Radiolab

Adding Memory

We start this section off with a question from writer Andrei Codrescu: "where do computers get their extra memory from?" And then we take it literally. Can you add memories? Dr. Elizabeth Loftus says yes. She’s a psychologist in the department of Criminology, Law and Society at the University of California at Irvine, and her research shows that you can implant memories—wholly false memories—pretty easily into the brains of humans. Her work challenges the reliability of eye-witness testimony, and is so controversial that she once had to call the bomb squad. Then, producer Neda Pourang brings us the story of finding a lost memory. Painter Joe Andoe incessantly paints huge canvasses of seemingly random images: horses, pastures, and - more recently - a girl with a particular about-to-say-something look on her face. He didn't realize until recently that he'd been painting a day from his past, a fragment of an afternoon 30 years earlier.

Slideshow: Joe Andoe
See Painter Joe's paintings
Buy Painter Joe's book
New Orleans, Mon Amour by Andrei Coderescu
Elizabeth Loftus can make you hate ice cream

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