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This is fresh air. I'm Terry Gross. Sometimes I'm convinced that I wrote and sent an email and I'm later alarmed to find I

didn't either. I felt a little bit better reading that the same thing happens to

my guest and he's a cognitive neuroscientist who studies memory.

Charononath's new book starts with a quote that I love

that's from an anonymous internet meme.

Quote, my ability to remember song lyrics from the 80s far exceeds my ability to remember why I walked into the kitchen."

I understand that. I have experienced that. maybe with different lyrics though.

When Rangonyth meets someone for the first time,

the question he's most often asked

is, why am I so forgetful?

He says, we have the wrong expectations

for what memory is for.

He says, quote, the mechanisms of memory

were not cobble together to help us

remember the name of that guy we met at that thing, instead of asking why do we

forget, we should really be asking why do we remember? And that's the question he's

been researching for about 25 years with the help of brain imaging techniques.

He directs the Dynamic Memory Lab at the University of California Davis,

where he's a professor of psychology and neuroscience.

His new book is called Why We Remember.

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