Hey everyone, and welcome back to the Easy English Podcast, the best place for improving your listening and learning skills with English. And today I am very excited. Why? Because this episode is going to be special. It's going to be a little bit different. So in all of my episodes, so everyone apart from this one, I speak at a level which is aims and designed for lower and mid intermediate levels. So around that A2 up to about higher B1 to B2 the level.
But as I've mentioned before on the Patreon, I have more advanced episodes, so aimed to bring you up to B2 Plus with your listening and vocabulary. And today I am going to give you one of those episodes completely for free and just to listen. So this episode is a sample of our Patreon exclusive advanced level episodes. So there we dive into more deeper, more thought provoking topics.
Thought provoking means something that makes you think more deeply and question things all in natural fluent English. So if you love more complicated topics about language, psychology and culture and you want to challenge yourself with more complex vocabulary and ideas, you will love the content over there. The link is in the description below. If you like this episode to go and subscribe and support the Patreon and take your English
learning to the next level. But let's get started with today's episode. I'm going to be talking faster and using more complicated vocabulary than usual. So if you're new, don't worry, just listen to another episode and I will speak a little bit slower and with easier words. OK, so let's get started. Remember, I'm going to be talking faster. So in today's episode we're talking about the Mandela Effect. And this is a strange phenomenon. That's a hard word to say, even for me, phenomenon.
And a phenomenon means something that happens in the world, especially something unusual or difficult to explain. And this Mandela Effect is what it's called, and it is where large groups of people misremember events, words and facts in the same way. It's almost as if our collective memory. So the way that we as a group of people remember something has changed, but how and why is very fascinating. So we're going to get into it.
So what is the Mandela Effect? Have you ever been absolutely certain, 100% sure that something has happened, only to find out that you were completely wrong? Maybe you misremembered it so you remembered it incorrectly, like a famous movie quote or something historical that happened. Maybe that you thought that a logo of a company looked a certain way and then you saw the real version. Or perhaps you and all of your friends remember the same false, incorrect memory.
That's the Mandela Effect, and this Mandela Effect title comes from Nelson Mandela. So people term it because many people distinctly so that means very clearly remember that he died in prison in the 1980s, but he didn't. He was actually released from prison in 1990 and became president. The strangest part? Thousands of people who had never met all share the same memory. And it's not just one case,
there are dozens. So dozens means a large number, usually more than 12. There are dozens of examples of people misremembering these things in this exact same way, so I'm going to give you a couple of famous examples. The 1st is a famous quote from Star Wars, and a lot of people remember this quote as Luke. I am your father. So it's what Darth Vader says to Luke Skywalker. So many people remember this quote as Luke I am your father, but the real quote is no, I am your father.
So why didn't so many millions of people remember it the wrong way? And if we go to Monopoly, the game Monopoly, many people are sure that the Monopoly board game mascot so that the character of the game wears a monocle. A monocle is like a small piece of glass, a round piece of glass that some rich people used to wear over one eye to help them see. But he doesn't. We associate these monocles with
rich old fashioned characters. So perhaps our brain fills the gap with something that wasn't actually there. So why does this happen? Why do millions of people misremember these same details? And there are a few psychological explanations for this, psychological means related to the mind and how it works. And the first of these is very interesting. It's called the power of association. Our brains love patterns, and patterns are repeated designs or
structures. This is when something fits into an expected pattern. We believe that it's true even if it's not. For example, with the Star Wars quote, Look, I am your father sounds more dramatic than no, I am your father. So our brain possibly changes it. It changes it to make it sound better or what we expect. The second theory for why this happens is called memory reconstruction, or recreation. We could say memories are not like video recordings.
Every time you remember something, your brain rebuilds, so it recreates it, puts it together again. This memory. And during this process, all of these little details can change, especially if you've heard a changed version of it before, like that Star Wars quote. If you've heard someone else say it before incorrectly, your brain might remember the incorrect version, the wrong version. The next is the misinformation effect. And this ties into that last
point. When we hear incorrect information repeatedly, our brain will start to believe that it's true. And this can happen with all sorts of stuff like propaganda and even simple things like these movie quotes. If people keep saying the same incorrect thing, we start to think about it as the correct thing. I believe there's a quote, you know, if you say something enough or as many times or many times, it becomes true or people start to believe it. The final theory is a little bit crazy.
And the one which is quite associated with this Mandela Effect, and this is parallel universe theories. And some people believe that the Mandela Effect is proof of alternate realities. The idea is that we remember details from a different version of reality. And while this sounds like science fiction, so science fiction is a type of story about the future or imaginary science. So while this sounds like science fiction, the concept of multiple realities does exist in theoretical physics.
So maybe there is some possible truth in this. So what does this all mean? Are our memories unreliable? So unreliable means not always correct or trustworthy. Well, sometimes, yes. The Mandela Effect teaches us that memory is flexible, it can change, and cultural memory is shaped, It's changed by storytelling. And this is the the way a group of people remember history. And if we're all telling the incorrect version of the story, it starts to become our collective memory.
What we all remember, the way that we remember words or sorry. The final point is, the way that we remember words, phrases, and events is also often based on how we expect them to be. So the next time you're sure about something, ask yourself, is it real? Or is it just what I've always believed? If you enjoyed this episode and you want more advanced discussions, check out our Patreon exclusive podcast series.
And there I am, covering on Patreon deeper language insights, some fascinating psychological, political and scientific topics, and more real natural English at an advanced level. This main podcast will always stay free and accessible for everyone, and I will continue to make podcasts at a level that are inclusive for lots of
different language learners. But if you want to take the next step and take your English up to that more advanced listening and understanding, go to the Patreon link that's in the description. And of course, this helps support this project and it lets me make more content for you guys. I really appreciate it. I couldn't do this show and I couldn't do this project without you. So thank you so much for listening.
I hope you check it out and I will see you in the next episode of the Easy English Podcast. Have an amazing rest of your day, goodbye.