When you witness an event, when you see it with your own eyes, it certainly feels like what you saw can't be questioned.

But how good is your memory really? Can you misremember details? Is your memory like a video, or isn't it? Is your ability to remember details? Is your memory like a video or isn't it? Is your ability to remember changed by

how many things are going on in the scene or whether there's a gun pointed at you? Can something

told to you after the event change your memory of the event.

Welcome to Inner Cosmos with me, David Eagleman.

I'm a neuroscientist and an author at Stanford, and in these episodes, we sail deeply into our three-pound universe to understand the intersection between brains and our lives.

Today's episode, we're going to be talking about eyewitness testimony.

I think it's fair to say that most of us, when we see something

happen, we know what we've just seen. This occurred, this is what the person looked like, and so on.

And in fact, when jurors get interviewed on this point, they'll often say something like, yes,

I understand there are problems with memory and eyewitness testimony,

but my memory is like a video recorder.

But the question we're going to ask today is how good is our memory really?

And what does that mean for courts of law?

So strap in because we're going to see some amazing events and court cases that may change your opinion on your own memory and about what you take to be true.

One of the courses I teach at Stanford is the brain and the law. It's where neuroscience intersects

with the legal system. And a few months ago, I was in the middle of lecturing to my 70s students

when something very wild happened. I was talking to the auditorium and the back door opens.

And a middle-aged woman comes in at the back of the classroom and she walks halfway down the aisle

toward me and then just interrupts me as though I weren't talking at all.

She says, are you David Eagleman? And I said, yes, but I'm in

the middle of teaching a class. Who are you? And she starts shouting how she's emailed me over and

...