Stuff You Should Know - Is photographic memory a real thing?

Episode Date: July 2, 2019

Photographic memory is the stuff of movies and TV, but is it real? Sort of. But not really. But kind of. It's a little bit a matter of semantics. Listen in and this will all make sense.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Attention, world. If you can make it to America, then come see us. We are going out on the road for SYSK Live again, and we are going to start the whole thing off in Chicago on July 24th.

That's right, and if you can't make it to America, maybe make it to Canada. Cause we're gonna be in Toronto in the next night, Danforth Music Hall, then in August, we're gonna do a couple of dates at the Wilbur in Boston, October 29th in Portland, Maine's lovely state theater on August 30th. Yep, and then we're going to be heading down to Florida.

We're gonna be at Plaza Live on October 9th, and then the next night, we're gonna be in New Orleans at the Civic Theater. That's right, and then we're gonna round it out in Brooklyn, October 23, 24, and 25 at the Bell House. Yep, so come see us. You can get tickets and info at SYSKLive.com. Welcome to Step You Should Know,

a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryan over there, and the ghost of Jerry Rowland is seated next to us. Just Frank the chair, I guess. Yeah, hey, Frank. Yeah, Jerry, everyone, has a hurt shoulder.

From bowling. Has to go to the doctor and did that deal, which he's only done a couple of times where she just hits record and leaves. Yep. And it always feels like the teacher is gone. It feels really weird in here. And that we should, like, do something disruptive and wrong.

So we're practicing paper airplanes. Basically. It's the worst thing we could come up with. We're doing spitballs. Josh just threw a couple of pencils up and stuck them in the ceiling. I still got it. Remember that old move?

Sure, well, clearly. And what else? We started a fire in the metal wastebasket. Yeah. Chuck's trying out drugs. Sure. And we started listening to Miley Crew. That's right.

And we're going to talk about photographic memory, which, as it turns out, it's kind of not real. Yeah, it's a semantic thing. Photographic memory, it's funny that we're talking about being in elementary school, because it's sort of one of those things that used to hear a lot on the playground about, you know, so-and-so's got a photographic memory.

I know. They can read a book and recite every word from it or something. There's something so juvenile about claiming that you have it yourself as an adult. Yeah. It has its smacks of that playground thing. I hadn't put my finger on it, but that's exactly what it is.

Yeah. And as it turns out, what you call photographic memory isn't really a thing. There are people with amazing memories and people with amazing techniques to develop better memories. Right. But this whole notion of a photographic memory,

like you could walk, you know, like you see on TV or something, isn't really a thing. No. No, it's a thing from TV. It's a thing from books. It's something that you attribute to like Sherlock Holmes or just some great genius. Sure.

Or John Holmes. Sure. Obviously, everybody knows he had a photographic memory. But the idea that, yeah, you can just walk around, have an experience or flip through a phone book and like a year later recite that phone book, that just doesn't happen. There's maybe one person who's ever lived

that came very close to that who we talked about before, Kim Peek, the inspiration for Rain Man. But they're still not sure if Kim Peek would have really fully fit that bill even. Yeah. But for the most part, that idea is not, it isn't. It's not real. But again, it's also a question of semantics

because if someone has the abilities of a Kim Peek, it's like, well, you know, isn't that photographic memory? Basically, right. Right, yeah. I think maybe then, let's say it like this, there, anyone who says that they have a photographic memory is probably full of it. Yes.

They probably have a better than average memory. That's what they're saying. But that doesn't mean that they have a perfect memory because here's the thing, even people with outstanding amazing memory abilities, they still get stuff wrong. Sure. And that seems to be part and parcel

with this idea of a photographic memory that not only is the recall amazing over long periods of time and in detail and clarity, but that it's flawless too. That they don't get stuff wrong. Yes. They don't insert stuff that wasn't there originally. They don't misremember things.

That's part of the photographic memory. And that doesn't exist. For sure. That would be perfect recall and the brain just isn't really capable of that. All right, well, we're going to start out this episode, though, talking about something else that's a slight variation, which is called

idetic memory, E-I-D-E-T-I-C. And that is something found exclusively in kids between the ages of six and 12, roughly. About 2% to 10% of kids in that age group. Yeah, so here's what they do for these tests. You get a subject, you get a little six-year-old or a seven-year-old, or an eight-year-old or a nine-year-old or a 10-year-old or a 11-year-old or a 12-year-old.

OK, but no more beyond that. No. And then you show them an image. Kid can look at it for whatever, 15, 20, 30 seconds. And you take that image away. And then he say, what do you recall about that image? And if you have idetic memory, for a very short term, you can recall with astonishing detail

what was in that image. Yeah, maybe another 30 seconds, maybe up to a couple of minutes. And there's a lot going on here, all right? So it's not like, here, look at this image. And then you take the image away, and the kid goes over and sits down and really thinks about what was in the picture.

The kid holds the pose and their line of sight, just like they were when the picture was in front of them, as if they're still looking at the picture. And here's the thing about idetic memory. The kid who's showing off there and people who have idetic memory are called ideticers. I know it's weird. But the idetiker isn't recalling what they saw.

They never stopped seeing. They're holding it visually in their line of sight, even though the picture is no longer physically present. Yeah, and one of the ways they can tell is that they talk about it in the present tense still. They don't say, well, the picture had a red car with a weird looking dog driving it. Right, it's present tense.

The picture has a red car with a weird looking dog driving it. Yeah, so that's a big one, right? That's, people think, well, that's photographic memory. But that's really the closest thing to photographic memory that science has really happened upon. Well, one of them, we'll get into another one in a little while. But there's a lot of divergence from what you tend to think of as photographic memory.

For one, again, it's a very short duration. 30 seconds, a couple of minutes. And then five minutes later, they talk about the picture and the kid's like, what picture? What picture? Where am I? Why did you drug me and tie me up?

Apparently, even them speaking during this period or even blinking can shut it off. Yeah, and especially not just speaking, but saying what the thing is. Saying out loud, oh, a red car. We'll make the picture vanish from their visual. It almost sounds like a trance or something. Kind of, it does.

It's really interesting. They can make errors as well and put things in there that weren't there. So that obviously is not a photographic memory. Yeah, the dog driving the car had a cat friend. That's believable. That's really stupid kids. By the way, everyone, the cats and the dogs

are getting along great just to update that. Oh, good. Everyone's getting along fine. That's fantastic. But we have a, one of the kittens is a bed pier and so we're trying to sort that out. Oh boy. This is not a fun problem.

You know what the solution to that is? Kitty diapers, the cutest diapers. Yeah. Yeah, we're getting through that. Not fun. What do you do? You just like clap loudly next to it? No, you try, you know, if you catch them,

you try and hustle them really quickly into the litter box. The whole idea is to get them associating litter with peeing and your bed from not peeing. Yeah, but usually cats are really intuitive. I've never had a cat that wasn't like immediately just litter trained. Yeah.

This is a little bit distressing. Yeah, how long has it been going on? We've had like three or four bed peas. Oh, that's not too bad. Yeah. They'll pick it up in no time. But anyway, just wanted to update everyone. So is this true about the idetic memory studies

being done by the Nazis? Is that correct? Yeah, the Nazis found out about this. I'm not quite sure how, but they're attributed to some of the earliest studies of idetic memory. And they, in Nazi fashion, gave it a really bad name because they were using it to promote how the Aryan race was obviously superior

because our kids have idetic memory. Right. And so since, you know, just about anything the Nazis studied, whether it was legitimate studies or not, it just had a taint to it afterward, a chode, if you will. Had a Nazi stank. Pretty much, right? And so it was discontinued for many decades.

And then I can't find out who picked it up. It's really weird. Like when you look up photographic memory, almost everything that comes back for research says, photographic memory is not real, and here's why. There is such thing as idetic memory, but there's almost no information on like the actual study of it, who's conducting it.

Usually it'll be like, they'll even cite like one study, everyone will, this doesn't even have that. It's real cryptic almost, and weird, and just, I wanna say fringy, but there's nobody who questions the science behind it. It's proven that this does exist. We know kind of the mechanics of it, how it actually, or what the process is,

what's actually happening, or how kids display this stuff. We know how to test for it. So it is real, and there's that catchy name, ideticers. It's definitely a real thing, but how it's being studied, and who's studying it's just totally lost on me. I can't find it. Well, and we don't know why it's only in children, or really a whole lot of concrete conclusions about it

other than the fact that it happens. Well, there's some interesting hypotheses about that. Let's hear it. Well, the fact that kids from six to 12 are developing it, and it stops beyond that, suggests that it has to do with language development. Okay. The fact that if you verbalize what the thing is,

you've labeled it in a certain way, and shut your brain off, that suggests it has to do with language development too. They think that maybe the kids are not compartmentalizing what they saw in abstracts like people do with normal memories, and so it's able to stay in their visual field even after they're no longer looking at it.

Interesting. Yeah, but about two to 10% idetic memory. Well, it is interesting though, because the word photographic memory, this sounds as close to that as it gets, because it almost sounds like they are taking a sort of a brain snapshot, because they're just sort of in a trance

and gazing at what it once was. But again, they can't move, they can't speak, they can't blink, and five minutes later, once they do blink or whatever, and snap out of this trance, if you want to call it that, which you clearly do. Yeah. So we will, we'll just call it trance.

Once they snap out of the trance, they can't recall the picture. So it's not a very good example of photographic memory, but it's the closest thing science has shown. Aside from some other ones, let's talk about later. All right, should we take a break? I think we should. All right, let's do it.

And we'll talk more about PM right after this. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends

to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal?

No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy,

blowing on it, and popping it back in, as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough,

or you're at the end of the road. Ah, OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, god.

Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week

to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Oh, just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, so, um, they have not found any, like, again, science hasn't come forward and said, hey, there is photographic memory, and this is it, and this is how it works. Right, all those people who are, like, promoting themselves with having a photographic memory, they, no one,

no one's gotten their hands on one of them and said, this guy's totally right, he has a photographic memory, or she, or they. That's right, but it's still something you hear on the playground. It's still something you hear people tout. And there's a few reasons why. One is, and this kind of has to do with the perfect pitch,

is I think humans just like to label and assign geniuses with these tags, like, you know, Tesla had a photographic memory, and it's very easy just to write that down, and it looks cool on a piece of paper, and that's kind of just as simple as that. He apparently was self-proclaimed with a photographic memory. A lot of people say this about themselves. He doesn't seem like the type who would do that.

He seems like the type that people would say about him without him claiming it. But Mr. T is one who claims to have a photographic memory. Really? So that I saw. Wow, so he could list all the fools he's pitted. All of them. I'm wearing 18 chains right now.

Doesn't even have to look down. Wow, who else? You got anyone else? Teddy Roosevelt. Okay. Truman Capote. Okay. Leonardo da Vinci.

Sure. I'm not sure if he was self-proclaimed, or if people just, again, kind of ascribed it to him because he's a genius. Right, he is a da Vinci. But it is, it's like that kind of thing, like mythologizing extraordinarily smart people. Well, we equate memory with intelligence,

kind of like Sherlock Holmes, right? Of course he's gonna have a photographic memory. He's a highly intelligent person. So anybody who seems extremely intelligent, genius level intelligence, especially someone in history, we would ascribe something like a photographic memory to him. Well, there was an author named Kavya Viswanathan, who there was a case where this author

was accused of plagiarism from another author. And Kavya was like, no, I just have a photographic memory. And I'm sure I read that book, but it was just so burned into my brain that I must have just repeated these things without even knowing about it. She said that in the New York Times.

And so that gave occasion for a lot of journalists and scientists to come forward and be like, by the way, everybody, there's no such thing as photographic memory. Right, but there is a thing as plagiarism. Yeah, I was looking, I was like, what were some of the examples? That was pretty bad.

Was it? In the original book, there was a line in truly masochistic fashion, they chose to buy Diet Cokes at Cinnabon. Okay. Okay, that's the original? The plagiarized one is in truly masochistic gesture, they chose to buy Diet Cokes at Mrs. Fields.

Yeah, that's plagiarism. Yeah. It is. That's not even like, that's plagiarism 101, like, yeah, I'll swap out one word for a like word. Right. And then it's fine. Right, isn't that crazy?

She said this in the New York Times. I have a photographic memory, so. It's not my fault. Right. Another reason this is still sort of out there in the public sphere is the fact that there are people with amazing memories and there are memory competitions and memory exhibitions and things like that.

Yeah, I looked into that, Chuck. I really, so I got sucked into memory. I was like, oh yeah, I forgot how cool memory stuff is. We've done a few podcasts on it. Sure. We talked about it in Can a Thinking Cat Make Me a Genius. We talked about it in a podcast to remember, our memory one.

We talked about it extensively in the Amnesia episode. Right. It's just some good stuff. And there's more we could do, but one of them is this whole idea of mind sports, which includes memory. But it is organized competitions to show off your memory skills.

There's actually five mind sports. Memory, mind mapping, which is a form of taking notes with icons and colors and stuff. It's really neat. If you ever really need to commit something to memory, look into mind mapping. Speed reading, IQ, which is a little iffy to me. And then creative thinking.

Like there's a mind sport competition for creative thinking. I was like, what is that? And you'll be given a question, like a little passage that says like, the alphabet makes no sense. No one can make heads or tails of why it follows the order it does. Put the alphabet into a sensible order

and explain how it makes sense. Wow. Stuff like that. So there's people who are answering these questions coming up with amazing stuff. So you would just devise a creative system that makes sense though. Right.

It's gotta make sense. Or else you'd lose. You'd lose. You'd be run out of town on a rail. Wow. Yeah. It sounds really neat, but there's, with memory in particular,

there's the World Memory Championships. And they're being held in Wuhan, China this December 6th to 8th, 2019. Well, you think of a show like Jeopardy and there are things that you can certainly figure out, question and answer wise on Jeopardy. Yeah. But I would say most of that is recall.

It is recall and that's the same thing with mind sports too. Like if you talk to a World Memory Champion, there's one in particular named Dominic O'Brien. Who is what? I don't know. It's just funny to think of these, like a picture of walking in with this boxing robe.

He, no, he's more the, you'd find him with like a neat scotch and a cigarette going in like a dark bar somewhere. Oh, okay. He distracts me. He's a super friendly, neat guy. And he's just like mumbling presidential returns over the past 15 years.

No, no, he's like running numbers or something like that. Oh, okay. That's my guess. He's like a bookie in a bar or something. That's what he strikes me as. Again, really nice guy. I don't know he's doing anything illegal,

but a British man named Dominic just strikes me as like a bookie. Anyway, he's an eight time World Memory Champion. Wow. World Memory Champion. And he'll tell you like it's all training. It's practice, it's mnemonic devices. And just about anybody who is involved in mind sports

will say it's all practice. It's using techniques to expand your memory, which is really amazing because what these guys are doing, one of them is card reading. They will give you a deck of cards and you will go through, scan it in order, maybe be given a minute to scan it,

maybe three minutes, something like that. You'll put it down and then 20 minutes later, they'll ask you to recall the deck. In the order of the 52 cards. And these guys like get it flawlessly perfect. That's pretty amazing. It is amazing, but they are saying like, I have learned to do this.

I was not born like this. I don't have a photographic memory. I'm using things like mnemonic devices that are techniques to help me remember stuff. Yeah, interesting. Have you ever heard of a memory palace? Yeah. Okay, so a memory palace then it's just like

building a castle or whatever in like different rooms or where you put different things and specifically you might have a drawer for a specific thing. And you remember where that specific thing is because you placed it in that drawer, in that room, in your palace that you've built in your mind. Yeah, it's a very helpful way to remember things for sure.

And also shout out to friend of the show, Nate DeMeo and his great podcast, The Memory Palace. The Memory Palace. Oh my gosh, I never put two and two together. Yeah, Nate's still around, still a great show. Well, sure, sure, I don't think he died or anything but I'm saying like, I knew his show was named The Memory Palace.

Yeah, you should make that connection. I never did. You should have put it in The Memory Palace. That is a great name, Nate. Yeah, isn't it? That is a great, I liked it even more before but I was just taking it more like Tolkien's cellar door. It was just pretty, you know what I mean?

Right, right. Wow. So there have been some connections that people have made with synesthetes and people with supposedly photographic memories. There was a writer named Solomon Shershevsky who was a writer, I think I already said that, in the 20th century, in the early 20th century.

And he had these really amazing powers of memory. And he uses, or used mnemonic techniques like we talked about. He did. But he was also a synesthete. Right. So the point was made here was that he basically had been doing this his whole life

involuntarily because of associations that synesthetes make with color and sound and shape and things like that. Yeah, that's how a memory becomes all the more solid. It's associated with an emotion or a physical sensation. And he was a multiple synesthete, right? So rather than say like a sound having a color, this guy, when he heard a bell ring,

he saw a white, tasted salt water and sensed something small and round from the sound of a bell. He would not read the paper while he was eating because the tastes that the words on the page evoked would compete with the taste of the food he was eating. Like he had it just powerfully, powerful synesthesia. That's pretty cool.

So yeah, he couldn't help but have an amazing memory. Pretty cool. The mnemonic devices, everyone uses those in school where they tell you that's a good way to remember things. But then there's also what, and this was a Grabster article, what he just called relentless obsession. And if you wanna go on Jeopardy,

memorize the Constitution. Memorize every state flag, every state bird, every state motto. It's like if you pour yourself into that kind of study and you're obsessed over memorizing a certain thing, then you could probably do it over time. Right, yeah. Ed uses the example of the, what are they called?

The Shospolic. Yes, who were a sect of Polish Jews who memorized the Babylonian Talmud, which is from what I gather, one of two versions of the Talmud. Yeah, I think there are like eight or 12 books. It's a lot. Yeah, like 5,000 pages.

And these guys, they would remember the Talmud so precisely that a case study from 1917, based on eyewitness accounts, said that you could put a pin on a word on one page and push the pin through, say, 50 pages. And they could tell you the word that that pin came out on 50 pages ahead. So that's geography too. Kind of, that's a really good example

of a potential photographic memory. Right, but also an example of obsession. Right. I did a little more reading on them too. They were known as Nemanists for Pneumonic. Right. It's interesting, that's just, I don't know. I think that might've been a early Eastern European

and Russian name for someone with amazing memory, because the sheriff's chef's key, he was written about as a patient, just by the pseudonym S, by a psychologist, a very famous psychologist named Alexander Luria. And he titled his paper book, The Mind of a Nemanist. Oh, okay. So I wonder if that was like an old-timey word

for like somebody with an amazing memory. Nemanist, that's probably word, what is it, Nemanist? Oh yeah, I like the way you said it. I think yours is right. I like yours more, though. Another thing is that a lot of times when someone you might think or they claim to have a photographic memory,

it's on a very specific thing that they are obsessed with. Like a chess player may be able to memorize like these incredibly complex sequences or games that they've played, but may not have a great memory otherwise of other things. Can't remember their anniversary as their wives. Yeah, you know? For sure.

Who's this other guy? John Van Neumann, he was a mathematical genius. And he could recite chapters of books and pages of the phone book, but apparently he was like, that was sort of where it ended. He didn't have like a memory outside of like these very specific things. Right, he also never claimed to have a photographic memory,

which is pretty cool because if anybody could claim that, he was definitely one of them. And he was a polymath just straight up genius in general. It's a great varied thinker. He, I read somewhere that he used to tell jokes with his dad in classical Greek at age six, which I mean, if you're doing that at age six with your dad, it's a specific type of household

you're being raised in. Yeah. That Steven Wiltshire guy is pretty interesting. I remember seeing something on him a while ago. I think we talked about him in the thinking cap episode too. Yeah, that might have been it. He's from London and has autism. And he's the guy who takes a helicopter ride over Berlin

lands and then draws it in like astonishing detail. Yes, but, and it is astonishing. But, and people put him up as an example of photographic memory, there are flaws in the recollection and the telling. These are renderings are not architecturally precise drawings, but still, I mean, better than, it's astonishing. No, I think what's astonishing is the art.

And I think people should just like lay off the photographic memory part of it and just say, Steven Wiltshire is an amazing artist who like can see a scene and encapsulate it on paper with ease or seeming ease. Yeah. And then you really can't start a conversation about memory of any kind without talking about

Kim Peek who we mentioned earlier, who was again, the inspiration for Rain Man, but was much more friendly, much more outgoing, much happier than Rain Man was. Yeah, he was a real jerk. He was, well, he wasn't a jerk, but he was much more introverted. Kim Peek was much more happy, go lucky

and like very talkative and curious. And for a very long time, he was considered to have had autism, but now they think he had FG syndrome, which is a very specific genetic disorder that's characterized by people who are friendly, inquisitive, hyperactive and have a short attention span. And from what I understand,

that describes Kim Peek to a key, to a T. Yeah. Not a key. To a KP. He would, his whole thing, I mean, he had a great memory, but he had basically memorized the calendar. And when you say calendar, you mean, like that means the calendar of the past.

Well, big whoop, it's Tuesday, everybody knows that. Yeah, but what day was, you know, July 1st, 1977. He can say, well, that was a Thursday and on this day, these things happened. Right. That kind of memory. Yeah, which is pretty astounding in and of itself,

but he was also able to do things like, read the phone book, two pages at a time. Yeah, now that's just off the charts. This is, he may be the only human being who is ever born capable of doing. Yeah, his left eye was reading one page and his right eye would read another page. Okay, astounding that he could do that

just visually, optically. Yes. He would retain this stuff. Yeah, there's two parts to that. And he could tell you the phone number of somebody's name, you went back and said, what is, you know, what is John Von Newman's phone number? And he'd say the phone number,

he'd be like, really, I don't want to call him. I'll tell you about, say John Von Jovi for a second. I'm excited. I have a good joke in Greek. Yeah, I mean, that's, that is. Let's edit that part out. Really? No.

Okay. I didn't say it really. Here's the thing with peak though, is we talked a lot about the corpus callosum in the, Yeah. What's it called? The restless hand syndrome, alien hand syndrome. Yeah, yeah.

One of our early, early podcasts. That's right. I forgot that it showed up, isn't it? The corpus callosum, we talked about it a bunch of shows, but that's what connects the two hemispheres. Kempig does not have a corpus callosum. Like not severed, not cut apart, not partial. It did not grow in his brain.

So he has two independent hemispheres of his brain. And so when his left eye is inputting all this stuff and his right eye is inputting all this stuff, his brain can recall it separately, but together. That's just astounding. Is he still with us? No, he died a few years ago. I don't remember of what.

And like he was in his 60s, I believe. All right, well, RIP, Mr. Peak. And let's take a break now, and then we'll talk about a woman named Jill Price right after this. ["Hey Dude"] On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lacher and Christine Taylor,

stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it.

It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair.

Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, cause you'll wanna be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s.

Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road.

Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God.

Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander

each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, as promised, we're going to talk about Jill Price, who I remember from the news in 2006, is when she kind of hit the big time with the news. And she was the one that, she's called the woman who cannot forget.

Yes, and pretty accurately. Because she has an audit well, they now, they call it a couple of things now. I saw HSAM, Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory. Right. And then another condition called hyperthesmia. Thymesia. Hyperthymesia?

Yeah, hyperthymesia. With a Y and 70. Oh, is this misspelled? Uh-huh. Okay. And hyper- So delete my correction. And hyper means excessive, obviously.

And then thymesis is remembering. So it's excessive remembering. I like Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory, though. Yeah, and I saw where they found, they know of at least 60 other people that have HSAM, whereas this said only two other people have been diagnosed with hyperthymesia. Right, it's the same thing.

It is? It's the exact same thing. Okay, so are there 60 people or are there three? There's 61 from what I understand. Oh, okay. Yeah. Well, she can't forget stuff. And these people, apparently, you know,

if you go back and say, what were you doing, you know, 14 years ago and two months and two days, or give them a date? Date, usually. And then they will be able to say what they did, what they were wearing, who they were with. What was on TV? Yeah.

But the thing is, so this is it. So you say, okay, great, fine. We found, these are the people with photographic memories. Right. Not really. Right. Because it's Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory. And that.

That's right. It's a specific kind of memory. It's a type of episodic memory. Episodic memories are personal memories, memories you generate, as opposed to semantic memory, which is memories that you make of things like a car has two axels or something stupid like that. Right.

Like a fact that you recall. Right. Rather than an autobiographical memory. So the semantic memory is normal in people with HSAM or hyperthymesia. It's the autobiographical stuff that is astoundingly photographic. Yeah.

And people also tried after she came out and made a kind of a big splash on the news programs. There were people trying to poke holes in her condition saying that like, well, starting in her teenage years, she started keeping these obsessively detailed diaries every day as well. Right. Which, sure, that can help.

But just because you write an obsessively detailed diary every day doesn't mean you're going to remember it 25 years later. Right, no, that's exactly the point, right? Yeah, maybe she is even using mnemonics to solidify it even further. But the fact that you can give her a date at random and she can remember it without consulting her journal,

it's pretty impressive. It's definitely its own thing. And there's a pretty widespread consensus that this is a real condition. Right. But the fact that you said it, she keeps an obsessively organized journal, they believe it's possible that it's

linked to obsessive-compulsive disorder, that the brains of people with hyperthymesia have the same traits, the same structures, that people who have OCD have. And they'll very frequently have kind of this comorbid collection of stuff. They have traits that somebody, yeah. Somebody with OCD might have.

I also wonder if it has anything to do with narcissism. Oh, really? I don't know, man, it's autobiographical. Yeah. Like, they remember everything about their life. Right. But they might not be able to tell you, like, you know, who the president is.

Sure. But OK, if it is narcissism, it's a masochistic. No, it's a masochistic. OK. That's the one where you're bad to yourself, right? You mean to yourself? Why? Because this is sort of a curse?

Yes. Right. So if you see interviews with Jill Price, she's not a happy person by any stretch of the imagination. Because part of this condition is not being able to forget, like, emotions attached to things. Yeah, she, after a very long time, met a man and married him. And they were very, very close.

Like, she said later that he just got her. He was the first person to ever just get her and accept her for who she was. Other family and friends would be like, can you not just let this go? Can you not get over something that happened 20 years ago? And she's like, no, I really can't. This guy just accepted her.

And then, of course, he dies young from, I think, cancer or something like that. So rather than going through the morning period and grieving like a person normally would, time healing all wounds, that does not apply to somebody with hyperthymesia. Because when they think of that day, again, or something reminds them of that person,

and the memory of them is recalled, they experience that same pain like they experience the first time it happens, forever. They cannot forget. It does not fade. Like a sci-fi movie. Basically. But it's a real thing.

What was the Tom Cruise thing? Lib-Dai repeat? Rain Man. Yeah, that's it. You know who else has hyperthymesia or highly superior autobiographical memory? I think I know this, who? Because you talked about her at length

in the podcast you remember. What, who? I'll give you a one degree of separation, and you'll figure it out, OK? OK. Don't say Kevin Bacon. Tony Danza. What?

No, I didn't say you do it Tony Danza. That's John Travolta. Sorry. That was not a bad Tony Danza. Mona. No. Oh, that's right. Yes.

What's your name? Yes. Alyssa Milano? No. No. Mary Lou Henner from Taxi. Right. Alyssa Milano.

Well, wasn't she in The Boss? She just looked up from the gallery in the congressional hearing and went, who me? I forgot about Taxi. Mary, that's right. Mary Lou Henner, that's right. Like has it, you can say you'll give her a date or even like a Taxi episode.

She'll start reciting lines, the other person's lines, she'll talk about what she's wearing in the scene, stuff from the 70s. It's really impressive. She has the opposite experience though. She loves the whole thing. Like it's a gift to her whereas it's a curse to Jill Price. My memory is weird because I will,

and I'm sure we talked about this in the other memory episodes, but I can have the worst memory on the planet or the best. And it all just depends on whatever detail it is. It's either in the old brain or it's not. Like I can recall some very specific things that people are like, how in the world do you remember that? You know, the thing that bothers me about this

is we have had so much information pass through our brains. And I retain so little of it. It's almost like I really wish I had more of it in there. It's just not though. I mean, I guess it is if you jog it, but I can't bring it to memory very easily. Yeah, I often find that couples though, whether that's you and I or us and our individual wives,

can compliment each other with their memories and their abilities. For sure. Like I'm really good at remembering certain things and Emily's really good at remembering other types of things. And together it's usually works out. It's a whole person.

Yeah, basically. Yeah, I know what you mean for sure. But you do that too. You remember stuff that I don't remember like Mary Lou Henner. Right. And the list goes on and on. Right.

You remember way more than I do. But I don't remember nearly as much as I should, I think, or that I wish I did. I don't deal in shoulds anymore, Chuck. Right. So should we talk about Charles Strohmeyer, John Merritt, and Elizabeth? Sure.

So this was a little bit wrong, but the way I understood from what you sent me as a follow up is that Charles Strohmeyer was the one who did this initial research at Harvard in the 1970s. Yes. Is that right? Yeah. OK, so this guy placed ads in newspapers.

He was trying to do some studies on photographic memory. And all these ads were images of random dots. And you could take a test yourself just by looking at these dots very briefly and then trying to reproduce them. And if you did a really good job, you would follow up by getting in touch with him saying, hey, I nailed your test, dude.

Right. You should talk to me. I drew the turtle on the matchbook just right. Remember the turtle in the turtleneck? Yeah, and there was a pirate too, right? Yep. What was that all about? It was like an art correspondence course

where you would learn to draw through the mail. Interesting. I think we've talked about that on another episode. Surely we have. I think so. Sorry for derailing you with the turtle thing. No, that's OK. But that was the long and short of what he was trying to do

and how he was trying to recruit subjects. And I believe he got like 30 people that were successful. 15 of which he was impressed enough by to go to their house and follow up with. And one person he really followed up with. He did. He found out of the 15, none of them had photographic memory. True.

But then later on, he came across a woman from a different study entirely named Elizabeth. And here's the thing. This is nuts, man. He figured out, Strowmeyer figured out that if you took, remember the 3D? So in the colorblind episode. Yeah, the magic image or whatever

where you could see the sailboat and the big thing of dots. Right. So this thing didn't have to do with color. It had to do with overlaying the dots to create a 3D image. So you need two sets of dots. And when you put them together, they'll create like a magic eye poster kind of thing. So what Strowmeyer figured out is you

could take these two layers and separate them. Show one of the layers to somebody you're testing for photographic memory. So you really get a look at this. OK, now I'm going to wait like a day. And then I'll show you the second layer. Bring to mind that first layer you saw and overlay it in your brain.

And see if you can tell me what the 3D image is. That's amazing. It is amazing. And Strowmeyer found one person who could do it, a woman named Elizabeth. And he married her. And he married her. And the weird thing is he wrote like this whole write

up in the journal Nature. Then he married her and no more testing after that. So he took her off the market. He did. He did. But so they're like, well, we can't say that this is definitely a case of photographic memory. If they were true, this would be the closest thing

to photographic memory anyone's ever come up with. Now Kim P. Coles is the title. Yet Elizabeth is just could be the key. Right. Could be probably not though. I saw that in some follow up tests, this would explain why he took her off the market that she couldn't do it.

Really? But then this guy, John Merritt, he came along later and used those studies for his own purposes. He did. He found that nobody could do this, that nobody is able to do that. But they did figure out that, hey, this makes a pretty good test to find ideticus.

Because you don't show them one layer and then take away the other layer and ask them a day later. You show them one layer, ask them to hold it in their mind, and then put the other layer underneath it. And if you're an idetic, you are typically able to see in 3D. And you can go do this online, actually. Just don't blink. Don't blink and don't say what it is you're looking at.

Like Michael Cain always says. Oh, I've never heard him say that. That was one of, he did these kind of corny, how to active video series, I think at one point. What? And Letterman used to play bits of them because they were really funny. One of them was the secret to great acting, don't blink.

Was he trying to be funny? No. But Letterman would play it for laughs, don't blink. And he would show scenes and he's like, look at me, I'm not blinking. And then Letterman would say, don't blink like out of the blue 50 times the rest of the show. Probably.

I love that guy. You got anything else? No, sir. I've got one more. Lex Luthor. What? He supposedly had photographic memory. He's not real.

Well, he does photographic memory. All the more likely that he had photographic memory. Well, if you want to know more about photographic memory, go take that Eideker test. You'll love it. The Mr. T thing is just. Back to the podcast? Maybe.

I pity the fool that tripped me on 57th Street on July 29, 1982. Well, Chuck made a Mr. T reference, which means then it's time for Listener Mail. This is, I think, just some warm gratitudes. Oh, I like them. Hey, guys, I'm sure you get these emails all the time. But I'd be remiss if I didn't thank you for your wonderful work.

I had a really tough time with mental illness, and there have been a lot of nights that your wonderful show has staved off panic attacks or worse. Thank you for keeping me calm and educated. Thank you for making me feel safe, even in perilous circumstances. Thank you for giving me something to talk about when my depression has kept me in a fog,

without your massive backlog of seemingly endless supply of fresh, fascinating subjects that would surely be lost. Spent some time researching that can truly appreciate just how much time and energy goes into becoming familiar enough with something to explain it as succinctly as you guys do. You are superheroes and rock stars. You have truly saved me. Kindness and warmest regards, Georgia.

And here's the thing, everyone. I may have read this before, but let's leave it in there. Oh, OK. Because if I did read this before and forgot it, it will have been within the last six or seven weeks, and it will be a very funny ending to the memory episode. Either way. The listener mail is so nice, you read it twice.

Yeah, that's appropriate. Well, thanks a lot, Georgia. Two times over. Maybe. Thank you, Chuck, for that great ending. If you want to get in touch with us, you can go on to stuffyoushouldknow.com, check out our social links, and you can also send us an email

to stuffpodcast.ihartradio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor,

stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it.

Listen to, Hey Dude, the 90s called, on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.