Can we trust our memories?

All In The Mind

ABC listen

Life Sciences, Health & Fitness, Science

4.4 • 785 Ratings

🗓️ 12 October 2024

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

We don't remember everything that happens to us — so why do we remember what we remember?

And the memories we do lock away aren't always accurate or trustworthy.

This week, we're talking about the fallibility of memory and why sometimes it's healthy to forget.

We'll also get into how to remember special moments more clearly, and here's a hint — you might want to put down your camera sometimes.

If you're looking for something to listen to next, check out our episode Overcoming resentment with gratitude.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	ABC Listen, Podcasts, Radio, News, Music, and more.
0:11.6	In his time as a parent, Charan Ranganath has planned a lot of birthday parties.
0:17.3	He doesn't remember the details of many of them, apart from the broad outlines.
0:21.6	You go to the zoo, or you go to the gymnastics place, or the swimming place, whatever it was, and they would have a birthday party there.
0:29.6	But a blow-by-blow account of what happened? Not recorded.
0:34.6	Except for one party, where his daughter was around six or seven or eight.
0:39.3	He can't remember the exact age, but he does remember how it went down.
0:44.3	Because this party, he decided to plan himself and do it at home.
0:49.3	I had created this activity where they would paint these little ceramic cats
0:55.7	and then it would be taken to like the ceramic place and they would bake them.
0:59.9	So kids up something to take it on.
1:02.0	So I thought that would take up a lot of time, then you do the cake and the presents and it would all be done.
1:07.7	This is not how it went down.
1:10.4	Basically it was about I I would say, five to
1:14.1	ten minutes and they finished all the painting on the cats. Five to ten minutes into the party,
1:19.5	it was all done. Yeah, exactly. At least that's how I remember it right now. It was very short.
1:25.2	Were you panicked? What did you feel? He's definitely starting to panic. Yeah.
1:29.2	That's what you do when you have a bunch of kids sitting in your house with nothing to do.
1:35.5	Charm had two hours to fill, and luckily at least had a pinata, but even that turned disastrous.
1:43.2	This was like a SpongeBob Squarepants finata.
1:46.0	And this thing was indestructible.
1:48.1	And so finally, I just like pulled out a golf club from the garage.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from ABC listen, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of ABC listen and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.