Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 2: And I am Joe McCormick, and it is Saturday. The
Speaker 2: vault door it creaketh open, and then we go for
Speaker 2: part three of our Before You Could Remember series. This
Speaker 2: originally published on April eighteenth, twenty twenty three, and here
Speaker 2: it is again, Hope you enjoy.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 2: And I'm Joe McCormick, and we are back finally with
Speaker 2: part three of our series on childhood amnesia. We had
Speaker 2: a bit of an interruption in the series last week
Speaker 2: to first of all, to some sick days and then
Speaker 2: to a scheduled interview. But now we return to finish
Speaker 2: off the series, so I thought we should do a
Speaker 2: brief refresher on the stuff we talked about in the
Speaker 2: past couple of episodes here. So the term childhood amnesia
Speaker 2: refers to a couple of different facts, which are first
Speaker 2: of all the fact that most adults cannot conjure any genuine,
Speaker 2: first hand episodic memories from before roughly the age of three,
Speaker 2: and there are some minor variations in that age horizon
Speaker 2: that have been observed to correlate with variables like gender.
Speaker 2: Girls tend to have slightly earlier memories culture. Different cultures
Speaker 2: have on average different memory horizons, but on average we
Speaker 2: can say most people's earliest memories tend to be somewhere
Speaker 2: in the range of three years old, or between three
Speaker 2: or four. And then the other fact is that once
Speaker 2: we do start having memories, for the next four to
Speaker 2: five years after that, we have fewer memories than would
Speaker 2: be predicted by the normal rate of forgetting. That holds
Speaker 2: true throughout the rest of your life. So first you've
Speaker 2: got no memories usually, and then you've got fewer memories,
Speaker 2: and then finally the regular rate of forgetting kicks in,
Speaker 2: maybe somewhere around seven or eight or so. Now, some
Speaker 2: people do claim to have much earlier memories, and we've
Speaker 2: heard from some of them in email. Even some people
Speaker 2: claim to have memories even up to and before birth.
Speaker 2: And you know, it's impossible to rule that out. It's
Speaker 2: possible in some cases people do have those memories, but
Speaker 2: these claims also have to be considered alongside the fact
Speaker 2: that research shows it is very easy to create the
Speaker 2: false impression of a childhood memory, spurred by all kinds
Speaker 2: of external prompting, anything from a photo, whether a real
Speaker 2: photo or a doctored one, a story told by a parent.
Speaker 2: And it's clear that these false memories implanted later in life,
Speaker 2: in many cases feel completely genuine to us, even if
Speaker 2: they are fabricated purely for the purpose of an experiment.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, so we want to continue to drive that
Speaker 1: home that to whatever extent a memory is accurate, augmented, fabricated,
Speaker 1: et cetera, that doesn't take away from the subjective reality
Speaker 1: of the memory and the importance of the memory, or
Speaker 1: the or the pain of the memory.
Speaker 2: Well, sure, you know, one of the ways I would
Speaker 2: put it is that like the fact that someone has
Speaker 2: a false memory, as in they have a memory of
Speaker 2: an event that did not actually happen, does not mean
Speaker 2: that they're like lying it, you know, like we literally
Speaker 2: cannot tell the difference between real memories and false memories
Speaker 2: in many cases.
Speaker 1: Right and I think it's safe to say that the
Speaker 1: many memories, if not all memories, are false to some degree.
Speaker 2: Right now. In previous parts, we also talked about some
Speaker 2: of the experimental methods used to test for memory at
Speaker 2: early ages, including you know, straightforward earliest memory prompts, tell
Speaker 2: me your earliest memory, things like the word Q test,
Speaker 2: so tell me a memory associated with the following word.
Speaker 2: We use the example of jar and so forth. Now,
Speaker 2: some research we discussed in previous episodes made a pretty
Speaker 2: convincing case, at least to me, that the explanation is
Speaker 2: not that the brain is incapable of forming memories before
Speaker 2: the average age of three or four. One of the
Speaker 2: other studies we talked about included a scenario in which
Speaker 2: three year olds could produce details about recent events in
Speaker 2: their lives when interviewed along with their mothers, showing that
Speaker 2: they did have memories of recent things that had happened,
Speaker 2: and these memories could be elicited with cues from parents.
Speaker 2: Though it seems in a lot of cases children this
Speaker 2: young will not offer details from memory spontaneously, but if
Speaker 2: you kind of coax it out of them, they can
Speaker 2: produce details on their own that show they do remember things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, plusive mom is there to help, you know, right.
Speaker 2: But when those very same kids were interviewed years later,
Speaker 2: after having been able to produce memories about recent events
Speaker 2: at age three, between the ages of seven and nine,
Speaker 2: many of those memories of early events were lost, and
Speaker 2: a lot more were lost by the ages of eight
Speaker 2: and nine than were lost by the age of seven.
Speaker 2: So there appears to be in later childhood kind of
Speaker 2: a period of rapid massive forgetting, where a lot of
Speaker 2: our earliest memories kind of vanish, like memories of a dream.
Speaker 2: So the big question is why is it that many
Speaker 2: of these earliest memories, or what memories exist of earliest events,
Speaker 2: cannot be produced later in life, either later in childhood
Speaker 2: or especially in adulthood. There have been a lot of
Speaker 2: attempts to answer this question. There, of course, is still
Speaker 2: a lot of controversy about it. It is not a
Speaker 2: settled debate. But many of the proposed answers are based
Speaker 2: in the developing structure of the brain. And while I
Speaker 2: think there is absolutely something to these arguments, the neurodevelopmental
Speaker 2: structural arguments, they don't exactly mean that the immature brain
Speaker 2: cannot make memories yet, because again we as we've seen,
Speaker 2: sometimes you can get younger children to provide details about
Speaker 2: recent events, and also young children can show examples of learning,
Speaker 2: say learning how to manipulate a simple mechanism in a
Speaker 2: toy in experiments to show that they do have memories
Speaker 2: that in some cases last for weeks or months even
Speaker 2: before the age of three, so there is some remembering
Speaker 2: going on. Instead, it seems to me more likely that
Speaker 2: what's happening here is the memories that the brain makes
Speaker 2: at age one or two are prone to more rapid
Speaker 2: forgetting than the kinds of memories we would make at
Speaker 2: age eleven or twelve or Also, those memories might be
Speaker 2: different than the memories made in later life in a
Speaker 2: way that makes them more difficult to retrieve after we
Speaker 2: age passed that memory horizon. So for the neurodevelopmental structural
Speaker 2: arguments we looked at, one paper in Part two are
Speaker 2: arguing that the hippocampal memory system is actually very active
Speaker 2: in the first few years of life. That's the normal
Speaker 2: memory system. A lot is going on there when you're
Speaker 2: you know, two years old or so. But this paper
Speaker 2: argued that instead of making memories of the kind that
Speaker 2: will be stored for the rest of your life, what
Speaker 2: it's primarily doing with the processing of information from experiences
Speaker 2: is learning how to learn. And complementary to this, I
Speaker 2: think one structural developmental explanation has been offered is that
Speaker 2: a lot of early autobiographical memories may be lost due
Speaker 2: to the rapid rate of neurogenesis during childhood. So as
Speaker 2: new brain cells are formed, especially in the hippocampus, this
Speaker 2: may erode the stability of the structural basis of existing memories. So,
Speaker 2: you know, the hippo campus is developing rapidly. You're sort
Speaker 2: of like, you know, rebuilding the house constantly in real time,
Speaker 2: in which case the rooms that existed, you know, a
Speaker 2: year ago might not really exist anymore as rooms down
Speaker 2: the road.
Speaker 1: It's almost heartbreaking to think about that. It's gotten memories.
Speaker 2: The house is getting bigger. You know, you can put
Speaker 2: more in it, but you're also dismantling as you do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I guess it's like you're thinking of it
Speaker 1: in terms of the young child. It's like the house
Speaker 1: that is being built is going to be magnificent as well,
Speaker 1: and it's built on the bones of the house that
Speaker 1: came before. So you can't get too sentimental about that
Speaker 1: which is being lost as a necessary part of the
Speaker 1: child's maturing. But I still reserve the right to cry
Speaker 1: a little bit. Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, if you're recalled, I got interested in this whole
Speaker 2: idea because of a story about my daughter, who is
Speaker 2: actually I said five months last time. You know, she's
Speaker 2: coming up on six months now. Wow, And we were
Speaker 2: trying to figure out Okay, so we've been really making
Speaker 2: her laugh a lot by dropping a cloth on her face.
Speaker 2: She thinks this is hilarious. It just layer down on
Speaker 2: the blanket and drop the cloth from above, and we
Speaker 2: were like, is she going to remember that she thought
Speaker 2: this was funny? Will she be able to explain why
Speaker 2: she thought it was funny when she's older, And unfortunately
Speaker 2: it breaks my heart. I think the answer is probably not.
Speaker 1: Still, these are prime years to just kill it as
Speaker 1: a dad standout. Yeah, so it just keep developing that material.
Speaker 2: But anyway, so while the while the overall causes of
Speaker 2: childhood amnesia are still being debated in the scientific literature,
Speaker 2: I'm very one over that at least one of the
Speaker 2: major causes probably is the neurodevelopmental issue we talked about
Speaker 2: in the last episode, the hippocampus coming online and developing.
Speaker 2: Of course, it also seems plausible that it's a phenomenon
Speaker 2: with multiple contributing causes, and maybe some are based not
Speaker 2: just in the physical development of the brain, but possibly
Speaker 2: in some more externally visible developmental milestones, maybe based in
Speaker 2: the environment and things we learn, And so I thought,
Speaker 2: before we move away from this topic, we should explore
Speaker 2: a few of those ideas as well. So another factor
Speaker 2: I've read about linked to childhood amnesia, possibly explaining elements
Speaker 2: of it, is language. This seems like an obvious place
Speaker 2: to go, the language and the linguistic environment in which
Speaker 2: a child grows up. What if the extent to which
Speaker 2: we record experiences as memories, in the form in which
Speaker 2: they're stored, and our later ability to retrieve and make
Speaker 2: sense of those memories is in some way dependent on language.
Speaker 2: The typical childhood memory horizon tends to come pretty much
Speaker 2: right in the middle of a period of rapid development
Speaker 2: of language skills and the acquisition of vocabulary. So could
Speaker 2: it be that the adult capacity for memory greatly depends
Speaker 2: on the use of words and concepts that we gain
Speaker 2: during this language acquisition period. Could be coincidence, but developing
Speaker 2: skills and manipulating different types of subjects and predicates I
Speaker 2: think could play a role in the onset of autobiographical
Speaker 2: memories that persist over time. Because language obviously plays a
Speaker 2: major role in how we as adults remember and tell
Speaker 2: autobiographical memories. Like you ever notice how when you tell
Speaker 2: a story from memory, you often end up using the
Speaker 2: same or similar words.
Speaker 1: To do so.
Speaker 2: Why is that? I mean? Even if so, you can
Speaker 2: understand how if you are like reporting speech in a memory,
Speaker 2: you would want to use the same words to do
Speaker 2: so because you're reporting what somebody said. But so you're
Speaker 2: reporting a non verbal event, just like a walk you
Speaker 2: went on and things you saw. Very often you use
Speaker 2: the same or similar words to do so, or at
Speaker 2: least I think I do, and most people I notice
Speaker 2: seem to do. Would this be your experience?
Speaker 1: Also, yeah, and I do. It kind of brings me
Speaker 1: back to the topic of Dad stand up comedian because
Speaker 1: I wonder, like to a lot extent, it's like you
Speaker 1: keep retelling a story more or less the same way
Speaker 1: because you know what's really working. You know, like what, yeah,
Speaker 1: what makes it more dramatic, what makes it more funny?
Speaker 1: Which you know, how you can frame it in a
Speaker 1: way that have also brings to mind, like scenes from
Speaker 1: movies or something. So yeah, I think there's a lot
Speaker 1: of that going on.
Speaker 2: Oh well, it's interesting you bring up the role of
Speaker 2: entertainment in the language used to relate a memory that'll
Speaker 2: come up again in just a minute. But yeah, so
Speaker 2: I think I would acknowledge that certain types of vocabulary
Speaker 2: might actually make the difference between the ability to coherently
Speaker 2: remember an event and recall it years later versus that,
Speaker 2: you know, the characteristics that often come up when people
Speaker 2: are describing their very earliest memories, even the ones we've
Speaker 2: heard of from listeners in the email we got after
Speaker 2: the first couple of parts, like the kind of rare, fragmented,
Speaker 2: decontextualized sensory memories that people often produce as their very
Speaker 2: earliest Those have a very different and character than a
Speaker 2: lot of later memories, and that may it seems to
Speaker 2: me like those differences could correlate with not really having
Speaker 2: the language to organize them as memories at the time
Speaker 2: they're formed. But if language does play an important role
Speaker 2: in establishing the capacity for long term memories about your life,
Speaker 2: what if it's not just conceptual vocabulary. Another way language
Speaker 2: could have something to do with memory in early childhood
Speaker 2: is narrative. So when you are asked to explain a
Speaker 2: memory from childhood, for example, you know, what's the first
Speaker 2: time you can remember swimming in the ocean. You could
Speaker 2: say I was in Florida, I was about three, or
Speaker 2: you could say, well, I was with my mom and
Speaker 2: dad and we were in Florida and the sand was white,
Speaker 2: and I remember I saw a crab and it scared me,
Speaker 2: but my dad told me it was safe and the
Speaker 2: crab wouldn't chase me. And then the water was cold,
Speaker 2: it was colder than the bath. And then salt water
Speaker 2: got in my nose and I didn't like that at first,
Speaker 2: but then I did. And then later we went to
Speaker 2: dinner at a restaurant and my dad got steamed crabs,
Speaker 2: and he remembered the crab on the beach, and he
Speaker 2: kept teasing me. He made the crab creep up on
Speaker 2: me on the table.
Speaker 1: Well, is this an actual memory for you?
Speaker 2: No, I just made it up, But it seems like
Speaker 2: it could.
Speaker 1: Be, because I mean, you do have a certain fascinating
Speaker 1: with crabs. So if this were a legitimate memory, perhaps Joe,
Speaker 1: perhaps we're retrieving this memory through the exercise of podcasting.
Speaker 2: This explains everything. It's how I got corm and brained,
Speaker 2: and now it's just leaking out in a made up story.
Speaker 2: Right here, but no, so, at least in the way
Speaker 2: you tell stories from childhood, there is a wide range
Speaker 2: of stylistic flexibility. You could mention things in a dry
Speaker 2: informational manner, reporting just where you were and what happened,
Speaker 2: or you could offer information more in the kind of
Speaker 2: narrative style that people enjoy and make meaning out of
Speaker 2: when they tell stories to each other. And you could
Speaker 2: call this distinction sort of reporting versus remen missing, you know,
Speaker 2: with the storytelling being more social in nature and more
Speaker 2: entertainment focused, honestly, So that comes back to your thing
Speaker 2: about having a certain format of the memory that is
Speaker 2: based around the language you've found is best to express
Speaker 2: it for entertainment value or for communicating what you're trying
Speaker 2: to get across.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, And exaggeration, I find is also a tool
Speaker 1: you often see employed sometimes, I guess at later ages
Speaker 1: you see it used intentionally, intentionally exaggerating the emotional context
Speaker 1: of an event in order to make a better story
Speaker 1: out of it. Though I've also seen much younger children
Speaker 1: do that. I remember, and this was like a birthday
Speaker 1: party I took my son to and there's a slipping slide.
Speaker 1: Tensions were running high, I think, and an adult went
Speaker 1: down the slip and slide, and then the birthday Blay exclaimed,
Speaker 1: this is a disaster, and see'd rather perturbed by the
Speaker 1: whole scenario. I don't know how that experience matured or
Speaker 1: state or it sticks stuck around as a memory, But
Speaker 1: like that kind of exaggeration I can imagine could make
Speaker 1: it if it was truly viewed as a disaster, as
Speaker 1: a catastrophe of a non child going down slip and slide, Well.
Speaker 2: Just think about yeah, if that child later tells that story,
Speaker 2: all the different ways that the story could be loaded.
Speaker 2: I mean, it could be loaded with like humor, sort
Speaker 2: of ironic reflection on how one feels as a child,
Speaker 2: or I don't know, maybe if you mature a certain way,
Speaker 2: you might still take it very seriously and be upset
Speaker 2: about the slipping slide. But there's all this loading in
Speaker 2: stories that is not just merely reporting the facts about
Speaker 2: an event, but to make the facts reported make sense
Speaker 2: within some broader story. You might call this having the
Speaker 2: facts contexted. That's how it was expressed in the abstract
Speaker 2: of a paper I was looking at. But you also
Speaker 2: make evalue a statements and implications about those facts, So
Speaker 2: not just why happened, but I felt X about why.
Speaker 2: And I've read numerous sources alleging that there could be
Speaker 2: a link between the narrative reminiscing style of say the
Speaker 2: family or the environment in which a child grows up
Speaker 2: and the age at which those children form lasting memories.
Speaker 2: I was reading about this in one article in the
Speaker 2: Berkeley Greater Good magazine by Gene Shinsky and another article
Speaker 2: in the BBC from twenty sixteen by Zaria Gorvitt. These
Speaker 2: were essentially making the link that some researchers think more elaborate,
Speaker 2: coherent narratives could cause children to have memories that last longer,
Speaker 2: and one example was cited in that BBC article. It
Speaker 2: was a paper done by the Cornell University psychology professor
Speaker 2: Chi Wang, who was the author of a paper called
Speaker 2: culture Effects on Adult's Earliest Childhood Recollection and Self Description
Speaker 2: Implications for the Relation between Memory and the Self published
Speaker 2: in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in two
Speaker 2: thousand and one, and this found that by comparing childhood
Speaker 2: stories told by Chinese and American college students, American students'
Speaker 2: stories tended to be longer and more elaborate with more
Speaker 2: self focused evaluations, whereas the Chinese stories were more restrained
Speaker 2: and factual. And also the average earliest memories of the
Speaker 2: American students were a little bit earlier. And this personally
Speaker 2: squared with Wang's experience of growing up in China, where
Speaker 2: she said that the cultural norm was that there was
Speaker 2: less emphasis on stories of early childhood memories, and she
Speaker 2: gives a quote to the BBC saying, if society is
Speaker 2: telling you those memories are important to you, you'll hold
Speaker 2: on to them. And this also relates to cross cultural studies,
Speaker 2: saying that some of the examples of the people on
Speaker 2: average the earliest childhood memories tend to be people of
Speaker 2: the Maori culture, and these same studies find that Maori
Speaker 2: families tend to place a lot of emphasis on elaborate
Speaker 2: narrative storytelling in the past. So I thought this was
Speaker 2: interesting that this could connect to some of the differences
Speaker 2: we've already read about and I think talked about in
Speaker 2: the first episode about cross cultural differences in the age
Speaker 2: of the earliest memories, and also gender differences, because there
Speaker 2: have been some studies showing that girls tend to have
Speaker 2: slightly earlier memories on average than boys, and that girls
Speaker 2: in childhood tend to relate stories in a more contexted
Speaker 2: and evaluative manner. But whatever the particulars of how it works,
Speaker 2: it's certainly not hard for me to imagine that the
Speaker 2: storytelling environment in which you grow up plays a large
Speaker 2: role on what and how you remember things from your
Speaker 2: earliest childhood.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it's fascinating and something also just to keep
Speaker 1: in mind too that I remember one of the sources
Speaker 1: I quoted in maybe the first episode mentioned, and that
Speaker 1: is that there's no right or wrong way like the
Speaker 1: earlier memories of childhood versus later memories, neither one is
Speaker 1: healthier or more correct. The brain remembers what it needs
Speaker 1: to remember.
Speaker 2: Right, And while playing on that, one way to interpret
Speaker 2: these findings, if they are correct, is that maybe by
Speaker 2: inhabiting an environment where there is a lot of elaborate
Speaker 2: narrative storytelling that involves a lot of contexting of events
Speaker 2: and including evaluations, that is an environment that tells the
Speaker 2: child that they need to remember things in that manner
Speaker 2: and thus makes them easier to retrieve and relate later on.
Speaker 2: Of course, the interesting thing being that again this is
Speaker 2: all coming back to autobiographical memories, the kind of memories
Speaker 2: for like event in your life that like you can
Speaker 2: later retell as stories. And this doesn't necessarily correspond to
Speaker 2: other types of memory, like say, memory of how to
Speaker 2: do something, you know, memories that we often think of
Speaker 2: not as quote memory but as learning. All right, So,
Speaker 2: the language based memory development idea has been around for
Speaker 2: a long time, and it has its proponents, though I
Speaker 2: think also it has its critics, and I don't think
Speaker 2: we should place too much emphasis on things like the
Speaker 2: role of language, because one big reason here is that
Speaker 2: some analogs to infantile amnesia have been discovered in animals
Speaker 2: like rats. You know, So there are rat experiments showing
Speaker 2: kind of similar patterns of forgetting of the earliest experiences
Speaker 2: as rats age into adulthood. Rats of course never acquire
Speaker 2: langug which, but show some similar patterns. So it's clear
Speaker 2: that language is not the deciding factor, but may play
Speaker 2: a role in, say the timing of different stages of
Speaker 2: memory acquisition. Another older idea that might still have something
Speaker 2: to do with the with childhood amnesia. What about the
Speaker 2: role of what researchers have called the cognitive self. I
Speaker 2: was reading about this in a paper called on Resolving
Speaker 2: the Enigma of Infantile Amnesia by Mark Howe and Mary
Speaker 2: Courage published in Psychological Bulletin in nineteen ninety three, and
Speaker 2: they discussed the idea of what if The crucial factor
Speaker 2: in the establishment of lasting autobiographical memories is the development
Speaker 2: of the concept of I and me, related in a
Speaker 2: way to the concept of theory of mind. Understanding that
Speaker 2: your mind is different from the minds of others, that
Speaker 2: you know things other people don't know, and have thoughts
Speaker 2: and feelings other people don't have, and that they likewise
Speaker 2: know things and have thoughts and feelings that you cannot
Speaker 2: share in unless they tell you. Under this proposal, it's
Speaker 2: not until we have mastered the concept of a self
Speaker 2: different from others that we're able to organize our memories
Speaker 2: into a sensical form that can be retrieved across time.
Speaker 2: How Encourage right in their conclusion quote, A series of
Speaker 2: significant developmental events take place when infants are between eighteen
Speaker 2: and thirty months of age that prepare them to talk
Speaker 2: about personally experienced events. First, at about eighteen months of age,
Speaker 2: infants learn to recognize their features in the mirror. The
Speaker 2: next acquisition is a more advanced representation of the self
Speaker 2: reflected in the pronomial reference to the self as I
Speaker 2: and me. In the early months of the second year,
Speaker 2: finally the child learns to talk about immediate and then
Speaker 2: more distant past events in narrative the language of autobiographical memory.
Speaker 2: Both narrative and autobiographical memory continue to develop in structure, organization,
Speaker 2: and content over the preschool years, But by that time,
Speaker 2: infantile amnesia is indeed a phenomenon of the past. And
Speaker 2: so this one's a little bit different because this one
Speaker 2: does not depend while it's related to language, Their idea
Speaker 2: of the concept of the cognitive self does not rely
Speaker 2: entirely on language, and they think there are ways that
Speaker 2: the cognitive self can be demonstrated before a child acquires
Speaker 2: the words in which to express it. But they think
Speaker 2: that the child needs a concept of self and I
Speaker 2: separate from the world and the events in the world
Speaker 2: in order to put the memories into a form that
Speaker 2: can later be accessed and expressed.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, because it sounds like without that,
Speaker 1: there's no there's no like weight, there's no structure. It's
Speaker 1: just like memories of potentially of just environments and groups
Speaker 1: of people without the actual connection of like this, this
Speaker 1: is a value because I am at the center of it.
Speaker 2: That's right, And that would connect again to the ideas
Speaker 2: about rative and maybe the important role of say, evaluative
Speaker 2: statements about memories helping us to be able to recall
Speaker 2: them later.
Speaker 1: Yeah the child is yeah, oh sorry, Yeah, the child
Speaker 1: is like, it's nice, but what is in it for me? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I remember it.
Speaker 2: So in the end, when I'm looking at all these explanations,
Speaker 2: I don't know. Of course, I'm you know, I'm not
Speaker 2: a neuroscientist or a developmental psychologist, so I don't pretend
Speaker 2: to be expressing expertise on this, But I just say, personally,
Speaker 2: I feel pretty convinced by the neurodevelopmental arguments, the ones
Speaker 2: about the development of the hippocampal memory system, that there's
Speaker 2: clearly some kind of like structural change going on in
Speaker 2: the brain in the early years of life, and this
Speaker 2: this plays a major role in why we don't retain
Speaker 2: all these memories until later life. As far as these
Speaker 2: explanations based in language and the cognitive self and stuff,
Speaker 2: I I don't know it. It seems like the evidence
Speaker 2: for them is a little bit softer, But I'm very
Speaker 2: interested in them, and they seem plausible to me at least.
Speaker 2: M yeah, yeah, But basically all the papers I read
Speaker 2: on this subject, or you know the old cliche, they're
Speaker 2: calling for more research, like you know, widely acknowledging this
Speaker 2: is not a settled question. And so you know that
Speaker 2: we have some interesting ideas, but ultimately we don't know
Speaker 2: for sure why childhood amnesia happens, and maybe more research
Speaker 2: could help settle it.
Speaker 1: Now, we've discussed false memories a good bit in these episodes,
Speaker 1: you know, talking about very early childhood memories that are
Speaker 1: to some degree falsified, unaugmented, And you know, I think
Speaker 1: it's it's easy to mostly focus on the potential pitfalls
Speaker 1: of false memories or or to land somewhere on sort
Speaker 1: of like the neutral impact that they may have. But
Speaker 1: I also wanted to tackle the question of just like
Speaker 1: why is it also advantageous to have false memories? Like
Speaker 1: why would this it all be a dapt Is there
Speaker 1: an upside to this mental ability or is this just
Speaker 1: kind of junk? Is this just kind of a byproduct
Speaker 1: of the way that our brains have developed.
Speaker 2: Well, I would say that this is not the only
Speaker 2: way in which our brains consistently generate false beliefs, and
Speaker 2: I think when our brains do that, they're usually doing
Speaker 2: it for a reason.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and yeah. Certainly this ties into larger issues
Speaker 1: of how we falsify beliefs, how we falsify memories, how
Speaker 1: we obsess over perhaps impractical ideas of what the future
Speaker 1: might hold. You know, I'm reminded of a couple of
Speaker 1: quotes here. I believe it was Alan Rogerley who commented that,
Speaker 1: or he may have been quoting somebody else actually, that
Speaker 1: repetition and recollection are the same force, but in different directions.
Speaker 1: I remember too, I think our Scott Baker commenting that
Speaker 1: that science fiction and fantasy kind of both fulfill the
Speaker 1: same purpose, going either into the past or into the future,
Speaker 1: sort of constructing an unrealistic but far fetched version of
Speaker 1: the future based on where we are now, and then
Speaker 1: the other is a version of the past that is
Speaker 1: equally fantastic, illogical, and obviously not true, but telling about
Speaker 1: where we are in the present. So, you know, we're
Speaker 1: these strange creatures that see ourselves as occupying this space,
Speaker 1: this now, and remembering what came before, predicting what is
Speaker 1: about to come, and then it's kind of open to
Speaker 1: discussion if there is actually a now point, like are
Speaker 1: we actually there? Or is that also a construction of
Speaker 1: the past. But any rate, I wanted to see what
Speaker 1: experts were saying about this. So I was reading a
Speaker 1: paper titled false Memories, What the Hell Are They For?
Speaker 1: By Aaron J. Newman and D. Stephen Lindsay, published in
Speaker 1: Applied Cognitive Psychology back in two thousand and nine, and
Speaker 1: I thought, the author's made some good points here, and
Speaker 1: a number of these are going to be things that
Speaker 1: you know, we've discussed on the show before, or I
Speaker 1: guess generally understood about memory in the brain. But first
Speaker 1: of all, this is all part of mental our mental
Speaker 1: time travel abilities that enable us to experience our memories
Speaker 1: of the past with a feeling of subjective clarity, while
Speaker 1: also enabling us to produce mental models of potential futures. Quote.
Speaker 1: Recalling an autobiographical experience involves piecing together activated memorial information
Speaker 1: while at the same time making inferences based on other
Speaker 1: information available to us. Biases, stereotypes, and expectations that act
Speaker 1: on our current thinking also act on inferences that we
Speaker 1: make about mental events arising from the past. So Obviously,
Speaker 1: given this system, failures are inevitable. Memory failures are inevitable
Speaker 1: false memories, along with inaccurate or unlikely ruminated scenarios of
Speaker 1: the future. This is all just part of living with
Speaker 1: our human understands of reality, and so various methods can
Speaker 1: be used and have been studied to produce false memories
Speaker 1: of events. The authors point out. These include suggestion via
Speaker 1: imagination exercises, the use of photographs, dream interpretation, guided imagery,
Speaker 1: and paraphrasing. I mean, even this, you know, kind of
Speaker 1: joking example that we busted out earlier of you bringing
Speaker 1: up a hypothetical entirely made up memory of childhood about
Speaker 1: crabs in the end, and it was so loaded with crabs.
Speaker 1: It's a relatively easy exercise for one to then turn
Speaker 1: that back on the person who created and saying, well,
Speaker 1: is that completely made up? What does that say about you?
Speaker 1: Why did you bring up the crabs so many times?
Speaker 1: You know? And you can begin to build on that.
Speaker 2: Well, yes, And if you took that same story and said, hey,
Speaker 2: you know, your parents told us the story about when
Speaker 2: you went to the beach when you were little. Do
Speaker 2: you remember this, well, you might not necessarily at first
Speaker 2: or you might think, well, maybe I do, and then
Speaker 2: over time that could very easily turn into what feels
Speaker 2: like a real memory for you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it also now there are a number of
Speaker 1: factors to keep in mind too. It's worth noting that
Speaker 1: the results and experiments involving the creation or the fostering
Speaker 1: of false recollections, it depends on the degree to which
Speaker 1: a memory is falsified. For example, in many of these experiments,
Speaker 1: you'll find examples where they'll find out about an actual
Speaker 1: childhood memory like they would in this case, say talk
Speaker 1: to one of your parents and ask about your earliest
Speaker 1: speech encounter and then use that in the construction of
Speaker 1: a false memory. And then you also have to take
Speaker 1: into account the weight of the memory that is being
Speaker 1: built up or augmented. So it's one thing, for example,
Speaker 1: for me to suggest, yeah, maybe you were really fascinated
Speaker 1: by crabs like you like you were in this false
Speaker 1: story of childhood. It's another to say, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: that they had a you know, just you were profoundly
Speaker 1: frightened by the crabs, and this totally shaped to you.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like, how how much weight are you
Speaker 1: putting on the memory. For instance, one study reference in
Speaker 1: this paper had high results of memory inception when you
Speaker 1: were trying to get them to remember a childhood prank. Now,
Speaker 1: you know, nothing too severe, but you know something that
Speaker 1: where it's not going to like shake the core of
Speaker 1: their being or really mess around too many understandings of self.
Speaker 1: Is just like, let's let's generate this this memory of
Speaker 1: this prank that probably didn't actually occur.
Speaker 2: Yes, So, if I'm understanding right, this might imply it's
Speaker 2: easier to generate a false memory for an event that
Speaker 2: is not really like, does not shake the core of
Speaker 2: your what you how you would characterize your childhood, but
Speaker 2: rather for a kind of like weird, quirky, funny little
Speaker 2: event that doesn't really change anything about your life.
Speaker 1: Right, And of course, a lot of the very sorts
Speaker 1: of memories, early childhood memories that we've been discussing here,
Speaker 1: the kind that are sort of shared among families, are
Speaker 1: exactly the sort of memory. You know. They're not necessarily
Speaker 1: profound or anything. They're amusing, they're fun, and therefore it's
Speaker 1: easy to grab onto it now. The authors also point
Speaker 1: out that social factors such as group membership in the
Speaker 1: media as well, can seemingly influence memories like this as
Speaker 1: well quote socially driven distortions in memory. These and may
Speaker 1: have several benefits for the individuals, such as improving social
Speaker 1: relationships within a group, or they may improve social group coherence.
Speaker 1: So false memories can be self enhancing in many ways,
Speaker 1: but they can also be group enhancing. And in this
Speaker 1: we're getting we're speaking broadly beyond merely like childhood memories,
Speaker 1: but even getting into things where say you were a
Speaker 1: part of a group, you join a group, where memories
Speaker 1: of say even paranormal experiences have value. They bring you
Speaker 1: closer to the people in a group, or they enhance
Speaker 1: the overall connectivity of the group.
Speaker 2: This is exactly what I was going to hypothesize earlier
Speaker 2: when you were talking about so I brought up you know,
Speaker 2: there are other ways that our brain consistently produces false beliefs,
Speaker 2: and there you would suspect that there's probably an adaptive
Speaker 2: reason for doing that, like there's survival benefit, that's why
Speaker 2: our brains work that way. And my guess was going
Speaker 2: to be social function that they're that the same way
Speaker 2: that you know, we can have not false memories, but
Speaker 2: false beliefs about the external world. These can easily be
Speaker 2: induced through a concept known as identity protective cognition. You know,
Speaker 2: people will reason in ways that are not strictly logical,
Speaker 2: and will come to conclusions that they would find to
Speaker 2: be false if they were disinterested in the issue. But
Speaker 2: there is some social identity reason for coming to that belief.
Speaker 2: You know, in order to fit in with my social group,
Speaker 2: I need to be the kind of person that believes X.
Speaker 2: So I actually I do believe X, and it is right.
Speaker 2: And I think the same could easily be true of memories.
Speaker 2: It probably matters more for your survival that you're getting
Speaker 2: along good with your group than that, like, you actually
Speaker 2: remember what happened last Tuesday a year ago correctly. So
Speaker 2: if there's a way to remember that event incorrectly, but
Speaker 2: that would be sort of like fun to share as
Speaker 2: a group together to tell that story and I'll bond
Speaker 2: and all feel good about each other, Well then maybe
Speaker 2: you'll go that way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And I mean all this makes sense, I think,
Speaker 1: because of course humans are highly social creatures. We've talked
Speaker 1: about this before. This has had an enormous impact on
Speaker 1: the human animal So is it any surprise that we
Speaker 1: help each other remember events of our past. Is it
Speaker 1: any surprise that these memories may be distorted for the
Speaker 1: betterment of one's own integration with a group or the
Speaker 1: overall coherence of the group, Because for the social animal,
Speaker 1: the group is not it's not just nice to have
Speaker 1: like the group is survival. Being able to bond with
Speaker 1: the group has uh has a real adaptive advantage, and
Speaker 1: may and and and being able to fit in. Even
Speaker 1: if you're distorting the actual occurrence of events in the past,
Speaker 1: this may frequently outweigh the value of objective reality.
Speaker 2: So it's better if all your friends are laughing about, Hey,
Speaker 2: you remember that time Johnny, I don't know, yeah, chase
Speaker 2: me with esteamed crab and you don't really remember that.
Speaker 2: It's probably better for your brain to convince you you
Speaker 2: do remember that, so you can laugh along with everybody
Speaker 2: else than to say, like, no, I don't think that happened.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But again, these are generalizations, so you know, individual
Speaker 1: experience is gonna is going to differ, and they're they're
Speaker 1: all sorts of caveats that can come into play. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I think this is fascinating to think about now. In
Speaker 1: I think both of the last couple of episodes we
Speaker 1: talked a little bit about myth babies and legendary babies
Speaker 1: of history, child hercules, child Jesus, child Christian and so forth.
Speaker 1: So I do have just a little bit more on this,
Speaker 1: getting into the idea of the child hero and the
Speaker 1: child saint.
Speaker 2: Okay, we're gonna do another super baby sidebar here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this one, this one is going to end
Speaker 1: up bringing up child mortality again. So my apologies. It
Speaker 1: was not my intent to discuss this more, but in
Speaker 1: just diving into the topic, it becomes an essential part
Speaker 1: of understanding some of these traditions. Okay, so first of all,
Speaker 1: just talking about infant heroes in Greek tradition. One paper
Speaker 1: I was looking at here was Baby and Child Heroes
Speaker 1: in Ancient Greece by kareem On Dina Pash. And when
Speaker 1: it comes to the child hero proper and not merely
Speaker 1: the infant form of an heroes, so not just merely
Speaker 1: baby hercules, but like a child hero that is a
Speaker 1: hero in and of itself. They are defined not by
Speaker 1: their actions and exploits as with adult heroes, but by
Speaker 1: their untimely deaths, which immortalize them as in hero cults.
Speaker 1: And these include such examples as the children of Medea
Speaker 1: and the children of Heracles. To quote Pash here quote
Speaker 1: from parental fears and sense of guilt arise. The stories, songs,
Speaker 1: and sanctuaries honoring child heroes, both myth and ritual, articulate
Speaker 1: these very basic human anxieties, yet the emphasis is ultimately
Speaker 1: on the beauty that transcends the gruesomeness of these narratives
Speaker 1: and transforms dread into poetry. I think this is also
Speaker 1: interesting to consider when you look at the long list
Speaker 1: of child saints in the Christian tradition, and these include
Speaker 1: both martyred children and adults, as well as children who
Speaker 1: died at a young age, but were said to have
Speaker 1: been very mature, very whole in their young life, in
Speaker 1: a way that it's almost like they were they were
Speaker 1: too holy for this world and therefore could not remain here.
Speaker 1: So just a couple of examples to illustrate both of
Speaker 1: these categories. There's Saint Rumwald of Buckingham from the year
Speaker 1: six sixty two, said to have lived only for three days,
Speaker 1: but the child was said to be able to speak
Speaker 1: and profess his faith right away. In fact, it's, according
Speaker 1: to the legend, requested his own baptism and even delivered
Speaker 1: a sermon.
Speaker 2: He requested it, but did he get it?
Speaker 1: Did they baptize? Yeah, I believe that's part of the story.
Speaker 1: He got the baptism and then got to deliver a sermon,
Speaker 1: which you know is a comical image in some in
Speaker 1: some ways, but also you understand where the like the
Speaker 1: creative energy of this comes from, like the idea of
Speaker 1: like a child, and the and the attachment we feel
Speaker 1: to a child, the perfection and yet imperfection of a child.
Speaker 1: And then if there is and and then when you
Speaker 1: fact in these various faith models of how salvation is
Speaker 1: supposed to work, if you you factor in just the
Speaker 1: trauma of losing a young child, you can see where
Speaker 1: stories like this could be created. And then, of course
Speaker 1: you also have examples of martyrs. There is a Secarius
Speaker 1: of Bethlehem said to have been killed in King Herod's
Speaker 1: Masacre of the Innocence somewhere between seven and two BCE.
Speaker 1: The alleged remains of the child are still held as
Speaker 1: holy relics today. So in these cases, you know the
Speaker 1: child didn't. It's not my understanding, at least in this case.
Speaker 1: And this may vary from telling to telling a case
Speaker 1: where the child itself is not said to have been
Speaker 1: holy or done anything holy, but was victim of something
Speaker 1: or allegedly the victim of some sort of heinous act.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'd lean on allegedly on that one, because I
Speaker 2: think the story of the slaughter of the innocence, from
Speaker 2: what I recall, is largely considered to be legendary.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's And of course it's very, very notable
Speaker 1: that some of the more notorious examples of child martyrs
Speaker 1: were utilized in cases of blood libel against Jewish communities.
Speaker 1: Hugh of Lincoln in the thirteenth century and Simon Trent
Speaker 1: in the fifteenth century, ving two prime examples. And these
Speaker 1: are sadly not the only examples. You can pull out,
Speaker 1: cases where the you know, the alleged murder of a
Speaker 1: child was then used as an excuse for acts of
Speaker 1: violence against communities that were blamed with that to death.
Speaker 1: So obviously kind of a depressing place I need to
Speaker 1: wind up in this tangent. And I didn't really again,
Speaker 1: didn't really want to discuss dead children again, but I
Speaker 1: guess it's unavoidable. You know, why does a child stand
Speaker 1: out in a mythic narrative. It may be about who
Speaker 1: that child will become, but there's also a weight to
Speaker 1: the child that does not pass on into mythic adulthood.
Speaker 1: You know. And it can be clearly be leveraged in
Speaker 1: different ways as a rallying cry of martyrdom, as an
Speaker 1: inspiration of innocence, as an inspiration for violence and horror.
Speaker 1: You know. It can be the kind of narrative that
Speaker 1: can circumvent the cruelty of the world or inspire more cruelty.
Speaker 1: There's you know you can. You can go in various
Speaker 1: directions with it. Now, one final thing I wanted to
Speaker 1: discuss you a little bit, and I think we alluded
Speaker 1: to it a little bit earlier in this episode, is that,
Speaker 1: you know, as we've discussed already, there are numerous examples
Speaker 1: of suggested falsified memories to turn to, including memories of
Speaker 1: various paranormal encounters, different forms of abuse, and indeed we
Speaker 1: can also throw supposed memories of past lives into the mix.
Speaker 1: You know you can, You'll have you You can certainly
Speaker 1: find people who claim to remember very early childhood, people
Speaker 1: who claim to remember their birth, but also people who
Speaker 1: claim to remember a time before their birth before they
Speaker 1: were born, either in the womb or before the womb,
Speaker 1: in another life before the womb. Any you know, so
Speaker 1: you know it's uh. This again speaks to the power
Speaker 1: of our ability to create and falsify meaningful memories. And
Speaker 1: it's not too big of a leap, right, If you
Speaker 1: can already create a memory of a thing that didn't occur,
Speaker 1: it's not too much of a leap to remember supposed
Speaker 1: lives before this one as well, right, And there's a
Speaker 1: lot of individuals have written on this and theorized on
Speaker 1: this sort of thing. Check. Psychiatrist Stanislav Groff theorized that
Speaker 1: some near death experiences are actually a kind of channeling
Speaker 1: of birth memories, with the so called tunnel of light
Speaker 1: representing the birth canal. This is skeptical about that, Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is very Everyone has a right to be very
Speaker 1: skeptical of this. I've seen it refuted by skeptics on
Speaker 1: a number of grounds, including that the experience of being
Speaker 1: born would not look like this even if your infant
Speaker 1: head were in the right position and your eyes were
Speaker 1: actually open, and again you were capable of forming memories
Speaker 1: like this. So I think there's very strong reasons to
Speaker 1: be skeptical of this being an actual memory. But like
Speaker 1: we've said, you get in there and you start tinkering
Speaker 1: with your memories, start calling them, You start bringing in
Speaker 1: content from different communities and learned individuals. You can start
Speaker 1: augmenting things, you can start falsifying things, and what you
Speaker 1: end up with can still be highly meaningful. It can
Speaker 1: still you know, to you, it can also have an
Speaker 1: impact on the creation of art and literature. If the
Speaker 1: name standis left Grov sounds familiar. Longtime listeners might remember
Speaker 1: it coming up in an episode that Christian and I
Speaker 1: did on the art of hr Giger, because these very metaphors,
Speaker 1: you know, the tunnel of lie, near death, and pre birth.
Speaker 1: These were explored in some of Giger's art work, and
Speaker 1: Groff actually authored a twenty eighteen book of Giger's work
Speaker 1: titled hr Giger and the Zeitgeist of the Twentieth Century. Graf,
Speaker 1: by the way, was also a technical advisor on Douglas
Speaker 1: Trumbull's nineteen eighty three film Brainstorm that had Christopher Walkin
Speaker 1: in it. I believe so again not to say that
Speaker 1: these can't be potent ideas, but they do seem to
Speaker 1: stand outside of science. There you know, these are more
Speaker 1: We're getting more into the area of religion and myth
Speaker 1: and even the parent normal. But I think it all
Speaker 1: speaks to just how invested we can become in the
Speaker 1: story of us and those vast blank spaces in our
Speaker 1: recollection as you know, as well as any glimmers that
Speaker 1: we might sense in the dark that we could then
Speaker 1: augment and accentuate into something else, something that is meaningful
Speaker 1: to us or makes us feel part of a group,
Speaker 1: et cetera. And you know, there are examples of this
Speaker 1: line of thinking from outside of science, concepts of pre
Speaker 1: existence in various cultures. There's the concept of reincarnation or
Speaker 1: the transmigration of the soul, and we see this in
Speaker 1: various traditions, Greek traditions, early Jainism, Buddhism, Hinduism, medieval Jewish mysticism,
Speaker 1: new religious movements, and so many more examples.
Speaker 2: There were some early Christians who believed in reincarnation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I was reading a little bit about this,
Speaker 1: you know, the idea of a pre immortal existence of
Speaker 1: the soul. Various strains of thought concerning the not only
Speaker 1: the idea that the human soul was was pre had
Speaker 1: a pre existence that it was say, created before the
Speaker 1: physical creation of the universe, and I guess, you know,
Speaker 1: the souls are just setting around waiting to be installed
Speaker 1: in a physical form. And then there is also a
Speaker 1: fair amount of thought about the idea of the pre
Speaker 1: existence of Jesus, of Jesus Christ, the idea that yes,
Speaker 1: God is going to take on this sort of mortal
Speaker 1: incarnation because he has to go to earth and die
Speaker 1: for everyone sins and so forth. But but then there
Speaker 1: are there are these some lines of thought that are like, okay,
Speaker 1: well what was he doing before then? And I guess
Speaker 1: on one hand, you could say, well, he just had
Speaker 1: God had not incarnated yet, so it's like he hadn't
Speaker 1: butted off into a physical form. But then there are
Speaker 1: these other lines of thought. It's like, oh, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: he's there, He's just setting around waiting, but he just
Speaker 1: hasn't gone to earth yet. For example, I was I
Speaker 1: was reading that there was one early Christian theologian, I
Speaker 1: believe this his origin of I'll think of Alexandria, I
Speaker 1: lived at one eight five through two fifty three, taught
Speaker 1: that human souls existed for before creation, and this was
Speaker 1: something that he would later be accused of heresy for
Speaker 1: but yeah, I don't know. I mean, I think the
Speaker 1: big take home from all of this is that we
Speaker 1: have an impressive ability to create meaningful memories out of
Speaker 1: various sources that are not pure recollection to the limited
Speaker 1: extent that there is recollection of anything. And you know,
Speaker 1: I guess I don't think there's anything intrinsically wrong with
Speaker 1: fostering memories of infancy, birth or life before birth, so
Speaker 1: long as it improves one's quality of life and it
Speaker 1: doesn't take anything away from you or others. You know,
Speaker 1: if that's the case, then what's the harm in it?
Speaker 2: I think the way I'd put my feeling is reminisce
Speaker 2: and enjoy your memories, but also be aware of the
Speaker 2: fact that some of them may not have a factual basis.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, When I was thinking about this, I was
Speaker 1: trying to think, well, how could it be harmful? And
Speaker 1: I think that the main sticking point that I could
Speaker 1: come up with is if one's claims of false memories
Speaker 1: could embolden harmful models and others. So this is just
Speaker 1: a purely hypothetical scenario. But imagine that you, through one
Speaker 1: method or another, we've discussed your fostered memory of alien
Speaker 1: abduction that for you is awe inspiring and beneficial, Like
Speaker 1: I remember seeing aliens when I was a child, and
Speaker 1: isn't that great? I you know, this is my you know,
Speaker 1: brain expanding cosmost appreciating moment. But what if your pronounced
Speaker 1: belief in these experiences enable someone else to further engage
Speaker 1: in a harmful variation on it. Or on the other hand,
Speaker 1: what if, here's another scenario, what if your harmless accounts
Speaker 1: of a past life embolden someone else to and then
Speaker 1: wind up in a situation where they're being manipulated or
Speaker 1: conned by someone who is taking advantage of this you know,
Speaker 1: longing for or recollection of a past.
Speaker 2: Life, telling you this stuff is real and I can
Speaker 2: I can find your past selves for you for a price.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean, And you know, there's, of course,
Speaker 1: there can be a lot of gray area in any
Speaker 1: scenario like that, but you know, and this is hypothetical,
Speaker 1: but you know, it's it's worth considering. I think that
Speaker 1: in any given paranormal area, you know, it's going to
Speaker 1: be dependent on more than just mere professed experience and
Speaker 1: or augmented or false memories. There may also be disingenuous
Speaker 1: actors involved, manipulators of disinformation, and of course just outright
Speaker 1: con artists as well, So I don't know, food for thought.
Speaker 2: Yeah, i'd reiterate what I said. I mean, you know
Speaker 2: you can, you can enjoy all your family memories and
Speaker 2: all the you know, all the good stuff, but also
Speaker 2: just be realistic about the fallibility of memory.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if there were a video camera present, it may
Speaker 2: not actually have happened to the way you remember it.
Speaker 2: But you know that our memories all we've got, yeah,
Speaker 2: or in many cases it's all we got. I guess
Speaker 2: sometimes you did have a video camera there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you have the video, the video and you
Speaker 1: have the photographs, which then can of course be used
Speaker 1: to falsify memories. So yeah, there's and of course with
Speaker 1: advances and technology, things are only going to get more
Speaker 1: complicated on that. On those grounds, All right, we're going
Speaker 1: to gohe and close out this trilogy of episodes here,
Speaker 1: but we'd continue to love to hear from everyone out there.
Speaker 1: If you have thoughts on early childhood memories, you want
Speaker 1: to share early childhood memories, you know, memories of past lives,
Speaker 1: any of anything that falls under the under the heading
Speaker 1: of the topic here, yeah, right in. We would love
Speaker 1: to listen to you and discuss any of this, potentially
Speaker 1: on future episodes of Listener Mail. Listener Mails published on Mondays.
Speaker 1: On Wednesdays we do short form artifact or monster fact episodes,
Speaker 1: Core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and on Fridays we
Speaker 1: do Weird House Cinema. That's our time to set aside
Speaker 1: most serious concerns and just talk about a weird film.
Speaker 2: Huge thanks to our audio producer JJ Posway. If you
Speaker 2: would like to get in touch with us with feedback
Speaker 2: on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic
Speaker 2: for the future, or just to say hello, you can
Speaker 2: email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 2: dot com.
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