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Think from KERA

Your memories are subject to change

Think from KERA

KERA

Kera, 071003, Think, Society & Culture, Krysboyd

4.7911 Ratings

🗓️ 5 January 2026

⏱️ 47 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Neuroscientists have successfully altered memories in a lab, and yours could be next. Steve Ramirez, neuroscientist and associate professor of psychological and brain sciences at Boston University, joins host Krys Boyd to discuss how certain memories might be edited with pulses of light, what this means for people dealing with life-altering trauma, and how we figured out how to manipulate the mind. His book is “How to Change a Memory: One Neuroscientist’s Quest to Alter the Past.“

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Transcript

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0:00.0

There is new research on pleasure that actually is fascinating, and the site OMGS makes it accessible to everyone.

0:09.1

OMGS shares findings from the largest ever study into women's pleasure and intimacy.

0:15.1

In partnership with researchers at Indiana University and at Yale, they asked tens of thousands of couples what they wished they

0:21.5

had discovered sooner. They found patterns in those discoveries, and all that wisdom about pleasure

0:27.2

and intimacy is organized as hundreds of short videos, animations, and how-toes on omg.com.

0:34.0

And guess what? Half of OMGES users are men. Men are curious about this stuff too, scientific research-backed techniques but ourselves, they are built out of memories.

1:03.9

Our ability to form and recall depictions of past experiences begins to shape us from our very

1:09.7

earliest moments and serves as a powerful tool

1:12.6

for making predictions about what might happen next and how to be ready. So it's a little strange

1:18.1

that such an ever-present phenomenon in our lives can remain so mysterious. From KERA in Dallas,

1:25.7

this is think. I'm Chris Boyd. Why we recall what we recall, where memories

1:30.9

live within the brain, and how the brain decides what is worth keeping and what can be

1:35.5

forgotten. Those are big questions. And as the science continues to advance, people like my guest

1:40.8

are daring to ask even more challenging questions, including,

1:49.7

can the memories any one of us might have of a particular event be deliberately made easier or harder to bring to mind? And could any of our memories be manipulated on purpose to make

1:55.3

it easier for us to live in the present? Steve Ramirez is a neuroscientist and associate

2:00.4

professor of psychological and brain

2:02.2

sciences at Boston University. His book is called How to Change a Memory, One Neuroscientist's

2:08.4

quest to alter the past. Steve, welcome to think. Thank you so much for having me here today.

2:13.8

It really is remarkable to me how mysterious memory remains to brain scientists.

2:20.9

What are some of the reasons it is difficult to study this phenomenon that we all experience

2:26.2

pretty much all the time? Yeah, it's a great question. And I think at least two things make it

...

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