Hey, it's Caleb here. Today, we're revisiting Rufus' conversation with Charin Ranganath. Charn is a neuroscientist, and we had him on the show to talk about his book, Why We Remember. I remember it as one of my all-time favorite episodes. If you haven't heard this one, you are in for a treat, you're going to learn so much. And if you have heard it, maybe, I can't remember. Well, you're lucky to because you're going to relearn so much. Here if you have heard it, maybe, can't remember, well, you're lucky to because you're

going to relearn so much. Here's our conversation with Charne from April 24.

I'm Rufus Griscombe, and this is the next big idea. Today, your memory sucks, but you can make it

better. Here's how.

The year is 2003, and Brian Williams, the straight out of central casting news anchor,

is in the Middle East covering the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Our colleague, Brian Williams, is back in Kuwait City tonight after a close call on the skies over Iraq.

Brian, tell us about what you got yourself into. We asked the U.S. Army to take us on an air mission with them. They accepted.

We knew there was risk involved. We knew we would be flying over Iraq. We discussed it. We

weren't cavalier about it. We took off, and that is right about when

things started to happen. Williams is in a convoy of four Chinook helicopters, tasked with

delivering bridge components to a drop site about a hundred miles south of Baghdad. It's a routine

mission, until... Suddenly, without knowing why we learn we've been ordered to land in the desert.

On the ground, we learned the Chinook ahead of us was almost blown out of the sky.

So to recap, Williams is flying along when another helicopter, miles away, is hit by a rocket-propelled

grenade. That helicopter makes an emergency landing, and about an hour later, when the copter that

Williams is on catches up, it lands too. But here's how we told the story exactly 10 years later

on Late Night with David Letterman. Two of our four helicopters were hit

by ground fire, including the one I was in, RPG and AK-47. What happens the minute

everybody realizes you've been hit? We figure out how to land safely, and we did. We landed very

quickly and hard, and we put down, and we were stuck.

When Brian Williams told that patently exaggerated version of the story, he was at the top of his game.

...