Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Aaron Welsh, and this is this podcast will
Speaker 1: Kill You. Welcome to another of our tp w k
Speaker 1: Y book Club episodes, where we get to explore a
Speaker 1: science or medicine book beyond the pages by asking the
Speaker 1: author all sorts of questions for about forty five minutes
Speaker 1: or so. As you've probably heard me say, it's one
Speaker 1: of my favorite parts of putting this podcast together, and
Speaker 1: I hope that you're enjoying it too. If you are
Speaker 1: or if you're not, we'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 1: Send us your thoughts, your unanswered questions, your book suggestions,
Speaker 1: your favorite selections, and anything else you want to tell
Speaker 1: us to us via the contact us form on our
Speaker 1: website This Podcast will Kill You dot com. Speaking of
Speaker 1: our website, did you know that you can find all
Speaker 1: of the books we've covered so far this season and last,
Speaker 1: as well as the books that we'll be getting to
Speaker 1: later this year on our website. All you have to
Speaker 1: do is head over to our website and click on
Speaker 1: the link to our bookshop dot org affiliate account under
Speaker 1: the extras tab. Once you're on bookshop, you'll find various
Speaker 1: TPWKY associated booklists, including one for book Club Pro tip.
Speaker 1: These lists are good great for finding future reads or
Speaker 1: picking out gifts for the bookworms in your life. So
Speaker 1: with that shall we get into this week's book. I
Speaker 1: am delighted to share with you all a book whose
Speaker 1: subject literally all of us can relate to. Why we remember?
Speaker 1: Unlocking Memories, Power to hold on to What Matters? By
Speaker 1: Doctor Charan Ranganath. In this fascinating and insightful book, Ranganath
Speaker 1: expertly guides readers through complex concepts of how memory works
Speaker 1: and what happens when it doesn't, how memories are formed, forgotten,
Speaker 1: or forged, and what studying the mechanisms of our memory
Speaker 1: can tell us about our past as well as our present.
Speaker 1: An expert is no exaggeration. Doctor Ronganath is Professor of
Speaker 1: Psychology and Neuroscience and Director of the Dynamic Memory Lab
Speaker 1: at the University of California at Davis, and his work
Speaker 1: has investigated the neural underpinnings of how memories are made,
Speaker 1: what happens when we retrieve memories, and how things like
Speaker 1: emotions influence our recollection. We've all had those moments where
Speaker 1: we can't remember where we put our keys, or when
Speaker 1: we've typed in eight different passwords to that one random
Speaker 1: website we had to make an account four years ago,
Speaker 1: only to get locked out on our ninth try, Or
Speaker 1: when we struggle to remember that colleague's partner's name whom
Speaker 1: we met literally three minutes ago. I forget easily, easily
Speaker 1: ninety percent of some of the episodes we've released, like
Speaker 1: don't ask me anything about arsenic at this point, And
Speaker 1: there have been at least a few times where Aaron
Speaker 1: or I will suggest a topic that we've already done
Speaker 1: an episode on, having completely forgotten that we've already covered it.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it really does feel like our brain is sabotaging us,
Speaker 1: making us forget things that can be quite important, like
Speaker 1: whether or not you turn to the oven off as
Speaker 1: you sit on an international flight, while at the same
Speaker 1: time preserving the cringiest, most embarrassing, painful moments in exquisitely
Speaker 1: vivid detail so we can easily recall them at say,
Speaker 1: three am, when we're tossing and turning and our anxiety
Speaker 1: is at its peak. Complaining about our forgetfulness is a
Speaker 1: favorite pastime for many of us, but we don't often
Speaker 1: stop to consider why we remember in the first place,
Speaker 1: and how examining the role of memory over our evolutionary
Speaker 1: history can help to answer that question. In Why We Remember,
Speaker 1: Ranganath delves into this question and guides readers down many
Speaker 1: other roads relating to memory, including how we remember, the
Speaker 1: differences between different types of memory, like how is remembering
Speaker 1: your sixth birthday different from recalling the date the Titanic
Speaker 1: set sail at your favorite bars trivia night, How context
Speaker 1: like music or smell can strengthen our recall, the world
Speaker 1: of competitive memory, the unreliability of memory, how dejaus vous works,
Speaker 1: and even ways we can work at improving our memory.
Speaker 1: The neuroscience of memory is, as you can imagine, an
Speaker 1: incredibly complex topic where it would be so easy to
Speaker 1: get lost in the weeds, but doctor Ranganeth ensures that
Speaker 1: doesn't happen with his wonderfully clear and engaging writing. This
Speaker 1: is sure to be an episode you won't forget, at
Speaker 1: least for a while anyway, So let's get right to
Speaker 1: it after this break, doctor Ranganath, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for being here today. I absolutely devoured your book. I
Speaker 1: found it incredibly fascinating, could not put it down, and
Speaker 1: I wondered, you know, when did you decide I want
Speaker 1: to write a book about memory and two parter, how
Speaker 1: did you first become interested in researching memory?
Speaker 2: Great two part question. I got actually a background in
Speaker 2: clinical psychology in graduate school, and so initially my work
Speaker 2: was on depression, and I would see a lot of patients,
Speaker 2: and some of my time was actually seeing people, for instance,
Speaker 2: in treatment for depression or anxiety, and sometimes it was
Speaker 2: working in the neuropsychology clinic where people would be coming
Speaker 2: in and they would be worried, you know, do I
Speaker 2: have Alzheimer's disease or you know, maybe they had a
Speaker 2: car accident and an insurance claim and so forth. And
Speaker 2: so what was interesting is almost everyone who came into
Speaker 2: the neuropsychology clinic, whether or not it was their main problem,
Speaker 2: the thing that brought them in was almost always memory
Speaker 2: that they said they had a memory problem. And when
Speaker 2: I was working with patients, what I found was early
Speaker 2: on I was working, for instance, with my first patient
Speaker 2: was a phobia patient and he had a driving phobia,
Speaker 2: and so we worked through a lot of the mechanics
Speaker 2: of that, which is basically just exposure to drive drive drive,
Speaker 2: but he wasn't quite happy, and it wasn't until we
Speaker 2: really kind of got into a little bit of his
Speaker 2: memories around that time that he felt like he was
Speaker 2: really satisfied and he had actually, it turns out, a
Speaker 2: falling out with his father right before this car accident,
Speaker 2: and it was all at least for him, there is
Speaker 2: a deep link between them, and so it was just
Speaker 2: over and over again. I would see these links to
Speaker 2: memory throughout my clinical practice, in my training, that is,
Speaker 2: and at the same time, there were these new advances
Speaker 2: coming up in brain imaging. And what was great about
Speaker 2: that was that a lot of the way we were
Speaker 2: thinking about memory in the clinic was really not grounded
Speaker 2: in the best science that was around. It was more
Speaker 2: based on what was useful in the clinic. But I
Speaker 2: felt like, if we can actually get into people's brains,
Speaker 2: we can really figure out what's going on. And so
Speaker 2: that's how I ended up getting into the world of
Speaker 2: memory research. And over the years, you know, I've always
Speaker 2: I've really felt like I wanted to write a book
Speaker 2: for regular people because I never really felt like I
Speaker 2: would have gone this road. I feel like a very
Speaker 2: unlikely scientist, and so I wanted to write something for
Speaker 2: you know, everyone, to share science and where it's going,
Speaker 2: where it's gone and what we've learned from it, And
Speaker 2: again that kind of stems back to my interests of
Speaker 2: bringing a scientific perspective back to a lot of the
Speaker 2: clinical work. And so I just didn't think I was
Speaker 2: ready yet. I didn't think I had the book in
Speaker 2: me yet. I didn't think I had the time. And
Speaker 2: my agent, Rachel, actually she'd contacted me out of the
Speaker 2: blue in March of twenty twenty, and so we had
Speaker 2: an appointment to get together. I think it was the
Speaker 2: second or the third week of March, and two days
Speaker 2: beforehand turned out we had to cancel it because of
Speaker 2: the lockdowns, And it was like the universe was just
Speaker 2: telling me write this book. And then, you know, it
Speaker 2: was really just became apparent to me just how much
Speaker 2: people need to hear from scientists, not just journalists, not
Speaker 2: just politicians who were up on the science, but scientists themselves,
Speaker 2: especially because there's so much We talked about this a
Speaker 2: little bit in the beginning before we started recording, that
Speaker 2: a big part of science is actually having some degree
Speaker 2: of uncertainty, some degree of not knowing. I mean, that's
Speaker 2: actually a big part of science in general, is figuring
Speaker 2: out what we don't know and so I think people
Speaker 2: wanted facts at the beginning of the pandemic, and that's
Speaker 2: you know, that's how we are taught science in high
Speaker 2: school is this is just a boatload of facts that
Speaker 2: you have to memorize, and it's really a process, and
Speaker 2: it's an evolving process, and one in which you go
Speaker 2: into the trenches and you're kind of you're trying to
Speaker 2: figure out nature, but you're also fighting nature. It's a
Speaker 2: trying to figure this stuff out, and there's uncertainty involved
Speaker 2: with that, and I feel like if scientists were getting
Speaker 2: to people, we could say more about both the uncertainty
Speaker 2: and also about some of the educated guesses that we
Speaker 2: can make based on what's out there.
Speaker 1: Do you point out in the introduction that we shouldn't
Speaker 1: be asking why do we forget? Or why am I
Speaker 1: so forgetful? But rather the more interesting question, and also
Speaker 1: of course the inspiration for your book's title, why do
Speaker 1: we remember? And for the full answer to that question,
Speaker 1: I'll direct our listeners to your wonderful book, But for now,
Speaker 1: could you just give us a brief overview?
Speaker 2: Happy too. So, basically, when I was approached to write
Speaker 2: a book, you know, there was a little bit of
Speaker 2: a talk of writing a book to tell people to
Speaker 2: improve their memories, and I'm all for that, but that
Speaker 2: book has been written by a lot of people, and
Speaker 2: really I wanted to give people a scientific perspective on
Speaker 2: what memory seems to be for and combating a lot
Speaker 2: of myths people have about memory. I think a lot
Speaker 2: of us expect that we're supposed to remember everything and
Speaker 2: it's supposed to be effortless. And the earliest scientific studies
Speaker 2: of memory, where we started to quantify how much people remember,
Speaker 2: it was pretty well known that about sixty percent of
Speaker 2: what you've experienced will be forgotten in twenty four hours.
Speaker 2: So that is probably the best case scenario in certain ways.
Speaker 2: But here's the thing. If the scigence has shown this
Speaker 2: over and over and over again, much of maybe most
Speaker 2: of what we experienced we won't remember that we will forget,
Speaker 2: I should say, then the real question is why do
Speaker 2: we remember anything in the first place. And I think
Speaker 2: that the answer to this has come out not so
Speaker 2: much in terms of memories replaying the past, as much
Speaker 2: as about memory being this resource that we're expected to
Speaker 2: draw upon in the present in the future.
Speaker 1: Let's take a quick break and when we get back,
Speaker 1: There's still so much to discuss. Welcome back everyone. I've
Speaker 1: been chatting with doctor Charan Ranganath about his book Why
Speaker 1: We Remember, Unlocking Memories, Power to hold on to what matters.
Speaker 1: Let's get back into things. You also mentioned different types
Speaker 1: of memory or broad categories of memory. First, what are
Speaker 1: those different types of memory and how do we use
Speaker 1: each of these types of memories in different ways?
Speaker 2: In the book, I talk about especially what I study,
Speaker 2: which is episodic memory, which is your ability to recall
Speaker 2: a specific event. You know, recall your first date, or
Speaker 2: recall that time that the Dallas Cowboys won the Super
Speaker 2: Bowl or whatever it is that you look back on
Speaker 2: and reminisce about. Right, And those are events that are
Speaker 2: singular experiences in your life. Now, I should say, in
Speaker 2: neuroscience we're often obsessed with just splitting all these different
Speaker 2: kinds of memory into different boxes and so forth. I
Speaker 2: think in the real world there's a lot more interaction
Speaker 2: than we think between these different kinds of memory. So
Speaker 2: this is a little bit of an abstraction, I should say, right,
Speaker 2: And I'll get into that more, I'm sure later in
Speaker 2: the conversation. But there's another kind of memory that I'm
Speaker 2: interested in too, which is semantic memory, which is our
Speaker 2: general knowledge about the world. Right. So your general knowledge
Speaker 2: about the world you can apply anywhere, but episodic memory
Speaker 2: is specific to a time in a place. And what's
Speaker 2: cool about that is semantic memory is something that you
Speaker 2: learn very slowly, kind of like the way chat GPT
Speaker 2: learns about languages, like feeding it gobs and gobs of information.
Speaker 2: But episodic memory gives you this ability to mentally stop
Speaker 2: on a dime and take a take a U turn
Speaker 2: if you need to. In other words, once you learn
Speaker 2: about thing that's kind of exceptional, you can change, you
Speaker 2: can rotate your worldview in really interesting ways. Right. So
Speaker 2: you're dating someone, right, and then you find out that
Speaker 2: they've been texting with someone else on a you know,
Speaker 2: on a dating app or something like that, Right, and
Speaker 2: now you want to go back and change a lot
Speaker 2: of your assessments of this person that you're dating. And
Speaker 2: so that's just one example of how having these different
Speaker 2: kinds of memories allow you much more flexibility and allow
Speaker 2: you to learn quickly.
Speaker 1: Memory evolved in a different evolutionary context than the one
Speaker 1: that we currently find ourselves in. How did our ancestors
Speaker 1: use memory differently than we do now, and what implications
Speaker 1: does that have for us modern humans? You know, trying
Speaker 1: to remember that person that we just met at a
Speaker 1: work function and we're like, oh, their name, I can't
Speaker 1: remember their name? What is their face? Like everything? How
Speaker 1: does this affect what our memory prioritizes.
Speaker 2: It's useful to start off with just how our memories
Speaker 2: formed in the first place. And one of the no
Speaker 2: matter what kind of memory you're talking about, the general
Speaker 2: theory goes is that you have neurons, which are the
Speaker 2: basic computational unit of the brain. They're all these individual
Speaker 2: cells in our brain, but they're connected to each other
Speaker 2: and that in a way that allows them to talk
Speaker 2: to each other. And we think that through experience, no
Speaker 2: matter what kind of a smaller, big neural circuit you're
Speaker 2: talking about, those connections are tweaked and they change. And
Speaker 2: what that allows us to do is build associations between
Speaker 2: different things that we're experiencing. So even very very so
Speaker 2: called primitive organisms can learn the basic Hey, this thing
Speaker 2: is going to cause this effect in the world. This
Speaker 2: thing is going to be dangerous to me, this thing
Speaker 2: is going to be you know, a good source of
Speaker 2: food or whatever. Right, So those are just some basic
Speaker 2: ways in which memories can be formed, even in very
Speaker 2: simple nervous systems. But what's interesting is is that a
Speaker 2: lot of times that plasticity, the changes in those connections,
Speaker 2: is temporary, and often a way in which those connections,
Speaker 2: the changes are stabilized, comes from the release of these
Speaker 2: chemicals called neuromodulators. So I know you've talked about some
Speaker 2: of these in your show, dopamines one for instance, serotonin,
Speaker 2: norap and ephrin. These are things that people have often
Speaker 2: heard about, I think, and these are chemicals that are
Speaker 2: released in their brain that they don't cause neurons to
Speaker 2: be more just fire more or fire less, but they
Speaker 2: change the way processing happens. But they also stabilize plasticity.
Speaker 2: So why that's important is because these chemicals tend to
Speaker 2: be released, these neuromodulators, as we call them, tend to
Speaker 2: be released at particularly important times, times when you are
Speaker 2: you know, encountering something that gets you a state of
Speaker 2: desire or something that gets you know, when you're angry,
Speaker 2: you're scared, when you're stressed out. There are even you know,
Speaker 2: certain hormonal effects like you know, there's lots of stuff
Speaker 2: that happens. We're still figuring it out, but there's lots
Speaker 2: of stuff that happens after pregnancy that changes plasticity. There's
Speaker 2: so many different kinds of chemicals that can produce these changes,
Speaker 2: but they're all related to something important. And so that
Speaker 2: right there, to me is kind of a hint that
Speaker 2: memory is not about hoarding every experience that you have,
Speaker 2: but being more selective in terms of taking what you need.
Speaker 2: If you think about you brought up evolution, and I
Speaker 2: like to think of evolution mainly because it brings up
Speaker 2: this aspect of design constraints, right, So you can't have, like,
Speaker 2: you know, something that's great for hauling cargo and be
Speaker 2: the fastest car around. You got to make some choices.
Speaker 2: And so as a result, it's like in the brain,
Speaker 2: you could have something which is just like our phone.
Speaker 2: This is the massive storage capability of the stores everything
Speaker 2: we experienced exactly as we experience. And that's a hoarder's strategy.
Speaker 2: So you just hoard all these memories and then what
Speaker 2: you do with them, well, you can't really use them
Speaker 2: when you need them because you can't find what you're
Speaker 2: looking for. Or you could have this Marie Condos strategy
Speaker 2: of just taking these things that are valuable to you
Speaker 2: and bringing those along and saying goodbye to the rest.
Speaker 2: And I think that's the strategy that our brain is used.
Speaker 2: And you can see this quality over quantity trade off
Speaker 2: everywhere in the brain. Just in terms of even attention.
Speaker 2: We often think that everything we see, we're seeing everything
Speaker 2: in front of us, but really our eyes are moving
Speaker 2: around and just grabbing little high resolution bits of the world,
Speaker 2: and then our brain is using memory to some extent
Speaker 2: to really build a picture of what's in front of us.
Speaker 1: Right now, you explained a bit how memories are formed,
Speaker 1: how is a memory recalled, and do the processes or
Speaker 1: the parts of the brain involved differ depending upon the
Speaker 1: type of memory, you know, episodic or semantic.
Speaker 2: Great questions. So let's start with episodic memory. So there's
Speaker 2: an area of the brain called the hippocampus, which is
Speaker 2: probably one of the most glamorous areas of the brain.
Speaker 2: It's probably one of the most studied areas of the brain.
Speaker 2: And this area, on the one hand, it's evolutionarily very old.
Speaker 2: I mean even fish have a rudimentary hippocampus, and birds
Speaker 2: alone humans, right and so some of the theories go
Speaker 2: that the hippocampus evolved to tell us where we are,
Speaker 2: and I think the more modern perspective is it helps
Speaker 2: us track things in space and time. And so the
Speaker 2: hippocampus is basically saying, you know, we don't have a
Speaker 2: clock in our heads, we don't have a GPS in
Speaker 2: our heads. So to figure out where we are and
Speaker 2: when things are happening, it sort of has to put
Speaker 2: together all this arbitrary stuff that's happening and just glue
Speaker 2: it together and provide a little index that links everything
Speaker 2: just because they occurred at a particular place and time, right,
Speaker 2: And that's what we would call the context, so to speak.
Speaker 2: You know, as we're talking, you might have the scent
Speaker 2: of your dog in the background or something like that, right,
Speaker 2: you might have other things that are going on. You've
Speaker 2: got like this room in front of you, you got this
Speaker 2: big microphont frame. There are things that are just sort
Speaker 2: of in the background. But that's part of that context.
Speaker 2: And so one of the key features of episodic memory
Speaker 2: that explains a lot of its weirdness is that it's
Speaker 2: very sensitive to this context. So things like music, smells,
Speaker 2: being in a particular place. Those are all to the
Speaker 2: extent that they're unique contexts. They can just bring you
Speaker 2: back in time and give you the sense of literal
Speaker 2: time travel, where all of a sudden you're pushed back
Speaker 2: into a place in time that you haven't visited in
Speaker 2: a long time.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Songs are great for this because we tend to listen
Speaker 2: to songs during certain periods of our life, and so
Speaker 2: they're just these great tools for reminiscence because of that,
Speaker 2: because they were just the context, the soundtrack to our
Speaker 2: lives during these particular windows of time. So that's episodic memory.
Speaker 2: But there are other parts of the puzzle too. So
Speaker 2: sometimes our memories are these events are associated with things
Speaker 2: that again drive these sort of survival systems, and in particular,
Speaker 2: for instance, you can have things that scare us or
Speaker 2: stress us out right, and so when we retrieve those memories,
Speaker 2: they're accompanied by this sense, this visceral sense of rememory
Speaker 2: that's often like my heart's racing, or I'm just really
Speaker 2: aroused or stressed or worried or whatever it is. Right,
Speaker 2: And there's an area of the brain called the amygdala
Speaker 2: which seems to work with the hippn canvas but it
Speaker 2: really ties a lot of the important parts of a
Speaker 2: memory to those visceral responses that we have, so that
Speaker 2: the memory, when you retrieve it, you not only get
Speaker 2: this kind of a sense of mental time travel and
Speaker 2: so forth, but you also feel like you're there and
Speaker 2: you know, and you have a lot of those physiological
Speaker 2: sense of remembering, so to speak. And why that's important
Speaker 2: is that they are different from each other in that
Speaker 2: you can have a sense of remembering without that amygdalo component,
Speaker 2: and you can have that amigalo component giving you the
Speaker 2: physiological associations of a memory without actually remembering an event too.
Speaker 2: So they're different. But the interesting thing is people tend
Speaker 2: to feel like if they remember something and they have
Speaker 2: this big emotional response that they're somehow that memory becomes
Speaker 2: more vivid. So it's like they're two different things, but
Speaker 2: because they work together, they get you this integrated feeling
Speaker 2: of remembering.
Speaker 1: Let's take a quick break here, we'll be back before
Speaker 1: you know it. Welcome back. I'm here chatting with doctor
Speaker 1: Charon Ranganath about his book Why We Remember. Let's jump
Speaker 1: back into some questions. You write that to make memories
Speaker 1: that stand out, we need attention and intention. Can you
Speaker 1: give an example of what each of those is.
Speaker 2: Yes, So let me backtrack for just a second again
Speaker 2: to give the listeners some context, which is that imagine
Speaker 2: you have like a desk and it's just cluttered with
Speaker 2: all these like, uh, you know, I don't have to imagine,
Speaker 2: it's like I'm looking at what right in.
Speaker 1: Front of either.
Speaker 2: But but imagine that you just have your desk and
Speaker 2: it's cluttered with a bunch of junk, and it's all
Speaker 2: the same color, it all looks about the same and
Speaker 2: you're trying to find one posted note in this big,
Speaker 2: messy desk. It's going to be really hard. But now
Speaker 2: imagine you have like a fluorescent pink posted note sitting
Speaker 2: on this desk that has a bunch of white papers
Speaker 2: on it. It sticks out more, it's easier to find, right,
Speaker 2: And so memories are the same way. Because memories exist
Speaker 2: in this kind of ecosystem. It's not like there's just
Speaker 2: these individual memory traces. It's like the neurons are these
Speaker 2: different coalitions that are almost competing against each other. The
Speaker 2: science we call that interference. So the best way for
Speaker 2: a memory to be something that you can access very
Speaker 2: easily is for it to be distinctive. And the more
Speaker 2: of the kind of sensory details that you have, the
Speaker 2: more you're focusing on the things that are unique about
Speaker 2: this moment, the easier it is. Right. So when I
Speaker 2: talk about attention, what I'm saying is is that attention
Speaker 2: is the first gate I guess you could say, to
Speaker 2: what we remember, because we're going to get the most
Speaker 2: information into our brains about what we're focusing on in
Speaker 2: the moment. Now. The problem is is that often things
Speaker 2: grab our attention, and often we're just kind of going
Speaker 2: around willy nilly, and the world is doing things to us. Right,
Speaker 2: So you walk in, your dog starts barking. You got
Speaker 2: to let it out to do its business, and then
Speaker 2: all of a sudden you get like a text message
Speaker 2: and blah blah blah. And then next thing you know,
Speaker 2: you're asking yourself, where's my keys? Right? And that's like
Speaker 2: some things happens to me all the time. I'm still
Speaker 2: trying to find a pair of glasses that I can't find.
Speaker 2: It's terrible, right, So I live this as I'm living
Speaker 2: that true, But there is a separate part of piece
Speaker 2: of the puzzle, which is intention, which is actually focusing
Speaker 2: and controlling your attention on the parts of your experience
Speaker 2: that you want to take with you and the parts
Speaker 2: of the experience that are the most distinctive. And so
Speaker 2: why that matters is if I'm trying to remember where
Speaker 2: I put my keys, I put my keys in thousands
Speaker 2: of places, and so the real question is what makes
Speaker 2: this moment in time different from all these other times
Speaker 2: that have put away my keys? And so if you're
Speaker 2: not focusing, you will not get that distinctive piece of information.
Speaker 2: And so one of the things that you find is
Speaker 2: there's an area called the prefrontal cortex that's super critical
Speaker 2: for being able to focus on what's relevant to you
Speaker 2: at the moment. And as we get older, frontal function declines,
Speaker 2: and so what you start to see is older adults
Speaker 2: tend to be worse than younger adults and remembering the
Speaker 2: things that they're supposed to be paying attention to, But
Speaker 2: they're often just as good or even sometimes better at
Speaker 2: remembering things that they're not supposed to be paying attention to.
Speaker 2: And I think we've all had those things. Or sometimes
Speaker 2: it's like you can't find your keys, but you can
Speaker 2: remember some bizarre thing that happened while you're putting away
Speaker 2: your keys and it just stuck with you. Right, So
Speaker 2: that's a good example of that distinction.
Speaker 1: You mentioned fish earlier just as an example. But I
Speaker 1: wanted to ask about some of the ways that we
Speaker 1: can compare our human memory to the memory of other
Speaker 1: animal species, and what can you know other animals' memories
Speaker 1: tell us about what they use memory for.
Speaker 2: That's a great question, and I'll say that to some extent,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of disagreement about these kinds of questions.
Speaker 2: You know. I've met people who will study fruitflies and
Speaker 2: they'll say, okay, so we can study this model system,
Speaker 2: and it's basically telling us, you know, a whole lot
Speaker 2: about the way humans remember, you know. And of course
Speaker 2: you can find people say the opposite, and I will
Speaker 2: go too far because I don't I think everyone would
Speaker 2: agree that a fruitfly doesn't think like a person, but
Speaker 2: they'll often and extrapolated quite a bit about these differences, right,
Speaker 2: And so there's a lot that we don't know. But
Speaker 2: what I would say is that, first of all, there's
Speaker 2: different sensory information that comes into the brain from different
Speaker 2: in different kinds of animals. So for instance, bats use echolocation,
Speaker 2: and so someone that I work with, Maya gave A Segev,
Speaker 2: did these beautiful studies in bats, and she found that
Speaker 2: in fact, bats seem to have a map of where
Speaker 2: they are in the hip campus that seems to be
Speaker 2: different depending on whether they're using echolocation or whether they're
Speaker 2: using a different set. So that gives you one kind
Speaker 2: of example, right. But I think in terms of humans,
Speaker 2: what makes us especially interesting are that we're social animals
Speaker 2: and that we have areas like the prefrontal cortex that
Speaker 2: are so developed. I mean, the prefronnal cortex takes up
Speaker 2: about one third of the brain in humans and dogs, say,
Speaker 2: or in cats a whole lot, right, which explains a
Speaker 2: lot of like your cat's attentional problems compared to people,
Speaker 2: believe it or not. So that gives you the ability
Speaker 2: to put together information and memory across a big timeline.
Speaker 2: And the social element of memory means that when we
Speaker 2: share memories with each other, that collectively creates something that
Speaker 2: we didn't have before. It changes the memory through our
Speaker 2: interactions and so and in fact, you could argue that
Speaker 2: language one of the main reasons that evolved certainly one
Speaker 2: of the main things that takes up our time speaking
Speaker 2: is sharing memories.
Speaker 1: You talked a little bit about emotions and how extremely
Speaker 1: strong or very like visceral emotions can help kind of
Speaker 1: make a memory more, you know, indelible or more intense.
Speaker 1: How do these emotions also affect our recall of memories
Speaker 1: our emotions both in the present day when thinking about
Speaker 1: a memory, or when we experience that memory in the
Speaker 1: first place.
Speaker 2: They're definitely things that we experience in the present when
Speaker 2: we remember a past event, and we and others have
Speaker 2: done studies that show that even when people don't remember
Speaker 2: a lot of the details of a past event, if
Speaker 2: it brings up this emotional arousal, they will feel like
Speaker 2: they're vividly remembering that event. So, in other words, it
Speaker 2: can actually take over the sense of vividness even if
Speaker 2: people don't actually have that information available, So it can
Speaker 2: take on a new life in some ways when we
Speaker 2: recall an event, and in people with PTSD, this is
Speaker 2: a gigantic problem. It's true in a lot of anxiety disorders,
Speaker 2: but especially PTSD, because what we think may happen in
Speaker 2: PTSD is As I said, the hippo campus seems to
Speaker 2: lock in events and memories for events in a particular context.
Speaker 2: But let's say if you're chronically stressed for a long
Speaker 2: period of time, that can have a neurotoxic effect on
Speaker 2: the hippocampus. And there are probably other factors too. Not
Speaker 2: everybody who experiences a traumatic event gets PTSD, but for
Speaker 2: whatever reason, these memories become kind of detached from the context,
Speaker 2: meaning that things that weren't related to the event can
Speaker 2: serve as reminders. And so these memories pop up recurrently
Speaker 2: all the time, right, And so there's a part of
Speaker 2: the story which is probably that you have this traumatic
Speaker 2: experience and your brain thinks that's important and it should
Speaker 2: have a bias to bring it back. So these memories
Speaker 2: are very hard, even in animal studies to wipe out.
Speaker 2: But in PTSD, I think the big problem is that
Speaker 2: they become overgeneralized. Just as an example I talk about
Speaker 2: in the book, when I was working at a VA
Speaker 2: hospital for my training, I worked with Vietnam vets and
Speaker 2: one of the things that was really upsetting was the
Speaker 2: Fourth of July because fireworks would bring them back and
Speaker 2: bring back flashbacks of Vietnam and combat experience for those
Speaker 2: who had experienced combat related PTSD, and you could say, well,
Speaker 2: fourth of July completely in the United States and some
Speaker 2: suburban park totally different from Vietnam combat situation. But there
Speaker 2: was enough of that generalization that happened that again gave
Speaker 2: the emotion a life of its own, so to speak.
Speaker 2: And so these emotional memories can often pop up unexpectedly,
Speaker 2: leading us to have intense fear responses or panic or
Speaker 2: ruminate or many other things.
Speaker 1: And some people form such a strong emotional response to
Speaker 1: that is that like, is there an evolutionary explanation or
Speaker 1: hypothesis to explain why that is?
Speaker 2: I think probably the most obvious one would be just that.
Speaker 2: So let me give you actually, like more of a
Speaker 2: concrete example that could probably illustrate this. Right, It's like
Speaker 2: you go to you're forging around for food, right, You're
Speaker 2: this key person home, erectus whatever. You're going around forging
Speaker 2: for food, and you go into this place that looks
Speaker 2: like it's got some good food, and then you get
Speaker 2: you see a snake and like almost bites you and
Speaker 2: you just get away. Right, So you want to remember
Speaker 2: not only that you got attacked by a snake, but
Speaker 2: you want to remember where you got attacked by the snake,
Speaker 2: and what led you to be attacked by the snake, right,
Speaker 2: so that you can avoid those things in the long run.
Speaker 2: And that's what I mean by memory being about the future.
Speaker 2: It's pointless to just go, oh, I remember that time
Speaker 2: that I got almost bidden by a snake. It's important
Speaker 2: to be able to go, boy, I better not go
Speaker 2: back to that place again, just in case, you know,
Speaker 2: there could be other snakes there. And that I think
Speaker 2: is the evolutionary importance of memory. But likewise, you could
Speaker 2: also flip it around the other way and go, hey, look,
Speaker 2: I found an orange. I better go back. I like oranges,
Speaker 2: you know, And those are again another kind of part
Speaker 2: of the memory that you want to keep. I think
Speaker 2: where we get stuck in more modern life is those
Speaker 2: things that I just talked about are about survival, right,
Speaker 2: And you don't have to be you know, you could
Speaker 2: be a rat or like we talked about the fish
Speaker 2: or something like that. You don't have to have this
Speaker 2: deep emotional response to have these kinds of learning that
Speaker 2: take place. But in humans, we obviously intellectualize things to
Speaker 2: a great degree, and so being in a toxic work
Speaker 2: environment can be very similar biologically to being in an
Speaker 2: environment where there are actual physical threats in front of you,
Speaker 2: and so that's where a lot of the emotional baggage
Speaker 2: that comes with memory can be really problematic. But a
Speaker 2: big part of this, which I think is super important,
Speaker 2: and this is again one of the reasons why I
Speaker 2: really one of the messages I really wanted to convey
Speaker 2: in the book is there's the data of what happened,
Speaker 2: and memory is episodic. Memory in particular is great for
Speaker 2: giving you that data of what happened. But then there's
Speaker 2: the theories that are that we come up with just
Speaker 2: explain that data, and I think we often confuse that
Speaker 2: theory with the data itself, if you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: So in other words, it's like you have this emotional
Speaker 2: response and you say, well, this person hurt my feelings
Speaker 2: or something like that, and those are two different things, right,
Speaker 2: And I think that's especially where there's a mismatch between
Speaker 2: what our brains are designed to do and how we
Speaker 2: end up using them.
Speaker 1: Before reading your book, I don't think, or maybe I guess,
Speaker 1: I don't remember if I've ever come across the world
Speaker 1: of competitive memory. What are memory competitions and what can
Speaker 1: they tell us about how we can train or improve
Speaker 1: our memory abilities.
Speaker 2: So memory competitions are these right now, there's a whole
Speaker 2: thing about memory athletes, that's what they call themselves. And
Speaker 2: so they have these competitions where they try to where
Speaker 2: they're given massive amounts of information to memorize, like at once.
Speaker 2: And so there's a guy Joshua Foeher who wrote a
Speaker 2: book called Moonwalking with Einstein that he actually decided to
Speaker 2: enter this world of memory competitions. And they'll do things
Speaker 2: like they'll you know, memorize the order of a deck
Speaker 2: of cards or something like that, or you know, just
Speaker 2: an incredibly long string of numbers, or a whole bunch
Speaker 2: of names and faces and so forth. What's interesting, and
Speaker 2: again it comes up in that book, is you hear
Speaker 2: the stories of these memory athletes, and one person after another,
Speaker 2: they all say, there's nothing special about me. I just
Speaker 2: learned these tricks and anyone can learn them. And you
Speaker 2: see a lot of people who will say, you know,
Speaker 2: these memory athletes who in they're interviewed, they'll say, well,
Speaker 2: I just read this book one day and it had
Speaker 2: all these tricks on how to improve my memory, and
Speaker 2: then I just started using it in these competitions, and
Speaker 2: they just get to this world of competitive memory. So
Speaker 2: the reason that memory athletes are able to do what
Speaker 2: they do. You know, these people who are really good
Speaker 2: in these competitions that seem to have this ability to
Speaker 2: memorize like the order of an entire deck of cards
Speaker 2: or something like that. Is this a lot of information, right,
Speaker 2: and so and they learn it, they memorize it very
Speaker 2: very quickly, like you know, in a minute or something.
Speaker 2: It's just exceptionally quickly. But the reason they're able to
Speaker 2: do that is that they've mastered these strategies that actually
Speaker 2: allow them to memorize less. And not just that, but
Speaker 2: they allow them to organize what they are memorizing into little,
Speaker 2: manageable packets that can take this massive amount of information
Speaker 2: and compress it and organize it into something that they
Speaker 2: can easily access. And I know that sounds very abstract,
Speaker 2: but you know, you can give like a real world
Speaker 2: example of this. And an example I talked about in
Speaker 2: the book is Lebron James. And if anyone goes on
Speaker 2: YouTube and sees videos of him describing his past games,
Speaker 2: it's stunning. You'll see these videos of him talking about
Speaker 2: the game from memory, and then the video footage of
Speaker 2: the game in parallel, and the amount of detail that
Speaker 2: he's able to produce is just unbelievable. And the reason
Speaker 2: is he knows so much about the game that he
Speaker 2: knows what to focus on, and he knows how everything
Speaker 2: is meaningfully related to each other. So in real time
Speaker 2: he's actually dissecting what's going on and applying what we
Speaker 2: call schemas, which are the sort of organized knowledge to
Speaker 2: decompose what's there, reduce the complexity, and say how is
Speaker 2: everything related to each other? And if you go back
Speaker 2: to like these memory athletes, what they do is they
Speaker 2: learn strategies like that, they'll make up a story to
Speaker 2: link up all of these things that they have to memorize,
Speaker 2: or they'll you can do use songs. Songs is a
Speaker 2: great one to memorize large amounts of information. There's a
Speaker 2: technique called the method of low side where people imagine
Speaker 2: putting things in different rooms in their house and then
Speaker 2: taking a mental walk through the house to find all
Speaker 2: these things. So what you're trying to do is take
Speaker 2: this stuff that's kind of meaningless and boring and assimilate
Speaker 2: it into some structure of knowledge that you have really well,
Speaker 2: so that it's organized and laid out in a way
Speaker 2: that you can find it later.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you mentioned schemas because I really wanted to
Speaker 1: ask about some of the downsides of schemas. You mentioned
Speaker 1: this in the book How there are these incredible things
Speaker 1: we use and reuse them subconsciously. They help us organize
Speaker 1: and streamline new information. But then there are some downsides.
Speaker 1: What are some of those?
Speaker 2: So, schema as are these organized knowledge structures that again
Speaker 2: simplify everything, and they allow you to put meaning into
Speaker 2: your experiences, right, So, and that gives you a lot
Speaker 2: of capability for prediction and making inferences. So, for instance,
Speaker 2: if I were to go to a cafe, I order
Speaker 2: a cappuccino, and I say give me soft foam or whatever,
Speaker 2: and I pay the person, I can predict, based on
Speaker 2: my knowledge about what happens during cafe events, that eventually
Speaker 2: a barista is going to give me that coffee. Now,
Speaker 2: I don't know it could I mean, really, you're trying
Speaker 2: to predict the future, and it could be completely wrong.
Speaker 2: But it turns out that we're actually very good at
Speaker 2: predicting the future with schemas. And you know, nine times
Speaker 2: out of ten you will get that cappuccino, and you
Speaker 2: wouldn't expect this person to throw the cappuccino in your face.
Speaker 2: You wouldn't expect a whole lot of things that are
Speaker 2: unlikely to happen, you know. So that's the benefit of
Speaker 2: schemas is that they really help us not only for
Speaker 2: the past, but also in real time and then when
Speaker 2: we remember these events. Schemas are like the sort of
Speaker 2: structure that episodic memories are built on. So you can imagine,
Speaker 2: like you go see a house. Initially as it's being built,
Speaker 2: there's just all these like you know, wood planks and
Speaker 2: so forth that are holding up the structure. But then
Speaker 2: people put in the drywall, they painted and so forth,
Speaker 2: and that painted house would be like an episodic memory.
Speaker 2: But the structure is really built by these schemas. So
Speaker 2: that's all good. And schemas help us remember a lot
Speaker 2: of stuff in part because it helps us focus on
Speaker 2: what we didn't already know. So if I have a
Speaker 2: schema for cafes, I don't need to know that coffee,
Speaker 2: I don't need to memorize the coffees involved, because that's
Speaker 2: that's an integral part of a cave event, is coffee.
Speaker 2: You know or for blue, don' drink coffee, whatever it
Speaker 2: is right, So that gives you this ability to make inferences.
Speaker 2: But the problem is sometimes we make inferences that are
Speaker 2: just wrong, and things creep into our memories that are
Speaker 2: not based on what actually happened, but based on our
Speaker 2: understanding of what happened right, And so that's where we
Speaker 2: can be inaccurate at times, and many, many experiments have
Speaker 2: shown this. And what's really weird about the way memory
Speaker 2: works is that, for instance, the hippie campus can often
Speaker 2: help us get a few details of things that happen
Speaker 2: at a particular time and place, but then we make
Speaker 2: a story out of it. So we talked about storytelling before,
Speaker 2: and that's a big part of episodic memories, the storytelling
Speaker 2: component where we use schemas to make a story about
Speaker 2: what's happening right now, and that story can often be completely,
Speaker 2: you know, completely wrong, because we're not replaying the past,
Speaker 2: we're imagining how the past could have been. That storytelling
Speaker 2: is an active imagination, and sometimes we imagine things to
Speaker 2: fill in the blanks of our memories that weren't there
Speaker 2: at all, and so it actually creates this big problem
Speaker 2: for us, which is how do we even tell the
Speaker 2: difference between imagination and memory in the first place.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that is a really important topic, recall and
Speaker 1: corrupted memories. And how do we know if it's imagination
Speaker 1: or memory? Big topic in terms of eyewitness accounts. So
Speaker 1: how does is that how memory corruption happens? And like,
Speaker 1: how do we approach that? Like what can we do
Speaker 1: about that?
Speaker 2: So memory corruption, I will say, corruption's a rather pejorative term, right,
Speaker 2: because there's a lot of good parts that come with
Speaker 2: this imagination process in that it's like, you know, we
Speaker 2: get a lot of meaning from these experiences. That's often
Speaker 2: it's either neither true nor false, or it's things that
Speaker 2: are actually true and very useful. So I should say
Speaker 2: it's not always corrupting, but yes, sometimes it does introduce noise,
Speaker 2: It introduces elements that weren't there before, right, And that
Speaker 2: happens when we remember something. But it also what happens
Speaker 2: is the act of remembering itself can change how we
Speaker 2: remember it again later on. So the act of remembering
Speaker 2: can strengthen that memory, make it more accessible later, but
Speaker 2: it can also make it harder to remember competing memories
Speaker 2: cause forgetting. And it can also change the memory that
Speaker 2: you're trying to remember later on, so that the stuff
Speaker 2: that you imagine becomes incorporated into your memory of the
Speaker 2: event itself. And so now you can take a thing
Speaker 2: that you've recalled over and over again, like the stories
Speaker 2: of your childhood that your parents probably tell over and
Speaker 2: over and over again. And what happens is often little
Speaker 2: bits of stuff that people thought about or you know,
Speaker 2: just filled in the blanks with can now start to
Speaker 2: corrupt that memory and it starts to become more and
Speaker 2: more detached from what actually happened.
Speaker 1: Can like quote unquote lost memories ever truly become recovered
Speaker 1: through like recovered memory therapy, or are they gone forever?
Speaker 2: So there's definitely evidence that a memory that seemingly lost
Speaker 2: can be pulled up much later. And in fact, I
Speaker 2: think many of us have had this experience of you know,
Speaker 2: you smell something and all of a sudden it brings
Speaker 2: you back and you recall something that you're like, how
Speaker 2: did I where did this memory come from? Right? So
Speaker 2: these things can happen, and in fact, sometimes also what
Speaker 2: happens is you'll remember something and be like, oh, ah,
Speaker 2: that came to mind. That's weird. I didn't think about
Speaker 2: that before when actually it is something that came to
Speaker 2: mind before, but you forgot that you actually remembered it.
Speaker 2: So that would be a case where you didn't really
Speaker 2: recover the memory, so to speak, it just was there
Speaker 2: all along and you forgot that it was there. That
Speaker 2: is all the weird memories strange, I mean, it's just
Speaker 2: strange things happen. So the problem with recovered memory therapy,
Speaker 2: which you brought up, is this is a special kind
Speaker 2: of approach and it's based on the assumption that you
Speaker 2: often hear this that it's like the body's trying to
Speaker 2: protect you or you know, that the mind has got
Speaker 2: these protective mechanisms that when you experience trauma, that you
Speaker 2: just block that memory and it becomes repressed and then
Speaker 2: it manifests itself in all these ways that are very
Speaker 2: you know, kind of like people end up feeling anxious
Speaker 2: or insecure or aggressive, unstable, and so the assumption is
Speaker 2: if they manifest any of these beliefs, they must have
Speaker 2: had a traumatic memory that cause them to be like this, right,
Speaker 2: And so the problem is that then what they do
Speaker 2: is they dedicate a lot of that memory therapy is
Speaker 2: dedicated to rooting out what they think of as the
Speaker 2: repressed memory, right, So, scientifically speaking, there's no evidence that
Speaker 2: there's some automatic mechanism that just represses a memory that's traumatic.
Speaker 2: If anything, most people who've experienced trauma just can't forget it,
Speaker 2: as we've talked about, right, And often when people don't
Speaker 2: remember something like this, it's not necessarily it can be
Speaker 2: explained by a lot of mechanisms that just cause forgetting
Speaker 2: in everyday experiences. But what we know about the way
Speaker 2: memories can become corrupted is, first of all, if I
Speaker 2: just ask you to remember something that never happened, you
Speaker 2: will try to imagine a scenario, try to cure yourself like, well,
Speaker 2: this must have happened. Maybe I can think about how
Speaker 2: it could have happened, right, And so how do you
Speaker 2: do that? Well, you'll take bits of other memories that
Speaker 2: you have to imagine how this thing could have happened.
Speaker 2: You take some of your knowledge about let's say I
Speaker 2: don't know your parents or local teacher or something like that,
Speaker 2: and you start to put these things together to think
Speaker 2: of what could have happened. And you're being given suggestions
Speaker 2: from someone you trust, which is this therapist, about what
Speaker 2: could have happened, and they're collaborating with you to create
Speaker 2: the story. Right. Sometimes there's hypnosis involved, and so you're
Speaker 2: turning off a lot of the mechanisms that you'd have
Speaker 2: to be more critical and thinking about these things. Right.
Speaker 2: So then you come back over and over and over again,
Speaker 2: you keep revisiting that same story, and you start to
Speaker 2: develop a memory that's not based on something that you experienced,
Speaker 2: but it's a memory that is of things the stories
Speaker 2: that you generated in previous sessions, and so over and
Speaker 2: over and over again. What happens is people could develop
Speaker 2: these very rich, mary detailed memories for things that sometimes
Speaker 2: you arguably couldn't have happened, like UFO abductions or something
Speaker 2: like that. And basically every the main core tenets of
Speaker 2: recover memory therapy are virtually identical to the recipe that
Speaker 2: you'd use in a lab to generate false memories in people.
Speaker 1: At the end of your book, you discuss collective memory
Speaker 1: and how memory errors can be transmitted throughout a group.
Speaker 1: Something that we saw and continue to see, for example,
Speaker 1: about the COVID vaccine. How are myths or disinformation campaigns
Speaker 1: taking advantage of this tendency of groups to transmit and
Speaker 1: amplify memory errors.
Speaker 2: So one of the interesting aspects of memory is that
Speaker 2: we don't often we can remember something without remembering where
Speaker 2: it came from. Right, So, for instance, you see something
Speaker 2: on social media, and a week later you might remember
Speaker 2: that story, but not remember that you saw it on
Speaker 2: social media. You might remember it of something that you
Speaker 2: read in the news or something that you heard about,
Speaker 2: and so we often have this loss of information that
Speaker 2: leads us to think things are more valid than they
Speaker 2: really are. And there's an added part of it, which
Speaker 2: is the more times you hear something the more, especially
Speaker 2: from trusted sources, what happens is it becomes more easy
Speaker 2: to access that belief. It becomes easier to access that information.
Speaker 2: And this is just the natural way our brains work
Speaker 2: is it's constantly trying to optimize, and so the more
Speaker 2: you're exposed to something, easier it is to process that information.
Speaker 2: So you hear the same thing from a bunch of
Speaker 2: different sources, and then all of a sudden, it's just
Speaker 2: easier to believe the more time you hear it, because
Speaker 2: it just feels right. And so there tends to be
Speaker 2: this tendency where the more people and sources you hear
Speaker 2: the same thing from the more it seems to be valid.
Speaker 2: So if you're in a social network and everyone's sharing
Speaker 2: information about, you know, some apocryphal stories about someone who
Speaker 2: got you know, had massive you know, died from the
Speaker 2: COVID vaccine or whatever, right, then all of a sudden
Speaker 2: it takes on a degree of believability because you've just
Speaker 2: heard it someone. And let's face it, how many of
Speaker 2: the beliefs that we have we don't really have the
Speaker 2: original data to show it, right, So I believe that
Speaker 2: viruses caused the common cold, but I don't actually know
Speaker 2: the data that you know that are the chain of
Speaker 2: events that leads for this, you know, or viral RNA
Speaker 2: transfer or whatever to like actually manifesting the symptoms of
Speaker 2: a cold. So there's always some degree of belief that
Speaker 2: we have that gives us some sense of what's real.
Speaker 2: But I think where misinformation really thrives is from the
Speaker 2: ability of groups to amplify that information, especially the most
Speaker 2: emotionally latent information is the most likely to be transmitted
Speaker 2: from one person to another.
Speaker 1: Is there anything that we can do about that? Like,
Speaker 1: does fact checking help to a degree?
Speaker 2: Fact checking definitely can help, But the research that we've
Speaker 2: seen so far suggests that it often helps to get
Speaker 2: fact checks after you've been exposed. It should just verify
Speaker 2: this afterwards, but it's like I can't remember for sure
Speaker 2: if it's before or after. But if BEVERI serves its,
Speaker 2: if you get the message after you've already read it,
Speaker 2: it can be more effective than if you get it
Speaker 2: before you've read it. So these external fact checks can
Speaker 2: be very useful. One thing I'll say, though, is that
Speaker 2: there's another way to inoculate yourself against misinformation, which is
Speaker 2: to be exposed to a number of different perspectives. Because again,
Speaker 2: what often happens is if we're hearing the same the
Speaker 2: same information is just circulating through this very closed social network,
Speaker 2: it starts to get more believable. But what we've seen
Speaker 2: in studies of misinformation is if you get groups of
Speaker 2: people that are fairly diverse and everybody gets a chance
Speaker 2: to speak, what happens is that a lot of that
Speaker 2: false information tends to drop out because people can contradict it.
Speaker 2: And where you tend to get more of these confirmation
Speaker 2: biases tend to be in more homogeneous groups. And I
Speaker 2: think this is something that we're not really great at is.
Speaker 2: We're not very comfortable with being uncomfortable, and so finding
Speaker 2: people who come from different backgrounds that you're interacting with
Speaker 2: it can often be uncomfortable, and having people tell you
Speaker 2: things that disagree with your beliefs can be uncomfortable. As
Speaker 2: a scientist, I know this is what as I this
Speaker 2: is what I have to do is deal with uncomfortable
Speaker 2: data and speak with people of different perspectives. But that's
Speaker 2: definitely the key to combating misinformation right now.
Speaker 1: That was so much fun. Thank you so very much,
Speaker 1: doctor Roanganath for taking the time to chat with me today.
Speaker 1: I am honestly absolutely fascinated by everything we chatted about,
Speaker 1: and I also feel like I kind of understand some
Speaker 1: of how our brains work for like the first time ever,
Speaker 1: which is a pretty cool feeling. For those of you
Speaker 1: out there that want to learn more about memory and
Speaker 1: why we Remember, check out our website this podcast will
Speaker 1: kill You dot com, where I'll post a link to
Speaker 1: where you can find why we Remember, as well as
Speaker 1: a link to doctor Ranganath's website. And don't forget. You
Speaker 1: can check out our website for all sorts of other
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Speaker 1: Buba Buba, buba
Speaker 2: Bumbo oh