Wiretap - A Whole Stack of Memories

Episode Date: August 10, 2020

What's your first memory of being alive? Are you swinging at a pinata at your 4th birthday party? Are you throwing a snowball at your pet cat? We explore why we remember some things and forget others.

It's not just you. News in Canada and around the world is moving at an incredible pace, which is where we come in. I'm Jamie Poisson and I host Frontburner, Canada's most popular daily news podcast. And what we try to do is hit the breaks on a story that you actually want to know more about. So try us out. Follow Front Burner wherever you get your podcast, Front Burner, stories you want to follow five days a week. I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and you're listening to Wiretap on CBC Radio 1. Today's episode, a whole stack of memories never equals one little hope in which memories are fondly recalled, easily forgotten, and recklessly microwaved. There was once a man who felt his losses more acutely than others.

lost watches, umbrellas, a money clip. He just couldn't let go. The passage of time didn't help either. He still dreamt of childhood toys he hadn't seen in years. And of course, there was the loss of women, some of whom he still woke up aching for. He'd study their remnants alone at night, slips of paper bearing old phone numbers,

photographs, a mitten, a toothbrush. In bed he would stare at the ceiling. trying to seize on the exact feeling of a particular woman's head on his chest, its weight, the smell of her hair. And yet oddly, most of these recollections were almost perfectly wrong. His memory turned redheads into brunettes,

French women into Spaniards, awful women into saints. One day, while waiting for his bath to fill, He lived in a building with ancient plumbing and it often took hours. The man went out to buy a magazine to read while bathing, and on the street he ran into one of those old ex-girlfriends of his. She was staring into a window of a candy store, and when he approached her, there was not a shred of recognition in her eyes.

He told her his name, repeated it, pointed at his face, and still it was like staring into an abyss. He worried this might be some game she was playing, a hurtful game of feigned forgetting. As he turned to leave, the woman touched his shoulder and explained that, about two months earlier, she'd been in an accident and had lost many of her memories. Some, she said, she kept, small ones, the color of old blankets, a mole on a kindergarten teacher's face. But most of the big ones had been wiped out. You might have been a big one, she said, and smiled.

It was in seeing her smile that the man immediately realized that this was not his ex-girlfriend at all. His ex-girlfriend did not have a gap between her front teeth. His ex-girlfriend, in fact, looked nothing like this woman. If you're not too busy, the woman continued, I'd love to hear about us, the things we did, what I was like back then, what we were like together. She suggested a nearby cafe, and the man, not sure what to do, began to stammer and hesitate. Please, she said, I've been so lonely without my memories. And so, with nothing else to do besides wait for his bath to fill, the man acquiesced.

To lose a fountain pen is one thing, he thought, but to lose one's entire self, it was clear this woman needed him. seated at a table in the rear of the cafe, he searched for where to start. Well, he said, we went out for hamburgers quite a bit, milkshakes too, and you always insisted on paying. It was your thing, our thing. I don't eat many hamburgers these days, the woman said with amusement. I'm mostly vegetarian. And we always sat on the same side of the booth, he said. The woman listened to him recount her past, taking it all in, sometimes with closed eyes as though soaking up sunshine, and other times shaking her head with disbelief. You had this way of rubbing my head furiously when I'd bang it, he said. I banged it often. Some of the things he tried to

remind her of seemed so alien they made her feel like she was hopping out of a cake onto a cool, dark stage. But other times, the memory sounded almost familiar and made her feel like she was entering a warm, carpeted room. When you drank soda, he said, you held the can backwards, like a cute little monkey. She tried it with her mug and felt the coffee dribble down her chin. I still do that sometimes, she said uncertainly. One time, he said, we were trying to get out of the rain, and we mistakenly ran into an S&M bar. Inside, there was a TV in the back, and we watched an old episode of Frasier. He was painting a portrait made from the bits of memory he'd stored from all the women he'd ever loved.

Brandy's fondness for American sitcoms. Nancy, Joie de Vivre. Kathy's impenetrable melancholy. Megan's enthusiasm for the smell of toast. You liked raisins, and you liked chocolate, he continued. But you did not like chocolate-covered raisins. You enjoyed it when I sat on the lid of the toilet and talked to you while you showered. The more he painted, the more he experienced the sensation of falling in love,

with something or someone, possibly her. It seemed the woman was feeling something too. She was, in fact, feeling something indeed, for as the man spoke, as he leaned towards her, closer and closer, the smell of his coffee breath was slowly turning her stomach. And with the smell crept spiders of memory, his morning breath, the way he would speak so close to her

that she'd have to wipe spittle from her glasses. So much as coming back to me, she began, while glancing at the door. When we went to the movies, he continued, between slurps of coffee, I'd often glance in your direction to find you watching me, curious about which scenes were making me smile. Yes, the woman thought, I'm certain this must be why we broke up, those noises he makes

while he drinks his coffee, the way he doesn't let me get a word in edgewise, that pontificating tone. You'd made me promise, the man went on, that if you were ever kidnapped or locked away somewhere, that I would never give up, never rest until you were free. The man leaned forward and looked at her with great intensity And as his bathroom flooded with bathwater And his downstairs neighbor pounded on his apartment door with increasing fury He could see by the look in her eyes

That he was succeeding in making her remember My earliest memory is of being pushed in a stroller by my mom across the Dewey Field to the bakery for breakfast. My earliest memory is of walking through a playground and getting kicked in the face by the kid on the swing set. My earliest memory is of visiting my parents

at the hospital right after my little brother was born. I wore dynos or pajamas and tried to yank off the scab on my new brother's belly button. My earliest memory is of having an argument with a friend at school. Back when we were learning about shapes, I told her about pentagons and she didn't believe they existed.

I was so mad. My earliest memory is of sitting on my uncle's knee and eating peppermint cream. My earliest memory is eating paste. It tasted surprisingly good. My earliest memory is from when it was about three. We had a cat named Kelly, and I pulled his tail. He died. It wasn't until I was about 19 that I realized the two events weren't related.

The earliest I can remember is lighting matches on the living room couch at two years old. This is Brad Williams. He's one of only 20 people to have ever been diagnosed with hyperthymesia, also known as superior autobiographical memory. What this means is that he can recall the minutia of his daily life year after year. Give him almost any date, and not only can he remember what he had for breakfast on that day and what the weather was like,

but he can also list off any world events that happened that day. People are taking to calling me the human Google. I will have somebody go on a search engine like Google, and they'll ask me when an event happened and if I can give them the date on that and to see if I can get it faster than the Google. And a lot of the time, it becomes the person on the keyboard saying, wait, I didn't even type this in yet, and you got it?

What am I supposed to do? Well, why don't you favor us with some of the things that you remember happening on, let's say, May 2nd from all the years past? I work in radio news, so last year we were naturally doing stories about the death of Osama bin Laden On May 2nd of 2004, my dad's side of the family had a reunion in central Wisconsin. On May 2nd of 1970, I attended the state spelling bee in Wisconsin. May 2nd, it was the 20th anniversary of a co-worker married on May 2nd of 1992. Would you like me to go on farther?

No, that's great. But is it just with dates, or can you also remember stuff like state... capitals. You could start at Olympia, Washington, go down to Salem, Oregon, and then Sacramento, California, over to Carson City, Nevada, and then Phoenix, Arizona, and Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Austin, Texas, and keep going to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Jackson, Mississippi, Montgomery, Alabama, and Tallahassee, Florida, Atlanta, Georgia, Columbia, South Carolina. If you woke up tomorrow and your memory was what everybody else's is, how would you feel about that? I wouldn't like it too much.

That is certainly a concern of mine. It's like, oh, boy, what if 10, 20 years from now this starts to go away, and that certainly would be bad. If I were awake up and just have a normal, no, I wouldn't like it too much. though most of us don't have as many memories to lose as Brad does the ones we do have are precious to us and so we hold on to them even the bad ones because they form who we are

but what if such memories became an impossible burden well then this would be the man to turn to for help I'm Dr. Cream Nader I'm a professor at McGill University and I study how the brain stores memories For over the past hundred years, the prevailing wisdom has been that memories are wired into our brain and are fixed there. But what Dr. Nader's research has discovered is that this is not so, and that memories are actually malleable. And in fact, the very act of remembering will itself change the memory.

When you remember a memory, it becomes unstable and unstored, and then it has to be restored. And so it's the remembering that opens up a choice. window of opportunity for some kind of intervention, during which you can actually block some of the content from getting restored. So functionally, that's the same thing as an erasing part of a memory. In the movie, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a man who can't get over his breakup undergoes a medical process that essentially wipes out all memory of the relationship. It's a fantasy scenario, but Dr. Nader's research points toward a similar sort of

targeted memory alteration in the real world. Unlike the movie though, his method doesn't simply erase specific memories from a patient's mind, but rather it allows the patient to retain the content of the memory while forgetting the intense painful emotions connected with the memory. And again, unlike the movie, Dr. Nader's method would only be used under the most extreme circumstances. So potentially, I could treat a range of psychopathologies such as PTSD. PTSD, post-traumax stress disorder, where you have a very strong emotional memory that cannot be managed by the other parts of the brain.

And so what we were trying to do is just turn down the part of the emotional memory that's so strong and just gear it back down to a normal bad memory that people can cope with. So we're not trying to wipe out the entire memory so that you have a black hole in your mind. We're just trying to target the erasure to the part that's become too intense. What does the treatment look like if you're sitting down with someone who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder? So essentially the treatment is they ask the patients just to write down in as much detail their traumatic event, to have them relive as much of that event as possible. And then that will allow the memory to become unstored.

And then there are drugs that will block the restorage of the emotional part of the memory. And the drugs are pretty benign, something called a beta blocker. So many people are on this for blood pressure or stuff like that. And so if you give a person a be a blocker, it can reduce the emotional intensity of memories that are restored. So has there been a strong reaction to what you're proposing? Because, you know, we have this idea that memories and even painful memories are there to tell us something, you know, like that there's something there to be worked out. Sure. No, absolutely.

But there's a qualitative distinction between having a bad memory. of a breakup that we're going to grow from, right? And PTSD. PTSD is not like that. It's not about growing from your experience, right? They're trapped by their experience. They're stuck in the past at the point of their trauma. They can't move forward.

You know, are we not going to help people who are raped and move forward and give them back some quality of their lives? It's the right thing. It's a right moral call there to say, hang on to all that pain. And when we ask people in which it was successful, does this take anything away from you? Do you feel like you've been robbed of anything? They say, no, of course, you know, it's given me back myself. It's somebody who can still remember the traumatic event,

but they've been able to move forward in their lives. So we finally found a podcast that speaks to you, pure bliss. It's so good that when you finish the final episode, it leaves a hole in your heart and your schedule. What now? Personally, is here for you. It's a collection of true story. that explore what it means to be, well, human.

The best part, there are six incredible seasons to dive into, with more on the way. Personally, get lost in someone else's life. Available now, wherever you personally get your podcasts. In the best of circumstances, our memories of the past exist to help guide us through our present. And sometimes, when denied, these memories will erupt as though they've a life and will of their own. William Faulkner once wrote, The Past is Never Dead. It's not even past. Here's Perry Grebin with a story that illustrates just that. This past New Year's Eve, I had plans with Dimitri, with a good friend of mine.

And I was, you know, I've been dating this girl on and all for like seven years. And she was not the kind of girl who could be available all the time. I once compared the relationship to standing under an icicle and waiting for water to drip into my mouth, and that's how I quenched my thirst for affection. It's terrible. So anyway, she was away for a couple of months, and this was one of the periods where we were technically together dating. She returned about, I don't know, five days before New Year's and said, hey, I'm going to go upstate for New Year's. Do you want to come?

And I was like, geez, I'd love to come. I have plans with Demetri already. And she said, are you, do you think you would mind, you know, if you canceled? And at that point, you know, any rational person would have been like, what do you mean to cancel it? But that didn't happen. So I said, geez, I don't know. Let me, I'll find out, I guess. Because, you know, the plans were loose.

Yeah, I've known Dimitri 40 years, and we've had, you know, 30 New Year's Eve together. I don't know. But that was what I wanted. That's why I wanted on New Year's Eve. But I also wanted not to say no to anybody. So then New Year's Eve is approaching, and days are going by, and I say, Dimitri, hey, you know, I may not come on New Year's Eve. He's like, what are you talking about?

Of course you're coming on New Year's Eve. He said, well, I might go upstate. He's like, don't forget that girl. What? She just sweeps in and, like, once you go, no, no, you've already had plans. I said, oh, yeah, you're right, you're right, right. So now two days before New Year's, and she said, so you're still coming upstate, right? And out of my mouth come the words, yeah, of course I'm coming.

Even though I tried to say, yeah, I'm not going to come. For some reason, out of my mouth came to the other thing. And now I was in it. I dug myself a hole. I jumped right in, and I was filling in the dirt. And I called Dimitri, and I said, I don't know why. I told her I was going to go. He's like, what? That's ridiculous. This isn't you now. This is the old you. That's how you used to behave. And at that moment, as he said that, all these childhood memories came back to me in full color, full force. My parents, who were very, very much divorced, were constantly, like, fighting all the time through me and my brother. So over time, I had graduated to a role of, like, a double agency, kind of double-speak, like saying yes to everybody, because you couldn't be sure until the very last moment which side was going to win. You know, here's my dad saying, you're coming here for Thanksgiving. Here's my mother saying, you're coming here for Thanksgiving.

and I don't want to upset her and you know I'm 10 I have to say yes everybody of course I'm going to be here yeah yeah we're definitely coming knowing you know full well out of my mouth comes the word yes and right behind it my entire body is saying absolutely not and I cannot help it even though I know like that's going to crash there's no there's no way that's not going to crash. Everybody can't get yes. And there I was on the phone with this girl. And I'm doing the same thing again. With that child, in that memory, was basically operating all the gears that made my mouth say, uh, yeah, I'll still be there. I'm going upstate. You can count on me. So when Dimitri said, this is the old you. You don't do that anymore. I realize he's right.

absolutely right. And so I spend half the night writing an email to this girl explaining why I'm not going to spend the year's eve with her. And she wrote an email basically saying like this relationship is over. And I got out of my chair and fell on my knees and cried for an hour in a way that I haven't cried since I was probably a child. And I realized I was emptying out all of the stuff I'd been holding in for years, like a volcanic emotion. explosion. I mean, I wept so hard I could barely breathe. And that was at like, you know, four o'clock in the afternoon. And then it emptied me to some degree where I was free of the past and free to say no when I felt like it and not try and please every single person just because

I was afraid I don't know that they wouldn't love me and so I'd go out with Dimitri because that's what I want to do and by midnight we're having dinner it's me and Dimitri

and these two girls and it's all fun it's like fireworks going off outside and lighting up the room and I was feeling great I felt, you know, wiser and happier and freer than I felt in a long, long time

then it was downhill from there I was able to coast happily. My earliest memory is of walking by all the fish tanks at a pet store and trying to stick my fingers in the water. My earliest memory is of being at a pizza parlor, walking up to a man who I thought was my father, and realizing it was not my father. My earliest memory is of dancing with my aunts to Michael Jackson and jumping up and down on my grandparents' bed. My earliest memory is of being five years old in Mrs. Bagwell's class, trying to come to terms with a D word, divorce. My earliest memory is a dream. I was three, and I dreamt that there were mannequins living under the stairs.

What's my first memory? I'm afraid I've forgotten. All of my lifelong struggles with Johnny. Hey, Gregor. What is the root of it? Really, what is the problem? I mean, I think in a lot of ways it... Exactly not. Here's the problem.

The problem is you. It's always been you. What's the solution? We tried diet. We tried exercise. None of it works. And then it came to me. Yeah.

What I need to do is wipe the whole hard drive, re-format it, start fresh, totally clean. Are you thinking of some kind of colonic? Talking about your brain, your personality, you. your identity. Well, like you want to get me a lobotomy? No, I can't get you a lobotomy legally anymore. Would you be serious for a minute? I'm talking about grown-up stuff here. Big boy talk. I'm talking about how we can make you succeed. Okay. Right now, am I going to get you over your fear of getting on an elevator, eating tuna fish, get you over you? No, I can't. I just can't. It's exhausting. Now, I know what you're going to say. How do we wipe every memory, every facet of my

personality from my brain without killing you? At this point, wouldn't you just consider maybe getting a new client? Let's say you had a car, and it got a flat tire. Do you throw that car away? No, no, I think really it's a question of, like, if I had a station wagon and I wanted a sports car, I would probably... Station wagon sports car. It's more like if you had a monkey, and the monkey had a diarrhea problem, and all you had to do

was cure that diarrhea, and then you have a beautiful monkey. How did we go from cars to monkeys? Because you're not like a sports car, Johnny. Let's be real. You're more like a monkey with diarrhea. Okay, can you please stop talking about that? We're going to get this monkey nice and regular. That's all I'm saying.

Okay, you know, I'm losing the threat of your argument. All I need to do to make Johnny perfect is completely wipe your hard drive and start fresh. So I start thinking, what's the quickest way to do that? Raid a graveyard in the middle of the night, get a freezing cadaver, and try and reanimate a brain and sew it into your head? Nah, I've seen it in movies, but it's really not going to happen. And then it occurs to me. You already brought it into your house, yourself. It's your microwave oven.

All I have to do is go in and remove the lead shield. Okay. Before long, your brain is so full of microwave radiation. It's like making instant soup in your head. And I know what you're going to wonder. Is this going to hurt me? Well, you tell me, because I already went in and removed the heat shield. From my microwave.

Yes, from your microwave. Now you don't have to go through life schlepping along all this trauma. When you walk by elevators now, do you get afraid? Have you noticed in the past few weeks? This has been going on for weeks? Yeah, it's not like an instant thing. I don't want to cook you alive. You make me sound like I'm crazy.

Gregor, how many weeks? I don't know. It's about about... Four months, I guess. I haven't been feeling like myself. Who are you feeling like? Someone better? Less like an imperiled squirrel and more like a superhero. This microwaving is the best thing that ever happened to you.

You know, I was wondering why you had gotten me that chipping palette of microwavable breakfast burritos. What's the harm? You get a nice warm burrito and a few less memories of your childhood trauma. The proof is in the pudding, Johnny. Watch this. Tell me the story about when your mom beat you with a garden hose. I don't, my mother's never beaten me with a garden hose. There we go. One memory successfully extracted.

No, no, Gregor. You're welcome. That was never the case. Do you remember when you were supposed to go to prom and they dumped a bucket of pig blood on your head? That was from Carrie. Have no fears, Johnny. And you will have no fears. Because you're not going to be thinking about anything. You're going to be watching out the window until 6 o'clock when the jello cart comes down the hall. You're cured, my friend. You are cured.

Memories, I've got no more memories all alone in my moonlight. There's no memories. I'm John. On Wiretap today, you heard Dr. Kareem Nader, Gregor Erlick, Perry Grebin, and Brad Williams, whose adventures in memory can be followed at triviazoids.wordpress.com. You also heard our friends from the Wiretap Facebook page calling in with their earliest memories. The title of today's show comes from a quote by Charles M. Schultz. Wiretap is produced by Mirabird Wintonic, Crystal Duhame, and me, Jonathan Goldstein. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca.ca slash podcasts.