it's a
Speaker 1: thing that is that is real to you. So yeah,
Speaker 1: but heartbreaking, is it is? It also just drives home
Speaker 1: something that is possible in all of our memories and
Speaker 1: really is going on on a less traumatic level with
Speaker 1: so many everyday memories in our lives.
Speaker 2: Yes, and while I would also point out that it
Speaker 2: seems especially easy to do this with the idea of
Speaker 2: early childhood memories, this also works for adults, like you
Speaker 2: can get adults to remember events that did not take
Speaker 2: place by causing them to vividly imagine the event or
Speaker 2: something like that.
Speaker 1: All right, well, well, getting away from from even the
Speaker 1: idea of alien abductions, let's get back into what the
Speaker 1: actual research seems to illuminate about this topic.
Speaker 2: Well, one thing I think we should say at the
Speaker 2: beginning is that it's still somewhat an open question why
Speaker 2: childhood amnesia occurs, and there are competing theories that might
Speaker 2: that are to some degree compete, but they might also
Speaker 2: be complementary. There might be multiple factors contributing to this
Speaker 2: overall pattern where most adults can not really remember much
Speaker 2: of anything from before age about three or four, and
Speaker 2: then have this gradual accumulation of more memories to about
Speaker 2: seven or eight. We'll probably explore some hypotheses in this
Speaker 2: part and then more in the next part in this series,
Speaker 2: but there was one I wanted to talk about because
Speaker 2: it seems like a pretty straightforward explanation based on neural development,
Speaker 2: the development of regions of the brain, especially a region
Speaker 2: known as the hippocampus, And so this was in a
Speaker 2: paper I was reading by Christina m. Alberini and Alessio
Speaker 2: Travaglia published in the Journal of Neuroscience in twenty seventeen
Speaker 2: called infantile amnesia a critical period of learning to learn
Speaker 2: and remember. And this paper highlights a seeming paradox. So
Speaker 2: on one hand, there's this phenomenon we've talked about at
Speaker 2: length now early speriences seem to be forgotten very rapidly,
Speaker 2: and yet simultaneously, early experiences seem to be incredibly influential
Speaker 2: on adult behavior and adult brain development, to the extent
Speaker 2: that early childhood experience is a very well documented risk
Speaker 2: factor for various adult psychopathologies and disorders. Just to cite
Speaker 2: one example, there is extensive evidence that neglect during early
Speaker 2: childhood development can lead to disorders including depression and anxiety,
Speaker 2: as well as learning and cognitive disabilities in later life,
Speaker 2: and there are similar findings about childhood poverty leading to
Speaker 2: cognitive and learning deficits that persist into later life. A
Speaker 2: lot of these effects are thought to be at least
Speaker 2: in part related to chronic stress in early childhood, though
Speaker 2: the authors of this paper propose that it might not
Speaker 2: just be the effects of stress leading to these outcomes,
Speaker 2: but also the absence of what they call enrichment in
Speaker 2: episodic or declarative experiences in early development. So we know
Speaker 2: that early childhood experiences have this profound impact on how
Speaker 2: your brain works later in life, and yet much of
Speaker 2: what we learn in this period cannot be recalled later
Speaker 2: in narrative or episodic form. So the authors say, quote,
Speaker 2: how then can memories that are rapidly forgotten and of
Speaker 2: which there is virtually no recollection in adulthood exert a
Speaker 2: lifelong effect on the brain and cognitive function. And the
Speaker 2: answer that the authors of this paper propose lies in
Speaker 2: the hippocampus. So the hippocampus is crucial for the formation
Speaker 2: and maintenance of episodic memories. It's thought to be necessary
Speaker 2: for certain kinds of learning, for the encoding of long
Speaker 2: term memory, and related brain functions like spatial memory and
Speaker 2: navigation of spaces. And an int intersting fact is that
Speaker 2: this is not true just of humans, but it's true
Speaker 2: of humans and non human mammals. The hippocampus is part
Speaker 2: of the limbic system, so it is part of the
Speaker 2: brain that we share with other mammals, and the authors
Speaker 2: write that in both humans and non human mammals what
Speaker 2: they call wwww memories, which I guess is more of
Speaker 2: a shorthand when you type it than you say it
Speaker 2: out loud, but that stands for who, what, when, and
Speaker 2: where memories, So these are explicit memories that require conscious recollections.
Speaker 2: This would have some overlap with the idea of like
Speaker 2: episodic memories, memories of events that happened that you can
Speaker 2: recall in detail. The authors say that these memories are
Speaker 2: processed by the hippocampus dependent learning and memory system, also
Speaker 2: known as the medial temporal lobe. Dependent learning and memory system.
Speaker 2: So based on comparing what we know about hippocampal development
Speaker 2: in humans with the results of studies based on learning
Speaker 2: and early development in rats, the authors actually argue that quote,
Speaker 2: the hippocampal memory system, like sensory functions and language, matures
Speaker 2: through experience and undergoes what they call a developmental critical period. Now,
Speaker 2: they deal with a couple of pre existing hypotheses about
Speaker 2: what's going on here. One they identify as the developmental hypothesis,
Speaker 2: which basically says that these wwww memories they are not
Speaker 2: stored in the long term quote because the hippocampus is
Speaker 2: immature and therefore unable to process, consolidate, and store contextual
Speaker 2: and episodic representation. So it's just functionally not competent to
Speaker 2: do this yet. And then on the other hand, there's
Speaker 2: this hypothesis known as the retrieval hypothesis, which quote posits
Speaker 2: that infantile memories are not gone, but are instead stored
Speaker 2: in some form that cannot be expressed due to retrieval failure.
Speaker 2: And they essentially thread the needle. They argue that both
Speaker 2: of these kind of get something right, but neither one
Speaker 2: is exactly right, and instead they end up arguing that
Speaker 2: the hippocampus and the hippocampal learning system are very active
Speaker 2: in early childhood, and they are very much processing experiences
Speaker 2: during this early developmental period, but instead of storing memories
Speaker 2: exactly the same way it will once it is a
Speaker 2: mature organ it is learning how to learn.
Speaker 1: I also have to mention here though, that it is
Speaker 1: interesting that the developmental hypothesis and the retrieval hypothesis, both
Speaker 1: of these in their own way reflect different former ideas
Speaker 1: about the minds of young children. Developmental being, well, that's
Speaker 1: not a full blown human yet, of course, it's not
Speaker 1: gonna think the way we think or remember the way
Speaker 1: we think. And in the retrieval hypothesis, it's kind of
Speaker 1: in some you know, it's not exactly like Freud, but
Speaker 1: you know, it gets into that similar like, oh, those
Speaker 1: memories are there, they're just not in a way in
Speaker 1: there in a place that we can easily get to them, right.
Speaker 2: And I think these authors think that there is an
Speaker 2: element of truth to both of these views, but that
Speaker 2: neither one is exactly correct. That instead, it's that the
Speaker 2: hippocampus is working really hard to process experiences during this time,
Speaker 2: but the main thing it's doing with those experiences is
Speaker 2: learning how to learn. So the hippo campus does store
Speaker 2: memories which can be maintained they say, through frequent recalls,
Speaker 2: but they say without some form of ongoing recall or
Speaker 2: subsequent activation or modulation, those memories can tend to decay
Speaker 2: rather quickly. And so they say, quote the types of
Speaker 2: experience to which an individual is exposed during development shape
Speaker 2: learning abilities an important implication that highlights the fundamental roles
Speaker 2: of developmental environments. So this period is very important, and
Speaker 2: it does change the brain in a way that will
Speaker 2: affect the the person throughout the rest of their life.
Speaker 2: But a lot of that, they argue, is through affecting
Speaker 2: how the hippocampus develops and thus how the brain learns
Speaker 2: to learn. And I'm not going to go into great
Speaker 2: granular detail on what the mechanisms are within this, but
Speaker 2: basically they propose a process by which there's sort of
Speaker 2: a sequence of different stages of development within critical periods
Speaker 2: for development in the brain. And this is true of
Speaker 2: not just learning and memory. It's true of sensory functions,
Speaker 2: like certain sensory things come online and the development of
Speaker 2: one seems to affect the development of the subsequent one,
Speaker 2: and then the next one and so forth, and they
Speaker 2: argue that the same thing may well be happening with
Speaker 2: the maturation of hippocampus dependent learning. So they say, quote,
Speaker 2: our hypothesis is supported by the observation that complex hippocampal
Speaker 2: learning takes place only after simple learning has matured. For example,
Speaker 2: the abilit to learn about a single queue or object
Speaker 2: seems to mature earlier than episodic learning and memory, which
Speaker 2: require the more complex function of binding together several objects,
Speaker 2: sequences and time. Again, this is the four W learning.
Speaker 2: And then finally they say, thus we speculate the different
Speaker 2: types of hippocampal learning mature sequentially in order of increasing complexity.
Speaker 2: So they have like a diagram where they speculate that
Speaker 2: it might go sort of learning about objects, and then
Speaker 2: learning about places, and then learning about space more generally,
Speaker 2: and then finally the four W learning.
Speaker 1: But once again kind of goetting back to what we
Speaker 1: were talking about in the first episode, it's like childhood
Speaker 1: and chadhood development as a series of gates that you
Speaker 1: pass through, as a series of phases that you progress
Speaker 1: through towards full integration into society as an adult.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and under this model at least how and when
Speaker 2: you pass through the pre gate affects how and when
Speaker 2: you pass through the next gate and the next gate
Speaker 2: and the next gate. But also too, as I said earlier,
Speaker 2: that this is one take within this sort of broader
Speaker 2: genre of explanations of childhood amnesia. This is sort of
Speaker 2: the structural brain development type argument. Now, there are some
Speaker 2: other types of explanations, maybe some involving language, interestingly and
Speaker 2: other things, but maybe we will save that for the
Speaker 2: next episode. Because I know Rob you today in your
Speaker 2: heart there's a burning icon on the surface of your
Speaker 2: heart and it is in the shape of a super baby.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we mentioned the possibility of discussing mythic babies, babies
Speaker 1: of religious significance, and actually we actually heard for at
Speaker 1: least from a couple of people that were like, yes,
Speaker 1: bring on the babies. So yeah, to whatever extent it
Speaker 1: helps us understand this topic, we will give you mythic
Speaker 1: babies that to some degree each exhibits superior abilities and
Speaker 1: or cognition or or something else that's worth touching on.
Speaker 1: So in general, though I think in most, if not all,
Speaker 1: of these examples, we're going to be touching on a
Speaker 1: very widespread religious archetype, that of the divine boy. And
Speaker 1: you know, once you see it, you can recognize it
Speaker 1: in all its various forms and incarnations. And I suppose,
Speaker 1: especially in modern media, you also have to consider its
Speaker 1: opposite in the form of various like damiens and various
Speaker 1: health children.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, the cursed boy.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean I almost think that in the modern
Speaker 2: era we I'm about to say something I don't really
Speaker 2: know its true. Okay, well, go with it anyway. What
Speaker 2: I was going to say is it seems like today
Speaker 2: we're more likely to interpret a child with like superabilities
Speaker 2: or super intellect as creepy rather than as something really cool,
Speaker 2: you know, like yeah, or we're more predisposed to the
Speaker 2: Damien direction than the than the child uh, you know,
Speaker 2: the child sage direction.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think it's very well illustrated in a
Speaker 1: couple of fictional examples I'll bring up here in a
Speaker 1: bit too. Yeah, that it's even if you're going for
Speaker 1: the divine, you end up touching on the uncanny, because
Speaker 1: it is there is an uncanny aspect to it, for sure.
Speaker 1: If you're imagining like a baby that has or a
Speaker 1: small child that has uh, like the rational demeanor of
Speaker 1: a full blown adult. All right, well, let's let's start
Speaker 1: with baby Jesus, who we've talked about on the show before.
Speaker 1: I think we did a whole episode one Christmas about
Speaker 1: images of the Christ Child from Renaissance art that look
Speaker 1: like tiny ugly men and why they look like tiny
Speaker 1: ugly men. Go back and listen to that if you
Speaker 1: need more weird baby action. But yeah, depictions of the
Speaker 1: Christ Child in the history of Western art, it varies
Speaker 1: greatly from believable human infant to tiny mandlings that sometimes
Speaker 1: exude a philosophic air other times look like vaguely grumpy
Speaker 1: getting into that, you know what we've talked about in
Speaker 1: the last episode about babies or like are like old people,
Speaker 1: and we can't quite get that out of our heads.
Speaker 1: And we have accounts of the adventures that range from
Speaker 1: basically nothing, from just like Christ's early life being just
Speaker 1: a just unrecorded, to other traditions such as the like
Speaker 1: Christ's roll lowering the chur not just Christ but the
Speaker 1: Christ infant lowering Christmas gifts from Heaven on a golden string.
Speaker 1: You know, that is a that is a tradition in
Speaker 1: parts of Europe. To other even wilder adventures.
Speaker 2: Oh well, Rob, I think you're trying to set me
Speaker 2: up to talk about the the infancy Gospel of Thomas.
Speaker 2: Is that right, Yes, Okay, this is an ancient text
Speaker 2: that we have discussed off Mike here.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: You know, if if you read the four gospels that
Speaker 2: are canonical to most Christians, the ones that are in
Speaker 2: the New Testament, there's very little about the baby Jesus.
Speaker 2: We don't get really many stories of what Jesus did
Speaker 2: before he was a full grown man. Two of the
Speaker 2: gospels have a story of his birth, Matthew and Luke do,
Speaker 2: but he doesn't do anything. He just gets born. There's
Speaker 2: really only one story in the canonical gospels of the
Speaker 2: baby Jesus or the boy Jesus, and that is the
Speaker 2: so called finding at the Temple story in the Gospel
Speaker 2: of Luke, which is essentially kind of a boy wonder story.
Speaker 2: It is that Mary and Joseph take Jesus to the
Speaker 2: temple and then they leave and then realize that he's
Speaker 2: not with them anymore, so they go back to the
Speaker 2: temple and he is there teaching the wise men about
Speaker 2: the law and about the scripture. So he's showing off
Speaker 2: just his great learning and intellect even as a child.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, I definitely this one from Sunday School days
Speaker 1: of old.
Speaker 2: But if you go outside of the New Testament canon,
Speaker 2: there are gospels from the ancient world that do talk
Speaker 2: about that tell other stories of Jesus as a child,
Speaker 2: including the frankly hilarious Infancy Gospel of Thomas. This is
Speaker 2: a text from I think it's generally believed to be
Speaker 2: from the second century that you can find and read
Speaker 2: online in an English translation. The translation I found was
Speaker 2: by M. R. James from Clarendon Press, Oxford, nineteen twenty four,
Speaker 2: published in a collection called the Apocryphal New Testament. I
Speaker 2: think the Infancy Gospel of Thomas is sometimes considered a
Speaker 2: Gnostic text, but I know there are some texts that
Speaker 2: were previously considered gnostic that now scholars don't so much
Speaker 2: think of as gnostic, So I'm not sure where this
Speaker 2: lands on the gnosticism scale of today. But the stories
Speaker 2: in it are wild and consist of child jes running around,
Speaker 2: actually Jesus basically in this is Damien from the Omen.
Speaker 2: He's just running around cursing and killing other children. So
Speaker 2: there's like a scene where he is playing by a brook,
Speaker 2: and he at one point he takes these he takes
Speaker 2: clay and fashions that into twelve little birds made out
Speaker 2: of clay. And then baby Jesus is accused of having
Speaker 2: violated the Sabbath because he did this on the Sabbath day.
Speaker 2: And then he gets mad and rebukes that, and he
Speaker 2: turns the clay sparrows into living sparrows and they fly away.
Speaker 1: I have to say too, this version of it that
Speaker 1: you shared with me, it's really hard not to read
Speaker 1: it in your head in the voice of like an
Speaker 1: ecclesiastical eric Idol from Monty Python and in the Holy Grail,
Speaker 1: you know, reading about the Holy hand grenade.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm not going to do eric Idle voice, but
Speaker 2: you can imagine eric Idol as I read from the following.
Speaker 1: This is the m R.
Speaker 2: James translation. It says, but the son of Annas, the scribe,
Speaker 2: was standing there with Joseph, and he took a branch
Speaker 2: of a willow and dispersed the waters which Jesus had
Speaker 2: gathered together. Oh yeah, Jesus he gathered together waters from
Speaker 2: the from the brook.
Speaker 1: I guess.
Speaker 2: So he does this. And when Jesus saw what was done.
Speaker 2: He was wroth and said unto him, Oh, evil, ungodly
Speaker 2: and foolish one, what hurt did the pools and the waters?
Speaker 2: Do thee behold?
Speaker 1: Now?
Speaker 2: Also, thou shalt be withered like a tree, and shalt
Speaker 2: not bear leaves, neither root nor fruit. And straightway that
Speaker 2: lad withered up Holy, But Jesus departed and went unto
Speaker 2: Joseph's house. But the parents of him that was withered
Speaker 2: took him up, bewailing his youth, and brought him to
Speaker 2: Joseph and accused him for that, Thou hast such a child,
Speaker 2: which doeth such deeds. And then I'm not going to
Speaker 2: keep reading, but it goes. Jesus gets like mad at
Speaker 2: the people who were accusing them, and further curses and
Speaker 2: kills people. It's intense.
Speaker 1: So Babe, the kid Jesus straight space vampire. This kid
Speaker 1: essentially yes, withered him right there on the spot.
Speaker 2: It's like, yeah, it's like the movie Life Force. So
Speaker 2: it's interesting. I don't know. One thing I don't fully
Speaker 2: understand is how this type of story would have been
Speaker 2: received by its intended audience. So, if you are one
Speaker 2: of the people reading this story in the second century,
Speaker 2: and you think this is an authentic story about the
Speaker 2: child Jesus, Like what are you supposed to think about it? Like, wow,
Speaker 2: he did you know? He really did show that kid
Speaker 2: or I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Like they're different. Way. You can sort of
Speaker 1: read this and instantly go in the Damien direction like
Speaker 1: that's dangerous for a child to have those kind of powers,
Speaker 1: or I can easily imagine someone going in a more
Speaker 1: sort of theological direction, like what does this say about
Speaker 1: like the power and authority of Christ and so forth?
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's it's certainly a head scratcher for us.
Speaker 2: Anyway, I think later in the text he does sort
Speaker 2: of take back or magically undo at least some maybe
Speaker 2: all of his curses and killings.
Speaker 1: So okay, well that would that would sound appropriate? Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, well let's move through some other examples from
Speaker 1: major world religions. First stop, the infant Muhammad, so according
Speaker 1: to the Prophet Muhammad and Ritual by Marion Holmes Cats
Speaker 1: published in twenty tens, the Cambridge Companion to Muhammad. There
Speaker 1: are also miraculous accounts of Muhammad as a child quote
Speaker 1: as depicted in the most widely circulated moulded texts the
Speaker 1: infant prophet was a luminous figure whose radiance ignited his
Speaker 1: mother's room and whose holiness blessed all who approached him.
Speaker 1: So there are accounts of him as an infant causing
Speaker 1: the breast of his foster mother, who was also caring
Speaker 1: for another child, to overflow with sustaining milk. This was
Speaker 1: in a time of drought and famine, if I remember correctly.
Speaker 1: And also it said that her emaciated donkey was invigorated
Speaker 1: simply by being in the presence of the child.
Speaker 2: Okay, so one could see this as a legend of
Speaker 2: the prophets sort of prefiguring the future blessings he would
Speaker 2: help facilitate bringing even in his childhood or even as
Speaker 2: a baby.
Speaker 1: Yeah, his whole presence is just kind of brilliant and empowering,
Speaker 1: all right. Up next, baby Krishna or Bala Krishna, which
Speaker 1: I think just means like the child Krishna or kid
Speaker 1: Krishna or something to that effect. Is of course, Krishna
Speaker 1: is the blue skinned avatar of Vishnu who plays a
Speaker 1: major role in Hinduism. But he was also once a baby,
Speaker 1: a little blue skinned baby, and there are a lot
Speaker 1: of tales of him and his exploits, and generally speaking,
Speaker 1: these tales tend to exhibit a very young child with
Speaker 1: abilities beyond his years, which is very much a part
Speaker 1: of the whole divine boy archetype. But there's still also
Speaker 1: a trickster element to him as well, with the main
Speaker 1: thing that he does being the stealing of butter, like
Speaker 1: it's such a big deal. You'll find numerous images and
Speaker 1: illustrations of this blue skinned Krishna stealing a little butter,
Speaker 1: And so you have infant Krishna also doing things that
Speaker 1: are not necessarily or certainly not attributes of the adult Krishna.
Speaker 1: Like adult Krishna is not going around stealing butter.
Speaker 2: Wait a minute, so you attached a picture of Bala
Speaker 2: Krishna here and does he have his hand in a
Speaker 2: butter jar?
Speaker 1: I believe so, I believe that is what this image represents.
Speaker 1: And there are numerous images that have this basic this
Speaker 1: this basic theme going on.
Speaker 2: This is his trying to get the Marischino cherries experience exactly.
Speaker 1: There's also another tale that I ran across, and this
Speaker 1: is one of another child accusing child Krishna of eating mud,
Speaker 1: So basically saying, mom, Krishna is eating mud make him
Speaker 1: stock right, and so his foster mother says, okay, Krishna,
Speaker 1: open your mouth, let's see. And then he opens his mouth,
Speaker 1: but within his mouth she sees herself and then has
Speaker 1: a cosmic vision of all universal matter within. So that
Speaker 1: love because it starts out like seeming like a very
Speaker 1: childhood story, and then takes a sharp turn into more
Speaker 1: the sort of an ally and become death, the destroyer
Speaker 1: of worlds, you know, that sort of aspect of the
Speaker 1: grown Krishna.
Speaker 2: Because all of my references are low brow trash, what
Speaker 2: I'm imagining with this inspiring myth is Tim Curry is
Speaker 2: penny Wise opening his mouth to show the dead lights.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, I mean kind of a similar vibe,
Speaker 1: except on the sacred end of the spectrum, as opposed
Speaker 1: to the horrific. All right, next up, baby Buddha. Yes,
Speaker 1: And I have to admit I hadn't really thought about
Speaker 1: this as much of a possibility, because first of all,
Speaker 1: I wasn't familiar with any stories of the historical Buddha
Speaker 1: as an infant am I sort of go to understanding
Speaker 1: of Sidhartagatoma, the man who had become the Buddha, is
Speaker 1: that of a prince who undergoes an existential crisis and
Speaker 1: turns his back on riches to instead pursue equanimity, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's kind of the standard. But they're all,
Speaker 1: of course, a lot of different interpretations of and writings
Speaker 1: about the Buddha, and some of them do discuss the
Speaker 1: idea of the Buddha as a baby, and in fact,
Speaker 1: there are traditions depicting the newborn Buddha or Buddha as
Speaker 1: a divine child in both Chinese and Japanese traditions.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, this image of Hercules. Sorry, yes, please do.
Speaker 1: The Oh yeah, let's move things back in the mythic direction,
Speaker 1: because of course we have to mention Hercules. Baby Hercules,
Speaker 1: famous for strangling the snake that was placed by an
Speaker 1: assassin in his cradle, and if memory serves, the Luferigno
Speaker 1: Hercules movie that we watched on Weird House Cinema also
Speaker 1: has a scene with baby Hercules strangling snakes.
Speaker 2: Bam and hold, I'm sorry you attached an image. It's like,
Speaker 2: I don't know, a mosaic of baby Heracles that does
Speaker 2: look like it's from the ancient world in which the
Speaker 2: artist has tried to simultaneously capture like muscles because it's Heracles,
Speaker 2: so he's muscily, but also give him the little like
Speaker 2: chubstick legs of a baby.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a strange image. It's some sort of like
Speaker 1: mosaic image. I don't know the exact origins of it.
Speaker 1: But yeah, he has a serpent in each hand, like
Speaker 1: crushing their necks, strangling them. A very fierce looking baby here.
Speaker 2: So he's just got a little like balloon legs like
Speaker 2: a baby has. But then also some ripples indicating he's
Speaker 2: ripped underneath that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's it's uncanny. Now, briefly skipping into
Speaker 1: more modern ideas of the divine child, I mean, I'd
Speaker 1: be remiss if I didn't point out that in our
Speaker 1: modern myth making, Anakin Skywalker is a child with abilities
Speaker 1: to surpass that of other children and even humans human adults.
Speaker 1: In his midst, at a very young age, he's already
Speaker 1: a phenomenal pilot, and his ability as a pilot factor
Speaker 1: into his earliest adventures.
Speaker 2: Is he not also a product of parthenogenesis?
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, yes, yes, so yeah, Anakin, that's a choice,
Speaker 1: good George Lucas. It was born out of the force
Speaker 1: there are various theological treatments of this as well. Then,
Speaker 1: of course, there are three main examples of exceptional children
Speaker 1: in Frank Herbert's Dune saga. You have a Leah a
Speaker 1: Treades who pops up in the second half of the
Speaker 1: book Dune. So she hasn't appeared in the new movies yet,
Speaker 1: and due to the exposure to her exposure to the
Speaker 1: water of life while still in the womb, she's born
Speaker 1: with the full powers of an adult Benny jesterid reverend Mother.
Speaker 1: I think people who've seen the David Lynch adaptation are
Speaker 1: well familiar with this figure, and it certainly comes off.
Speaker 1: I would say that the Dune saga in general embraces
Speaker 1: the creepiness of the divine child as well as the
Speaker 1: you know, the sacred aspects.
Speaker 2: I was about to say, can we admit that this
Speaker 2: character is creepy and maybe is supposed to be creepy?
Speaker 1: Certainly Lynch plays. It'll be interesting to see what the
Speaker 1: new film adaptation how it approaches it. But yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: how can she not be because she's a small child
Speaker 1: talking about like ruthless murder and so forth, and revenge,
Speaker 1: and it is very unchildlike in the way that she
Speaker 1: talks to people.
Speaker 2: You don't want a child telling you who is and
Speaker 2: is not the quisat's head.
Speaker 1: Rack. Yeah. Now, by the third book, in Children of Doune,
Speaker 1: we have two more super Dune babies. We have Leto
Speaker 1: the second and Ganima Treades, who both possess adult consciousness
Speaker 1: before birth due to their mother's spice consumption, and so
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of space in Children of
Speaker 1: Dune and Children of Dune is a long book, or
Speaker 1: at least in my experience, it was a long read.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of scenes of these two like
Speaker 1: talking to and out talking adults and like burning adults
Speaker 1: with various insults and reminders that they are in fact
Speaker 1: of brilliant minds, just sort of encased in the boi
Speaker 1: of small children. Oh yeah, yeah, plenty of creepy content
Speaker 1: going on in this book as well well.
Speaker 2: Rob, I think we need to wrap up today's episode there,
Speaker 2: but I'm loving your super baby sidebars, and I think
Speaker 2: we will have to continue this in the next part
Speaker 2: of the series as well, So we'll be back next
Speaker 2: time to talk more about childhood amnesia, this gap in
Speaker 2: the memory of children, what might cause it, and other
Speaker 2: interesting facts about it, and yeah, we are certainly not
Speaker 2: done with super babies and babies with super brains all right.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, if you want to check out other
Speaker 1: episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, you'll find our
Speaker 1: core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays and the Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind podcast feed, which you can get wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts, and will remind you that Mondays
Speaker 1: that's our listener mail episode. Wednesdays we do a short
Speaker 1: form artifact or monster fact episode, and on Fridays we
Speaker 1: set aside most series concerns to just talk about a
Speaker 1: weird film on Weird House Cinema.
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
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