I'm Alan Olga and this is Clear and Vivid. Conversations about connecting and communicating.

We were so exciting I put an electrode into the cells of the hippocampus. This was the

region that had been shown to be important for memory storage and I heard the boom, boom,

boom of action potentials and the thrill of having that was just spectacular. Now I had the naive

idea that all you had to do is put electrode into a cell that was involved in memory storage and

I would understand how memory works. How dumb can you be? Eric Candel is not so dumb. He won a Nobel

prize for a major breakthrough in understanding how memory works. He's one of our leading neuroscientists

who also knows how to make you remember something by engaging you with a story. Eric is an exceptionally

good communicator. He knows how to connect in the simplest most human way. Eric you were born in

Vienna. Yes and you start your book with the most compelling story of when you were nine years old

and it's to me such an interesting example such a prime example of how you can engage a reader with

a story. What happened when you were nine? My father owned a small toy store and from my ninth

birthday he gave me something that I very much wanted which was a train that I could control

remotely and my birthday was November 7th. November 9th was Kristallnacht. That was the night in which

a young Jewish guy very much hurt by the fact that his parents had been kicked out of the house by

the Nazis. I walked into the German embassy in Paris and shot one of the officials working in the

embassy. As a result not only was his boy arrested but Kristallnacht broke out in all of German

controlled territory. What does that word mean in English? Kristallnacht means the crystal night

every single synagogue in Vienna and in Berlin and several other cities was destroyed.

Many Jews were kicked out of their apartment including my family and Jews were beaten up all of them.

And you were you were nine years old playing with your toy train and you heard pounding on the door.

That's right. And two guys walked in and said you've got 20 minutes to get your belongings together

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