To the Best of Our Knowledge: Memory and Forgetting

In this hour, would you like to sharpen your memory? Science writer Joshua Foer tells you how to build a memory palace, and what it was like to compete in the U.S. Memory Championship.

Next, Jill Price can remember every day of her life since the age of 14. She's one of only half a dozen people diagnosed with "hyperthymesia" - a fancy word for nearly total recall. She talks about the burden that comes with such phenomenal memory.

Then, Eric Kandel is one of the world's leading experts on memory. A Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist, he talks about recent discoveries about the science of memory.

After that, do you think your memory is like a video camera - a device that can record and store every experience you've ever had? Historian Alison Winter says we tend to use technology metaphors to think about memory. And as technology changes, so do our ideas about how memory works.

Following that, writer Andre Aciman says a good memoir can capture emotional truth even when certain historical details are fictionalized. He describes the art of the memoir, and how writers draw on their memories to conjure up literary worlds.

Next, nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman is fascinated by the way memory shapes our sense of self. But he says our memories can be quite different from what we actually experience.

And finally, deja vu isn't just a weird idea. Some people have powerful experiences of deja vu, and some scientists are now studying them. Cognitive psychologist Chris Moulin talks about his own research on deja vu. [Broadcast Date: November 14, 2012]