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Speaker 1: My fellow Inner Cosmonauts. With this episode, I am wrapping

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Speaker 1: up season two, and I am so excited for all

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Speaker 1: the new topics coming in season three, like longevity and

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Speaker 1: the self and dementia and so many more things about

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Speaker 1: the brain that will come to understand In the new season.

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Speaker 1: I can have monologues, and I can have guests, and

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Speaker 1: I'm introducing some new formats. Until then, I'm going to

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Speaker 1: be taking a short break until mid November, and in

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Speaker 1: the meantime playing some of our favorite episodes. What do

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Speaker 1: we find beautiful? What is intelligence? Why do brains become depressed?

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Speaker 1: And one of my favorites, why do we see the

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Speaker 1: dress differently? Thank you so much for being part of

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Speaker 1: Inner Cosmos, where we get to take a deep dive

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Speaker 1: together to better understand our lives, our choices, and our experiences.

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Speaker 1: I'll see you next month. What would it be like

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Speaker 1: to have a vastly better memory than you do now?

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Speaker 1: What if you could remember what you were wearing on

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Speaker 1: any day back twelve years ago, or who you were with,

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Speaker 1: or what that conversation was, or whether it rained, or

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Speaker 1: what you heard on the radio. Would this be a

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Speaker 1: blessing or a curse? Or could it be a balance

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Speaker 1: of the two. And if you're forgetting a lot of

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Speaker 1: your life, what might you do to better remember it?

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Inner Cosmos with me David Eagleman. I'm a

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Speaker 1: neuroscientist and author at Stanford and in these episodes we

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Speaker 1: dive deeply into our three pound universe to uncover some

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Speaker 1: of the most surprising aspects of our lives. Today's episode

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Speaker 1: is about memory, and specifically the most extraordinary capacities for

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Speaker 1: memory that we have witnessed on the planet. Now. It

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Speaker 1: happens that one of my favorite authors is Jorge Luis Borges,

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Speaker 1: and he wrote a short story in nineteen forty two

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Speaker 1: called Funes the Memorius. This is about a young man

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Speaker 1: who falls off his horse and hits his head, and

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Speaker 1: as a consequence of this accident, he develops an extraordinary

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Speaker 1: ability to remember everything. He can no longer forget anything.

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Speaker 1: Fus's memory becomes so vast that he can recall every

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Speaker 1: moment of his life and every nuance of what he perceives,

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Speaker 1: down to the exact positions of the clouds on any

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Speaker 1: given day. Now, obviously, keep in mind this is a

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Speaker 1: story of fiction. Borjes was a great writer of fantasy

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Speaker 1: and the genre that came to be known as magical realism.

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Speaker 1: So back to the story, this ability becomes, for Fuse

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Speaker 1: more of a burden than a gift. He finds himself

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Speaker 1: overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information, and he becomes

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Speaker 1: incapable of thinking abstractly because he can remember all the

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Speaker 1: fine details of everything. He drowns in a world of

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Speaker 1: infinite detail. In story foodates can no longer even sleep,

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Speaker 1: as he recalls quote every crevice and every molding of

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Speaker 1: the various houses which surround him end quote. It's a

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Speaker 1: great fictional short story, and very creative. But there's a

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Speaker 1: debate in the literature about whether Borhaes made up the

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Speaker 1: story whole cloth, or whether instead he knew about a

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Speaker 1: Soviet neuropsychologist named Alexander Luria, because Lauria had for a

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Speaker 1: couple of decades at this point been studying a man

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Speaker 1: named Solomon Shrishevski. Now Sharyshevski came from a modest background

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Speaker 1: and you wouldn't think he'd become internationally known and immortalized.

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Speaker 1: But everything started in the mid nineteen twenties when Sharyshevski

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Speaker 1: was working as a journalist and attended a meeting and

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Speaker 1: afterwards his editor reprimanded him for not taking any notes,

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Speaker 1: and the editor was then astonished to find out that

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Speaker 1: shar Arshevski was able to recall every detail of the

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Speaker 1: meeting word for word, just from memory. So that led

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Speaker 1: Sharyshevski to get referred to Lauria, who is one of

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Speaker 1: the most prominent neuropsychologists of the time, and Lauria studied

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Speaker 1: Sheryshevski and his remarkable memory over the course of several decades.

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Speaker 1: Lauria eventually wrote a book called The Mind of Aneminist.

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Speaker 1: Now a neminist is a term for a person who

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Speaker 1: just has an untaxable memory. Because the key was that

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Speaker 1: Sharyshevski could memorize essentially anything. He could memorize whole strings

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Speaker 1: of random numbers, or long lists of nonsense words, or

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Speaker 1: really any kind of data presented in any kind of

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Speaker 1: random order. He had nearly perfect recall. So Lauria tested

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Speaker 1: him over time, and Sharyshevski could even recall these random

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Speaker 1: sequences years later, and this led Lauria to conclude that

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Speaker 1: Sharyshevski's memory was virtual, limitless, and this was of course

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Speaker 1: a very rare phenomenon. Now you may know that my

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Speaker 1: laboratory has studied synesthesia for many years. Synesthesia is a

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Speaker 1: harmless condition where people have a blending of the senses.

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Speaker 1: You can check out my books and episodes on that.

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Speaker 1: So it turns out that Sherishevski had a very rich

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Speaker 1: combination of synesthesias and this is what gave him his

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Speaker 1: memory abilities. For him, numbers would appear in colors and

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Speaker 1: shapes and with personalities, Sounds triggered textures, words evoked images

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Speaker 1: where they might feel heavy or light. Here's an example

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Speaker 1: of Sharyshevski's internal experience as he described it. Quote, take

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Speaker 1: the number one. This is a proud, well built man.

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Speaker 1: Two is a high spirited woman. Three is a gloomy person.

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Speaker 1: Six is a man with a swollen foot. Seven is

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Speaker 1: a man with a mustache. Eight is a very stout woman,

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Speaker 1: and so on and all. This sensory overlap allowed him

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Speaker 1: to store information in a rich multisensory format, which in

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Speaker 1: turn enhanced his recollection. So if you're not synesthetic, just

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Speaker 1: think about your own examples of how a second sense

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Speaker 1: helps you with recall. So, for example, you might have

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Speaker 1: a hard time memorizing a poem. But if it's put

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Speaker 1: to music, then we call that lyrics, and you memorize

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Speaker 1: all the words perfectly because now you have some other

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Speaker 1: data stream the music that you can tie it to.

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Speaker 1: So what Schershevski had was one example of an extraordinary

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Speaker 1: memory where he could memorize these random lists. But more

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Speaker 1: recently in history, there's been the discovery of another type

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Speaker 1: of off the charts memory. And this began in two

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Speaker 1: thousand and six when my colleagues at U SEE Irvine

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Speaker 1: came in contact with a very special woman named Jill.

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Speaker 1: Jill can recite details of every day of her life

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Speaker 1: from the time she was about fourteen years old that

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Speaker 1: she does this in great detail. Her specialty is in

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Speaker 1: autobiographical memory. That means memory about your own life, like

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Speaker 1: what you did and who you were with, and what

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Speaker 1: you were and what happened to you. This is called

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Speaker 1: autobiographical memory. It's not about random chess positions or the

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Speaker 1: details of the history of Cambodia. It's about you and

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Speaker 1: what has happened in your life. Now, if you are

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Speaker 1: like most human beings, your autobiographical memory is reasonably good,

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Speaker 1: but it's not that good. You can't really remember what

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Speaker 1: you were wearing on October fifth, twenty seventeen, or what

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Speaker 1: you heard on the radio on April twenty first of

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Speaker 1: two thousand and nine, and so on, because generally speaking,

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Speaker 1: the brain is tuned to drop as many details as

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Speaker 1: it can if they're not highly important. In other words,

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Speaker 1: forgetting is often as important as remembering. But for Jill Price,

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Speaker 1: her autobiographical memory was way, way, way above average, so

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Speaker 1: the researchers termed her condition hyperthymesia. But since people thought

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Speaker 1: that sounded something like a disease, they later termed it

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Speaker 1: highly superior autobiographical memory or HSAM for highly superior autobiographical memory. Now,

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Speaker 1: most of us can remember significant events in our lives,

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Speaker 1: like the birth of a child, or a graduation or

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Speaker 1: a nice vacation, but those memories eventually fade where they blur,

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Speaker 1: where they become harder to pull up details as time passes.

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Speaker 1: But for a person with h SAM, they have the

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Speaker 1: ability to recall nearly every day of their lives with

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Speaker 1: extraordinary clarity. They can tell you what they were doing

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Speaker 1: on some random Tuesday fifteen years ago, down to the weather,

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Speaker 1: the clothes they were wearing, even the smallest details of

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Speaker 1: conversations they had. Their memories aren't just stored, they're accessible

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Speaker 1: on demand with incredible richness. Maybe you have a reasonably

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Speaker 1: good memory, but almost certainly you can't remember what the

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Speaker 1: weather was like on October fifth, twenty nineteen, or precisely

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Speaker 1: what you chose out of your closet on that day,

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Speaker 1: and whether it rained or not, what piece of news

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Speaker 1: you've heard on the radio that day. But some people can.

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Speaker 1: Now this highly superior autobiographical memory is very rare as

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Speaker 1: right now, there's only been about one hundred people who

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Speaker 1: have been diagnosed with h SAM, And so I wanted

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Speaker 1: to find someone one of these rare people with h

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Speaker 1: SAM who I could talk to about this for the show.

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Speaker 1: And it turns out that one person who has this

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Speaker 1: is also someone you might have heard of for a

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Speaker 1: different reason. She's a famous actor, and that is Mary

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Speaker 1: Lou Henner. You may know that Mary Lou became a

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Speaker 1: well known stage actor in nineteen seventy one, appearing in

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Speaker 1: the the original production of the musical Grease with John

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Speaker 1: Travolta on stage, and then in seventy seven she began

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Speaker 1: in the movies, and in nineteen seventy eight she had

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Speaker 1: her breakthrough role on the television sitcom Taxi, where she

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Speaker 1: played a single mother who was working as a cabby,

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Speaker 1: and she got several Golden Globe nominations for that. She

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Speaker 1: later had co starring roles in a number of films

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Speaker 1: through the eighties nineties, and she continues to appear on

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Speaker 1: screen through the present day. Now, most of you will

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Speaker 1: recognize her face. But the thing that not everyone knows

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Speaker 1: about Mary Lou is that she is one of these

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Speaker 1: one hundred people. She has an extraordinary autobiographical memory, remembering

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Speaker 1: every day of her life. So here's my interview with

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Speaker 1: Mary Lou Henner. So, Mary Lou, we all assume that

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Speaker 1: everyone is having the same experience on the inside that

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Speaker 1: we are, but you, at this point in your life,

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Speaker 1: know that most people have a different sort of memory

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Speaker 1: than you do. So, so can you tell us what

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Speaker 1: is it like to have a memory like yours? What

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Speaker 1: is your experience?

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Speaker 2: Well, from the time I was six years old, everybody

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Speaker 2: in my sphere, my family, friends who came over, everybody

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Speaker 2: knew I had something unusual. Now, I was one of

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Speaker 2: six children, and you know, when you're one of six,

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Speaker 2: you look for anything that makes you a little bit different.

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Speaker 2: From your brothers and sisters, and so I was just

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Speaker 2: always called the memory kid, memory girl. I was called Univac,

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Speaker 2: which was an old computer. People would say, well tell

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Speaker 2: it to Mary Lucas, Sho'll remember it. So I was

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Speaker 2: clan of the family historian. And at six years old,

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Speaker 2: I started falling asleep at night plan of doing what

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Speaker 2: I call time travel. You know, I would think what

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Speaker 2: did I do when I was exactly all week ago,

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Speaker 2: two weeks ago, when I was this day in kindergarten,

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Speaker 2: when I was my little brother's aid, And it was

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Speaker 2: something that I became very good at doing. Now there

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Speaker 2: is no doubt in my mind that I was born

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Speaker 2: with something unusual. You know, They've wired me, put me

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Speaker 2: through an MRI. They took three hundred measurements of my brain.

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Speaker 2: They found nine areas ten times larger than the normal rain.

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Speaker 2: But it was definitely something that was that was nurture

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Speaker 2: as well. So there was nature and nurture because I

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Speaker 2: just loved having this. It was so it was so

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Speaker 2: unusual and it was kind of fun. And you know,

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Speaker 2: people would say you're such a little lo at all

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Speaker 2: and they'd say, no, I'm a remember it all, you know.

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Speaker 2: So It was kind of my claim to fain give.

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Speaker 1: Us an example of the kind of thing that you

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Speaker 1: would remember as a kid.

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Speaker 2: I remember like every day in school where I could remember,

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Speaker 2: you know, things People would come over and I would

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Speaker 2: tell them the last time they were at my house

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Speaker 2: with my parents, or what they were wearing or things

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Speaker 2: like that, you know. So it was it was just

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Speaker 2: memory work. It was just I would never forget anything.

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Speaker 2: And so I knew it was within my family. I

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Speaker 2: knew it was unusual, and everybody in my family has

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Speaker 2: a great memory. But I had this date thing I had,

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Speaker 2: you know, just the specificity of what I remembered was

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Speaker 2: so intense. And so what happened was my sphere got bigger,

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Speaker 2: and I realized, well, my friends don't have this either,

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Speaker 2: you know. And finally, when I was around eighteen years old,

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Speaker 2: a friend of mine said to me, when are you

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Speaker 2: going to realize that nobody else has this crazy memory.

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Speaker 2: So people in college knew that I had something unusual.

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Speaker 2: And in fact, I'm on my third and final husband.

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Speaker 2: But we knew each other in college, went to University

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Speaker 2: of Chicago. He was my roommate's boyfriend, but he knew

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Speaker 2: that I had this unusual memory, and so we make

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Speaker 2: jokes about it. Now. We always says, well, when you're

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Speaker 2: eighteen and you remember, you know, if you remember your life,

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Speaker 2: that doesn't seem down unusual. So he didn't like, let

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Speaker 2: onto the whole idea of it as much as he

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Speaker 2: has now that we spent twenty one years together.

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Speaker 1: So let me drill down on this. So you you

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Speaker 1: remember things that are autobiographical part of your life stories.

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Speaker 1: And this person came over. I had this conversation. I

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Speaker 1: heard this on the radio. I was wearing this, But

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Speaker 1: what about other things? Like if I gave you a

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Speaker 1: long list of nonsense words.

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Speaker 2: Let me go back to the story and then that'll

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Speaker 2: answer some of your questions. So I had this unusual

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Speaker 2: autobiographical memory. And I was a great student. I went

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Speaker 2: to the University of Chicago. I was named Outstanding Teenager

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Speaker 2: of Illinois. I were scholarships, so I was really quite

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Speaker 2: the student, and people who knew me knew that I

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Speaker 2: had this unusual memory. So when a story came up

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Speaker 2: for Leslie Stall, who was a friend of mine because

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Speaker 2: I worked with her husband, Aaron Latham, I'm a movie

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Speaker 2: perfect she called me and she said, I want you

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Speaker 2: to have lunch with me. So we had lunch together

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Speaker 2: September twenty in two thousand and six. It was a Wednesday.

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Speaker 2: We went to the slune and she's naming, Oh, when

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Speaker 2: did we meet? When did we do this? Blah blah blah,

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Speaker 2: and then her her producer said oh. She mentioned that

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Speaker 2: she had gotten married on June the fifteenth of nineteen,

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Speaker 2: nineteen ninety eight, and I said, oh, my god, that's

249
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Speaker 2: so unusual. Why did you get married out on Monday?

250
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Speaker 2: And she was like, oh, she is it. I said,

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Speaker 2: what's going on with you guys? She said, well, we've

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Speaker 2: been offered a story at sixty minutes about a woman

253
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Speaker 2: by the name of Jill Price who came to doctor

254
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Speaker 2: Legau and she had a very unusual memory and she

255
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Speaker 2: never forgot anything. So they did all this testing on

256
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Speaker 2: her and they offered the story to sixteen minutes and

257
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Speaker 2: I told him, forget it. My friend, it's not that unusual.

258
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Speaker 2: My friend married a vender has the exact same memory.

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Speaker 2: So that was in two thousand and six, and then

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Speaker 2: in two thousand and nine, Leslie callin. She said, oh,

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Speaker 2: because they gave the story to Primetime Live in Diamond Sawyer.

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Speaker 2: So in two thousand and nine, Leslie called and she said,

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Speaker 2: she said, I want you to be tested. It's very unusual.

264
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Speaker 2: They have found very few other people, so we're going

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Speaker 2: to have you tested on camera. And on camera they

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Speaker 2: tested me. They didn't use it all, but they tested

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Speaker 2: me for everything, sequencing, everything that you're talking about. The

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Speaker 2: list of items. They had me look at something for

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Speaker 2: fifteen second and then identify what corner was it. They

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Speaker 2: had me look at a face with all any hair

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Speaker 2: or you couldn't even tell what gender it was, and

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Speaker 2: they told me names associated with it. I scored high

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Speaker 2: on everything pretty much, but I really of course the

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Speaker 2: autobiographical stuff. I answered over five hundred questions within the day,

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Speaker 2: and then they did their wiring and asking questions and

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Speaker 2: so how it's fired up and stuff. So yeah, so

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Speaker 2: it's like it's a different part of the brain than

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Speaker 2: is the sequencing or anything like that. But I did still,

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Speaker 2: especially as an actress, I trained myself to be sort

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Speaker 2: of like a script supervisor. I mean, I'm sort of

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Speaker 2: a frustrated script supervisor where I can notice something's off

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Speaker 2: or where something is. In fact, they showed us a

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Speaker 2: fifteen minute movie and then asked us specific questions that

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Speaker 2: you might not notice an issue or a script supervisor

285
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Speaker 2: or somebody with HSAM. So yeah, there were a lot

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Speaker 2: of different types of testing that went on that day.

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Speaker 2: Most people, if you ask them, remember or eight to

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Speaker 2: eleven events within any given year, and people with h

289
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Speaker 2: SAM we remember two hundred to three hundred and sixty five.

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Speaker 2: The criteria cut off was two hundred all though I

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Speaker 2: scored in ninety nine percent off for three sixty five

292
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Speaker 2: because I can do a whole year. But you know,

293
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Speaker 2: it's like, it's like if people try to remember what

294
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Speaker 2: their year was like, they can probably come up with

295
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Speaker 2: eight to eleven and that's all, which is insane to me,

296
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Speaker 2: you know, because there's somebody who never loses anything. It's like,

297
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Speaker 2: I mean, except my assins or something key. So I

298
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Speaker 2: mean that I, as an actress, have trained enough to

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Speaker 2: be able to look at a script a couple times

300
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Speaker 2: and have it down. But I'll also remember where I

301
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Speaker 2: was when I read the script, what the character's life

302
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Speaker 2: reminds me of in my own life, you know, what

303
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Speaker 2: the weather was like, things like that.

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Speaker 1: So give us an example. Let's say it shows October fifth,

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Speaker 1: two thousand and nine. Are you able to.

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Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah, that was in one day.

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Speaker 1: And do you remember what you were doing that day?

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Speaker 2: Yeah? Of course, I was at a rehearsal for one

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Speaker 2: of my son's shows. We were putting on a little

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Speaker 2: play at there and he was doing he was doing

311
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Speaker 2: Willy Wonk and the Chocolate Factory. So there was a

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Speaker 2: rehearsal that day and I did all the hair and

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Speaker 2: makeup from my chid's school. Don't score warning.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, do you remember what you were wearing that day?

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Speaker 2: Yes, I was wearing like a navy blue shirt with jeans. Now,

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Speaker 2: to me, everyone has something they remember, especially well, it's

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Speaker 2: what I call their primary track. It's like in the

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Speaker 2: jigsaw puzzle of your life, what are your hard edged

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Speaker 2: pieces by which you can interlock all your other memories too?

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Speaker 2: And for some people it's places they live, places they worked.

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Speaker 2: It's sports is a huge one. For guys, they might

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Speaker 2: forget their anniversary, but remember how many chicken wings they

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Speaker 2: had that day and what the score was. And also

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00:19:05,200 --> 00:19:08,680
Speaker 2: you know places that people's children. I've heard everything from

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Speaker 2: food to clothes to baths. There was a guy who

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00:19:12,840 --> 00:19:16,439
Speaker 2: was obsessed with baths and new light fag information. So

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Speaker 2: that's called your primary trap and the jigsaw puzzle of

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Speaker 2: your life. What are the hardage pieces by which you

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Speaker 2: can inter other memories. Then everyone I believe has a

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Speaker 2: dominant sense. Everyone is a site cell, touch taste or

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Speaker 2: smell person. And if you can figure out what you

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Speaker 2: are site cell, touch taste or smell, you can figure

333
00:19:36,840 --> 00:19:40,679
Speaker 2: out how you receive and you cross connected with your

334
00:19:40,720 --> 00:19:44,800
Speaker 2: primary trap. You can figure out how you receive, retain,

335
00:19:45,240 --> 00:19:48,680
Speaker 2: and then retrieve memories. Because we just happen to have

336
00:19:48,720 --> 00:19:53,359
Speaker 2: an extraordinary retrieval system. Everything you have been through in

337
00:19:53,400 --> 00:19:56,720
Speaker 2: your life is on your emotional hard drive, and it

338
00:19:56,720 --> 00:19:59,480
Speaker 2: makes you behave in certain ways. So you might walk

339
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Speaker 2: into a room go like, oh my god, this smells

340
00:20:01,400 --> 00:20:04,040
Speaker 2: like my grandmother's or wow, that song on the radio

341
00:20:04,119 --> 00:20:06,280
Speaker 2: that reminds me this. Do you know what I mean?

342
00:20:06,440 --> 00:20:09,359
Speaker 2: So you people do this all day long. But people

343
00:20:09,400 --> 00:20:13,480
Speaker 2: with ASAM we remember everything in first person, in our

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Speaker 2: bodies looking out. You know, if I asked you, if

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Speaker 2: I said to you when you woke up this morning,

346
00:20:18,800 --> 00:20:22,240
Speaker 2: describe your warning, you'd probably be in first person and

347
00:20:22,359 --> 00:20:24,520
Speaker 2: talking about it, and you could say, oh, I got

348
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Speaker 2: to a bathroom or make coffee, or I walk my

349
00:20:27,640 --> 00:20:30,400
Speaker 2: dog or whatever but if I asked you, like three

350
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Speaker 2: weeks ago, you probably would be a third person. Most

351
00:20:34,680 --> 00:20:37,680
Speaker 2: people when they go back three weeks or beyond, they're

352
00:20:37,720 --> 00:20:40,000
Speaker 2: in third person. I gave a whole speech to all

353
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Speaker 2: these three hundred doctors in a cedar siginer, and nobody

354
00:20:44,400 --> 00:20:47,960
Speaker 2: had ever described the things that I'm describing from the

355
00:20:48,000 --> 00:20:51,359
Speaker 2: inside out. Now, I also believe that memory comes to

356
00:20:51,480 --> 00:20:57,520
Speaker 2: us in four different ways, what I call horizontally, vertically, mushrewingly,

357
00:20:58,080 --> 00:21:01,160
Speaker 2: or sporadically. So if I said to you, hey, how

358
00:21:01,200 --> 00:21:04,000
Speaker 2: is that wedding you went to a couple of weeks ago,

359
00:21:04,040 --> 00:21:06,480
Speaker 2: and you said, oh, man, it was brave. Friday night,

360
00:21:06,760 --> 00:21:08,720
Speaker 2: we went to the bar, we all had a drink,

361
00:21:08,760 --> 00:21:10,520
Speaker 2: there was a rehearsal dinner, we had a drink. The

362
00:21:10,520 --> 00:21:12,480
Speaker 2: next morning, I got up in jog and you start

363
00:21:12,520 --> 00:21:15,400
Speaker 2: telling me the whole weekend, sort of a linear horizontal,

364
00:21:16,280 --> 00:21:18,720
Speaker 2: you know, kind of a narrative way. If I said

365
00:21:18,720 --> 00:21:20,840
Speaker 2: to you, that would be a horizontal him. But I

366
00:21:20,840 --> 00:21:22,439
Speaker 2: said how is the wedding? And you said, oh, my

367
00:21:22,520 --> 00:21:25,400
Speaker 2: cousin and I got into a whole discussion at the wedding,

368
00:21:25,800 --> 00:21:29,920
Speaker 2: and you could probably just a pinpoint, a specific on

369
00:21:30,119 --> 00:21:32,840
Speaker 2: a line and go deep into a memory. So that's

370
00:21:32,920 --> 00:21:35,760
Speaker 2: kind of like a vertical memory. And if I said,

371
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Speaker 2: how is that wedding? And you said, oh, my gosh,

372
00:21:38,480 --> 00:21:41,040
Speaker 2: there was somebody I met. We decided to have lunch.

373
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Speaker 2: Two weeks later we're going to do a project together.

374
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Speaker 2: That's like a mushrooming memory. That means it came out

375
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Speaker 2: of the event I asked you about. But if mushrooms

376
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Speaker 2: somewhere else. And then if I said to you, oh,

377
00:21:52,520 --> 00:21:54,440
Speaker 2: how is that wedding and you said, oh my god,

378
00:21:54,520 --> 00:21:56,440
Speaker 2: there was a guy there who looked like when my

379
00:21:56,520 --> 00:21:59,600
Speaker 2: old boss, and I was instantly back and when I

380
00:21:59,640 --> 00:22:01,720
Speaker 2: off is thinking about what a jerk this guy was

381
00:22:01,760 --> 00:22:04,199
Speaker 2: because he took credit for my work. So that's a

382
00:22:04,240 --> 00:22:07,480
Speaker 2: sporadic memory. So all day long, we do memory like that,

383
00:22:07,960 --> 00:22:10,879
Speaker 2: especially people of age Sam, And you can ask about

384
00:22:10,960 --> 00:22:13,159
Speaker 2: some specific day and it can be told in a

385
00:22:13,200 --> 00:22:17,320
Speaker 2: linear horizontal way, or a vertical way, or a mushrooming way,

386
00:22:17,480 --> 00:22:20,280
Speaker 2: or a sporadic way, do you know what I mean. Yeah,

387
00:22:20,320 --> 00:22:23,320
Speaker 2: So we go all over, so you have to not

388
00:22:23,520 --> 00:22:27,399
Speaker 2: think the way it happens differently for us. It just

389
00:22:27,560 --> 00:22:30,959
Speaker 2: is And it's not even like we're all consistent but

390
00:22:31,000 --> 00:22:32,199
Speaker 2: this is how it happens for me.

391
00:22:32,640 --> 00:22:34,479
Speaker 1: How far back does it go for you? What's your

392
00:22:34,520 --> 00:22:37,199
Speaker 1: earliest memory being baptized?

393
00:22:38,119 --> 00:22:41,199
Speaker 2: So I was like three weeks old, yeah, and you

394
00:22:41,240 --> 00:22:43,560
Speaker 2: know and say, oh, it was a day. I just

395
00:22:43,600 --> 00:22:47,280
Speaker 2: remember the feeling. I remember, you know, just the whiteness.

396
00:22:47,359 --> 00:22:49,960
Speaker 2: I remember things like that. I didn't have words yet,

397
00:22:50,200 --> 00:22:51,840
Speaker 2: but I can go way back.

398
00:22:52,880 --> 00:22:54,680
Speaker 1: And is that generally true that you can remember things

399
00:22:54,720 --> 00:22:55,880
Speaker 1: from when you were one or two?

400
00:22:56,480 --> 00:22:59,120
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, oh wow, yeah. I mean it's much more

401
00:22:59,440 --> 00:23:02,919
Speaker 2: visual and it has a language to it for later on.

402
00:23:03,640 --> 00:23:06,080
Speaker 2: You know, what made you interest in neuroscience?

403
00:23:06,720 --> 00:23:09,520
Speaker 1: Oh, I've been you know, my father was a psychiatrist

404
00:23:09,520 --> 00:23:11,359
Speaker 1: and my mother was a biology teacher, and so it

405
00:23:11,440 --> 00:23:13,879
Speaker 1: was natural enough. I ended up becoming a writer first,

406
00:23:13,920 --> 00:23:17,359
Speaker 1: and then I went to neuroscience. So I'm very interested

407
00:23:17,359 --> 00:23:19,439
Speaker 1: in the human condition and all the different ways of

408
00:23:19,480 --> 00:23:23,760
Speaker 1: getting there. So let me ask you this. We can

409
00:23:23,800 --> 00:23:26,760
Speaker 1: never step outside of our own experience of the world.

410
00:23:26,800 --> 00:23:30,880
Speaker 1: But do you feel like your highly superior autobiographical memory

411
00:23:30,960 --> 00:23:34,520
Speaker 1: is something that's good or bad or you feel mixed

412
00:23:34,520 --> 00:23:35,199
Speaker 1: feelings about it?

413
00:23:35,240 --> 00:23:37,200
Speaker 2: People always say is it a blessing or a curse?

414
00:23:37,600 --> 00:23:41,280
Speaker 2: And my stock answer is it's always a blessing for me,

415
00:23:41,359 --> 00:23:45,639
Speaker 2: which is absolutely one hundred percent. Tu Now, for one

416
00:23:45,680 --> 00:23:47,840
Speaker 2: second did I think this was a curse. Not the

417
00:23:47,920 --> 00:23:50,720
Speaker 2: one second in my life. But I always say, but

418
00:23:50,760 --> 00:23:53,160
Speaker 2: it's a curse for my husband, which is probably why

419
00:23:53,200 --> 00:23:56,560
Speaker 2: I'm on my third and final because you know, like

420
00:23:56,600 --> 00:23:59,199
Speaker 2: we just had to fight two days ago, and he

421
00:23:59,280 --> 00:24:02,960
Speaker 2: said something and you know, in March of twenty twenty two,

422
00:24:03,000 --> 00:24:06,600
Speaker 2: and I went, no, it didn't it had been on No, Michael,

423
00:24:06,760 --> 00:24:09,639
Speaker 2: it had been on September the twenty third of twenty

424
00:24:09,680 --> 00:24:11,800
Speaker 2: twenty two. You know that I was wearing this you

425
00:24:11,880 --> 00:24:14,320
Speaker 2: were talking about. He was like, well, you know, and

426
00:24:14,359 --> 00:24:16,760
Speaker 2: then it became this. I said. It's not like I

427
00:24:16,760 --> 00:24:19,399
Speaker 2: have to be right. I just believe in accuracy. And

428
00:24:19,440 --> 00:24:21,919
Speaker 2: if you're talking about something that happened in this season,

429
00:24:22,520 --> 00:24:25,200
Speaker 2: you're in the wrong season, you know. But it's funny

430
00:24:25,200 --> 00:24:28,200
Speaker 2: because yeah, so he but he always says, what man

431
00:24:28,280 --> 00:24:32,200
Speaker 2: ever loses an argument against his wife anyway, at least

432
00:24:32,240 --> 00:24:36,080
Speaker 2: he has excuse because I sech an individual memory, you know.

433
00:24:36,359 --> 00:24:38,960
Speaker 2: But no, it's always been it's always been a blessing

434
00:24:38,960 --> 00:24:41,479
Speaker 2: for me. Here here's the thing, as you know, and

435
00:24:41,600 --> 00:24:45,359
Speaker 2: doctor Rabaut proved this. Doctor James mcgobre does the whole study.

436
00:24:47,160 --> 00:24:50,320
Speaker 2: He memories tied to adrenaline. So people are going to

437
00:24:50,359 --> 00:24:54,520
Speaker 2: remember the highs like getting married, having a baby, you know,

438
00:24:54,760 --> 00:24:59,119
Speaker 2: a promotion at work, a fabulous something or other, buying

439
00:24:59,119 --> 00:25:02,000
Speaker 2: a house, whatever, and they're also going to remember the lows,

440
00:25:02,400 --> 00:25:06,520
Speaker 2: whether it's you know, whether they've been embarrassed or a

441
00:25:06,560 --> 00:25:09,480
Speaker 2: breakup or a death of someone. You know. So those

442
00:25:09,760 --> 00:25:13,720
Speaker 2: highs and lows are being recorded constantly by us people

443
00:25:13,760 --> 00:25:16,680
Speaker 2: with h SAM. We're lucky enough to have all those

444
00:25:16,800 --> 00:25:20,600
Speaker 2: middle of the road kind of our tone moments recorded

445
00:25:20,680 --> 00:25:23,480
Speaker 2: and kept and talked about, you know, I mean that,

446
00:25:23,600 --> 00:25:26,040
Speaker 2: and they're available to us. So I'm always trying to

447
00:25:26,040 --> 00:25:28,399
Speaker 2: help people. You know, I don't have to show off

448
00:25:28,480 --> 00:25:31,000
Speaker 2: my memory anymore. It's just it's the way it is.

449
00:25:31,359 --> 00:25:34,560
Speaker 2: People stop me at the airport and until throw dates

450
00:25:34,560 --> 00:25:38,280
Speaker 2: at me and stuff I means hilarious. And the thing

451
00:25:38,359 --> 00:25:42,560
Speaker 2: is that's it's really you know, I'm what I'm trying

452
00:25:42,560 --> 00:25:44,680
Speaker 2: to do is I'm trying to help people bring back

453
00:25:44,760 --> 00:25:49,520
Speaker 2: those little summers nights, you know, the little fabric of

454
00:25:49,560 --> 00:25:51,800
Speaker 2: their lives kind of thing, things that they may have

455
00:25:51,840 --> 00:25:55,639
Speaker 2: forgotten because they didn't get recorded on those high tone

456
00:25:55,720 --> 00:25:56,880
Speaker 2: or low tone scales.

457
00:25:57,320 --> 00:26:00,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, we write down everything that's emotionally sales. That's really

458
00:26:01,000 --> 00:26:04,400
Speaker 1: what what memory is for, is to write things down

459
00:26:04,440 --> 00:26:06,760
Speaker 1: so that we can better plan for the future. That's

460
00:26:06,760 --> 00:26:07,880
Speaker 1: why we have memory.

461
00:26:08,320 --> 00:26:11,399
Speaker 2: Well, I don't say if all you do is you

462
00:26:11,480 --> 00:26:14,280
Speaker 2: wake up, you live your life, you turn off the light,

463
00:26:14,480 --> 00:26:17,879
Speaker 2: you go to sleep, you wake up, you live your life,

464
00:26:18,160 --> 00:26:20,960
Speaker 2: you turn off the light, you go to sleep, and

465
00:26:21,000 --> 00:26:24,680
Speaker 2: nothing has moved forward, well then what does it all mean?

466
00:26:25,240 --> 00:26:29,480
Speaker 2: So by developing a better autobiographical memory, you are able.

467
00:26:30,640 --> 00:26:35,480
Speaker 2: It's actually your strongest line of defense against meaninglessness that

468
00:26:35,520 --> 00:26:38,760
Speaker 2: you have because you are able to bring information from

469
00:26:38,760 --> 00:26:42,159
Speaker 2: your past to your present and let it inform a

470
00:26:42,160 --> 00:26:45,920
Speaker 2: better future. I work with people all the time on memory.

471
00:26:46,240 --> 00:26:49,400
Speaker 2: I work with people who have like a roadblock somehow

472
00:26:49,440 --> 00:26:52,080
Speaker 2: and trying to get them past a roadblock, or women

473
00:26:52,119 --> 00:26:54,680
Speaker 2: who pick the same kind of guy all the time

474
00:26:54,680 --> 00:26:58,000
Speaker 2: because they're not noticing the red flags they're wind to them,

475
00:26:58,040 --> 00:27:00,679
Speaker 2: you know. So I mean I do one tree with people.

476
00:27:00,960 --> 00:27:02,679
Speaker 2: One of the things I love to do the most

477
00:27:02,840 --> 00:27:08,760
Speaker 2: is for like school auctions or any kind of you know,

478
00:27:09,000 --> 00:27:11,680
Speaker 2: any kind of option. I will option my self off

479
00:27:11,680 --> 00:27:14,760
Speaker 2: as a memory person who will take people back and

480
00:27:14,920 --> 00:27:17,760
Speaker 2: do memory sessions with them. And it's really farm, it's

481
00:27:17,800 --> 00:27:20,560
Speaker 2: really amazing what happens in a couple hour hours.

482
00:27:20,760 --> 00:27:23,160
Speaker 1: Are you able to help other people improve their memories?

483
00:27:23,560 --> 00:27:25,639
Speaker 2: Oh yeah all the time. I might might not be

484
00:27:25,640 --> 00:27:28,040
Speaker 2: able to give them h sam, but you have. But

485
00:27:28,880 --> 00:27:31,359
Speaker 2: people have gotten so lazy, especially because everything is on

486
00:27:31,400 --> 00:27:33,960
Speaker 2: the you know, on their phones, and so we just

487
00:27:34,200 --> 00:27:37,520
Speaker 2: throw it there. I mean yeah. I always say, if

488
00:27:37,600 --> 00:27:40,480
Speaker 2: let's say you're a visual person, you know, you know

489
00:27:40,560 --> 00:27:44,240
Speaker 2: that your dominant sentenced visual well, during the day, during

490
00:27:44,280 --> 00:27:47,240
Speaker 2: your day, at some point, take the picture of the day. Okay,

491
00:27:47,280 --> 00:27:49,440
Speaker 2: just take a picture of the day and put it away.

492
00:27:49,840 --> 00:27:51,640
Speaker 2: And then at the end of the month, if you've

493
00:27:51,680 --> 00:27:54,639
Speaker 2: taken thirty pictures, you think like, oh, what were some

494
00:27:54,680 --> 00:27:57,080
Speaker 2: of those pictures? And see how many you can bring

495
00:27:57,160 --> 00:28:00,199
Speaker 2: forward again, because it's really a muscle, you know. And

496
00:28:00,240 --> 00:28:02,800
Speaker 2: the thing is, if you're only remembering eight to eleven

497
00:28:03,119 --> 00:28:05,720
Speaker 2: events within any given year, which is just so sad

498
00:28:05,760 --> 00:28:08,160
Speaker 2: and pathetic to me, I feel like, if you can

499
00:28:08,200 --> 00:28:12,000
Speaker 2: bring three forward and carry them with you, you'll have

500
00:28:12,080 --> 00:28:14,639
Speaker 2: at least thirty six in the first year that you

501
00:28:14,760 --> 00:28:17,520
Speaker 2: do it and maybe the following year you'll have even more,

502
00:28:17,680 --> 00:28:20,320
Speaker 2: you know, seventy two or something. You know. So, yeah,

503
00:28:20,359 --> 00:28:22,560
Speaker 2: I'm always helping people with their memories.

504
00:28:23,080 --> 00:28:26,040
Speaker 1: Some of my research has to do with how long

505
00:28:26,160 --> 00:28:29,240
Speaker 1: we think something has lasted, what the duration of let's say,

506
00:28:29,280 --> 00:28:31,879
Speaker 1: your past year has been. And what my research has

507
00:28:31,920 --> 00:28:34,520
Speaker 1: pointed to is that the more memory you have, the

508
00:28:34,640 --> 00:28:39,120
Speaker 1: longer things seem to have lasted. And so if you

509
00:28:39,120 --> 00:28:42,680
Speaker 1: can only draw on eight to eleven things, then it

510
00:28:42,720 --> 00:28:46,160
Speaker 1: seems like, wow, the year disappeared. What do you feel

511
00:28:46,160 --> 00:28:48,240
Speaker 1: like you have a different experience than other people in

512
00:28:48,360 --> 00:28:50,840
Speaker 1: terms of how long your life has been going on

513
00:28:50,960 --> 00:28:52,440
Speaker 1: or the past year was or the past month.

514
00:28:53,040 --> 00:28:55,360
Speaker 2: Yeah, well sure, I mean because I you know, I

515
00:28:55,400 --> 00:28:59,320
Speaker 2: mean sometimes I'll put on you know, I'll listen on

516
00:28:58,520 --> 00:29:01,280
Speaker 2: my soul and I'll do like a you know, a

517
00:29:01,400 --> 00:29:04,680
Speaker 2: mile two or three walk, a three mile walk or something,

518
00:29:04,920 --> 00:29:08,760
Speaker 2: and I'll just pick an alibum or you know, usually

519
00:29:08,880 --> 00:29:10,800
Speaker 2: like that, and I'll go through every date of the

520
00:29:10,920 --> 00:29:14,080
Speaker 2: year that that album came out, things like that. You know.

521
00:29:14,200 --> 00:29:18,680
Speaker 2: It's just it's I love the exercise of it, and

522
00:29:18,800 --> 00:29:21,360
Speaker 2: I love well, I love being able to do it,

523
00:29:21,440 --> 00:29:24,120
Speaker 2: and it's like fun and refreshing. There's always something when

524
00:29:24,160 --> 00:29:25,920
Speaker 2: I go through it where I go like, oh, yeah,

525
00:29:26,200 --> 00:29:28,760
Speaker 2: you know what I'm gonna call that person? Or damn,

526
00:29:28,840 --> 00:29:31,560
Speaker 2: where is that blouse? You know? Or oh there's you know,

527
00:29:31,680 --> 00:29:35,400
Speaker 2: things like that, and it's just there's always something that's

528
00:29:35,520 --> 00:29:37,880
Speaker 2: revealed to me like oh, yes, that's why I had

529
00:29:37,960 --> 00:29:40,480
Speaker 2: this reaction later, you know, things like that.

530
00:29:40,800 --> 00:29:43,280
Speaker 1: It's probably a difficult question to answer, but what fraction

531
00:29:43,400 --> 00:29:45,880
Speaker 1: of your time do you suppose you spend in uh,

532
00:29:46,480 --> 00:29:47,360
Speaker 1: in reminiscence.

533
00:29:48,080 --> 00:29:50,400
Speaker 2: Probably not that much, not as much as people think.

534
00:29:50,680 --> 00:29:53,520
Speaker 2: It's happens so quickly for me. And it's not like

535
00:29:54,280 --> 00:29:56,360
Speaker 2: it's not like oh I can't wait too you know,

536
00:29:56,680 --> 00:29:58,640
Speaker 2: it's not like that at all. I mean I could

537
00:29:58,680 --> 00:30:00,960
Speaker 2: be driving in the car talking mysel and I'll hevor

538
00:30:01,000 --> 00:30:03,239
Speaker 2: a song and I'll think about, you know, like oh,

539
00:30:03,320 --> 00:30:05,400
Speaker 2: I remember the last summer the first time I for

540
00:30:05,480 --> 00:30:08,520
Speaker 2: what this remaints. But it's it happens so quickly. It's

541
00:30:08,560 --> 00:30:12,400
Speaker 2: not like I probably spend laice of time because it's faster.

542
00:30:12,720 --> 00:30:15,080
Speaker 2: I just have a better computer system, do you know

543
00:30:15,120 --> 00:30:17,680
Speaker 2: what I mean? Yeah, I probably well last time because

544
00:30:17,720 --> 00:30:21,040
Speaker 2: I know where things are and I can always access them.

545
00:30:21,960 --> 00:30:23,640
Speaker 1: Do you know what synesthesia is?

546
00:30:24,120 --> 00:30:25,680
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't have that.

547
00:30:26,080 --> 00:30:29,360
Speaker 1: Oh okay, interesting, there's no So for example, thinking about

548
00:30:29,400 --> 00:30:32,080
Speaker 1: things spatially, if you think about the months or things

549
00:30:32,160 --> 00:30:34,360
Speaker 1: like that or years, do you have any spatial location

550
00:30:34,440 --> 00:30:34,600
Speaker 1: to that.

551
00:30:35,480 --> 00:30:38,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you know, i'd see things or I

552
00:30:38,160 --> 00:30:42,560
Speaker 2: feel things. Let's say, on like a timeline, so it

553
00:30:42,760 --> 00:30:45,240
Speaker 2: is like from my timeline, you know, let's say this

554
00:30:45,440 --> 00:30:50,000
Speaker 2: is all from your perspective. This would be January and

555
00:30:50,160 --> 00:30:52,800
Speaker 2: this would be December, let's say. But it scrolls quickly,

556
00:30:53,480 --> 00:30:56,320
Speaker 2: you know, it doesn't urger page flip. It's almost like

557
00:30:56,440 --> 00:30:58,440
Speaker 2: on a live and I can stop it and the

558
00:30:58,600 --> 00:31:01,880
Speaker 2: videos for the video from each day can show up

559
00:31:02,000 --> 00:31:05,040
Speaker 2: or not. You know. Sometimes things it's like developing a picture.

560
00:31:05,160 --> 00:31:08,160
Speaker 2: Some things take longer than others, you know what I mean.

561
00:31:08,640 --> 00:31:10,480
Speaker 1: By the way, that is a form of synesthesia called

562
00:31:10,560 --> 00:31:12,440
Speaker 1: spatial sequence synesthesia.

563
00:31:12,520 --> 00:31:15,520
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it sounds like I and I definitely think

564
00:31:15,760 --> 00:31:19,600
Speaker 2: like certain days or certain numbers in general have a

565
00:31:20,000 --> 00:31:22,240
Speaker 2: masculine or feminine stuff like that. But I don't have

566
00:31:22,360 --> 00:31:24,560
Speaker 2: the smell thing. I don't haven't, you know.

567
00:31:24,680 --> 00:31:27,760
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, there are many different forms of synesesia,

568
00:31:27,800 --> 00:31:29,760
Speaker 1: but it sounds it sounds like you definitely have special

569
00:31:29,800 --> 00:31:30,760
Speaker 1: sequence synesthesia.

570
00:31:31,160 --> 00:31:32,280
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess.

571
00:31:47,800 --> 00:31:49,440
Speaker 1: I have a question. Do you ever find that some

572
00:31:49,560 --> 00:31:52,240
Speaker 1: of your memories are inaccurate? Do you have ways of.

573
00:31:52,240 --> 00:31:56,120
Speaker 2: Testing literally self correct? It's like unbelievable, Like I'll say

574
00:31:56,200 --> 00:31:58,480
Speaker 2: something happened out a blubb of them. It's like Rura,

575
00:31:59,480 --> 00:32:03,840
Speaker 2: you will oh like no, be like something self correct immediately.

576
00:32:04,120 --> 00:32:06,400
Speaker 1: And does your remembory feel like a constant stream of

577
00:32:06,520 --> 00:32:08,880
Speaker 1: information or do you turn it off and not think

578
00:32:08,880 --> 00:32:09,160
Speaker 1: about it?

579
00:32:10,080 --> 00:32:14,239
Speaker 2: No? I mean, first of all, I've done seventy eight

580
00:32:14,320 --> 00:32:18,719
Speaker 2: movies in my lifetime, two huge television series, seven Broadway shows.

581
00:32:18,920 --> 00:32:22,720
Speaker 2: I've bringing ten books, So I don't think I you know,

582
00:32:22,800 --> 00:32:26,840
Speaker 2: I'm not sitting talking holy about memory or only you

583
00:32:26,880 --> 00:32:30,840
Speaker 2: know and it brings two fabulous sons and so you know,

584
00:32:31,000 --> 00:32:34,480
Speaker 2: it's not like this is such a preoccupation of marine.

585
00:32:34,760 --> 00:32:38,440
Speaker 2: I love talking about it. I love helping other people.

586
00:32:38,760 --> 00:32:41,000
Speaker 2: I love describing it and trying to get people to

587
00:32:41,120 --> 00:32:44,800
Speaker 2: sort of see what I see in their own lives. Possibly,

588
00:32:45,080 --> 00:32:46,920
Speaker 2: you know, when people come to me go, oh my

589
00:32:47,360 --> 00:32:50,040
Speaker 2: granddaughter has this or oh my son has this, I'll

590
00:32:50,080 --> 00:32:52,640
Speaker 2: go get them into acting class. If you're really troubled

591
00:32:52,680 --> 00:32:56,840
Speaker 2: by it, because as an actor, you will celebrate being

592
00:32:56,960 --> 00:33:01,480
Speaker 2: able to access your emotional your emotional drive. You know.

593
00:33:02,920 --> 00:33:06,760
Speaker 2: It's like we used to do a sense memory exercise

594
00:33:06,840 --> 00:33:11,040
Speaker 2: in class, talk about to sits on touch, taste, smell.

595
00:33:11,320 --> 00:33:13,680
Speaker 2: You'd have to bring in an object or a scent

596
00:33:14,160 --> 00:33:17,560
Speaker 2: or a piece of music or or you know, we

597
00:33:17,760 --> 00:33:20,880
Speaker 2: just one for each sense and people would say, okay.

598
00:33:21,040 --> 00:33:23,240
Speaker 2: The teacher would say, okay, go back in the memory.

599
00:33:23,560 --> 00:33:26,080
Speaker 2: And instantly I could cry, if you go, how'd you

600
00:33:26,160 --> 00:33:28,560
Speaker 2: get there so fast? And I'd say, how could you

601
00:33:28,720 --> 00:33:31,560
Speaker 2: not if that's what you're thinking of some painful memory?

602
00:33:31,920 --> 00:33:32,040
Speaker 1: You know.

603
00:33:32,160 --> 00:33:34,680
Speaker 2: I teach classes and memory live on it all over

604
00:33:34,760 --> 00:33:36,760
Speaker 2: the country. And one of the things that I do

605
00:33:36,960 --> 00:33:40,600
Speaker 2: is I have people bring in a turning point memory

606
00:33:40,760 --> 00:33:43,840
Speaker 2: or object and talk about it, you know, and it's like,

607
00:33:44,040 --> 00:33:46,800
Speaker 2: where was the fork in the road where you went

608
00:33:46,880 --> 00:33:50,160
Speaker 2: this way instead of going that way? Or what's that impact?

609
00:33:50,920 --> 00:33:54,560
Speaker 2: And you can't imagine the things people bring in and

610
00:33:54,680 --> 00:33:56,840
Speaker 2: talk how they talk about the fork in the road,

611
00:33:57,080 --> 00:34:00,320
Speaker 2: you know, how they talk about that turning point. And

612
00:34:00,640 --> 00:34:05,640
Speaker 2: people tell the most unbelievable stories, and you see the

613
00:34:06,200 --> 00:34:09,280
Speaker 2: life changing things happen over the course of the class

614
00:34:09,920 --> 00:34:13,800
Speaker 2: because people have gone back and processed it. Because you know,

615
00:34:13,880 --> 00:34:18,640
Speaker 2: I'm always saying, if you let memories become emotional boogeymen,

616
00:34:19,000 --> 00:34:22,080
Speaker 2: then they control you. But if you process them, it's

617
00:34:22,120 --> 00:34:24,120
Speaker 2: like how many times can you see a scary movie

618
00:34:24,200 --> 00:34:26,840
Speaker 2: without going Okay, Now I can see the camera was

619
00:34:26,880 --> 00:34:29,319
Speaker 2: at that angle when there's probably a craft service table

620
00:34:29,320 --> 00:34:32,080
Speaker 2: and on the corn. You know where you start processing

621
00:34:32,160 --> 00:34:34,160
Speaker 2: it different and you don't. It doesn't have quite the

622
00:34:34,200 --> 00:34:36,480
Speaker 2: same impact. I mean, I'm making a joke about being

623
00:34:36,520 --> 00:34:38,640
Speaker 2: on a set, but it's like it doesn't have the

624
00:34:38,680 --> 00:34:41,920
Speaker 2: same impact on your life when you process it. Otherwise

625
00:34:41,960 --> 00:34:43,040
Speaker 2: it's far away.

626
00:34:43,840 --> 00:34:46,680
Speaker 1: So do you feel like you process memories more, you've

627
00:34:46,760 --> 00:34:48,640
Speaker 1: gone through them, you've reviewed them more.

628
00:34:50,000 --> 00:34:52,200
Speaker 2: Well, Yeah, And I also went into therapy at a

629
00:34:52,320 --> 00:34:55,239
Speaker 2: very young age because my father had just passed away

630
00:34:55,360 --> 00:34:57,360
Speaker 2: and I was going through a lot of life changes.

631
00:34:57,600 --> 00:34:59,560
Speaker 2: So but I mean, I know I could help my

632
00:34:59,640 --> 00:35:03,480
Speaker 2: family that way. But yeah, I mean, I've never been

633
00:35:03,520 --> 00:35:06,880
Speaker 2: somebody who backed away from self reflection because it's like

634
00:35:07,280 --> 00:35:10,640
Speaker 2: verre and available to play with anytime. I'm well. One

635
00:35:10,640 --> 00:35:12,680
Speaker 2: of the things I'm always telling people to do because

636
00:35:12,920 --> 00:35:16,200
Speaker 2: we have gotten lazy, you know, with our smirkles and stuff.

637
00:35:16,560 --> 00:35:18,560
Speaker 2: Is at night, when you're brushing your teeth, it's just

638
00:35:18,600 --> 00:35:20,799
Speaker 2: supposed to do it for true med Just scroll through

639
00:35:20,880 --> 00:35:24,600
Speaker 2: your day, just see what was maybe worth remembering from

640
00:35:24,680 --> 00:35:28,080
Speaker 2: your day, because that second time through might steer it

641
00:35:28,200 --> 00:35:31,520
Speaker 2: in a little more indelibly, you know, because we just

642
00:35:31,800 --> 00:35:33,680
Speaker 2: we walk around with such a fog. People are in

643
00:35:33,760 --> 00:35:36,520
Speaker 2: a fond these dayscase they paying no attention to anything

644
00:35:36,560 --> 00:35:38,960
Speaker 2: that's not on their own, and it's kind of scary.

645
00:35:39,000 --> 00:35:40,080
Speaker 2: We're not living our lives.

646
00:35:40,520 --> 00:35:43,719
Speaker 1: Oh I love that. Great. I'm going to do that

647
00:35:43,840 --> 00:35:45,200
Speaker 1: tonight and every night from now on.

648
00:35:45,920 --> 00:35:46,480
Speaker 2: Do it tonight.

649
00:35:46,800 --> 00:35:47,200
Speaker 1: Terrific.

650
00:35:47,280 --> 00:35:49,359
Speaker 2: Well, we must be an auditory person. That's why you've

651
00:35:49,360 --> 00:35:53,200
Speaker 2: got a podcast and all that. Right, very auditory, I

652
00:35:53,239 --> 00:35:54,719
Speaker 2: guess I am. I listen to most of my books

653
00:35:54,760 --> 00:35:55,400
Speaker 2: now in audible.

654
00:35:55,520 --> 00:35:55,719
Speaker 1: Yeah.

655
00:35:56,480 --> 00:35:58,960
Speaker 2: So if you're very auditory, then you should, you know,

656
00:35:59,120 --> 00:36:01,000
Speaker 2: do a sound check at some point during the day

657
00:36:01,239 --> 00:36:04,000
Speaker 2: and write it down somewhere and then later on at

658
00:36:04,040 --> 00:36:05,640
Speaker 2: the end of the lefth go like, how many of

659
00:36:05,680 --> 00:36:08,160
Speaker 2: my little cell checks? Can I actually remember where was

660
00:36:08,239 --> 00:36:10,560
Speaker 2: I on this day or that day? Because we've just

661
00:36:10,680 --> 00:36:12,160
Speaker 2: gotten so lazy.

662
00:36:12,360 --> 00:36:14,440
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. And we all carry around our exo

663
00:36:14,520 --> 00:36:16,880
Speaker 1: brains now in our cell phones, and so we uh

664
00:36:17,120 --> 00:36:18,960
Speaker 1: we put stuff off to our devices.

665
00:36:19,760 --> 00:36:22,239
Speaker 2: People don't even remember their own phone numbers, you know,

666
00:36:22,400 --> 00:36:24,680
Speaker 2: or their best friends phone member. And as kids, we

667
00:36:24,800 --> 00:36:27,320
Speaker 2: can you know, we always an were our phone numbers.

668
00:36:27,640 --> 00:36:30,480
Speaker 2: I did our seminar once with three hundred people, and

669
00:36:30,840 --> 00:36:33,839
Speaker 2: I said to them, how there's no memories? And I said,

670
00:36:33,880 --> 00:36:36,240
Speaker 2: how many of you remember your freshman in high school schedule?

671
00:36:36,600 --> 00:36:38,160
Speaker 2: And the little girl raised her hand and I said,

672
00:36:38,200 --> 00:36:40,960
Speaker 2: hold you. She said, fifteen? Were you battering omber? That

673
00:36:41,080 --> 00:36:43,360
Speaker 2: was last year? I said, what about the rest of you?

674
00:36:43,560 --> 00:36:45,560
Speaker 2: Nobody remembered. I said, okay, I'm going to give you

675
00:36:45,680 --> 00:36:49,960
Speaker 2: some prompting questions, because it's about prompting sometimes, And so

676
00:36:50,520 --> 00:36:53,759
Speaker 2: within within fifteen minutes, every single person except for to me,

677
00:36:54,000 --> 00:36:56,799
Speaker 2: just didn't want to play. Every single person had their

678
00:36:56,800 --> 00:36:58,320
Speaker 2: freshman in high school schedule.

679
00:36:58,480 --> 00:36:59,920
Speaker 1: What's an example of a prompting question?

680
00:37:00,160 --> 00:37:02,480
Speaker 2: What rugby question would be? How did you get to school?

681
00:37:03,400 --> 00:37:06,160
Speaker 2: Do you remember what your first period was, what was

682
00:37:06,239 --> 00:37:10,440
Speaker 2: your lunchroom situation? Who'd you sit with? Did you have sports? After?

683
00:37:10,719 --> 00:37:12,640
Speaker 2: You know? You just go through like a list of questions,

684
00:37:12,760 --> 00:37:15,040
Speaker 2: and it just starts to build in and it's like

685
00:37:15,200 --> 00:37:18,279
Speaker 2: what class were you most hired or somebody said mac

686
00:37:18,400 --> 00:37:20,920
Speaker 2: I said, I bet that was your lunch. That was

687
00:37:21,040 --> 00:37:24,040
Speaker 2: right after lunch. Yeah, but you know, and you just

688
00:37:24,120 --> 00:37:27,560
Speaker 2: start prompting and then things be one another.

689
00:37:32,239 --> 00:37:34,840
Speaker 1: That was the actor Mary Lou Henner, who has highly

690
00:37:35,000 --> 00:37:38,800
Speaker 1: superior autobiographical memory. So in answer to the question that

691
00:37:38,880 --> 00:37:42,000
Speaker 1: we started with, which is whether everyone has the same

692
00:37:42,160 --> 00:37:45,440
Speaker 1: level of memory, the answers clearly know. I want to

693
00:37:45,520 --> 00:37:49,080
Speaker 1: wrap up by returning to two points. The first is

694
00:37:49,160 --> 00:37:52,800
Speaker 1: this question of whether a memory like this is a

695
00:37:52,840 --> 00:37:55,279
Speaker 1: good thing or a bad thing. I asked Mary Lou

696
00:37:55,360 --> 00:37:56,880
Speaker 1: what she thought of this, and she said it was

697
00:37:57,000 --> 00:38:00,040
Speaker 1: unambiguously good. But I just want to note that we

698
00:38:00,239 --> 00:38:03,319
Speaker 1: each live in our own heads, and you can never

699
00:38:03,560 --> 00:38:07,239
Speaker 1: really run a control experiment. Would you be happier or

700
00:38:07,320 --> 00:38:10,279
Speaker 1: less happy if you had a different memory, better or

701
00:38:10,320 --> 00:38:13,480
Speaker 1: worse than what you have now? We can each speculate,

702
00:38:13,560 --> 00:38:16,759
Speaker 1: but we can't really know. I will say that other

703
00:38:16,840 --> 00:38:19,920
Speaker 1: people with h sam, like Jill Price what I mentioned before,

704
00:38:20,600 --> 00:38:23,640
Speaker 1: she feels pretty clearly the opposite of Mary Lou. She

705
00:38:23,800 --> 00:38:27,360
Speaker 1: feels like it is a burden and let's return to

706
00:38:27,440 --> 00:38:32,479
Speaker 1: the Jorge Luis Borges story. Funes the memorious Borhes uses

707
00:38:32,520 --> 00:38:36,719
Speaker 1: the character to suggest that while perfect memory might seem desirable,

708
00:38:36,800 --> 00:38:40,759
Speaker 1: it comes at a cost. The character is cast down

709
00:38:40,880 --> 00:38:43,880
Speaker 1: in a flood of memory and loses an ability to

710
00:38:44,080 --> 00:38:48,919
Speaker 1: generalize or abstract or find appropriate meaning in the world

711
00:38:48,960 --> 00:38:51,520
Speaker 1: that has too many details. Now, again, that was a

712
00:38:51,680 --> 00:38:56,160
Speaker 1: fiction author's interpretation, But maybe fictional stories are as close

713
00:38:56,200 --> 00:38:59,320
Speaker 1: as we ever come to running a control experiment on

714
00:38:59,440 --> 00:39:02,800
Speaker 1: our own line. It is the case that Jill Price,

715
00:39:02,960 --> 00:39:05,920
Speaker 1: the real woman who can Never Forget, has stated that

716
00:39:06,120 --> 00:39:10,279
Speaker 1: she liked the character of Fuones is cursed by her

717
00:39:10,400 --> 00:39:14,440
Speaker 1: inability to forget. Whatever the case, all this points to

718
00:39:14,520 --> 00:39:18,400
Speaker 1: the possibility that forgetting is actually a useful thing. It

719
00:39:18,480 --> 00:39:22,239
Speaker 1: points to the possibility that natural selection has tuned the

720
00:39:22,360 --> 00:39:26,560
Speaker 1: amount we remember and don't remember to be roughly optimal,

721
00:39:26,680 --> 00:39:29,359
Speaker 1: at least in the environments in which humans evolved over

722
00:39:29,400 --> 00:39:33,000
Speaker 1: the past several million years. It at least encourages us

723
00:39:33,160 --> 00:39:38,440
Speaker 1: to consider that forgetting is an essential feature of memory,

724
00:39:38,840 --> 00:39:42,800
Speaker 1: rather than a flaw. Our brains are constantly bombarded with

725
00:39:42,920 --> 00:39:46,239
Speaker 1: information every site and sound and experience we have, and

726
00:39:46,520 --> 00:39:50,439
Speaker 1: most of it if it's not emotionally salient, really doesn't matter,

727
00:39:50,840 --> 00:39:53,239
Speaker 1: like where I parked my car at the airport in

728
00:39:53,320 --> 00:39:58,239
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen. As the writer Honora de Balzac said, memories

729
00:39:58,520 --> 00:40:05,840
Speaker 1: beautify life, but the capacity to forget makes it bearable. However,

730
00:40:06,160 --> 00:40:08,920
Speaker 1: on the flip side, I was moved and inspired by

731
00:40:09,000 --> 00:40:12,279
Speaker 1: what Mary Luce said about the importance of putting some

732
00:40:12,440 --> 00:40:16,200
Speaker 1: effort into remembering our lives. After all this, I've published

733
00:40:16,239 --> 00:40:19,520
Speaker 1: and argued in other episodes the apparent duration of your life,

734
00:40:19,560 --> 00:40:21,960
Speaker 1: In other words, how long you think it's been since

735
00:40:22,440 --> 00:40:25,640
Speaker 1: last summer, or last year or last decade. This depends

736
00:40:26,120 --> 00:40:30,200
Speaker 1: on how much memory you can draw upon, And what

737
00:40:30,400 --> 00:40:32,680
Speaker 1: tends to happen to us as we get older is

738
00:40:32,719 --> 00:40:36,719
Speaker 1: that we lay down less and less new memory, and

739
00:40:36,840 --> 00:40:39,759
Speaker 1: so we end up thinking, gosh, where did this year go?

740
00:40:40,320 --> 00:40:42,560
Speaker 1: We're already pulling up to the end of a new year,

741
00:40:42,600 --> 00:40:44,640
Speaker 1: and it feels like this one went by in the

742
00:40:44,680 --> 00:40:47,320
Speaker 1: blink of an eye. But if we have rich memories

743
00:40:47,400 --> 00:40:51,600
Speaker 1: that we can draw on from the year, then we think, oh, well,

744
00:40:51,680 --> 00:40:53,200
Speaker 1: let's see, there was this event, and oh and then

745
00:40:53,200 --> 00:40:55,239
Speaker 1: there was that, and there was that, and the whole

746
00:40:55,320 --> 00:40:59,120
Speaker 1: thing doesn't seem like it disappeared in a blink anymore.

747
00:40:59,440 --> 00:41:01,560
Speaker 1: One of the most important things from the point of

748
00:41:01,640 --> 00:41:05,000
Speaker 1: view of brain plasticity is to keep your brain well

749
00:41:05,200 --> 00:41:08,560
Speaker 1: exercised and not falling into routine. And one of the

750
00:41:08,680 --> 00:41:11,279
Speaker 1: things that I recommended in a different episode is that

751
00:41:11,680 --> 00:41:13,800
Speaker 1: when you brush your teeth, you should try it with

752
00:41:13,880 --> 00:41:16,279
Speaker 1: your other hand, because that gets your brain out of

753
00:41:16,320 --> 00:41:19,160
Speaker 1: its routine and forces it to confront a little novelty.

754
00:41:19,600 --> 00:41:23,359
Speaker 1: So I loved Mary Lou's suggestion about thinking through your

755
00:41:23,480 --> 00:41:26,560
Speaker 1: day while you brush your teeth and really writing down

756
00:41:26,719 --> 00:41:30,879
Speaker 1: mentally what you did so tonight and hereafter, I would

757
00:41:30,960 --> 00:41:33,640
Speaker 1: like to suggest that you brush your teeth with your

758
00:41:33,719 --> 00:41:37,880
Speaker 1: other hand while recounting your day from beginning to end.

759
00:41:38,280 --> 00:41:41,160
Speaker 1: This will not only kick your brain off its natural

760
00:41:41,239 --> 00:41:45,399
Speaker 1: path of least resistance, but it will also lock down

761
00:41:45,600 --> 00:41:48,760
Speaker 1: a little more memory in your life. I'm not telling

762
00:41:48,840 --> 00:41:52,560
Speaker 1: you here how to live longer. Instead, I'm suggesting how

763
00:41:52,640 --> 00:41:55,960
Speaker 1: to make it seem as though you have lived longer

764
00:41:56,320 --> 00:42:00,720
Speaker 1: by internally writing down more of your health human journey

765
00:42:01,120 --> 00:42:04,279
Speaker 1: so that you have more of its richness to draw from.

766
00:42:07,680 --> 00:42:10,560
Speaker 1: Go to Eagleman dot com slash podcast for more information

767
00:42:10,760 --> 00:42:13,799
Speaker 1: and to find further reading, Send me an email at

768
00:42:13,880 --> 00:42:17,680
Speaker 1: podcasts at eagleman dot com with questions or discussion, and

769
00:42:17,800 --> 00:42:20,400
Speaker 1: check out on Subscribe to Inner Cosmos on YouTube for

770
00:42:20,640 --> 00:42:23,960
Speaker 1: videos of each episode and to leave comments until next time.

771
00:42:24,280 --> 00:42:27,279
Speaker 1: I'm David Eagleman and this is Inner Cosmos