Lab 010: It Was All a Dream

Everybody.

I want to tell a story. No, I don't want you to tell a story because you never tell stories, right. You always start adding all this extra stuff that didn't actually happen.

No, I just give a lot of descriptors, and I think sometimes you're just worried about the wrong things when I truth. No, I tell the truth, but I want people to feel like they are there. I tell stories in a Doobe digital im asks three D on.

A leather sofa. That's not times, that's not true because you tell stories and all of a sudden, there's all these added layers and all this added drama that wasn't there. And so I feel like that's not the actual story. And you have me out here looking crazy.

You're punishing me for being perceptive. I can feel the tension in the room. I can feel I'm you know, I'm I have these big old eyeballs.

I'm always looking.

I'm always seeing stuff, and maybe I'm just seeing stuff that you're not seeing.

No, I don't think that's what's happening at all.

Do you know the story I'm about to tell?

Yes, I know this story about to tell. Are you telling this now? Are you telling it? In the intro. I'm telling it now. I'm t T and I'm Zekiah and from Spotify Studios. This is dope Laps.

Sometimes we were out and this man was drunk and we were at this place that had big open windows, and the guy tried to like everybody was dancing, but we weren't dancing.

We were too cool for that. And the also known as TV doesn't know how to dance. Well speak for you. Well, yeah you said, I said t T. So no need to be spicy. Yeah, I tell the truth, have an arrow. So there's this guy.

He comes up and he tries to like dance with t T but also almost like tries to pick her up.

Almost, Oh my god?

True or false?

Yes? True?

And my friend got so mad. Y'all know, like, Bruce Banner.

Bruce Banner, where is this story going? Because I know what happened, but I feel like this is getting out of hand.

Y'all know that nursey around and is like, grab you by the collar? Boy, you better holler? Did he grabbed that man by the collar?

WHOA?

I said, she grabbed a collar.

And turned your wrists?

What would that be counterclockwise? I don't know, turned your wrists picked him up.

Okay, see this is this is when this is when the lie. Your arms go up? Did I pick him up? No? My arms did not go up. Did he raise? No? See what's wrong with you? Right?

My friend picked that man up off the ground his toes.

His toes were just barely He would have to be the size of a toddler for that to happen, and he was tall too. So how is that possible low center gravity? I don't know. Well, my version of that story is this man, this person was like trying to pick me up, and I was like, no, thank you, No, I would like my feet to remain on the ground. What yeah, are you saying? That's what I said? No, that's what I'm saying. How you felt? Okay, so this has turned into a comic book now it's.

Like pow yeah, yeah, damn, that's exactly that's exactly what I'd like to add.

No, you want a narrative, you want me to say? And then TT said this, and then he said because there wasn't nothing said. It was just like whoa, whoa, none of that, and that's all it was.

Basically, So I haven't heard you say the part where you grabbed him by the collar.

I didn't grab him by the collar. I didn't grab him by the collar. I put my hands on his chest and pushed him away. I was like, stop, we got to get to the bottom of this.

I told this story a million times and people know that TT grabbed a man about the collar.

Okay, but there's I was there. You were there, and you were in a moment it was you can't remember what, if anything, I should remember more than you. You don't know your own strength. I know if I could pick a six foot man up off the ground, that's not happening. You don't got to shrink yourself for these people.

Sure that you're a next man, show them your true powers.

I don't have any powers. All I did was remove that man from my vicinity, and that was that. My version is a gorilla in the club.

Across my friend and we were like whoa, whoa, whoa, and my friends like, uh uh, grab some bottle collar twist, no pull up that can't come from his heels. Came up off the ground, but it felt like it because he didn't bother us anymore.

Pow.

We were both there. I was definitely there. I saw you, and I saw.

It, but I was standing back, so I saw it real good.

No, I was in it, so I know what happened.

And I think there's a problem here because I want to know why do we remember this differently?

I can name a few reasons, but I think I understand where you're going. I think I understand where you're going. Yes, I would like to know too. Let's walk down memory lane. So today's episode is about memory.

All this back and forth about stories being told the wrong way really has us thinking about our brains and how these memories, whether true or false, come to be right.

So let's start with what we know. We know that you and I have different recollections of some of the things that have happened during our friendship, right, and so clearly two people can remember the same event differently.

We also know that we can remember these things even though they happened a long time ago.

We can still access memories.

So memories that we've had for a really long time, we can still access them.

But we also know that we don't remember everything. So you remember what you have for breakfast?

Like last week, Cake, I know you know what we have breakfast together?

We go.

Isn't that wild?

When see this?

What I'm talking about then they say they call you a life. When down the National Press Club we had croissants. You have one that had banana curd and that.

Was disgusting, very nice warm. I hate bananas. They are so nasty. Imagine biten into something that you think is a croissant and there's banana puree in the center. Yummy. I thought I was gonna Vomit. Tastes like baby food, That's what I was gonna say. So convenient, just like baby food. Oh man.

So yeah, it's interesting, right because like how could you go from not remembering that at all to the exact detail of like the banana curd and how it felt when you ate it?

Isn't that crazy?

Right?

I just needed like a couple of cues. So what do we want to know? I want to know how memories are made in the brain? Is it like lying? Yeah? And I want to know, like are there different types of memory? Like because I know there's short term memory of long term memory, but what are all the other types that are going on in your brain?

And I know that I was just able to jog your memory, but is there any like tried and true way to like help people remember things.

That's a good question. And I want to know what happens in our brains over time.

Right, who's prioritizing these memories? Like is it like a filing system or is it like, oh, you haven't touched Is it like the trash can on your computer? Like could you move something to the trash but if you don't open it again, it gets deleted?

Right? Maybe maybe it is something like that.

And then I want to know once the memory is in there, right, Like, once we have a memory of an event, can you change that memory? Is it like inception?

Oh?

Is that based on anything real?

Oh my goodness, I don't even want to start thinking about inception. I'm gonna get so confused that. And you haven't even started the episode. We're not even in the dissection yet. I don't want to be confused right now, wait for the drop?

You remember that in the movie? Yeah, yes, man, that's exactly what we waking me up when I'm sleep at work, Like, oh, back out of that dream.

And the last thing I want to know is why is the keyst memory so bad? I think it's a valid question. Well, one of us knew what we had for breakfast last Friday? Yeah, all I needed was you to jog my memory.

Then whose memory is bad?

You got a bad memory?

All right, welcome to the dissection. We are ready to dive in t T. I want to know why you have repressed your memory of picking that man up.

Okay, because it didn't actually happen, but okay. Our guest expert this week is doctor Elizabeth Loftis.

My name is Elizabeth Loftus, and I'm a professor at the University of California, Irvine.

Doctor Loftis is an experimental psychologist who specializes in the study of human memory.

Memory is important because without it, you wouldn't know how when you woke up in the morning to make coffee or make toast, or figure out where you left your car keys, or find your way to the bus stop. Memory is important because our memories are part of our identity and make us feel something about who we are.

Specifically, she studies how memories can be changed or corrupted.

The problem with memory is that it's not always accurate, and inaccuracies can creep into memory for a number of reasons. In some situations, memory is exceedingly important, such as when it's involved in a court case and somebody's liberty. Their freedom is at stake.

But the first thing we wanted to know is about memories in general. Are all memories the same?

Doctor Lofta says, there are a lot of different types of memories.

For example, we have episodic memories, which are memories about our personal past. Sometimes we use the term autobiographical memory when it's a about our life. There are semantic memories, which are memories that we have about words and concepts and knowledge of the world. There are procedural memories, such as remembering how to ride a bike or how to play the piano.

We asked doctor loftis, how do you study memory. What is a typical experiment, What does it look like? How does it help you understand how memory works.

Well, In many of the experiments that I've done and other scientists, we'll show people a simulated event. It might be a simulated crime or a simulated accident, and later on we're going to expose them to some new information. So you might see a robbery where the perpetrator is wearing a green jacket, and later on you encounter another witness who says, well, I saw the guy take the wallet and he had a brown jacket. What is that

All of our memories are stored in the brain.

In the lining episode, we talked about white matter and gray matter in the brain, but the most important parts of the brain for memories are the cerebrum and the cerebellum.

We're not going to dive into the neurobiology of memories in this episode, so you can check out our show notes for more information about that.

But we will tell you this. Where the memories are stored in the brain depends on the type of memories they are.

And most people assume that once a memory is in your brain is locked it can't change.

But a big part of doctor Loftus's work is proving that memory is malleable and that it can be changed or corrupted due to outside influences.

So what are some examples of things that can influence a person's memory.

One of the things that can influence a person's memory, for say, a past event, is whether they get some new information about the event. For in some of these studies that we have done, we might expose people to a simulated accident where a car goes through an intersection with a yield sign, and we can suggest to people that what they saw is a stop sign, not a yield sign, and many people then will accept the suggestion and come to remember that they saw a stop sign.

This is very true.

You remember that story that we told earlier about being at my house watching scary movies and then we both heard the door handle at the back door like jiggle.

It sounded like somebody had grabbed the door knob and was trying to get inside the house.

We all we did was look at each other, and the next thing I knew, we were out the front door barefoot, barefoot in the night.

Yes, and I was Becausezikia, as we know it, is a very good cook, and she had barbecue that day. She grilled out and so I had a rib in my mouth. I was mid bite when we heard that sound, And as soon as we heard that sound, I dropped that rib smooth on the floor.

And the crazy thing is, every time I tell that story, I say, I looked at T T. She dropped that rib right onto the carpet boom, and we ran out the door. But I don't remember seeing that. I know I didn't see it because I know I locked eyes with you. And then the next thing I remember, I was out the front.

Looking at the night sky. Yeah, and I was like, we gotta get some help. But that goes to what doctor Loftus is saying. I told you that I dropped the rib on the floor, and when we came back in, we saw the rib on the wall, So that was additional information that then changed your memory of that event. Isn't that wild? That's really interesting. I think another thing that a lot of people think or say, or that I've heard people say, is that smell is the strongest

There are smells that can act as retrieval cues and can remind you of something that happened in the past, maybe a time when you smelled something similar, but I wouldn't call it the strongest retrieval cue. In fact, much more scientific work has been probably done on visual information or even auditory information than the old factory or smell information.

So memories can be influenced by new information, like with T T in the rib. But what if the new information we get is inaccurate.

That's what doctor Loftus calls the misinformation effect, and it can result in memory contamination.

We get new information when we talk to other people who might have witnessed the same event, or if we are interviewed or interrogated by somebody who perhaps has an

So this makes me think about Lab three when we talked about lying, because I think that there's an important distinction here. You might think that somebody is deliberately lying to you, but they might just have a contaminated memory, or they might just be contaminated.

Not me, but they might be they universal day DJ Khalid day in the DJ Kalid Day, that's right.

The kinds of memory distortions that I study and spend a lot of time thinking about are not deliberate lies. These are distortions in the minds of people who are trying to be accurate and honest and trying to tell you what they truly remember, but they have been influenced by some sort of suggestion that causes these memory distortions and inaccurate reporting. It's very different from deliberate, intentional lying.

Okay, so back to that night that I did not pick that man up by his collar. Why does the Kia not remember things how I remember them. We were both there, and any outside influences that were around, we both experience them, and we still don't tell the same story.

One obvious reason is that they're focusing on different details. They're looking at different parts of the event, and so they're remembering different parts. It's also possible sometimes a person's own biases that they already have can influence how they perceive and remember something. It's also possible that these two people could be exposed to different forms of post event information, so one of them might have a memory that gets contaminated by misinformation and the other doesn't.

Thank you, Elizabeth, it's because I'm biased. I see TT as strong, praise, in charge, and able to protect me from all outside threats, and that has colored my perception as I access this memory over and over again.

She wants me to apologize. No, I'm sorry.

I don't want you to apologize so much.

For telling that story that that way.

In all my stories, In all my stories, you are the hero.

Or the crazy person. It depends on how you depends on your bias and your perception of the event. Somebody may hear that I picked a man up by the collar and be like that lady.

Is crazy, That lady is strong. Okay, let's take a break. When we come back, we'll talk about collective memory when it comes to things we all remember. Do the same rules still apply?

Don't go anywhere. And we're back, and we want to talk about collective memory. Moments in history that society remembers together. Is it possible for a group of people to have a collective memory of an event?

There are certain events that happen in the world that we as a society may experience together.

When I think of collective memory, I tend to think of like traumatic events like wars or major protests, or things that happen to different groups of people.

Right, Yeah, we call these sort of flashball memories, these collective memories for you know, traumatic national events, for example, wherever you live, we share the experiences of what happened in nine to eleven, and many people can tell you something about how they learn the news on that particular day.

When we think about collective memory, we all may have a certain narrative or there's like a predominant narrative and that's the collective memory about an event, or like.

A collective emotion or something like that. Yeah, people think about nine to eleven and are generally sad.

Right, there is a sense in which we still as a society share that experience and are bound together by having endured that experience. But it's still very interesting that when you gather information from people right afterwards and they say how'd you hear the news? They may they may say, you know, I was in my college dorm and my roommate came in and told me. But when you interview them a year or two later, they're telling you that they learned about it when they turned on the TV.

So collective memory can change just like individual memories can I guess.

I wonder like, how does collective memory get shaped? Like who decides what we remember?

There are some really interesting examples in the world right now of things that could influence collective memory. One of those things is monuments that commemorate different people or events.

What I described earlier was a new misleading information that can contaminate or distort or transform somebody's memory. But it's also the case that you can see items in the world as you're wandering through the world that can remind you of a past experience.

It's like a permanent physical reminder.

It's like walking to your house every day and seeing the rib on the carpet every day, the ribbons on the carpet every day, the ribs on the carpet, and you're like, this was a major thing that happened. How grand how you know exactly?

And those things are true not just for like physical things that are you know, erected in our communities. It's also true in pop culture.

Yes, I think that's a very good point. So in the media, what stories get told. One of the most recent ones that I think is really change is providing some new information for folks.

Is when they See Us. Yep, When They See Us has been the most watched series on Netflix in the US every day since it premiered on May thirty first.

That's a lot of people, and that's really that's moving the mark on that collective memory there.

The Central Park five was something that people know about or kind of know about, but we didn't really have as much detail as before. I feel like there are some people who didn't even know that they were exonerated. And now with all this additional information, this movie is now like a monument.

Yeah, it shifts the collective memory about what happened to those young men.

And it also brings that memory to the forefront and kind of like sears it into our memory. But that's so important, right it is. It's important for our collective memory, and it's important to build that structure within pop culture.

And so that makes me think that if cues like that reinforce memory for us and make us remember things, then does the absence of a queue like that make us forget things from our collective memory.

I think that's definitely possible. The things that are super important to a community, it's important to have things those cues to bring it to the forefront of your mind. Yeah, so put a little plaque next to that rib and say, here lies the rib that teaching never finished. May it always remind us to lock the back door. So over time, as we have these memories in our brain, they will start to fade. Right.

One of the kind of basic laws of memory is that it fades over time. So our personal memories for things we individually have experienced, or are collective memories for things that we have as a society or a population have experienced together. What's a little less obvious is that as our memories are fading, they become more and more

So the older memory is, the more likely it is that someone could make you misremember what happened.

Okay, So I think that Z can become a better person. What okay, wrong words? Not a better person, but just better at remembering things. It's critical to our friendship. When we turn seventy, I want to be able to tell these stories. I'm gonna tell them, but I want them to be accurate.

They will be when we turn seventy. Man, none of this stuff is going to be the same. People are going to be like used to stand around and hold drinks in your hands and look at each other. Yes, Doctor Lofta says that there's been research into ways to prevent your memories from being contaminated.

One of the things psychology have looked at in this memory contamination work is whether warning people that you might be exposed to some misleading information can help people reduce the impact of that misinformation. And we have found that if you give people a warning, you know, watch out, somebody might be trying to mess with your memory. People can use that warning and to some extent fenned off to some degree the invasion of new information into the mind.

But is a little tricky to employ this in the real world.

The problem out there in the real world is we don't walk around with these warnings in the forefront of our consciousness.

And you know what else, I'm thinking about, what all the stuff that we have in our phones, like all the pictures and the videos and Facebook and Twitter and all that stuff like that, that is really going to play a major role as we get older and how we remember stuff. Remember from the Edges Snatched episode, we were talking to doctor Harris about self image versus self fact, and we were asking folks, how many selfies do you have in your phone?

Yeah, and he said, so he dropped a gem. He was like, now, more than there's never been a time in history where we spent more time looking at ourselves exactly right. And so when you think about that, those are lots of physical cues to remember. I feel like back in the day, it was probably easier for some folks to say, like, oh, when I was in college, I was fly I was just this and that. But when we look back at those pictures, honey, eyebrows are

And before it was it was all put on the shoulders of historians to collect all this information, keep it together, preserve it, and everything like that. Now we are all historians.

We're our own historians, which is the scary part because what I think is important for today might be really different from what somebody else thinks.

Right, right, that just goes you know what.

That's making me think about who's talking about Sudan on Instagram and who's not. Exactly something like that could be totally wiped from the collective memory just because it doesn't right, because there's a media blackout in Sudan, like our news stations aren't covering it here, we're not hearing about it. And basically we're relying on folks on Instagram that are Sudanese or have some type of connection to Sudan to give us the information or we wouldn't know. That's wild.

It would affect it a lot. Yeah, because I mean even in our phones are if you have an iPhone, I don't know what Android phones are doing. But now let me stop. But like, as soon as you go into your photos, it'll be like, here's what you were doing five years ago, Here's what you were doing in September. Oh, here's this slides show of you and your sisters. I'm like, oh, this is nice. And even how we get information. People

Do, information gathering, then analysis of that information.

Yeah, then how can you commit that to memory? You're taking it for granted that when I need it it'll be here. This is disposable, right, How do.

We reinforce the memories and the things that we care about and we don't want to go to the wayside?

Right? That's tradition. That is tradition. And that's a very good point. Because Juneteenth was yesterday.

M hm.

What did y'all do to celebrate?

What did you do to bring it to the forefront of your mind and to and to remember or not even just remember, but to go back and act and get.

Some accurate information about Juneteenth.

Yeah, let's post a June teenth quiz see what people see what you know about Juneteenth, but don't read anything before you take the queens and cheat.

Don't cheat. They're millennials and gen zs. They go on Google. You can do a pre Google. You can do a slight Google, not a deep Google. You can only look at the first two results. Yeah.

I think one of the main things is like when we think about Juneteenth, right, there are not many monuments, and when we think about the fourth of July, I feel like, I see, I can tell you July fourth, seventeen seventy six, but June teenth.

What what year was it? What year was it?

And it's so interesting, right because it's where do you get this information? You see the things about the fourth of July everywhere. You see statues and monuments, and you see all these things related to like the Civil War.

But I think when you.

Exclude certain events from the narrative, they also don't get to become part of the collective memory. So somebody, we need some community historians. And there are people that are doing this work, you know, but we really want to shine a light on them. So definitely check out our show notes for some more information about Juneteenth and some of the celebrations.

Yes, posted Juneteenth outfits. Yes, what did y'all wear?

How did y'all celebrate? I celebrate every occasion by cooking.

And I celebrate every occasion by going to Ze's house and eating.

For more on today's episode, check out our cheat sheet and show notes at Dope Labs podcasts dot com.

And remember the phone lines are always open. You can leave us a question or a comment or text us. Our number is two zero two five six seven seven zero two eight. That's two zero two seven seven zero two eight.

You can find us on Twitter and Instagram at Dope Labs podcast t t is on Twitter and Instagram at dr Underscore t Sho.

And you can find Zakia on Twitter and Instagram at z Said So.

And if you do love the show, don't forget to follow us on Spotify or wherever else you listen to your podcast special thanks to our guest expert, doctor Elizabeth Loftus. You can find more about her research in the show notes. Our producer is Jenny Rattle at MAST. Mixing and sound design by Hannis Brown.

Original theme music by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex sugi Ura. Additional music by Elijah Lex Harvey.

Dope Labs is brought to you by three M and is a production of Spotify Studios and Mega Own Media Group, and is executive.

Produced by us T. T.

Shadia and Zakiah Wattley.

Why are you looking at me like that?

I'm just saying, maybe you thinking different about yourself. I'm not. You don't want people to know you're a stone cold killer, but I know