Something You Should Know - SYSK TRENDING - How Memory Really Works

Episode Date: March 17, 2026

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. PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS POCKET HOSE: Text SYSK to 64000 for your two free gifts with the purchase of any Pocket Hose Ballistic hose! DUTCH: If your pet is still scratching and you’ve tried everything at the pet store –it’s time to stop guessing and go prescription.Support us and use code SYSK for $40 off your membership at ⁠https://Dutch.com⁠ RULA: Thousands of people are already using Rula to get affordable, high-quality therapy that’s actually covered by insurance. Visit ⁠https://Rula.com/sysk⁠ to get started. QUINCE: Don't keep settling for clothes that don't last! Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Quince.dom/sysk ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too! SHOPIFY: See less carts go abandoned with Shopify and their Shop Pay button! Sign up for your $1 per month trail and start selling today at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Shopify.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ EXPEDITION UNKOWN: We love the Expedition Unknown podcast from Discovery! Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 Sumeraki, 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. You know, I'm a sucker for a good mystery. Like, in the 1950s, a flight from New York to Minneapolis just disappeared over Lake Michigan. No wreckage, no answers.

Or the Diet Love Pass incident, a group of experienced hikers found dead under circumstances so strange, people still debate what really happened. There's a podcast called Expedition Unknown from Discovery, hosted by Josh Gates, and this is what he does. He doesn't just tell these stories. He goes there. He's hunted for priceless artifacts stolen by the Nazis in World War II. He's traced the final flight of a pilot who vanished mid-mission

and searched the Great Lakes for a ship that disappeared without a trace. If you love the unanswered questions of history, you know, the stuff that makes you lean in. You're going to love this. Travel the globe with Josh Gates as he investigates humanity's greatest feats and most iconic legends. Listen to Expedition Unknown, wherever you get your podcasts. 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 Sumeraki. 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.

Hi. Thanks for having me. So first, could you tell me what my memory is? Because I know what it is, but I don't really know what it is. Yeah, yeah, this is an interesting question, right? Because we all think we know what it is, but then trying to provide a formal definition often trips us up. Memory 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 also include things like knowing what an elephant is, knowing how to ride a bike or type or any of those types of procedures, and even things like unconscious. 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 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 using the term memory to talk about a lot of very different things that sort of fall under the umbrella of memory? 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,

procedural memories like riding a bike or, you know, remembering concepts or events, our memories are not perfect. They also tend to be susceptible to suggestion, but that piece of it tends to work more for events than, say, concepts. So, you know, it would be hard for somebody to convince me that an elephant isn't what I think it is, but I can integrate 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. And so false memories are prevalent.

But 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 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. 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? 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. long term is longer than that. Short-term memory or working memory is the more kind of modern cognitive concept that we use. It's really, really short. It's what we're holding onto in the moment. So the amount of things that you can sort of hold onto in your mind right now as I'm speaking, that's all part of this short-term working memory concept. 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 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. But of course, there's a big difference between five minutes ago and remembering components 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 psychologist would call the reminiscence bump. It's this time frame from our sort of late teens into our early 20s, roughly speaking. The memories, many memories from that time frame 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 for my wedding, I'll remember my wedding pretty well, but I won't remember something that was 10 years, right? So like the 10 years in between, it's hard without a piece of paper to draw things out. But essentially just those things from our late teens, early 20s, and kind of that

time frame tend to be, for whatever reason, better remembered. And so it's pretty common for all of us to remember events from that time frame. We, you know, but it's also, it also seems 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. 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 that we're not perfectly accurate when we think about those, those really big and important events as well. What about the difference in people that some people seem to have, God, Bob's got a great memory, but Susie 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? 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 Susie 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. memory as well. And so it becomes kind of tricky to know. If someone says, oh, I have a terrible memory. Terrible memory is 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. And not everybody has

the same memory skills. We're talking about human memory, how it works, and how to make it work better. My guest is Megan Sumeraki. She is a cognitive psychologist and author of the book, The Psychology of Memory. Of the Regency era, you might know it as the time when Bridgeton takes place, or is the time when Jane Austen wrote her books. The Regency era was also an explosive time of social change, sex scandals, and maybe the worst king in Brighur.

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forgetting is important. Why is forgetting important? 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. 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. I remember hearing someone say, and it sort of made sense to me, and I don't 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. 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 just an assessment of what is in our memory. Rather, 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. 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 into correct misconceptions or at least it doesn't make sense to do so. 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. And the event. And that actually happened and the way it was maybe imagined 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. 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 it, where did that come? Well, I know where it came from.

It probably happened. But why am I still remembering that? So we do tend to remember things from late teens, early 20s, 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 helped you remember. I have, so 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 80s early.

90s. I was very colorful at 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 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? 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 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 I don't know why. I have no idea. But I could spot them all off to you if I, 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. Yeah. I mean, we used 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. Right. Nobody, because nobody uses them, yeah. One of the things that people always are concerned about as 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? Yeah, so it's absolutely a normal part of aging, depending on what skill we're talking about, what cognitive skill, those memory skills can peak in your mid-20s. Not all of them.

Vocabulary tends to actually increase over time. So when you're in your older years, you know, 60s, your vocabulary might actually be better than it was earlier on. But speed of processing in particular and in certain types of memory tend to decrease. slowly, but they do decrease after roughly the mid-20s. And so, you know, having trouble accessing a word, remembering where things were, what you need to do, absolutely will decline. And it doesn't mean that there's something wrong. I also think we tend to just notice it more. It's entirely possible that, you know, when I was 27 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 30s, I'm forgetting things because I'm past my cognitive peak. It's possible that that's part of it. But it is a real, but slight decline. And it really isn't something to worry about unless it starts happening frequently enough that you become concerned. It's never a bad idea to mention it to a

health care provider. So are there any proven ways either generally to keep your memory sharp, or if there's something you specifically want to remember that we know really works, or is everybody too different for that to be the case? No, we do have some strategies that tend to work very well. When we retrieve information, we call this retrieval practice, 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 effects 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. 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 try to retrieve it again tomorrow and the next day and so on. That is a way to really improve remembering, but, but also flexible use of information and being able to apply it in other situations.

This is weird. I forgot what I was going to ask you. That happens all the time, too. It's normal. Well, I remember now, but how embarrassing that I forget what I was going to ask a memory expert. We're out of time, but I'll save my question for next time. I've been speaking with Megan Sumeraki. 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. Thanks so much, Mike. It's been really fun talking with you.