WHY WE REMEMBER: The New Science of Improving Your Memory

The Next Big Idea

Next Big Idea Club

Self-improvement, Arts, Books, Society & Culture, Education

4.5 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 25 April 2024

⏱️ 70 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

"The only things that are important in life," declared the French filmmaker Jean Renoir, "are the things you remember." But what do we remember and why? That's the subject of a new book, "Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory's Power to Hold on to What Matters," by pioneering neuroscientist Charan Ranganath. He joins us today to explain why you still know the lyrics to the song you loved in eighth grade but can't remember the name of your kid's eighth-grade teacher, how memory shapes your identity, and what you can do right now to improve your recall. THE NEXT BIG IDEA CLUB We all know that reading is the best investment we can make in ourselves, but figuring out what to read — well, that’s another matter. Which is why we started the Next Big Idea Club. We get the best new books (as chosen by our friends Malcolm Gladwell, Adam Grant, Susan Cain, and Daniel Pink) into the hands of curious people. Like you! Join us today at nextbigideaclub.com

Transcript

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0:00.0	LinkedIn presents.
0:05.0	I'm Rufus Griskum and this is the next big idea.
0:10.0	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 Barack.
0:42.0	Our colleague Brian Williams is back in Kuwait City tonight after a close call on the skies over Iraq.
0:48.0	Brian, tell us about what you got yourself into.
0:51.0	We asked the U.S. Army to take us on an air mission with them. They accepted. We knew there was risk
0:57.6	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
1:05.8	when things started to happen. Williams is in a convoy of four Chinook helicopters, tasked with delivering bridge components to a drop site about 100 miles south of Baghdad.
1:17.0	It's a routine mission until...
1:21.0	Suddenly, without knowing why we learn we've been ordered to land in the desert.
1:27.0	On the ground, we learned the Chinook ahead of us was almost blown out of the sky.
1:32.0	So to recap, Williams is flying along. was almost blown out of the sky.
1:32.9	So to recap, Williams is flying along
1:35.3	when another helicopter miles away is hit by a rocket-propelled grenade.
1:40.4	That helicopter makes an emergency landing and about an hour later when the copter that Williams is on catches up it lands too
1:48.6	But here's how we told this story exactly 10 years later on late night with David Letterman.
1:54.3	Two of our four helicopters were hit by ground fire including the one I was in.
1:58.9	No kidding.
1:59.9	RPG and AK-47.
2:01.9	What happens the minute everybody realizes you've been hit?
2:04.8	We figure out how to land safely and we did.
2:07.9	We landed very quickly and hard and we put down and we were stuck.
	...

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