Pod Insights Something You Should Know SYSK TRENDING - How Memory Really Works About this episode Memory feels dependable — we rely on it to tell the story of our lives. But the truth is, memory behaves in some surprisingly strange ways. For one thing, your brain forgets far more than it remembers, and that’s not a flaw — it’s actually part of how memory is designed to work. At the same time, certain moments stick with remarkable clarity while others fade almost instantly. Think about how vividly many people remember events from their late teens and early adulthood compared with other periods of life.
So why do some experiences become unforgettable while others disappear? And if our memories are so selective and imperfect, can we do anything to improve them?
Cognitive psychologist and memory expert Megan Sumeracki says yes. She explains how memory actually forms, why we often misunderstand how it works, and what science reveals about the best ways to strengthen it. Megan is an associate professor of psychology at Rhode Island College and author of The Psychology of Memory (https://amzn.to/4cCOAuK). In our conversation, she shares fascinating insights about why our brains forget so much, why certain years of life seem packed with memories, and simple techniques anyone can use to remember more of what truly matters.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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0:32 Mike Carruthers? Why is it you can remember the lyrics to a song you haven't heard in years, but forget someone's name seconds after you're introduced? Why do certain memories stay vivid for decades while others disappear almost immediately? It can make memories seem mysterious, even unreliable. But the truth is, memory isn't random. Your brain follows some surprisingly clear rules about what it keeps, what it discards, and why. And once you understand those rules, you can actually make your memory work a lot better. That's why today's SYSK trending topic is how memory really works. In my conversation with cognitive psychologist Megan Sumeracki,
1:15 Mike Carruthers? we explore how your brain forms memories, why forgetting is actually part of the process, and the simple strategies that can dramatically improve how well you remember things. And we'll get to it right after this. Now, here's something that might be worth a minute of your time. How would you like $1,000 to spend on shopping? Especially with the holidays coming. Well, the people behind Shopify have a shopping site called shop.com. And to celebrate the new shop.com, they're giving away $1 million in Shop Cash. But not to one person. 1,000 people will each win $1,000 in Shop Cash.
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2:58 Mike Carruthers? Over the last several years, it seems there's been a lot of new research coming out about how your memory works, which is always so interesting because more and more, it seems that memory isn't what we think it is. And the more you understand how the memory does and doesn't work, the more you can use your memory to your advantage. Here to explain all this is Megan Sumeracki. She's an associate professor of psychology at Rhode Island College. She's a cognitive psychologist, memory expert, and author of the book, The Psychology of Memory. Hi, Megan, welcome to Something You Should Know.
3:35 Speaker 02 Hi, thanks for having me.
3:37 Mike Carruthers? So first, could you tell me what my memory is? Because like, I know what it is, but I don't really know what it is.
3:45 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, this is, this is an interesting question, right? Because we all, we all think we know what it is, but then trying to provide a formal definition often trips us up. Memory is is actually much more broad than most people think. It's the definition that I like is using the past in service of the present or future. And so this definition allows us to think about the memories that probably pop into our heads first when we think about the concept of memory. For me, it's, you know, my daughter's birth, getting married, some events from my childhood. But it also allows for memory to to also include things like
4:31 Speaker 02 knowing what an elephant is, knowing how to ride a bike or type or any of those types of procedures and and even things like unconsciously, but but sort of still the past serving us in the present, being able to navigate an area that we haven't been to for a very long time. And maybe we don't even remember having been there, but somehow we're able to navigate it better than if we had been dropped there and never had been before. That's called implicit memory, and that's one example of implicit memory. So there's a lot of a lot of different concepts that that really encapsulate this larger umbrella of the term memory.
5:14 Mike Carruthers? And so we have all those different, seemingly different types of memories. But is it all working in the same place and working the same way? Or are we are we using the term memory to talk about a lot of very different things that sort of fall under the umbrella of memory?
5:34 Speaker 02 Oh, gosh, I think the answer is a little bit of both. So our memories are not perfect, and that's true across the board, whether we're talking about
5:45 Speaker 02 procedural memories like riding a bike or, you know, remembering concepts or events. Our memories are not perfect. They they also tend to be susceptible to suggestion. But but that piece of it tends to work more for events than, say, concepts. So, you know, it would be hard for for somebody to convince me that an elephant isn't what I think it is. But I can integrate new new aspects or features of what an elephant is into my understanding of elephant. We are much more susceptible. To being told or the suggestion that certain events happen differently. And every time we retrieve events, we actually kind of change a little bit.
6:30 Speaker 02 And so false memories are prevalent. But so, so I think when we're talking about long-term memory, we're talking about kind of one system that has a lot of different pieces or components, so to speak. But we also have our shorter-term stores like working memory, which is the, the, the system that allows us to have this conversation. The system that allows me to have at least a rough idea of what the question was and what I've said already.
7:00 Mike Carruthers? So you mentioned, and I wanted to dive into this, long-term and short-term memory. We hear those terms a lot. I don't know if those are actually two very different things or how it works. But, you know, there is that issue of, you know, grandma can remember everything about her wedding day, but she can't remember what happened five minutes ago. How is that possible? What's going on there?
7:25 Speaker 02 Oh gosh, that's such an interesting question. So five minutes ago is part of long-term memory. We actually, when we talk about long versus short-term memory, I think there's a misconception that short-term means like basically everything today and long-term is longer than that. Short-term memory or working memory is the more kind of modern cognitive concept that we use. It, it's really, really short. It's what we're holding on to in the moment. So the amount of things that you can sort of hold on to in your mind right now, as I'm speaking, that's all part of this short-term working memory concept.
8:08 Speaker 02 What happened five minutes ago, or even just a couple of minutes ago, once you let go of that out of your working memory, so say, I could quiz you on some of the things that were mentioned during the introduction. It would be kind of a useless quiz, but we could ask people, oh, do you remember my name? Do you remember details that were shared? And if you could think back to a couple of minutes ago and, and recall some of the information from the intro of this episode, you're actually using your long-term memory to do that because you stopped thinking about it for a little while and now you're retrieving and thinking about it again. And so five minutes ago really is grandma forgetting something from long-term memory.
8:50 Speaker 02 But of course, there's a big difference between five minutes ago and remembering components from our, from our wedding or something that was many, many years ago, potentially decades ago. We do forget over time, but it seems as though the memories that we create, what cognitive psychologists would call the reminiscence bump. It's this timeframe from our sort of late teens into our early twenties, roughly speaking. The memories, many memories from that timeframe are remembered better than the things that are more recent. So 10 years out from my wedding, I'll remember my wedding pretty well. 20 years out from my wedding, I'll remember my wedding pretty well, but I won't remember
9:33 Speaker 02 something that was 10 years, right? So like the 10 years in between, it's hard without a, without a piece of paper to draw things out. But, but essentially just those things from our late teens, early twenties and kind of that timeframe tend to be, for whatever reason, better remembered. And so it's pretty common for, for all of us to remember events from that, that timeframe. We, you know.
10:00 Mike Carruthers? But it's also, it also seems that, that remembering your wedding and remembering what happened five minutes ago, one of the big differences is probably nothing much happened five minutes ago and your wedding was such a big emotional deal.
10:15 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, quite possibly. And we do, it does seem, it seems like we favor memories that are, that occur with great emotion, although we tend to think that we're more accurate than we are. So that's, that's one of the tricky things, too. We think we remember our wedding, but there's probably some details that we're misremembering. But who's, you know, how would we know that that's not correct? So it's entirely possible that these vivid memories that we have from these emotional events aren't as accurate as we think. But you're right, something that, you know, nothing really happened five minutes ago. So of course, I don't really remember it. What I ate for breakfast, who cares? But it's entirely possible
10:58 Speaker 02 that we're not perfectly accurate when we think about those, those really big and important events as well.
11:04 Mike Carruthers? What about the difference in people that some people seem to have, God, Bob's got a great memory, but Suzie doesn't remember much. And like, are there individual differences? Or are they just not using it correctly? Or are they using it differently? Or really, is one person just better at memory than somebody else?
11:26 Speaker 02 Yeah, so absolutely, we can have individual differences in what we, our memory abilities. We can also have individual differences in our ability to monitor our own memory. So Suzie might think she has a horrible memory, and Bob might think he's great, and they could potentially have the same skills. They might be different, but there are some people that are confidently wrong, and some people that are underconfident. And that mixes in with the general abilities of individuals in terms of memory as well. And so it becomes kind of tricky to know. If someone says, oh, I have a terrible memory, terrible memory is,
12:08 Speaker 02 in some ways, kind of what one would expect. There are a lot of different things that we forget and ways to forget, and those are functional, forgetting is important. And so sometimes we think we have a terrible memory, but really, our memories are just working the way they're supposed to. But there are definitely individual differences. Not everybody's the same height, not everybody has the same eye color, and not everybody has the same memory skills.
12:32 Mike Carruthers? We're talking about human memory, how it works, and how to make it work better. My guest is Megan Sumeracki. She is a cognitive psychologist and author of the book, The Psychology of Memory.
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13:13 Mike Carruthers? So Megan, you said a few minutes ago that forgetting is important. Why is forgetting important?
13:20 Speaker 02 Yeah, so you know, misplacing your keys, not knowing where you parked the car. These things tend to lead us to say, oh, I can't remember anything, or to be really frustrated. And I think in general, we focus on the times we forget and not so much on the times we remember. You're not going to give yourself a party every time you remember where you parked your car, but you sure remember the time that you can't figure out where it was and you were late as a result. Right? And so it's frustrating, but at the same time, you don't need to or want to remember everywhere you've ever parked your car or everywhere you've ever put your keys. We shouldn't and don't want to be able to hold on to every single detail. And that's not the point of memory.
14:05 Speaker 02 Memory is not designed to remember every single detail. It's designed to serve us in the future. And of course, it would be good to remember where you put important things like your keys or the car, but every once in a while, there is going to be an error. You're going to make a mistake and that is just sort of the nature of our systems and that we want to forget things so that we can make kind of room, so to speak, for newer things.
14:31 Mike Carruthers? I remember hearing someone say, and it sort of made sense to me, and I want you to comment on it, is one of the reasons that memories distort over time is that when you recall an event, you're not necessarily recalling the event, you're recalling the last time you remembered the event. And the more times you remember it, the more likely things are to go haywire in your memory about that event.
15:00 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's correct. So every time we retrieve information, whether it's something that we learned at some point, or an event that occurred, it's not benign. It's not, it's not just an assessment of what is in our memory. Rather, it is, it is activating those memories and using retrieval cues to sort of activate the features related to the memory. And when you do that, the memory can be strengthened, but also modified. This is great news for trying to learn new things in school, or at one's job, or whenever, because when you retrieve information, you strengthen it.
15:43 Speaker 02 This, this is, this is very good news. But when it comes to trying to remember events exactly as they occurred, especially when there's no way to give yourself feedback and to correct misconceptions, or at least it doesn't make sense to do so. Right? Every time you remember something about your wedding, you don't think, oh, I better go watch the wedding video to make sure I got everything correct. You don't give yourself feedback like that. And so, and maybe there isn't even a wedding video to watch, right? So when you retrieve the information, little, little pieces can insert themselves and they become integrated into that memory. And we have a difficult time distinguishing between the event that actually happened and the way it was maybe imagined
16:26 Speaker 02 later, or something that was suggestive, that was, that was sort of integrated into the memory, or altered the memory in some way. And so over time, the more you retrieve it, the stronger it gets, but also the more distorted it can become.
16:41 Mike Carruthers? We have like these weird, random memories that aren't particularly special. They weren't special moments in time necessarily, but they're just like, I remember this thing when I was three, and I had this coat, and it had this thing, and it's kind of a flash. Where does, where did that come? Well, I know where it came from. It probably happened. But why am I still remembering that?
17:05 Speaker 02 So we do tend to remember things from late teens, early twenties, although it sounds like you're maybe talking about younger. It's also entirely possible that there's a picture and you've seen the picture, or you've been told the story, or it is just some weird thing that you, that was special to you at the time and you thought about it and you recalled it. Maybe you told the story a few times when you were younger and retrieving it has, has helped you remember. I have, so you, when you say that, I have a memory of, I had this windbreaker, like a, you know, like a little jacket when I was maybe around four years old. And I called it my firecracker jacket because it was from the late eighties, early nineties.
17:49 Speaker 02 It was very colorful and all these different patches of color. But also when I was about that age, I got hit with a bottle rocket. We were camping and some kids were doing bottle rockets out over the lake before the professional fireworks and they thought it would be fun. They were probably like 12 or 13 to shoot the bottle rocket up over the crowd. They slipped and they missed and it exploded in my face. And I don't really remember that event, but it did singe a hole in that jacket. And so I remember that jacket and I remember it, you know, calling it that firecracker jacket. But I can imagine this event happening in my head, but I know I don't have a true memory for it. I know the story and I remember the story and then I remember that jacket. Does that make sense?
18:34 Mike Carruthers? Yeah, well, when you said, what you said, when I was thinking about that memory I have of that coat, there was a picture, there is a picture. And that's what, and that must be it. But, but here's another weird thing about my memory. I can remember every phone number I've ever had since I was five years old. And, and I don't know why, I have no idea, but I could spot them all off to you if I, if you, if you wanted to hear them. There's no point to it. I never use it. I don't know whose number it is now, but I know all my phone numbers from the time I was five.
19:10 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, we use those a lot. We used to give them out a lot. I wonder if kids now would would know. Maybe, maybe not. But I mean, I remember my childhood phone number as well, and some of my friends from high school. I remember their childhood phone numbers, but I couldn't tell you their cell phones now.
19:27 Mike Carruthers? Right.
19:28 Speaker 02 We don't use them now.
19:29 Mike Carruthers? Yeah. One of the things that people are always are concerned about is as they get older, it does seem that memory can fail more often. And is that just normal part of aging? Or is that a red flag that there's something wrong?
19:47 Speaker 02 Yeah, so it's absolutely a normal part of aging, depending on what skill we're talking about, with what cognitive skill, those memory skills can peak in your mid twenties. Not all of them. Vocabulary tends to actually increase over time. So when when you're in your older years, you know, sixties, seventies, your vocabulary might actually be better than it was earlier on. But speed of processing in particular, and and certain types of of memory tend to decrease slowly, but they do decrease after roughly the mid twenties. And so, you know, having trouble accessing a word, remembering where things were, what you need to do,
20:28 Speaker 02 absolutely will decline, and it doesn't mean that there's something wrong.
20:35 Speaker 02 I also think we tend to just notice it more. It's entirely possible that, you know, when I was twenty seven and finishing up my PhD, that if I forgot something, I would think, oh, weird, I forgot that. Whereas now I'm like, oh, man, now that I'm in my late thirties, I'm forgetting things because I'm past my cognitive peak. It's possible that that's part of it. But it is, it is a real but slight decline, and it really isn't something to worry about unless it starts happening.
21:07 Speaker 02 Frequently enough that that you become concerned. It's never a bad idea to mention it to a healthcare provider.
21:15 Mike Carruthers? So is are there any proven ways either generally to keep your memory sharp? Or if there's something you specifically want to remember that that we know really works? Or is everybody too different for that to be the case?
21:31 Speaker 02 No, we do have, we do have some strategies that that tend to work very well. And we retrieve information. We call this retrieval practice. It it does strengthen our memories. And so if there's something that we need to remember, retrieving it frequently, bringing it to mind makes it so that we're going to remember it better. And it also makes us more able to apply it. So we become more flexible with that information. And so retrieving works pretty well across the board. And those effect sizes tend to be quite large. I study that in the context of students in education, but it works in a lot of other domains, including with older adults who are trying to remember things as well. And then spaced practice is another one that tends to work really well.
22:16 Speaker 02 And the two go together. So you don't necessarily want to retrieve something 10 times in a row, all right in a row. But if you're trying to remember something and you can space out the times that you retrieve it, so maybe I'm going to retrieve it again in a little bit, and then I'm going to remember, try to retrieve it again tomorrow and the next day, and so on. That is a way to really improve remembering, but also flexible use of information and being able to apply it in other situations.
22:48 Mike Carruthers? This is weird. I I forgot what I was gonna ask.
22:54 Speaker 02 That happens all the time, too. It's normal.
22:58 Mike Carruthers? Well, I remember now, but how embarrassing that I forget what I was gonna ask a memory expert. We're out of time, but I'll save my question for next time. I've been speaking with Megan Sumeracki. She's an associate professor of psychology at Rhode Island College, a cognitive psychologist and memory expert and author of the book, The Psychology of Memory. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. And thank you, Megan, for coming on and being a guest.
23:24 Speaker 02 Thanks so much, Mike. It's been, it's been really fun talking with you.
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