0:00

Get your advanced PhD in WOW

0:02

from Floor & Decor. If

0:04

you're a pro, you're already an expert in tile,

0:06

wood and stone. And with Floor

0:09

& Decor's job site delivery, their free design

0:11

services, and pro rewards that actually reward you,

0:14

your business is set to grow from one client

0:16

to the next. Floor & Decor isn't

0:18

just a couple of vials, it's an entire

0:20

store designed to help your business boom.

0:23

It's Floor & Decor. On

0:27

May 10th, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

0:30

is coming to IMAX and theaters

0:32

everywhere. This

0:36

summer, one movie event will rain.

0:39

It is our time. Apes hunt

0:41

humans. That is wrong. Bend

0:45

for your king. Never. Kingdom

0:48

of the Planet of the Apes, only in theaters

0:50

May 10. Tickets on sale now. Rated PG-13. Some

0:53

material may be inappropriate for children under 13. Brett

1:04

McKay here and welcome to another edition of

1:07

the Art of Manliness podcast. Do you sometimes

1:09

walk into another room in your house to

1:11

get something, but then can't remember what it

1:13

was you wanted? Do you sometimes forget about

1:15

an appointment or struggle to remember someone's name?

1:17

You may have chalked these lapses in memory

1:19

up to getting older. And age

1:21

can indeed play a role in the diminishing power of

1:23

memory. But as my guest will tell us,

1:25

there are other factors that play as well. Charin

1:28

Raghunath is a neuroscientist, psychologist, and

1:30

the author of Why We Remember,

1:33

unlocking memories' power to hold on to what matters.

1:35

Today on the show, Charin explains how factors

1:37

like how we direct our attention, take photos,

1:39

and move through something called event boundaries all

1:42

affect our memory. And how our

1:44

current context in life impacts which memories we're

1:46

able to recall from the past. We

1:49

always talk about how to reverse engineer these factors to improve

1:51

your memories. After the show's

1:53

over, check out our show notes at aom.is.memory.

2:07

Charin Raganath, welcome to the show. Thank

2:09

you very much, Brett. Great to be here. So

2:11

you are a neuroscientist and you've spent your career

2:14

20 plus years researching

2:16

memory. And we're going to talk today about

2:18

why we remember some things, why we forget

2:21

other stuff and what we can do to

2:23

improve our memory. But after I read

2:25

your book, one of the big takeaways I got from it

2:27

was that memory is more than

2:29

just an archive of our past. That

2:32

actually memory shapes our day-to-day

2:34

lives. So how does memory influence

2:36

our lives beyond just being able

2:39

to recall events? So

2:42

one just very kind of simple

2:44

example would be, let's say you wake up in a

2:47

hotel room, right? Your

2:49

first question as you wake up,

2:51

as you're a little disoriented and probably

2:53

without even thinking about it, you're having

2:55

this moment of where am I? And

2:59

just to situate yourself in time and space, right? It's

3:01

like you can look around, you know where you are

3:03

in the room, but where's this room? It could be

3:05

in like a prison somewhere or it

3:08

could be in like a resort, who knows? And

3:11

so you have to rely on memory just to get

3:13

to that point to dig you out of that hole

3:15

and tell you exactly where you are. So

3:18

let's take a slightly

3:20

more complex example now. Like

3:22

let's say, for instance, you are

3:25

trying to choose which restaurant you want to go to. It's

3:28

like a usual restaurant that's pretty good, but then

3:30

lately they changed the menu and you know the

3:32

last time you went there, you had a terrible

3:34

meal. So you can use

3:36

memory to basically say, you know what? I'm going

3:39

to go to someplace different this time. And

3:41

then we can take something like a big choice. So

3:44

I decided to go into research in

3:47

cognitive neuroscience, but my training was in

3:49

clinical psychology and I actually had the

3:51

chance to do a clinical internship in

3:53

which I could have been on a

3:56

career path to make lots of money in a

3:59

clinical career. And when

4:01

I look back on that decision,

4:03

what I asked myself was essentially,

4:06

what are the kinds of moments

4:08

that I feel most comfortable in,

4:10

that I'm happiest about? When

4:12

I thought about the instances in which I was

4:14

in the clinic, I thought, okay, I have to

4:16

be dressed up well, I have to be there

4:18

early in the morning, I have to

4:21

be on when people say there's a lot of

4:23

pressure because if I don't get things right, bad

4:25

things can happen, versus the

4:27

times that I could remember from

4:29

being in research where I was staying

4:31

up late, drinking beers and eating pizza in

4:33

the lab while we were working late for

4:35

a conference or something like that, and the

4:38

people that I hung out with in the

4:40

lab versus the more formal

4:42

environments in the clinic, and it was just

4:44

a no-brainer. And so these

4:47

hard life decisions are

4:49

very, very complicated. We're making them based

4:51

on insufficient information. And so we rely

4:53

on memory to give us that

4:55

data that we need to make these decisions about

4:57

our future. And as we'll

5:00

see in this conversation too, memory is connected

5:02

to a lot of other things in our

5:04

lives that we might not think are connected

5:06

to memory. The ability to imagine things, that's

5:08

connected to memory. How we situate ourselves not

5:10

only in place, like in

5:12

that example you gave, you wake up in a hotel room, you're

5:14

like, where the heck am I? But also in time. Well, let's

5:16

get to this question here, I think a lot of people might have this. Why

5:19

do we remember some things but not

5:21

others? And then the follow-up question is,

5:24

what can that answer tell us

5:26

about how memory works? When

5:29

we look at the design of the brain,

5:31

what you see over and over and

5:33

over again, whatever system you look at, is

5:36

that the brain is optimizing to make

5:38

the most of a little bit of information.

5:41

And so what I mean by that is if

5:43

we see the world, we're not literally looking at

5:45

everything, we're only grabbing little bits and pieces of

5:47

the world with our eyes by just moving our

5:49

eyes and focusing at different places, and

5:52

then assembling that into a meaningful picture.

5:54

So we know that even our

5:56

ability to perceive the world is limited and our

5:58

ability to hold the world. things in attention

6:00

is limited. So what

6:03

makes things memorable and

6:05

what makes things grab our attention, there's

6:07

a high relationship between them. They're often

6:10

things that are biologically important. So something

6:12

that you'll probably find this, I imagine

6:14

yourself Brett, if you look back on

6:16

things in your life, you probably

6:19

remember the first things that will come to

6:21

mind will be the highs and lows, right?

6:23

Things that are very emotionally, you know, they're

6:25

exciting or times where you were scared or

6:28

times where you felt intense desire. And these

6:30

are biologically important moments where there are

6:33

chemicals in the brain that promote plasticity

6:35

that are released during these moments. So

6:37

that right off the bat tells you

6:39

something about why some events are memorable

6:41

is because they're

6:43

biologically important. Other events that

6:45

would be also important

6:47

would be things that are new or things

6:49

that are surprising. So we often

6:52

remember these events that really surprise

6:54

us because they stick

6:56

out and some of that is related

6:58

to a phenomenon I'll get into

7:00

with regards to interference. But

7:03

some of it is also when we're surprised or when

7:05

we're in a brand new place that we've never been

7:07

to before. Again there's these

7:09

release of neuromodulators, these chemicals in

7:11

our brain that promote plasticity. So

7:14

those are some of the key factors and

7:16

another key factor as I mentioned is

7:19

the fact that memories compete with each other and

7:21

this is a phenomenon called interference. So I think

7:24

intuitively we might think of memory as being like

7:26

I store a bunch of files in my hard

7:28

disk and more or less if I

7:30

store 10 files or if I store 20 files

7:32

it doesn't make a difference. But

7:34

that's not how memory works. In human

7:37

memory the memories are competing

7:39

with each other and so if

7:41

I'm trying to remember Brett

7:43

let's say your name I meet you sometime in

7:45

person we go into the real world as opposed

7:47

to the virtual world. I meet you we have

7:50

a beer something like that then

7:52

later on I meet someone named Brit. Well

7:55

remembering Brit is going to be complicated because

7:57

I've just learned about Brett and there's going

7:59

to be this interference between them.

8:02

So the way that memories can survive

8:04

that competition is if there's something distinctive

8:06

that makes this memory different from something

8:08

else. So if I had

8:11

something about your name and I could

8:13

tie it with something interesting about

8:15

you that I learned and make that all

8:17

into one big story, for instance, then now

8:19

all of a sudden you're very, very different

8:22

from Brit because Brit's just sound that I

8:24

heard. And this is

8:26

the way in which memories can stick

8:28

around, is if we're attending

8:30

to something that allows us to

8:33

capture what's unique about this moment

8:35

in time. So the sights, the

8:37

sounds, the smells, emotions,

8:39

something that you think about that's unique.

8:43

Does our brain store memories in

8:45

a specific part of the brain? Well

8:49

this is a very tough question to

8:51

answer because essentially it comes down to

8:53

what is the memory. So there's many

8:55

different ways memory can be manifest. One

8:57

is your ability to just

8:59

call upon facts, general knowledge that you

9:02

have about the world and that's called

9:04

semantic memory. And then there's

9:06

your ability to remember specific events in

9:08

your life like episodic memory. So

9:11

I know that Def Leppard was a

9:13

British metal band that played very melodic

9:15

songs in the 1980s,

9:17

but that's different than my memory for seeing

9:20

them in the round during the hysteria

9:22

tour which was a little bit after

9:24

they had peaked. But nonetheless, that's an

9:26

episodic memory from one point in time.

9:29

And so those kinds of memories differ from each

9:31

other. Now the hippocampus is

9:33

an area of the brain that's known

9:35

to be very important for forming new

9:37

episodic memories. And

9:39

it doesn't do it by itself, but what

9:41

it does is it ties together all of

9:43

these different parts of the brain that are

9:45

processing the different kinds of aspects of the

9:48

semantics of your world. Does that make sense?

9:50

No, that's making sense so far, yeah. Yeah.

9:54

So a lot of what people think of

9:56

when they think of the memory

9:58

loss, for instance, they that you see

10:00

in the earliest stages of Alzheimer's disease,

10:02

that's related in part to the loss

10:05

of the hippocampus because what happens is

10:07

people start to lose this ability to

10:09

form new episodic memories. They

10:11

still have knowledge of who they are, all the

10:13

people they know in those early stages, but

10:16

they lose this ability to form new

10:18

episodic memories. And so that's why

10:20

the hippocampus is such a big player in memories

10:22

because it plays this role in just arbitrarily

10:26

saying, in some ways the hippocampus,

10:28

I mean, if we were to pretend the

10:30

hippocampus is a person instead of a brain

10:33

area, you could say, well, it's being deliberately

10:35

dumb. It's not thinking about why things should

10:37

go together. It's just saying, hey, I

10:40

happened to see Brett in the pub

10:43

while the song was playing in the

10:45

background all at the same moment in

10:47

time. And that's what the memory is.

10:49

It's just this random coincidence of factors.

10:52

Okay, so the hippocampus is involved

10:54

in episodic memories, something

10:56

that you've researched a lot and found, and

10:59

it's been groundbreaking, is the role the

11:01

prefrontal cortex plays in memory.

11:04

People might be familiar with the idea that the

11:06

prefrontal cortex can be used as

11:08

short-term memory. It's sort of used as the

11:10

analogy is the prefrontal cortex is like RAM,

11:12

it's like working memory. So if you need

11:14

to temporarily remember something, prefrontal cortex

11:16

can take that, but for like longer term memories,

11:18

you go to the hippocampus. What your research has

11:20

found is no, the prefrontal cortex actually

11:23

plays a bigger role in those long-term

11:25

memories. What role does the prefrontal cortex

11:27

play? Yeah, I think

11:29

that I'm really glad you brought up that

11:32

RAM analogy because I think that was very

11:34

popular for a long time in psychology that

11:36

we used to think of humans as being

11:38

like computers in this very kind

11:40

of straightforward way, but we're not. What

11:42

the prefrontal cortex seems to be

11:45

about is it's kind of

11:47

a, again, I'm gonna use these analogies just

11:49

to keep things simple, although I hope people

11:51

with a more scientific background will get mad

11:53

at me for this. But a

11:56

lot of people use the term executive

11:58

to describe what the prefrontal cortex is. financial cortex does.

12:00

And what that means is, you

12:02

know, an executive who's running a company

12:05

really has no useful skills, right? They're not

12:07

like, you're not going to trust them with

12:09

the accounting, you're not going to trust them

12:11

to like handle the mail room or anything

12:14

like that. But their job

12:16

is really to oversee everything coordinated

12:18

towards a common goal. And

12:20

that's what the prefrontal cortex is all about. So for

12:22

a long time, people used to think, oh, the prefrontal

12:24

cortex doesn't do anything

12:27

because it's not people could

12:29

lose a prefrontal cortex and they would still

12:31

walk and talk and have all the knowledge they did

12:33

before. But they couldn't

12:35

function in the real world because they had no

12:38

ability to use that information to get

12:41

their goals achieved. And

12:44

so you brought up this idea of short term

12:46

memory. And so part of the idea of being

12:48

able to hold a phone number, say in short

12:50

term memory, like if I give you a phone

12:52

number, if I say, hey, here's your temporary password,

12:54

I need you to reset it so that you

12:56

can get back into your bank account. You're

12:59

keeping that information in mind. But to

13:01

do that, you have to keep yourself

13:03

from being distracted, right? So there's a

13:06

kid crying in the background, or maybe

13:08

you're getting a text alert on your

13:10

phone and you have to suppress those

13:12

distractions to focus on what's relevant. And

13:15

that's where the prefrontal cortex comes in. But

13:19

that same ability is also what

13:21

allows you to be present

13:23

in the moment and focus on what's

13:25

important, like where I put my keys

13:27

or where I put my phone, as

13:30

opposed to the things that may be

13:32

less important but could grab your attention,

13:34

like the sound of a dog

13:36

barking or a kettle whistling or something. Things that you

13:38

need to take care of, but they're not necessarily related

13:40

to these other long term goals. And

13:43

so this idea that the prefrontal cortex

13:46

directs our attention to stuff that we want

13:48

to remember, and if we're

13:50

distracted, we might not remember that thing. That

13:53

explains why we forget, where did I put my

13:55

keys or where did I put my wallet? Because

13:57

your prefrontal cortex kind of checked out when you

13:59

just... you dropped them on the counter and you weren't paying

14:01

attention. So it was just like, yeah, we're

14:03

not gonna remember that. That's

14:06

exactly right. Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right.

14:08

And so, and sometimes what happens is

14:10

our prefrontal cortex isn't checking out, but

14:12

it's actually, sometimes we intentionally do it.

14:15

We switch from one task to another.

14:17

We'll go, oh, yeah, I'm gonna

14:19

be like, I'm

14:21

walking in the door, I've got my keys, but

14:24

then I just decide habitually to check my

14:26

email or something. And so the

14:28

prefrontal cortex is saying, okay, let's shift gears. Now

14:31

my goal is to check email. And

14:33

so the next time when

14:35

you go back to your keys, you're already

14:37

a step behind because your prefrontal

14:39

cortex has to use all these resources just

14:41

to shift back from the email task

14:43

back to whatever it was you were doing when you opened

14:46

the door. And so

14:48

as a result, our resources become

14:50

too depleted, spread too thin,

14:52

and we can't focus in on what we need.

14:54

So sometimes the prefrontal cortex is there, but

14:57

we misdirected because we have bad habits.

15:00

Or it could just be overwhelmed. I think you highlighted

15:02

some research, how constantly using

15:04

social media, that can inhibit

15:06

memory because your prefrontal cortex has got

15:08

all this information, you're blasting

15:11

it, and then it can't remember stuff you

15:13

actually wanna remember. That's exactly

15:15

right, yeah. So you can be blasted

15:17

both by switching between these things. And

15:20

again, a lot of this is under

15:22

our control, so to speak, meaning that

15:24

we don't have to check social media all

15:27

the time. Like right now, if

15:29

I was being sloppy, I would be

15:31

checking social media in

15:33

between points in our conversation,

15:35

which would be horrible for my

15:38

ability to remember our conversation later on, which is

15:40

why I turned off all my

15:42

alerts and I went into focus mode for

15:44

this conversation because otherwise I'd be

15:46

having this conversation. And then somebody would say, hey, what

15:48

did you do today? And I'd be like, I was

15:51

on this amazing podcast, but I

15:53

can't remember anything about it. Yeah,

15:55

and this might explain why as you

15:58

get older, I mean, there's a couple. things going

16:00

on as you get older while your memory feels like it's

16:02

not as sharp. But I just say as you get older

16:04

into your thirties and your forties and your fifties, you have

16:06

a lot more going on in your life, a lot more

16:09

stuff to keep track of, keeping track of your kid's schedule,

16:11

your work schedule, things that need to be done on the

16:13

house. And so yeah, you're probably

16:15

going to forget that your glasses are on top

16:17

of your head because you got so much going

16:19

on. That's a very

16:21

good point. You know, so as we get older,

16:23

there's a bunch of things that happen. So one

16:25

is that we have a lot of stresses, we

16:27

have a lot of pressures and we have a

16:29

lot of competing things and deadlines

16:31

and so forth. And so when

16:34

we're under stress, the natural

16:36

response of the brain is to down

16:38

regulate the prefrontal cortex. You want to

16:40

go into a more of a responsive

16:42

mode rather than a mode of planning

16:45

and deliberation. And so

16:47

we're now compromised because of that stress.

16:49

But then on top of it, as

16:51

we get older, on average,

16:53

the prefrontal cortex shrinks a little bit.

16:56

It's not functioning as efficiently as it

16:58

should. And then, you know,

17:00

we're maybe having some health issues. Maybe

17:02

we just got over a bout of

17:05

COVID. Maybe you're not sleeping as

17:07

well as you used to. And

17:09

so all of these factors can compromise the frontal

17:11

cortex even more. So one of the things I

17:14

think a lot about is how

17:16

modern life is just optimized to

17:18

deplete our mental resources and put

17:20

us in the state of perpetual

17:22

amnesia. Okay. So the

17:25

prefrontal cortex plays a role in

17:27

memory by directing where we place

17:29

our attention. And then when we

17:31

don't give something sufficient attention, we

17:33

can't remember it. So, you know, if we got a lot going

17:35

on in our lives, we tend to be

17:37

forgetful because there's just too many things to pay

17:40

attention to. It overwhelms the prefrontal

17:42

cortex. And then when you're multitasking, you

17:44

know, task switching a lot, you can't

17:46

give anyone task enough attention to remember

17:49

what's going on with it and do it well.

17:52

And then all these things, it can cause stress

17:54

and that can deplete the strength of the prefrontal

17:56

cortex, as well as other things like lack of

17:58

sleep, something related to the, is

18:00

how the use of smartphone cameras

18:03

affects how we remember an experience. What

18:05

does the research say there? So

18:09

on average, the research shows pretty

18:11

significantly that when we use cameras

18:13

to document our lives, we actually

18:15

have a paradoxically lower

18:17

memory for those events. And

18:20

I think people have this intuitive idea that if

18:22

I take a picture of this event, I will

18:24

remember it. And in theory, that

18:26

could be true, but what often happens is

18:29

people don't go back to

18:31

the pictures, right? Because we collect gobs

18:33

and gobs of pictures. And

18:35

then on top of it, we're mindlessly documenting

18:37

these things. And you can see this with

18:39

the rise of Instagram walls everywhere, right? So

18:41

it becomes no longer about

18:44

the experience but about the picture. And

18:47

so what happens is that people tend to

18:49

have a poor memory for these experiences when

18:51

they've been focused on taking the pictures and

18:53

posting them. Now, it doesn't have

18:55

to be that way. So you could be more

18:57

selective in the way that you

19:00

take pictures and use the camera as a

19:02

tool for grounding you in the

19:04

moment and say, what's really going on here?

19:06

What's interesting here? And then selectively

19:08

take pictures that are planting cues in

19:10

your mind for later on being able

19:12

to remember them. Because that's what a

19:15

lot of memory is, is

19:17

if you have the right cues, some

19:19

distinctive thing that you're seeing or smelling

19:21

or hearing, that's

19:23

what allows you to go back and revisit

19:26

that moment. And so we can

19:28

be mindful about picture taking and study

19:30

one study found that if people are

19:32

in that kind of condition, you

19:35

can actually improve memory. Another

19:37

way you can do it is by

19:39

actually going back to those pictures. So

19:41

we can think of like an Instagram

19:44

story or a Snapchat post as

19:46

being a metaphor for how photos actually have

19:48

this amnesic quality where you post something and

19:50

then two days it disappears. And this is

19:52

what I think we often do with our

19:55

photos. But if you actually, one

19:57

of the things they do like is what's called

19:59

Facebook memories where they put on a photo

20:01

that you haven't seen in years, but

20:03

you posted it a while back. And

20:05

that's now a cue to recall that

20:07

memory. And the act of recalling that

20:09

memory now makes it more accessible later

20:11

on. So that way you can

20:14

remember it again. So the act of remembering

20:16

makes it more memorable. Okay,

20:18

so if you're gonna take pictures, I think going back

20:20

to what we were saying about the role of prefrontal

20:22

cortex in memory, if you're just

20:24

focused on taking the perfect picture and thinking, oh,

20:26

this would be great for Instagram and what are

20:28

my friends gonna think about, the way you're directing

20:30

your attention, putting it on the

20:33

picture taking itself, I

20:35

mean, you're not really present, you're not there. And

20:37

because of that, you're not gonna remember the experience

20:40

as much. But you could,

20:42

if you direct your attention differently, even while taking

20:44

a picture, that can enhance your

20:46

memory if you wanted to. Yes,

20:48

I would say that if you can use

20:51

your prefrontal cortex to say, if my goal

20:53

is to have a memorable experience, I

20:55

can actually, first of all, think

20:57

about what's in front of me, think about

20:59

the sights and the sounds and the smells

21:01

and so forth and immerse myself in it,

21:04

immerse myself in this moment. But

21:06

then when I do take pictures, you can actually

21:08

ask yourself, what would be a good reminder of

21:10

this moment? What are the points in this moment

21:12

that I wanna remember? And what are the points

21:14

in this moment that I don't wanna document? I

21:17

think lots of times we just take pictures without

21:19

ever even thinking, is this the

21:21

memory that I wanna be calling back?

21:23

Because ultimately, once we start taking these

21:25

pictures, those pictures will have

21:27

a disproportionate effect on what we

21:29

remember. So how many times have

21:32

you taken vacation and you take

21:34

pictures and the events that you

21:36

remember later on are those events that you photographed

21:38

and the ones that you didn't photograph get thrown

21:40

to the side, has this ever happened to you?

21:42

Yeah, not for

21:44

sure. So yeah, so that's, I think part of

21:46

it is the camera can be a tool and

21:49

again, if you use your frontal cortex to say,

21:51

what do I want out of this experience? The

21:53

camera can be a tool to get it as

21:56

opposed to a distraction that just takes you away

21:58

from what you want. So going back

22:01

to this idea of episodic memory, this is

22:03

sort of remembering events in our lives that

22:05

happened to us. Why

22:07

is it that we have a harder time

22:09

with episodic memory as we get older? So

22:11

I think we mentioned some things, right? You

22:14

have just a lot going on in your

22:16

life, there's stress, your prefrontal cortex,

22:18

shrinkage, you get older. But

22:21

I mean, I've noticed this in my own life, and I think you talked

22:23

about this in the book, I can remember

22:25

stuff from when I was, you know, middle

22:28

school through age 30, like very

22:32

vividly. I remember college, I remember

22:34

traveling internationally, I remember, you know,

22:36

high school football. But then

22:38

after age 30-ish, things are kind of

22:40

like, I kind of remember doing that,

22:42

but it's not as much detail as

22:45

those, you know, teenage years. What's going on

22:47

there? Well, this is something

22:49

that's very, very common. In fact, memory researchers

22:51

have a name for it, which is the

22:54

reminiscence bump. And the

22:56

idea behind the reminiscence bump is that if

22:59

you just plot the number of memories that people will

23:01

report, if you ask them about different times of their

23:03

lives, and you just make a little graph out of

23:05

it, there's a big bump in the graph from the

23:07

years between the ages of 18 to 30. And

23:10

there's a number of reasons for that. And one

23:12

big reason is that that's when our sense of

23:15

who we are is actually emerging.

23:18

And so the experiences that we have during

23:20

the time period are very tied to our

23:23

sense of identity. And

23:25

that's the time when we're forming our

23:27

tastes in music and food, and we're

23:29

finding the friendships that will help define

23:31

us and so forth. And so we

23:33

tend to call upon those memories more

23:35

as a result. And

23:37

as I was saying, the memories that you call upon

23:40

the most will be strengthened each

23:42

time you call upon them. Another

23:44

theory as to why we remember

23:46

more from our youth is that

23:48

memory is enhanced when we encounter

23:51

something novel. And when we're

23:53

young, we've got a lot of novel things. There's a

23:55

lot of firsts. We do a lot of new things.

23:58

And so when the brain encounters that... It's

24:01

memory camera is like oh hey. This is novel.

24:03

We this might be important Let's we're gonna take

24:05

a lot of footage of this so

24:07

then when you look back on it There's

24:09

a lot of memory footage to unspool, but

24:12

as adults you know we tend to get

24:14

into a routine We experience less novelty you

24:16

know each day I mean even year is

24:18

just a lot like the last one so

24:21

the memory camera. It's like turns off It's like

24:23

well. I've seen this before

24:25

no need to capture it so when we look

24:27

back There's not a lot of memory footage to

24:29

unspool, so you want more memories in adulthood You're

24:33

gonna have to do more novel things more

24:35

more memorable things We're

24:37

going to take a quick break for your Words More sponsors. It's

24:41

wedding season and while weddings are all about the bride and groom,

24:44

they're also a chance for you to look your best. With

24:46

a fully custom suit from Indochino, you'll walk into

24:48

wedding season looking like a million bucks, even though

24:50

suits started just $499. It's

24:53

easier than ever to be the best dressed with Indochino.

24:55

Order your custom suits now and they'll be ready for

24:57

wedding season. The process of customizing a suit on Indochino,

25:00

very easy to do. It's also a lot of fun.

25:02

I've talked about my navy blue suit I've gotten from

25:04

Indochino. First off, you can decide how the jacket is,

25:06

how you want the pockets on the jacket to be,

25:08

how you want the lapels, the vent

25:10

on the back, the lining on the pants. You can

25:13

decide you want pleats or no pleats. I want

25:15

no pleats on my pants on this one. Then

25:17

you do the measuring process. You'll need someone to help

25:19

you, but they have this very easy to follow

25:21

guide. Send that all in. In

25:23

a few weeks, you have a custom made to measure

25:25

suit sent directly to your door and you're going to

25:27

pay about the same price for a suit that you'd

25:29

pay for an off the rack suit at a department

25:32

store. Look your best this wedding season at the table

25:34

or on the dance floor when you wear Indochino. off

25:40

any purchase of three hundred and ninety nine dollars

25:42

or more That's I N D

25:44

O C H I N O dot-com

25:46

promo code manliness check it out today

25:49

Spring is here and the McKay's gonna be really busy. I'm

25:51

coaching flag football again My daughter's playing basketball and on those

25:53

nights when we don't have time to cook a full meal

25:55

and clean up We like to eat

25:57

factor meals factor meals are ready-to-eat

25:59

meals that are on the table in

26:01

less than two minutes. They're fresh, they're not

26:03

frozen, they're chef-crafted and dietitian approved. You eliminate

26:05

the hassle of prepping, cooking or cleaning up.

26:07

You just simply heat and savor the good

26:10

stuff and all these meals are really, really

26:12

nutritious. They're macro-friendly if you're tracking your macros.

26:14

That's another reason why I like them. So

26:16

we've been using factory meals for a while.

26:18

One thing I've enjoyed lately is the green

26:20

chili chicken. Super tasty. I also like the

26:22

creamy mushroom chicken and rice. Very good. It

26:24

also comes with garlic green beans. And again,

26:26

you just warm these things up in two

26:28

minutes and then you have this really delicious

26:31

meal. And best of all, clean up some breeze. If

26:33

you wanna try this out, head

26:35

to factorymeals.com/manliness50 and use

26:37

code manliness50, that's manliness50, to

26:40

get 50% off your first month plus 20% off

26:43

your next month. It's a good deal. That's

26:45

code manliness50, manliness50 at

26:48

factorymeals.com/manliness50. Get

26:51

50% off your first box plus 20% off your next

26:53

box while your subscription is active. Check it out today.

26:55

Have you ever been to an event where you just

26:57

had to get the best seats? Maybe it was a

26:59

concert for your favorite band or maybe it was an

27:01

important game for your favorite team. Well,

27:03

to do that, you had to set an alarm to get the

27:05

tickets as soon as they went on sale. When

27:08

you want the best, you have to act quickly or someone

27:10

else will get it instead. It's like if

27:12

you are trying to hire for your business and you

27:14

wanna find the most talented people for your open roles

27:16

before the competition scoops them up. So what's

27:18

the best way to do that? ZipRecruiter. ZipRecruiter

27:21

finds qualified candidates fast. And right now,

27:23

you can try it for free at

27:26

ziprecruiter.com/manliness. ZipRecruiter's powerful matching technology

27:28

takes center stage to identify

27:30

top talent for your roles.

27:33

Immediately after you post your job, ZipRecruiter's

27:35

smart technology starts showing you qualified people

27:37

for it. Amp up

27:39

your hiring performance with ZipRecruiter and find

27:41

the best people fast. See

27:43

why four out of five employers who post a

27:45

job on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the

27:47

first day. Just go to this

27:50

exclusive web address right now to try ZipRecruiter

27:52

for free. ziprecruiter.com/manliness.

27:56

Again, that's ziprecruiter.com/manliness.

28:00

L-I-N-E-S-S, ZipRecruiter, the

28:02

smartest way to hire. All right, picture that

28:04

thing you've always wanted to learn. Now picture

28:06

learning it from the person who's literally the

28:08

best at it in the world. That's

28:11

what you get with Masterclass. This year,

28:13

learn from the best to become your

28:15

best with Masterclass. Masterclass offers over 180

28:17

world-class instructors, and a lot of them

28:19

are former AOM podcast guests. So for

28:21

example, you can learn the art of

28:23

negotiation from Chris Voss, we had him

28:25

on the podcast, leadership from Jocko Winnilink,

28:28

another AOM podcast guest, writing from Malcolm

28:30

Gladwell, another AOM podcast guest. You name

28:32

it, Masterclass has it. With Masterclass, you

28:34

get unlimited access to intimate one-on-one classes

28:36

with the world's best. Plus, every

28:38

new membership comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee,

28:40

so there's no risk. So I did the

28:42

Masterclass with Chris Voss on negotiation. Very well

28:44

done, he talks about tactical empathy, how

28:47

to mirror somebody so that you can develop rapport

28:49

with them. So if you enjoyed that podcast I

28:51

did with Chris Voss several years ago about his

28:53

book, Never Split the Difference, you're gonna love this

28:55

Masterclass. And right now, AOM listeners will get an

28:57

additional 15% off an

28:59

annual membership at masterclass.com/AOM.

29:02

Get 15% off right

29:04

now at masterclass.com/AOM, masterclass.com/AOM.

29:07

Check out the negotiation

29:09

class with Chris Voss.

29:15

And now back to the show. How

29:18

can understanding how episodic memory

29:20

works help us understand why

29:22

it is when we go into

29:24

the kitchen for something, we

29:26

forget why we went into the kitchen? What's

29:29

going on there? This is

29:31

one of my favorite topics and actually something

29:33

that we're studying a lot in my lab

29:35

right now. Even though our

29:37

lives are continuous, what happens is we

29:40

tend to remember our lives as

29:42

a series of events, like I went

29:45

to the kitchen, I went to someone's

29:47

21st birthday party, blah, blah, blah. And

29:50

so what we think happens

29:52

is that as we go about our

29:54

day, you're creating a little story

29:56

in your head that's okay, so my job

29:58

right now is to. talk to Brett and

30:01

answer this question. I'm keeping your question in

30:03

mind. I'm thinking of all these ways of

30:05

answering it. But then we move

30:07

on to another question and I flush that

30:09

information out. I focus on the new question

30:11

you're asking. And that time when

30:13

I pivot from question one to question two

30:15

is what we would call an event boundary.

30:18

It means that one event is over, another has

30:20

begun. And what we can see

30:22

when we scan people's brains is at those

30:25

moments, there's almost a tectonic shift in the

30:27

patterns of brain activity where you

30:29

see this change in patterns

30:31

as people's story about the

30:33

world changes in a moment. And so what's

30:35

interesting is that even the act of just

30:38

moving from one room to another can give

30:40

you that. So if I take

30:42

a few steps right now, if I were just to

30:44

stand up, take a few steps to my right, I'd

30:46

be in my room and then one more step and

30:48

I'm crossing into the hallway. And

30:50

even though it's just another step, I

30:53

would psychologically feel like I'm in a

30:55

new place. And that change in your

30:58

spatial context is enough to

31:00

create an event boundary. And

31:02

because context is so important for memory that

31:04

as episodic memories are so tied to a

31:06

time and a place, that in

31:08

the time it takes me to go to the kitchen, now

31:11

I've shifted across two or three rooms.

31:14

And now when I go back and try to remember why

31:16

I went to the kitchen, I have

31:18

to engage in this act of mental time

31:20

travel to recall what I was doing back

31:23

in that time period when I was in

31:25

my room. And that's why

31:27

it's often helpful if you go back to the room you

31:29

were in originally, you'll remember why you

31:31

went to the kitchen. That's

31:33

right. Yeah, that's right. So then what

31:35

happens is for me personally, I'll go to the

31:38

kitchen, I'll say, oh, what was I here for?

31:40

Then I'll just grab some food and eat it. And

31:42

then I come back to my office and I'm like,

31:45

oh my God, I left my phone in there. Yeah.

31:47

I realized, okay, over the course of the

31:50

past year, I've probably consumed thousands of calories

31:52

because of these damn event boundaries. As

31:55

I read about that idea about event

31:57

boundaries, it made me wonder if this

31:59

can help. explain whenever

32:01

I read stuff on a digital device like my

32:03

smartphone with the Kindle app, I

32:05

don't remember as much as when I'm reading from

32:07

a paperback book. I think it could be because

32:09

when you're on a device, I could

32:12

be on the Kindle app and then immediately I could

32:14

talk over to Instagram or my email. That

32:16

event boundary, when I'm reading on my phone,

32:19

it's just really porous. I'm switching back and

32:21

forth between events, so I'm

32:23

remembering less about each. But with

32:25

a book, like a paperback book,

32:28

there's a clear event boundary in its pages.

32:30

When I'm reading, I'm reading. I'm just in

32:32

the book. It's just one

32:34

event. I've noticed that whenever I

32:36

read a paperback book, I remember

32:38

it more. I can find things and I can

32:41

remember where some quote that I highlighted is.

32:43

I know which part of the book it's in,

32:46

but I don't have that experience when I'm reading on the

32:48

Kindle app. Yeah. So there's

32:50

definitely physical aspects of holding a

32:52

book that are different than the way we

32:54

interact with a Kindle, for instance. That

32:58

can lead our reading experience change,

33:00

which is going to change memorability. One

33:04

of the things that you mentioned is just the fact that

33:06

if you're using a device that has more than just a

33:08

reading app on it, it's just

33:10

so tempting to think of other things. When

33:14

you pick up that device, your brain

33:16

is considering all the possible tasks you

33:18

could do on that device. It's

33:20

almost like you're at a buffet. I don't

33:22

know about you, but if I ever go to a buffet,

33:24

I'm eating one thing, but I'm thinking about all the other

33:26

things I could be eating. So again,

33:28

I'm never really there. With

33:31

a book on the other hand, you have no choice. You're sort

33:33

of stuck with it. Also

33:35

with a book, there's a way in

33:37

which there's a spatial sense of where

33:39

the plot is because essentially there's a

33:42

physical place for each word on this

33:44

book. But on the screen, it's

33:46

a little different because every page appears on the same

33:48

screen. It

33:50

gives you a little bit more distinctiveness. All

33:53

these factors put together, I believe,

33:56

make it easier. I think you brought this up

33:58

in your example. If I'm

34:00

reading page 100, I

34:02

often have to think back to what happened in page

34:05

70 in order to

34:07

be able to understand what's happening in page

34:09

100. And that's

34:11

easier to do, I think. At least it

34:13

feels more natural with a physical book because

34:15

it's on a different page. So I

34:18

can think about it in a way that actually

34:20

takes me back to a different place in a

34:22

different time. And what we've found is that actually

34:25

there's a little burst of activity and

34:28

a pattern of activity in the hippocampus

34:30

that tells us that people are mentally

34:32

time traveling back at these

34:34

points where you can make a connection between the current

34:36

part of the story and the previous part of the

34:39

story. And so I think

34:41

that act of being able to link things together

34:43

and build them into a bigger narrative is

34:45

just mentally easier with

34:48

a physical book. Okay,

34:50

so if you feel like your brain is kind of like, oh,

34:52

I'm not remembering as much, a few things we can do there.

34:55

Don't blast your prefrontal cortex as much. Maybe

34:58

turn off the fire hose of

35:00

social media. Don't task, switch so

35:03

much. Take care of your prefrontal cortex,

35:05

sleep, reduce stress, eat right. That can help out a

35:07

lot. I thought it was really interesting you have this

35:10

chapter about the role that

35:12

imagination plays in memory.

35:15

What's the connection between the two? So

35:17

I loved writing this chapter. It was just

35:19

so much fun because it allowed

35:21

me, one of the things about writing this book that was

35:23

so much fun is I got to take

35:26

a beginner's mind and start to look at things

35:28

that I'd seen in different things that

35:30

I had read and put it together in a new way.

35:33

And so there's a very old idea going

35:35

back to a researcher named Bartlett in 1930,

35:37

where he

35:39

argued that we don't replay the past,

35:41

but we really create what

35:43

he called an imaginative construction. And

35:46

by that he means that

35:48

we don't play the past, we actually imagine

35:50

how the past could have been. Instead

35:53

of replaying it, we stage a play in our mind

35:55

about how it could have gone out. And

35:57

so we do get some details, but then we... use

36:00

imagination to fill in the blanks and

36:03

add meaning to our past. And

36:05

likewise, he suggested this and then in

36:08

neuroscience, this idea really took off about

36:10

15 years ago, that

36:13

we actually use memory to supplement imagination.

36:15

That is, when we imagine things, they're

36:18

not coming out of thin air. They're

36:21

based on this combination of all these,

36:23

you know, semantic knowledge that we have,

36:25

and then all these little episodic memories,

36:27

these random bits of experience that we've

36:30

had at different moments in our life

36:32

that allow us to anticipate and

36:34

imagine things that have never happened before.

36:36

And it's sort of the root of

36:38

creativity. So this

36:41

is an interesting question. If memory is

36:43

us just imagining how things might have

36:45

gone, how do we know if

36:47

what we're remembering actually happened,

36:50

that we're not just imagining it? This

36:52

is one of the coolest things about science.

36:54

When somebody comes up with a problem that

36:57

nobody had previously realized was a problem.

36:59

And so my old advisor, Marcia

37:01

Johnson, just came out with this

37:04

as a young researcher in the 70s. She just

37:06

said, how do we tell the difference between imagination

37:09

and things that we've actually experienced? Because

37:11

it's all in our heads. A

37:14

memory for something that happened and a memory for

37:16

something we just thought about are

37:18

both just mental experiences. And

37:21

so the way that we have to do

37:23

it is, again, surprise, you have to use

37:25

your prefrontal cortex to do a

37:27

little bit of extra detective work. And

37:29

so what that involves is saying, okay,

37:32

when I remember this thing, what are the bits

37:34

and pieces that are coming to mind? Are

37:36

they things that I can see, you

37:38

know, or are they things that I

37:40

can hear, or, you know, something that

37:42

gives me some grounding in that past

37:44

event? Or is it just stuff that

37:46

I thought about? So I don't know

37:49

about you, but like for me, I have

37:51

these issues where I ask myself, did I

37:53

send that email or did I just think

37:55

about sending the email? Did I take my

37:57

medicine today or did I just think about

37:59

it? and then get distracted. And

38:02

I have to actually ask myself, okay,

38:04

can I feel myself pushing the send

38:06

button? Can I visualize myself

38:08

or can I taste like putting the

38:10

medicine in my mouth and drinking the

38:12

water? And if so, do I bring

38:14

back a sense of today versus some

38:16

other day? And so those

38:19

kinds of sensory experiences ground us in

38:21

things that we've actually experienced in the

38:23

real world. But the

38:25

information that we think about could very

38:27

easily be imagined. And

38:30

then also, whenever we're

38:32

doing that imagining memory thing going on,

38:34

other stuff might mix in as we're

38:36

trying to recall a memory of our

38:38

childhood. There might be something that we

38:40

picked up, like we

38:43

read a book or something and we

38:45

saw a movie, and we unintentionally spliced

38:47

that into the childhood memory. And it

38:49

might turn into something that actually, that's

38:51

not how it happened. Yeah, and

38:54

often, I mean, we need this

38:56

because this less is more principle that

38:59

we're using schemas as

39:01

the scaffold for episodic memories. So we

39:03

don't have to keep rebuilding our memories

39:05

from scratch. If I went to

39:07

a cafe every Monday and met up with

39:09

a different friend, if I

39:12

formed a blank memory of that every

39:14

time, I would be

39:16

wasting enormous amounts of resources when

39:18

instead, I could just take all

39:20

my knowledge about what generally happens in cafes

39:23

and then tack on to that the specific details

39:25

of what I did this week versus what I

39:28

did last week. Now,

39:30

the problem is, is that our schemas allow

39:32

us to fill in those blanks, but sometimes

39:34

we fill them in incorrectly. And

39:36

then what's worse is when we recall those events

39:38

and we fill in the blanks incorrectly, now

39:41

that new information can creep into our

39:43

old memory because the memories get transformed

39:45

every time we recall them. And

39:48

so that's why often people's, when they tell the

39:50

story of something that happened in their childhood over

39:52

and over and over again, or your parents probably

39:54

do this, what happens

39:57

is that they get more and more of

39:59

these little errors that started. accumulating. Does

40:02

this idea explain why sometimes

40:04

people confess to crimes they

40:06

didn't commit? Yes,

40:09

because what you

40:11

can typically do in these interrogation

40:13

situations, and there's actually manuals that

40:15

there's a manual called the read

40:18

manual that talks about an interrogation

40:20

method, which relies on this, where

40:23

what they do is they ask a person

40:25

to, so first of all, you

40:27

start off with somebody who's an authority figure,

40:29

like a police person. You put

40:31

the defendant under stress,

40:34

and then you give them some misinformation, like

40:36

somebody else has ratted you out. We already

40:39

know that you did this. So

40:41

now there's a little bit of a seed of doubt

40:43

planted in the person's mind, and they're

40:45

stressed out, so they're not applying this kind of

40:47

critical thinking that the prefrontal cortex would normally let

40:49

them do. And then you ask

40:52

them, OK, well, if you don't remember it, just

40:54

imagine how it could have played out. And

40:57

so now they think about it. And if they

40:59

have a vivid imagination, they might actually

41:01

be able to come up with a very vivid

41:03

mental picture of how the crime could have played

41:05

out. And the

41:07

next day you ask them, and now they

41:09

remember something, but they don't remember what happened.

41:12

They remember what they imagined. And

41:14

so if you do this across multiple days

41:16

while a person is stressed out, sleep-proprived, in

41:19

case of it some interrogation of somebody

41:21

abroad, like what the CIA does with

41:23

their enhanced interrogation tactics, maybe they're being

41:26

tortured. And so as

41:28

a result of all this, people can develop

41:30

quite a rich, false memory for things that

41:32

never happened. And this has been simulated in

41:35

a lab by Julia Shaw and Elizabeth Loftus.

41:37

And this has been shown to happen in real life.

41:41

OK, so memory can be

41:43

squidgy because our imagination

41:46

plays a role in recalling memory. Here's

41:48

another thing I've noticed in my

41:50

life. It goes to the squidginess

41:52

of memory. Sometimes you're talking to

41:54

a friend, and you'd be talking about

41:57

when you were in high school or in college, and you

41:59

say something like. Oh yeah, I remember

42:01

you were really for the war in Iraq. And

42:04

I remember how adamant you were. And

42:06

the person, your friends, they actually know I

42:09

wasn't. I mean, I might have said some things, but

42:11

I actually wasn't. You're like, no, you seem pretty adamant

42:13

about that at the time. Do

42:16

we sometimes change our memories in

42:18

order to match how we see ourselves today? So maybe

42:20

we thought something in the past, but then our politics

42:23

has changed or beliefs have changed. But

42:26

we update the way we remember things so that it

42:28

matches how we think of ourselves today. Does

42:31

that make sense what I'm asking? Absolutely. And the

42:33

answer is yes. So our

42:36

ability to recall anything in a given moment

42:38

is based on who we are and how

42:40

we feel in our mental context at a

42:42

given moment. So just as if you hear

42:45

the right song or if you're in the

42:47

right place, you can access a memory for

42:49

a particular moment that matched up with that.

42:51

It can kind of send you back in

42:54

time. Likewise, when we're searching

42:56

for information, the goals that we

42:58

have and the beliefs that we carry with us affect

43:00

what we can pull out and what we can't. So

43:04

it can be something more unconscious.

43:06

So for instance, it could be something along the

43:08

lines of you're having a fight with your partner.

43:11

And so now all of a sudden you pull up all

43:13

these things recently that they did to piss you off. And

43:16

it's just so easy to come up with them. Then

43:18

you make up and then a week later you can't

43:20

remember what you even thought about all

43:22

those other memories that popped up. Right.

43:25

And so what changed was your mental context,

43:28

this emotion, this intense emotion that you felt.

43:31

And this also works for beliefs too.

43:33

So we have certain

43:35

beliefs and we tend to find memories

43:37

that are consistent with our beliefs. If

43:40

my belief is the past used to be

43:42

great and I was so cool

43:44

when I was in high school, then

43:46

I'll remember all these great things that happened in

43:49

high school, but I won't remember all the negative

43:51

things that happened in high school. And

43:53

then finally we view the world through

43:55

a particular perspective. And so we

43:58

can actually access other information we can do. change

44:00

this perspective. So for instance, two people

44:02

who are members of different political parties

44:05

might watch the same presidential debate and

44:08

come away with memories of completely

44:10

different experiences of who won and

44:12

who lost based on little one-liners

44:14

and so forth and the talking

44:16

points that they selectively remember. But

44:19

people can switch perspectives and say, well, what

44:22

if I was, instead of being a Republican,

44:24

what if I was a Democrat or vice

44:26

versa? They can start to pull up these

44:28

exceptions that they might have normally missed, just

44:30

like you can probably pull up information

44:33

about the positive aspects

44:35

of your relationship with your partner

44:38

when you're not fighting with them. Okay,

44:40

so that's interesting. So how do you manage that?

44:42

Are there any tips on how to make sure

44:44

you're remembering things correctly and you're

44:47

not messing things up just

44:49

so it updates and matches your current

44:51

state? Yes, I

44:53

think one factor to keep in mind

44:55

is just, first of all, how

44:57

much you're going to search for information and

45:00

memory that confirms your beliefs. So on average,

45:02

people tend to think of them recall memories

45:05

that are more positive and

45:07

that make themselves look better than they really

45:09

were. So if I

45:12

recall some experience from some

45:14

time in my life, I might actually think of

45:16

it, think of an experience

45:19

that's going to be more positive, but I'll

45:21

also remember myself in a way that's

45:23

maybe been more of a positive role

45:25

than actually transpired. So being aware

45:28

of these biases, I think, is the first step. Another

45:31

step is allowing ourselves the

45:33

time to think critically. And

45:35

again, what often happens is we're under stress,

45:38

you shut down the prefrontal cortex, you move

45:40

on to the next thing very quickly. And

45:42

it makes us very susceptible to misinformation. It

45:44

makes us very susceptible to manipulation. But

45:47

likewise, I think one thing we can do to

45:49

help ourselves is surround ourselves

45:52

by diverse Perspectives and give ourselves

45:54

a chance to remember things from

45:56

other perspectives and think that maybe

45:58

the way I. See the world Now

46:01

is just one view of how the world could

46:03

be. What's one thing that people

46:05

can start doing today to get more out

46:07

of their memory? Oh

46:10

so much. What I would

46:12

say is probably the one

46:14

thing that I would say

46:16

is be comfortable with discomfort.

46:19

And what I mean by that and I

46:21

don't think that necessarily be a madman up

46:23

it I'd over in the art of manliness.

46:25

But what I do you mean is is

46:27

that I think we often assume that memories

46:30

be effortless. Six. Is easily come

46:32

to mind and we should be able

46:34

road for memorize things easily. And you

46:36

look as a kid you get straight

46:39

A's like all that person smart. that

46:41

person's doing great and school. but really

46:43

the purses getting straight A's as.learn enough.

46:45

In theory, if you're learning, it means

46:48

that you're actually struggling, you're failing to

46:50

recall thing sometimes and then you can

46:52

get the most learning by pushing yourself.

46:55

And exposing the weaknesses in your

46:57

memory so that you can then

46:59

capture those weaknesses and six them.

47:01

Likewise, if you want to be

47:03

more creative, you need to expose

47:06

yourself to sources of memories that

47:08

are very idiosyncratic. and we're. If

47:11

you just kind of expose yourself

47:13

to gobs and gobs of the

47:15

same media whether it's reading material

47:17

or music or people who you

47:19

interact with and they're all from

47:21

the same demographic group, same culture

47:23

assemblies, you might as well be

47:25

chatty P T V that creative

47:27

or it's just states. And if

47:29

you want to be accurate and

47:31

you don't want to be remembering

47:33

things in a way that's basically

47:35

being you susceptible for me, feel

47:37

a sense you need to surround

47:39

yourself with sources. Of Information and

47:41

people who have different beliefs. again

47:43

so the you can really constantly

47:45

challenge yourself to challenge your view

47:48

of how the past transpired and

47:50

all those things can be uncomfortable

47:52

with. A can also be source

47:54

of curiosity and curiosity is a

47:56

major driver of learning and hasn't

47:58

it's effects on the brain as

48:00

we've shown in our lap. Or

48:03

sure there's been a great conversation. where to people go to

48:05

learn more about the book in your work? Well,

48:07

are you deadly? Read my book. Why

48:09

we remember am You can also go

48:12

to my website, turn around and ask.com

48:14

to get on our mailing list for

48:16

more information and you can find me

48:18

on Instagram a repost periodically. It's including

48:20

some tips about memory from time to

48:22

time and that's at the Memory Doc.

48:25

And as you will turn rogan us six much for

48:27

time, it's been a pleasure. Thanks for having me breathless

48:29

been fun! My.

48:31

A Swiss chard rocket off you. The Author: The

48:33

book Why we remember to be of on amazon.com

48:35

A book stores everywhere. You. Find more face

48:38

by his work at his website for a rug

48:40

and us.com also taken a send Us day when

48:42

the I as last memory and finding some resources

48:44

and delve deeper in this topic. Well

48:53

that wraps up another just to be a when

48:55

podcast makes your check it or what's that it

48:57

out of balance.com refiner, podcast or guys and while

48:59

you're there Senate for newsletters get the Elite. Eighty

49:01

three options are both free the best way. Still

49:04

top of what's going on a whim and vivid

49:06

and thirty at appreciated. Take one minute to his

49:08

view, not the podcast a spot. a final set

49:10

a lot and done that already Think you please

49:12

consider say the show the friend or family members

49:14

you figure something out of it as always save

49:17

the confused important to like size Brett Mckay we

49:19

might I was the on pa just put put

49:21

put you've heard into action. Time.

49:37

for a quick break to talk about

49:39

mcdonalds mornings of for mixing and matching

49:42

at mcdonalds for just three dollars mix

49:44

and match to have your favorite breakfast

49:46

items including a sausage mcmuffin sauces biscuit

49:48

sauces burrito in hash browns make it

49:50

even better with a delicious medium iced

49:52

coffee with mcdonalds mix and match he

49:54

can't go wrong price and participation may

49:56

vary cannot be combined with any other

49:58

offer a combo me Single item

50:00

at regular price. Sometimes.

50:03

It takes a different approach. To help

50:05

you unlock your true potential. With.

50:07

Capella University's game changing flex path

50:10

learning format. You. Gain relevant skills

50:12

you can apply to your career right away.

50:14

On your degree from an accredited

50:16

university. Imagine

50:20

your future differently at capella.edu. Capella

50:24

University is accredited by the Higher

50:26

Learning Commission. Learn more at capella.edu.